“Another form of luxury is to be unavailable. To turn your back on the daily din is a privilege. Letting others take over tasks in your absence. The decision not to reply to text messages or pick up when the phone rings. Expectations from colleagues, business connections and family that are not that important to you are handed over to someone else, or ignored altogether. You have fought your way into a position where you couldn’t care less if someone wants to contact you.”

– Erling Kagge, Silence

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“Steal Time, Every Day”

– Hugh MacLeod, Evil Plans

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I wish I could disconnect from the grid of other’s demands.

There is a great body of literature to feed our flights of fantasy and provide imagined adventure.

Many others have trekked, traveled and challenged themselves up, down, and around the world.

But once our eyes refocus on the life in front of us it can be disheartening and overwhelming to plan our own grand adventure.

But there are options.

Small acts of defiance and independence.

A five minute daydream.

A short walk along a new route.

A workout.

A blog post.

Whatever it is that we can snatch time for can become a small daily adventure.

Perhaps these can build up momentum and become something bigger.

I have been a modest adventurer, taking a small step in the right direction.

I have taken this time to write as a detachment from the trivial.

“Don’t you think it’s pretty, all these trees, these hawthorns! And my pond – which you’ve never congratulated me on! You’re looking as sad as an old dishcloth. Feel that little breeze? Oh, say what you like, life has something to offer despite everything, my dear Amédée!”

– Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

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“Still, a great deal of light falls on everything.”

– Vincent Van Gogh, quoted in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

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There is always something to notice.

A glimpse of life that can lift the spirits.

There really is, even if at times the world can feel mighty small and bare.

It can happen in nature, on the page, anywhere we care to look.

But to notice something wonderful we must take the step outside, pick up the book, have faith that there is always so much more to see, experience and absorb.

I’m going to pick up a book, relax, and wait to catch sight of something new.

“I’m nothing special,
I’m nothing special.
You always tell me that I’m,
Nothing special.”

– Symposium, Nothing Special

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“You accept certain unlovely things about yourself and manage to live with them. The atonement for such an acceptance is that you make allowances for others that you cleanse yourself of the sin of self-righteousness.”

Eric Hoffer, Working and Thinking on the Waterfront

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I’m not special.

I’m totally fine with that.

It feels great to not feel special.

Totally ordinary

Low expectations and high freedom.

Keep the ego of righteousness at bay.

Keep an open mind.

No one owes me anything.

Ask for little.

And make the most of what I have.

“We watch a reader in a bookshop: he picks up a book, leafs through it—and for a short instant he is entirely cut off from the world. He is listening to someone speaking, whom others cannot hear. He gathers random fragments of phrases. He shuts the book, looks at the cover. Then he often takes a brief glance at the cover flap, hoping for some assistance. At that moment, without realizing it, he is opening an envelope: those few lines, external to the text of the book, are like a letter written to a stranger.”

– Roberto Calasso, The Art of the Publisher

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“‘Where were you just then?’ said Pete, throwing his lighthouse-beam in my direction. The blueness of his eyes and his sudden frank attention still made me jump. He would have made a brilliant hypnotist. ‘Lost in a book?’ I thought, I get lost in real life. Books are where I find myself.”

– Christopher Fowler, Word Monkey

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A book is the start of something.

It can be a brief fling or develop into a long term relationship.

There are many ways in which we are introduced to books.

By a friend.

Online.

A chance meeting in a shop.

Or my favourite – from another book.

However I am introduced, a book becomes an integral part of my life during the reading stage of the relationship.

I look forward to the moment I can pick up the book again and continue the conversation.

There is often a small tinge of loss when I finish the book.

Many books linger in my mind for days, weeks, months and years after.

I visit books to be with myself.

In fact this blog is created as an outlet for all the happy memories enjoyed in the company of books.

Here is my collection of snapshots.

It might inspire you to visit some of the places I have loved.

“One thing a person cannot do, no matter how rigorous his analysis or heroic his imagination, is to draw up a list of things that would never occur to him.”

– Thomas Schelling, quoted in Seven Types of Serendipity, by Steven Johnson

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“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.”

– Donald Rumsfeld, DoD News Briefing, February 12, 2002 11:30 AM EDT

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Even if I haven’t got anything noteworthy or interesting to say, I hope I have some skill in recognising and selecting from the works of others things worth repeating and sharing.

I do not have to originate any compelling ideas of my own. There are plenty out there waiting to be discovered.

My reading life is spent linking the knowns with the known unknowns.

But the greatest thrill is in the discovery of the unknown unknowns. An author new to me. A book that is a revelation.

Not everything previously unknown is life changing. But like an addict at a slot machine I know that if I read long enough the odds will provide me with a new discovery every now and then.

I want to stay in the game.

I keep coming back to play.

“Sustained combat produces a ruthlessly Darwinist process in which each item of equipment or supply shows its value over time, and with experience, soldiers bring only what’s needed and use only what works. That is often different from what military planners and logisticians predicted. But a lethal environment is a powerful crucible for shaping soldiers to care about what works over what the manual prescribes.”

Stanley McChrystal, On Character

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“Here’s a simple (if expensive) lifestyle hack. If you would like everything in your kitchen to be dishwasher-proof, simply treat everything in your kitchen as though it was; after a year or so, anything that isn’t dishwasher-proof will have been either destroyed or rendered unusable. Bingo – everything you have left will now be dishwasher-proof! Think of it as a kind of kitchen-utensil Darwinism.”

Rory Sutherland, Alchemy

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My brain is wired in such a way that I cannot bear to wait for anything I’ve suddenly decided I want.

I am not a saver, nor have ever been described as a patient and methodical planner.

When I start something new I am filled with an inrush of desire for tools and gadgets.

I can spend hours scrolling, constantly on the edge of purchase.

Fortunately I have developed some control over my monkey brain. I can resist for now, but there is a regular tug of wanting.

The areas where I have the least self control is in book buying.

Fortunately I don’t have expensive tastes. My books don’t need to be Near Fine First Editions. I want to read, not admire them.

What actually matters in any enterprise is the doing. Not the collecting and inventorying.

For most activities you need less stuff than you think.

Experience is the physical act of practicing.

The best way of knowing what you need is to do the activity and observe what you use or wish you had most often.

I recently started rucking. I got excited about buying a new rucksack, special weights to put in the rucksack, new boots.

What I really needed was my 25 year old army surplus burgan, two 5kg dumbells for weight and my running trainers. Off I went, using what I had and having a marvelous time.

By doing a few walks I realise I need nothing else than what I already have. I was close to buying an expensive smartwatch to track my walks and heart rate. But an old chest strap heart rate monitor and iPhone work just fine.

I’m struggling to splurge here!

I want to practice what works, using what I have, which is a pretty good strategy for resisting the siren call of New Stuff.

I have everything I need right here.

But can I ever have enough books?

A question to answer another day…

“You are greater than the Bible

And the Conference of the Birds

And the Upanishads

All put together

You are more severe

Than the Scriptures

And Hammurabi’s Code

More dangerous than Luther’s paper

Nailed to the Cathedral door

You are sweeter

Than the Song of Songs

Mightier by far

Than the Epic of Gilgamesh

And braver

Than the Sagas of Iceland

I bow my head in gratitude

To the ones who give their lives

To keep the secret

The daily secret

Under lock and key

Dear Diary

I mean no disrespect

But you are more sublime

Than any Sacred Text

Sometimes just a list

Of my events

Is holier than the Bill of Rights

And more intense.”

– Leonard Cohen, Dear Diary, in Book of Longing

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“I am writing all of this in my room and I must stop as supper is waiting for me at the rooming house, Las Delicias. Farewell for now, little diary, faithful dog of my soul. Don’t howl—your master is leaving, it is true, but he will return.”

– Witold Gombrowicz, Diary

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I’m sure we all have an internal monologue yapping through a large part of the day.

Often this yapping grows serious and admonishing.

Some thoughts left within the mind grow insistent, clawing at the door to get out.

Writing engages directly with my yapping self.

Dogs need walking otherwise they start chewing on the furniture.

Minds need walking otherwise they start devouring a person from the inside.

I show love and respect for myself by writing daily, creating my own sacred text.

I am piecing together the world as I see it.

But writing guides me only as far as the next sentence.

To find out how I must live, the writing must continue.

I’ve enjoyed my daily excursion, but cannot help starting to plan tomorrow’s trip across the page.

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.”

– William Blake, quoted in Epiphany of a Middle-Aged Pilgrim by Peter Wortsman

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“I have said my life has been passed in the shade of a nonexistent tree…It was planted sixty years ago by a boy with a bucket and a toy spade in a little Nebraska town. That boy was myself. It was a cottonwood sapling and the boy remembered it because of some words spoken by his father and because everyone died or moved away who was supposed to wait and grow old under its shade. The boy was passed from hand to hand, but the tree for some intangible reason had taken root in his mind. It was under its branches that he sheltered; it was from this tree that his memories, which are my memories, led away into the world. After sixty years the mood of the brown wasps grows heavier upon one. During a long inward struggle I thought it would do me good to go and look upon that actual tree. I found a rational excuse in which to clothe this madness. I purchased a ticket and at the end of two thousand miles I walked another mile to an address that was still the same. The house had not been altered. I came close to the white picket fence and reluctantly, with great effort, looked down the long vista of the yard. There was nothing there to see. For sixty years that cottonwood had been growing in my mind. Season by season its seeds had been floating farther on the hot prairie winds. We had planted it lovingly there, my father and I, because he had a great hunger for soil and live things growing, and because none of these things had long been ours to protect. We had planted the little sapling and watered it faithfully, and I remembered that I had run out with my small bucket to drench its roots the day we moved away. And all the years since it had been growing in my mind, a huge tree that somehow stood for my father and the love I bore him. I took a grasp on the picket fence and forced myself to look again.”

– Loren Eiseley, The Night Country

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Loren Eiseley breaks my heart. There is such heavy sadness in his writing. And a sense of loneliness.

I cannot read too much at a time for fear of being tipped into my own undercurrents of melancholy.

But Eiseley’s view of the world connects to something deep within me. I am so glad to have found him.

Dealing with the practicalities of a single lifetime, there are an infinite number of occasions, events, conversations and memories for us to wrest into some sort of coherence.

However, we are saved from overwhelm by our subconscious self: that part of us that knows if we find something interesting or not.

I do not need to deliberately select a memory for it to hold significance. It is already held aloft in my mind for me to simply notice.

Why some memories and not others?

I don’t know. I’ll probably never know for sure.

Perhaps that is why I read and write – I want to figure out what is important to me.

I am attempting to cultivate my recognition of significance.

What claws at my brain demanding recognition?

Who shall I share it with? Everyone and no one.

There are no physical barriers preventing the billions of internet users from accessing my thoughts here.

But because every other human being has their own automatic search and sort mechanism, it is natural that I remain unnoticed.

It is enough for me to notice what moves me and to leave my brief remarks.

Like a skin shed and left aside, if I address what troubles me, will I be able to slither along anew?

Or am I adding layers to my shell as protection from the outside world, waddling ever slower?

Whatever the consequences, seen or unseen, from engaging and writing about what I find significant, I have done it. And it feels good.

“A gift that cannot be given away ceases to be a gift. The spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation.”

– Lewis Hyde, The Gift

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“Of course I never considered myself the owner of these things, only their custodian for a certain time. I was not tempted by a sense of possession, of having them for myself, but I was intrigued by the idea of bringing them together, making a collection into a work of art. I was aware that in this collection I had created something that in itself was worthier to last than my own works.”

– Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday

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Like a distant bell, I’ve been called once more to pass comment.

Why maintain this blog? Is it for riches? Fame? A slap on the back from the internet?

Of course not. As is clear in writing this, I am writing for myself. This is my record: my collection of thoughts and ideas.

I happily intermingle with the words of the wise during my intellectual journey toward the mythical lands of comprehension.

I have a love for words and ideas. I am unique in as much that I read what I am drawn to. No other person on this planet, nor any all encompassing AI thinks, selects, intrigues and wonders as I do.

This doesn’t make me special. But how many other people stop to attempt to process and organise the sandstorm of information that daily blows through us? I attempt here to shake out from my crevices grains of thought worth remembering.

I appreciate this feeling. Of having stopped and written.

A little momento to add to my archive.

I owe it to myself to return tomorrow…

“The spark, the ideas, the emotions of a novel can come from anywhere. They do not have one source, but they convect and converge to a centre, a place that concentrates and expresses their essence; a place that I know. And in the physical particulars and the spirit of that place I find the distillation, which is the book.”

– Alan Garner, Powsels and Thrums

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“How much more we would see, I sometimes think, if the world were lit solely by lightning flashes from the Elizabethan stage. What miraculous insights and perceptions might our senses be trained to receive amidst the alternate crash of thunder and the hurtling force that give a peculiar and momentary shine to an old tree on a wet night. Our world might be transformed interiorly from its staid arrangement of laws and uniformity of expression into one where the unexpected and blinding illumination constituted our faith in reality.”

– Loren Eiseley The Night Country.

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Sometimes metaphors start up in my mind, take a turn or two then dead end.

Reading and eating are not similar.

We need to eat at regular intervals to avoid perishing.

We don’t need to read for the same reason.

And yet: without intellectual sustenance I begin to wither. I need a steady stream of thought calories.

It doesn’t all have to be high minded, bran filled worthy ideas.

I crave trash every now and then.

It’s natural.

But Reading is not eating, otherwise I’d have to liken writing to shitting on the page.

There are all sorts of chemical changes that happen fthrough digestion. I cannot feel the effect of that specific nut or seed I’ve eaten.

But I can trace the change caused by a new idea.

Reading is revelation. A single strike of Understanding.

My DNA is altered irrecoverably and immediately.

I can never be full.