Personal
As I approach the age of 60 this section of the website seems increasingly important. We are all on a voyage of personal discovery - that is what life is all about. I am currently going through a somewhat belated mid-life crisis. For me it is taking the form of clarifying the values one holds and tightening their connection to action.
I intend to write more about this. It will inevitably be both biographical and personal, but now is not yet the time. As I continue to wrestle with this however, I have included below some quotations from others that have made me think as well as the introductions to three of my books that illustrate this aspect of my personality and thinking.
From the preface to Escape from Evil by Ernest Becker:
It goes without saying that this is a large project for one mind to try to put between two covers; I am painfully aware that I may not have succeeded, that I may have bitten off too much and may have tried to put it too sparely so that it could all fit in. As in most of my other work, I have reached far beyond my competence and have probably secured for good a reputation for flamboyant gestures. But the times still crowd me and give me no rest, and I see no way to avoid ambitious synthetic attempts; either we get some kind of grip on the accumulation of thought or we continue to wallow helplessly, to starve amidst plenty. So I gamble with science and write, but the game seems to me very serious and necessary.
This is Henry's tirade from Tom Stoppard's play The Real Thing:
Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly . . . (he clucks his tongue to make a noise.) What we're trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock it might . . . travel . . . (he clucks his tongue again and picks up the script.) Now, what we've got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting 'Ouch!' with your hands stuck into your armpits. (Indicating the cricket bat.) This isn't better because someone says it's better, or because there's a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of Lords. It's better because it's better.
Two quotations from Tom Robbins, both from Still Life with Woodpecker:
Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to rules. The most any of us can do is sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honour and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean security is out of the question... My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free. The romance of new love, the romance of solitude, the romance of object hood, the romance of ancient pyramids and distant stars are means of making contact with the mystery. When it comes to perpetuating it, however, I got no advice. But I can and will remind you of two of the most important facts I know: Here are the personal introductions from three of my books: Finally for the moment and very personally are the eulogies I wrote for two of my friends: