As introduced here, these Warm Recollections are random cullings from thirty years of notes files…
I don’t want to know: I want to believe. Belief is a contract between equals, between a human and an idea. Knowledge is a victory of ‘the truth’ and those who control it. And who said truth was so important, anyway? When did it become the be-all and end-all? As anyone who has spent any time as an adult knows, the truth ain’t always the best thing to know. Staying lost in the dream is sometimes what keeps us sane.
The slip-up: an internal flight in US, where someone notices that the views out of the two sides of the plane do not match up.
Don’t wait for perfection. The only thing that’s perfect is death. You can be perfectly dead. With everything else you’d better just make the best of being here, now.
I’m not sure Dutch Courage is such a good idea for me. It has a tendency to lead to Dutch Ill-Advisedness, and then ultimately descend into outright Dutch Idiocy.
It is a mistake — especially the older people get — to think that just because someone is complaining about something (even if incessantly) they want something done about it, or to have something changed. Complaining is merely an expression of the human condition, an excretion of the psyche. Many perfectly good situations have been replaced with something far worse because this fact has been misunderstood.
As always, if you can think of anyone who might enjoy this Substack, please spread the word.
Also re-reading Spares right now as a comedown from re-reading something huge.
The penultimate one reminds me of British weather. We LIKE complaining about it. We also like that it isn't something different, like drought conditions or hurricanes