As introduced here, these Warm Recollections are random cullings from thirty years of notes files…
You never believe so much in magic as you do around love and death — and especially love, because we know, in our heart of hearts, that death lies outside our powers, however ardent our prayers. People who have zero belief in magic will still open their hearts for a while, in desperation, when it comes to love.
And no-one has as fierce a disbelief in magic as the person who’s done that, who’s called upon the gods and the universe to help them in love, and found the call unheeded. Disappointed lovers are atheists to their core.
Never mind being bored with London: when you’re bored with all of the available junk foods, you really are bored with life.
Summer rain occupies the same strange liminal space as a forest that comes down to the edge of the sea: a meeting of archetypes with a degree of opposition. This is related to the special uncanny flavor of human dwellings — from whole cities like Seattle, down via little fishing villages, to a single decaying wooden hut on the waterline — which provide a bridge from the sea/water to the land.
The disconcerting moment of looking at your old notes and ideas and them seeming like they’ve been written by someone else, a person whose work you neither like nor hate but don’t have any strong feelings about either way.
Quote from female Madison, WI, cab driver, who’d recently been to a family wedding: ‘Church folk are the eatingest people’.
As always, if you can think of anyone who might enjoy this Substack, please spread the word.
"Sweet Summer Rain. Like God's own mercy."
O Brother Where art Thou. Just always loved that line.
Perhaps atheists are disappointed people to their core🤔
That bit about liminal spaces….. like the forest at the edge of the sea: it’s like our minds can’t cope with the abrupt shift, we expect a transition from one state to another, an airlock in which to acclimatise to the new thing. But the world, and life, isn’t really like that. You can be putzing along in one state, quite content, and be abruptly shunted into another without a by-your-leave.