a perpetual lab

entrance to the park I went along Rectory Avenue, remembering the “psychedelic tree” that stands on the corner. Once years ago I looked through it and saw each leaf move separately in te breeze and imaginatively merged with it, so that its limbs were my limbs and I felt it all at once. Now it’s strangled by ivy, but still the same tree, still standing to remind me of that momentary experience. Just as vividly, I remember one Christmas when my younger children were little, and I thought it time to take them out from the warm house to breathe the frosty air. Rectory Avenue was a few minutes’ walk away. We made a game of looking in at Christmas lights in the big houses there. As they were mostly set far back from the road, it was no impertinence to gaze through their windows, their curtains not yet being drawn against the long dusk of these winter afternoons. In our new house we follow the Dutch custom and seldom close our curtains, though we’re only a yard from the narrow pavement, and s...

7pm at Wheeler End, April 29th I had an idea a few weeks ago, and it’s held good so far, without being abandoned like all the others. I’ve worked on it every day, and wanted to write a post about it too, but it seemed to be too early, perhaps still is. I don’t find it easy to do the sensible thing. Left to myself I brood daily on crazy ideas and false trails. In “real life”, as opposed to writing—which happily portrays that which is not and could never be—I have K as my prompt, conscience and general minder. Her common sense rubs off, and I am the better for it. But my unripe writing projects constitute a labyrinth that no mortal should have to get lost in, and she wisely stays clear. This is where one has need of a proper etherial Muse. I’m fortunate to have received such a visitation since I wrote here last. She introduced herself one morning as Barbara. It was before five o’clock, too early to stir. I lay immobile as a corpse, unable to know if I was awake or dreaming—the hypnopompi...