Thursday 18 August 2016

Vaguely Connected Rambles.

I read a quotation from an Olympic competitor today. It said:

Winners are people who come first, not second or third.

It seemed to me that there spoke the narrow voice of ego.

And then something put me in mind of a little and a little-known ode written by an English poet to a tree:

And let’n grow
And let’n spread
And let’n live
When I be dead.

There, I thought, speaks the universal voice of higher mind.

And I thought it sad that we in modern culture are conditioned to view the work of writers, poets, artists, musicians, dancers et al as enlightening recreation at best, and sometimes merely as entertainment. The politicians, on the other hand – and the bankers and the corporate executives and the populist media – do their level best to confine us to the prosaic and keep us rooted in the mire of material preoccupation. And in so doing they become rich and powerful and very important.

*  *  *

I referred to myself recently as a ‘country boy.’ I take it back, preferring instead the epithet ‘nature boy.’ Because something has been troubling me lately: living in the countryside as I do, I’m uncomfortable with the fact that too many people here are country people, not nature people.

*  *  *

And something else occurred to me the other day when I was passing an estate agent’s window. I remembered that it used to be common in Britain for boarding houses to have signs in the window which said:

No blacks
No dogs
No Irish

If I were running an accommodation establishment, I would be more inclined to list:

No politicians
No corporate executives
No estate agents

*  *  *

Being vaguely connected

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