Here we are May 1st and a cool cloudy campervan morning. A solid mass of off white, greying cloud sits overhead. My companionable blackbird is two trees down, in the very top branches of another ash this morning singing loud and clear. The reply appearing to come from my right in the distance. Robin song issuing forth from the oak above me. There is a road rumble in the distance, plus overhead noises of passing planes. In just the last few days the oak has really started to sprout and leaf, turning shades of green, rather than the stout browns and grey of trunk and branch. Just seen a beautiful pair of Goldfinches dart around the bush and grass and I have not seen any of them for a long while. They pause briefly, to show their colours, then gone as quickly as they came. There is a morning chill in the air and a sense of rain to come that you can see in the light and feel in the air. In fact the grey in the light has become quite prominent and rain feels imminent. A busy day yesterday, leads to a quiet morning and the journey continues. One of my fav diarists Anais Nin wrote that :
“ We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”
And I love that from underneath the oak, behind a drum or the pen of a journal allows me a doorway to seek out other states, other lives and other souls. Also to experience, explore and journey with other souls. I wrote yesterday of the power of literature as my companion on my journey the ‘Sweetness’ that John Muir talks about, being extricated from my readings. The author Anne Quindlen writes in her book ‘How reading changed my life.’
“ Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home. “
I think she missed out a word for me that of a refuge. Sometime a book is a refuge from the world, an aid also to help make sense of the world. They are a driver, they educate, illustrate, nurture, challenge and encourage me to new experiences and new adventures. Yet since 2010 over 780 libraries have closed here in the UK. In the land of the free, books are censured, removed from the shelves of libraries and bookshops. And if we are not careful that disease will spread here. Cherish your books , bookshops, library’s and your reading, from there great adventures will come. Lovely days people.
“Cherish your books , bookshops, libraries and your reading, from there great adventures will come. “
Ray Watters ( Ohhh the vanity lol ).
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