'Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers...'

Guernsey Literary Society | Shaffer & Barrows

Well, if you’ve loved reading Byatt’s Possession, then this one’s for you as well!

It’s a lovely 2008 novel  titled, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society written by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows!

A novel that – much like Possession – is made up entirely of letters and letters and letters!

Whereas Byatt’s Possession has been a single-author’s creation, this one’s by a duo!

Added, in Byatt, you’ve got a great overflowing love for words! Sample this –

Christabel LaMotte says in her letter to Ash,

Words have been all my life, all my life - this need is like the Spider’s need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out - the silk is her life, her home, her safety - her food and drink too - and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew!

Replace ‘Words’ with ‘Books’ and you have the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society!

As simple as that!

And what’s more? -

You don’t have the scholarly encodings and decodings and the resultant quests that are staple to Byatt’s Possession anywhere over here! ;-)

In fact, what lends the Guernsey Society its added charm is its simply lovely bubbly plot!

There is a dash and sprinkle of all high-renowned Victorian characters strewn all over the novel!

Set against the backdrop of World War II, when London is slowly stepping out of the gory effects of the war, the novel narrates the story of a writer by name Miss Juliet Ashton (reminded of Possession here?) who is on the hunt for a good subject for her next book!

The story as I see it –

A young lady [Miss Juliet Ashton] who also doubles up as a literary being, gets to know about a Reading Society in a faraway island – Guernsey - a lovely-o-lovely, lush green sylvan island!

By a fortuitous coincidence perhaps, this young lady’s [Miss Juliet Ashton] copy of Charles Lamb’s Essays of Elia gets into the hands of a handsome ‘Guernsey’ guy, who’s also member of this Reading Club aka Literary Society in the lovely island of Guernsey!

Miss Juliet, the vibrant literary being that she is, eagerly catches up on news about this Guernsey Literary Society – officially called the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society! ;-)

She braves all odds (and even her fiancé) to meet up with the members of the Guernsey Literary Society! And hey presto! Without prior notice, she arrives one fine morning in the island and…

The rest is for y’all to read and to enjoy over a cuppa coffee! ;-)

There are a host of things that one would sure love about this delightful unputdownable read!

For one, the lovely delightful quotes that make the reading such an engaging exercise!

Sample these –

What is the matter with me? Am I too particular? I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.

In the meantime, will you accept this small gift from me? It is his Selected Letters. I think it will tell you more about him than any biography ever could. E. V. Lucas sounds too stately to include my favorite passage from Lamb. I find my moral sense in the last stage of a consumption and my religion getting faint.

While there, Lamb helped Hunt paint the ceiling of his cell sky blue with white clouds. Next they painted a rose trellis up one wall. Then, I further discovered, Lamb offered money to help Hunt's family outside the prison.

Though he himself was as poor as a man could be. Lamb also taught Hunt's youngest daughter to say the Lord's Prayer backward. You naturally want to learn everything you can about a man like that.

That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive! All with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.

I no longer live on Oakley Street, but I'm so glad that your letter found me and that my book found you. It was a sad wrench to part with the Selected Essays of Elia. I had two copies and a dire need of shelf-room, but I felt like a traitor selling it. You have soothed my conscience.

I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true. ;-)

Emily had to make Heathcliff up out of thin air! And what a fine job she did. Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life. ;-)

Amelia told us you would like to know about our book society and what we talk about at our meetings. I gave a talk on the Bronte girls once when it was my turn to speak. I'm sorry I can't send you my notes on Charlotte and Emily.

I used them to kindle a fire in my cookstove, there being no other paper in the house.

Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.

After all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot.  

Excuse my unburdening myself. My worries travel about my head on their well-worn path, and it is a relief to put them on paper. I will turn to more cheerful subjects such as last evening's meeting of the Society.

None of us had any experience with literary societies, so we made our own rules: we took turns speaking about the books we'd read.

At the start, we tried to be calm and objective, but that soon fell away, and the purpose of the speakers was to goad the listeners into wanting to read the book themselves.

Once two members had read the same book, they could argue, which was our great delight. We read books, talked books, argued over books, and became dearer and dearer to one another.

Other Islanders asked to join us, and our evenings together became bright, lively times we could almost forget, now and then, the darkness outside. We still meet every fortnight.

For instance, they were always changing curfew. Eight at night, or nine, or five in the evening if they felt really mean-minded. You couldn't visit your friends or even tend your stock. We started out hopeful, sure they'd be gone in six months. But it stretched on and on. Food grew hard to come by, and soon there was no firewood left.

Days were grey with hard work and evenings were black with boredom. Everyone was sickly from so little nourishment and bleak from wondering if it would ever end.

We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us. Elizabeth used to say a poem. I don't remember all of it, but it began. Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done, to have advanced true friends.

Lots more of lovely lines and quotable quotes are there on this lovely read for us to taste and to digest!

So why wait dear gentle reader?

Grab your copy asap!

If possible, right away! ;-)

Happy reading to you! 

image: amazondotcom

'How on earth does one see three apples, two chestnuts, a silvery beaker, a brown dish and a spoon when there are no such things to be seen?'

The Puzzle of Visual Art | Ways of Seeing

Currently I’m into eminent historian Watson, Peter Watson’s The German Genius, a comprehensive 964-page repertoire of scholarship that’s presented in such easy-to-understand prose - quite impactful, informative and intriguing at once!

In especial, the chapter titled, ‘New Light on the Structure of the Mind’, intrigued me much! Watson here puts forth his ruminations on the Kantian notion of ‘how the imagination forms images in perception’!

And I quote –

Kant is saying that we do not have in our heads, as it were, an image of the world “out there” instead we have an idea of how it appears to us…

Kant’s underlying point was that our minds are “living, actively operative organisms,” not passively receiving information from without, through the senses and summed through experience; instead our minds shape our perceptions according to their own laws…

In analogous fashion, for Kant the existence of God can never be proved rationally. God is a notion, our notion, like space and time, and that is all. “God is not a being outside me, but merely a thought within me”.

Kant’s theory of art and genius became a rallying point for the Romantic movement and its view that the aesthetic imagination is the “begetter of the world and reality”.

says Watson, in such ‘elementary’ fashion! ;-)

Something akin to the Kantian take, Hawkes, Terence Hawkes too doth make, in his famous primer on Structuralism titled, Structuralism and Semiotics.

Says Hawkes –

In fact, every perceiver’s method of perceiving can be shown to contain an inherent bias which affects what is perceived to a significant degree. [Any observer is bound to create something of what he observes]. In consequence, the true nature of things may be said to lie not in things themselves, but in the relationships, which we construct, and then perceive, between them.

Superimpose it on Postcolonial studies, and you have again, almost a similar take!

McLeod, John McLeod in his famed primer on Postcolonial Studies titled, Beginning Postcolonialism, says that, Colonialism suggests ‘certain ways of seeing’, specific modes of understanding the world and one’s place in it that assist in justifying the subservience of colonised peoples to the (oft-assumed) ‘superior’, civilised order of the colonisers. These ways of seeing, attitudes and values are at the root of the study of colonial discourses’, says McLeod, John McLeod!

The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, explicates on a similar theoretical premise which he calls the ‘the primacy of perception’.

You may want to compare Ponty’s primacy of perception with Brentano’s (Husserl’s guru) take on intentionality of consciousness!

Well, coming back, these ‘musings on seeing’, have much in common with an equally amazing 2003-book on ‘Seeing’ titled, Ways of Seeing: The Scope and Limits of Visual Cognition by Pierre Jacob and Marc Jeannerod.

Say Pierre & Marc,

Many of the things humans can see they can also think about. Many of the things they can think about, however, they cannot see.

For example, they can think about, but they cannot see at all, prime numbers. Nor can they see atoms, molecules and cells without the aid of powerful instruments.

Arguably, while atoms, molecules and cells are not visible to the naked eye, unlike numbers, they are not invisible altogether: with powerful microscopes, they become visible. Unlike numerals, however, numbers—whether prime or not—are simply not to be seen at all.

Similarly, humans can entertain the thought, but they cannot see, that many of the things they can think about they cannot see.

Museums are institutions purposefully designed to promote the exercise of human sight and the enjoyment of visual experience.

If you visit the Louvre in Paris, for example, you can see a famous painting by the late eighteenth-century French painter, Jean Siméon Chardin, called Le gobelet d’argent (‘The silver goblet’). 

Facing this picture, you will see three red and yellow apples, a silvery beaker, a large brown dish with a silver spoon in it and two brown chestnuts lying on a brown table.

Of course, what you call ‘brown’ in English is not one but many different color shades: although you call them ‘brown’, your visual experiences of the colors of the table, the dish and the chestnuts are all different.

Nor do you see the full spoon: you merely see a tip of the handle emerging from the dish, but you do take it that what you see is the handle of a spoon the rest of which is being hidden by the dish in which it is resting. The central apple partly occludes the other two.

The apple on the right partly occludes the brown dish. As the light is coming from the top left corner of the canvas, it is reflected in the silvery beaker and falling sideways onto the apples, the chestnuts and the top of the spoon. The apples cast their shadows on the table.

So do the chestnuts. The dish casts a shadow on the wall. If you look closely, you will discover incredibly subtle reflections of the apples in the silvery beaker. You will also see a rich network of spatial relationships between the objects: the silvery beaker stands to the left and slightly behind the apples.

The large brown dish with a spoon in it stands to the right of the beaker and behind the apples. The chestnuts are to the right of everything else. Everything lies on the table.

These fascinating issues arise on the assumption that one is indeed perceiving a visual array consisting of nine objects with their shapes, contours, orientations, textures, colors and intricate spatial relationships.

But, of course, none of this is literally true. Your visual system with the rest of your brain is playing a trick on you: there is no apple, no chestnut, no silvery beaker, no brown dish, no spoon, no table, no wall.

All there is, is a canvas with two-dimensional shapes and patches of colors drawn on it. How on earth does one see three apples, two chestnuts, a silvery beaker, a brown dish and a spoon when there are no such things to be seen? Or are there after all?

This is the puzzle of visual art, say Pierre & Marc!

Lovely-o-lovelyyy ain’t it? ;-)

image: museum-essays.getty.edu

'We spend much of our lives not being who we really are....'

rod judkins | On Cultivating A Creative Mindset

A lovely inspirational line on a ‘creative mindset’, I got or rather caught for myself ;-) while reading through the famed 2015 rod judkin read titled, The Art of Creative Thinking.

rod judkin, Professor of creativity at the world-famous St Martin's College of Art says here,

A creative mindset can be applied to everything you do and enrich every aspect of your life. Creativity isn't a switch that's flicked on or off; it's a way of seeing, engaging with and responding to the world around you. The creative are creative when filing documents, cooking, arranging timetables or doing housework. Try to develop an alternative way of thinking that can be applied to any challenge or project, no matter how far out of your comfort zone.

rod judkin starts off by penning down his inspirational thoughts on art's first super star, Michelangelo -

Undoubtedly one of the world's great geniuses, Michelangelo had not so much a divine gift as an intensely nurtured talent. Brought up by quarrymen, he could chisel and cut blocks of stone from the age of six. By the age of twelve he had been carving stone for thousands of hours. At fourteen he was apprenticed to an artist's studio. That level of skilled training is not possible today. In fact, it's illegal.

The old masters are a great source of inspiration, but we cannot ever emulate their level of skill. We have to discover our own strengths. Creative thinking is like a muscle that needs to be strengthened through exercise. I often set exercises that each last five or ten minutes, rather as an athlete might do a series of short workouts to get fit.

says rod judkins.

How lovelyyy! How bubblyyy!! How trueyyy!!!

Some of his thoughts are real inspirational stuff! –

Sample this –

Everyone is searching for originality. Ironically, it is right there within them, but most people are too busy being someone else.

Creative people are prepared to be themselves. They make the most of their own experiences whether good or bad. The advantage of being themselves is that they are original. There is no one like them. This makes whatever they do unique.

We spend much of our lives not being who we really are. There are huge pressures on everyone to be someone else; to live up to others' expectations - to be a perfect parent, obedient employee, selfless partner or high-achieving son or daughter.

We lose the ability to be good at being ourselves, and we forget who we are.

The world is pushing constantly to submerge you in orthodoxy, to make you indistinguishable from everybody else. To fight against it is to be involved in a lifelong struggle.

To be successfully creative you have to realise it's OK to be yourself.

We all have weaknesses and strengths; the creative accept them and use them both.

The biggest benefit you can be to your company, school, business or family is to accentuate what is special and unique about yourself.

That's difficult in a society that puts huge emphasis on conformity.

True, ain’t it???

And finally, to end with the snippeting part, ;-) the info that he gives us all on one of our favvys, Paulo Coelho – and Coelho’s creative vibes, is the real icing on the cake –

The incredible struggle of Paulo Coelho is an extraordinary example of sheer determination. As a teenager he passionately wanted to become a writer, but his parents considered this madness.

They wanted him to become a lawyer, a secure, respectable profession. To 'save' him from his writing ambitions, his parents had him committed to a mental institution three times. He was subjected to electric shock treatment.

He refused to compromise. He instinctively knew he was meant to be a writer, and he went on to become an author with a unique vision.

His book The Alchemist was translated into eighty languages, sold sixty-five million copies worldwide and provided Coelho with unequivocal, lasting financial security.

To all ye literati of the loveliest order out there - For the next few days, I would gently recommend that you go on ‘Digital Minimalism’ mode for a full twelve hours a day, and pull out a kindle version of this rod judkin read to get some real inspiration for our literary souls from this rod judkin-ian delight! ;-)

The Lecture Series...

PG & Research Department of English

Queen Mary’s College (Autonomous)

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, INDIA

Invites you for

The Lecture Series on

Literature in Times Like These

03 July – 06 July 2020

9. 30 am to 11 am

The Lecture Series titled, ‘Literature in Times Like These’ is an endeavour to reach out to the student community during this pandemic COVID 19, to find strength in the human response to similar situations in the past, be it the Great Plague or the Spanish Influenza.

The feelings of insecurity that gnaw at us when one amongst us falls through disease may be seen even in War Literature, for even this pandemic is ravaging along the lines of armed conflict.

Displacement is also one of the fallouts of this war with Corona Virus. Heart-wrenching images and stories of migrant labourers have left indelible imprints on our minds. The employment scenario is bleak with wage cuts: many have lost their jobs due to the lockdown.

Isn't this reminiscent of the Great Depression? The existential crisis looms large before us not only because of the economy but also due to disease and death.

And yet, Literature has always served as a place of refuge for the human spirit, an ocean where we may sink our griefs, a springboard from which we can liberate our spirits.

In times like these we cannot help remembering “the fever and the fret” that Keats lamented and his ability to transcend it as well, the “negative capability” which unleashed from him a tribute to a tiny, but significant form of life, the nightingale of whom he said, “Thou wast not born for death, Immortal Bird. No hungry generations tread thee down.”

He literally took flight on the wings of the little bird when he said, “Away for I will fly with thee. Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards. But on the viewless wings of poesy.” That is transcendence!

The Lecture Series on Literature in Times Like These, will have experienced and eminent professors, address students on Literature in the context of -

Existentialism

Transcendence

Disease

Displacement of human communities

This crisis has witnessed a commendable response in terms of human beings bonding together online.

May we keep this spirit going by bringing together our students from different colleges to listen together and think together about life as it has been dealt to us today.

With a View to Enhancing the Standard and Quality of Research...

Research in Literature & Language | Book

What are the basic factors I should bear in mind while choosing a research topic?

What should I choose first: author or approach?

How do I find out if research has already been done on a particular author/topic?

What is research gap and how do I identify it?

When does a researcher arrive at the final title?

What are the differences between Bibliography and Works Cited?

What should the introductory chapter contain?

Which chapter should I write first?

These are just a sample to the 200 FAQs given in such an easy-to-understand format for research scholars working on Literature and Language for their Doctoral/Post-doctoral studies, in the book titled, FAQs on Research in Literature and Language.

The very fact that the book has been written by a Professor of English – Dr. A. Joseph Dorairaj – who has adjudicated more than 75 PhD theses (and counting) in English Language and Literature for quite many Indian universities, and has sat on dozens of viva voce in English and in Humanities, - gives the book its added cachet and credibility.

‘I would like to share with the academic community some of my observations with a view to enhancing the standard and quality of research in English Language and Literature and Humanities in general so that our PhD theses approximate international standards’,

says Dr. Dorairaj, on the purpose behind the book.

True to its purpose, the book gives a profound insight into the various facets of a good literary research, the dos and the donts to be noted, the guidelines to be followed, the deadlines to be observed, the methodology to be adopted, etc., in such a simple and engaging style that can appeal to all and sundry.

From the first chapter titled, ‘What is Research’, where Professor Joseph Dorairaj elucidates on the definition of research and the various types of research, to the second chapter that discusses a frequently confusing question that plagues quite a lot of researchers – How should I choose my Research Topic? to an elucidation on the research concepts and tools, up until the grand finale - the Viva Voce, you get to have a comprehensive insight into every aspect of research in such a legible, graded, structured, coherent and easy-to-understand format. 

And yes! Please don’t forget to read the Appendix to the book!

Written in three parts, the Appendix to the book feels more like Dr. Joseph Dorairaj himself engaging in a scholarly tête-à-tête with you in his inimitable gentle way.

I very strongly recommend this Researcher’s Handbook of FAQs for anyone who is planning to do / doing his or her research in Literature and Language.

Thanks to Ms. Nalini Olivannan, the Emerald Publishers, Chennai have done quite an excellent work in giving the book its present delightful shape and form. The vibrant cover design and the good quality of the paper have an equal say in enhancing the readability of the book.

Copies of the book are available with Emerald Publishers, Chennai on their website.

PS: A few copies (very few copies) of Dr. Joseph Dorairaj’s book titled, Myth and Literature (2001) and Interventions: Essays in Philosophy and Literary Theory (2006) are available. If you are in real, serious need of the books, you may contact Professor Joseph Dorairaj at his email id.

Now for the Blurb to the Book –

This book is in the form of Questions and Answers. 200 questions vital to research have been raised and answered in an easy-to-understand manner. While the existing Handbooks and Manuals focus largely on the mechanics of writing and documentation, this book covers almost all aspects of research – right from choosing a research topic to the viva voce. Significantly, most research queries have been answered from the researcher’s point of view.

About Professor Joseph Dorairaj –

Joseph Dorairaj is a Professor of English & Dean, School of English and Foreign Languages, Gandhigram Rural University, Dindigul, Tamil Nadu. 

He was the Vice-Chancellor (Acting) of Gandhigram Rural University in 2013-14. 

He was a Fullbrighter in 2014 and an Erasmus Mundus Visiting Scholar at KU, Leuven, Belgium in 2015. 

He has authored three books: Myth and Literature (2001), Interventions: Essays in Philosophy and Literary Theory (2006) and Philosophical Hermeneutics (2011). He has edited two books: Critical Essays on Indian English Poets (2015) and Essays on Gandhi (2019). 

He is the Founder-Editor of Gandhigram Literary Review, a peer-reviewed journal.

'A gift that cannot move loses its gift properties!...'

The Gifts of Reading | Book

A gift that cannot move loses its gift properties,

says Hyde, Lewis Hyde, in his motivational book titled, The Gift.

[you may want to read our past post on The Gift here].

In simple terms, if say, for example, I share a gift - (could be a book!) ;-) - with my friend, and my friend in turn shares it with their friends, who in turn shares it with their friends, the gift thus shared has a great transformative appeal to it, enriching and enlightening manifold times, both the receiver and the sender in the process!

Now, let’s quick fast-forward together, to this last past week, May 2020! 

Well, I was reading my way through Robert Macfarlane’s book titled, Underland: A Deep Time Journey, [again, gifted to me by my lovely cousin], a book that’s touted to be ‘an epic exploration of the Earth’s underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself’.

After having done with reading through this delightful book, I was busy checking out on more of Macfarlane, Robert Macfarlane’s books, for the weekend, when I chanced upon a priceless little treasure that he’d written, exclusively for charity sake!

And it’s titled, The Gifts of Reading.

‘This story, like so many stories, begins with a gift. The gift, like so many gifts, was a book – and the book was given to me by a man called Don, with whom I became friends in Beijing during the autumn and winter of 2000’,

he begins the book, and adds,

A book was given to me by a man called Don, with whom I became friends in Beijing during the autumn and winter of 2000. Don and I were working as English literature teachers in a University.

Don had been his able ‘friend, philosopher and guide’ during his pretty little stint at a University in Beijing. Now, after his tenure in Beijing is up, Robert Macfarlane heads back to Cambridge to work on his PhD in Victorian Literature.

Interestingly, Don comes over to Cambridge to visit Robert on a short sojourn of sorts. And while departing, he leaves behind a few presents for Robert Macfarlane on his table. The presents include, a copy of Snyder’s Mountains and Rivers Without End, and a paperback copy of a book by Patrick Leigh Fermor titled, A Time of Gifts!

Says Macfarlane, Robert Macfarlane on the book –

A Time of Gifts is filled with gifts and acts of giving – it is a book, we might say, that is rich with generosity. Among its gifts is the gift of time:

Leigh Fermor did not publish it until 1977, forty-four years after beginning his walk, and a result of that long and thoughtful delay is a narrative voice which possesses both the joyful wonder of youth, and the wisdom and perspective of later age.

And among those wisdoms is its reflection on the nature of gift: what it might mean to give without expectation of recompense, and what types of kindness might stand outside the reciprocal binds of the cash economy.

One of the first things Leigh Fermor is given in A Time of Gifts is a book: the first volume of the Loeb edition of Horace. His mother (‘she was an enormous reader’) bought it for him as a farewell present, and on its flyleaf she wrote the prose translation of an exquisite short poem by Petronius, which could hardly have been more appropriate as a valediction to her son:

Leave thy home, O youth, and seek out alien shores … Yield not to misfortune: the far-off Danube shall know thee, the cold North-wind and the untroubled kingdom of Canopus and the men who gaze on the new birth of Phoebus or upon his setting.

The journey of A Time of Gifts is set going by the gift of a book – and it is a book that has in turn set going many journeys,

says Robert Macfarlene.

Reading through A Time of Gifts, was an invigorating experience, he adds.

‘It made me want to stand up and march out – to walk into adventure’. The comforting rhythm of his journey – exertion, encounter, rest, food, sleep; exertion, encounter, rest, food, sleep – rocks its readers into feelings of happiness and invulnerability. I could do this, you think, I could just start walking and keep going for a day or two, or three, or four, or more.

Again, poring over Lewis Hyde’s The Gift was a transformative experience, says Macfarlane –

I was given a copy of Hyde’s The Gift – and I don’t have that copy any longer, because I gave it to someone else, urging them to read it. Gifts give on, says Hyde, this is their logic. They are generous acts that incite generosity. He contrasts two kinds of ‘property’: the commodity and the gift. The commodity is acquired and then hoarded, or resold. But the gift is kept moving, given onwards in a new form.

I am particularly moved by his deep interest in what he calls ‘the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us’. 

The outcome of a gift is uncertain at the time of giving, but the fact that it has been given charges it with great potential to act upon the recipient for the good. 

Because of the gratitude we feel, and because the gift is by definition given freely, without obligation, we are encouraged to meet it with openness and with excitement. 

Unlike commodities, gifts – in Hyde’s account and my experience – possess an exceptional power to transform, to heal and to inspire, 

says Macfarlane.

Today, Macfarlane is known the world over, for his enthralling books on landscape, language, nature, places and people.

However, it was the sweet impact of that one book gifted to him by his friend Don, that had quite turned his life a full 360 degrees for the better - for a richer and a fuller life! 

Exactly what Lewis Hyde says, about the power of the gift –

Only when the increase of gifts moves with the gift may the accumulated wealth of our spirit continue to grow among us, so that each of us may enter, and be revived by, a vitality beyond his or her solitary powers.

Yes!!!

So let me put it this way, this simple way –

Patrick Leigh Fermor was gifted the first volume of Horace: Odes and Epodes, by his mother, which acted his spontaneous spur and immediate impulse to become one of the best known travel writers from around the world.

Robert Macfarlane was gifted a book on Patrick Leigh Fermor by his friend Don, and titled, A Time of Gifts, which in turn had motivated him to develop an engaging and rewarding relationship with the landscape.

Rufus (me) ;-) was gifted this Robert Macfarlane’s book titled, The Underland, by my cousin, which in turn motivated me bigtime to write this post!

And.... well... the gift moves on and on and on!

So yup!

Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the ‘present’.

How have you been using/sharing your gifts?

Remember, Lewis Hyde says: A gift that cannot move loses its gift properties!

So why wait?

Start using your gifts!

Right away at that!

Before it loses it properties! ;-)

Bonne chance!

image: amazondotcom