Monday, May 5, 2025

Conscious idleness

 Ronald Blythe occasionally forced himself to take an idle day. No answering the phone, no worrying about the important business that absolutely had to be attended to.

I feel wonderfully well — it is the inescapable result of a conscious idleness to feel wonderfully well.

 

I am learning.

• Source: Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside; London: John Murray, 2022, p. 213.

at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Juneteenth

 Juneteenth is the day slavery ended in the United States. The main rebel army surrendered in Virginia in April 1865. It took a while to mop...

  • When Willa Cather's life began
     Willa Cather had a maxim: “Life began for me when I ceased to admire and began to remember.” She liked what the Greeks called  anamnesis , ...
  • The things you hear
      Some days you go into the woods and see all kinds of things. Some days you don’t. And then there are days when you don’t see but   hear . ...
  • Alice Oswald's poem on battle
     An appropriate read for Memorial Day? How about Alice Oswald’s long poem  Memorial , which recounts how soldiers in the  Iliad  met their e...