So it would seem that we are heading rapidly and ineveitably into the maws of early winter, with its grey skies, low, scudding clouds and its stillness, which pervades even in the centre of a city such as London. And, as ever, I find myself eager for its slightly distant embrace. I'm not entirely sure why this is so, but I find it puts me in a mind and of a manner of which I was very much accustomed for some time and which I feel I can no longer readily attain. A certain distance on life, perhaps - but that's not correct, for life shouldn't be distant - more properly, a wider panorama, in which I am not the focus of the image but removed from it.
For all that the passage of these few years has granted me, I can't but feel that a significant part of what defines me, or at least that which once helped define me, has been lain aside for a brief moment and subsequently never reclaimed. Instead, I find myself occupied in the petty thoughts, inanity and mundanity of the quotidian, and whilst I appreciate these are an essential aspect of life, I don't seem to be able to properly compensate for the sense of solitude I once, and for so long, cherished. And it sometimes plays heavily...
But things change. As do we and our conceptions of ourselves.
The words of Xavier de Maistre in A Journey Around My Room express somethign similar:
"What a change in my ideas and feelings! When I compare them as they were and as they are today, I see them in a mortal frenzy, busied with plans that touch them no more. We regarded a particular event as a great misfortune, but the end of the letter is missing, and the event is completely forgotten: I cannot know what it was all about. A thousand prejudices besieged us; the world and the people in it were quite unknown to us; but also, what warmth in our dealings, what a bond of intimacy! What boundless trust!
We were happy in our errors. And now: Ah! It is so different! We have had to read, like everyone else in the human heart; and truth falling in our midst like a cannon shell, has destroyed forever the enchanted palace of illusion."
For all that the passage of these few years has granted me, I can't but feel that a significant part of what defines me, or at least that which once helped define me, has been lain aside for a brief moment and subsequently never reclaimed. Instead, I find myself occupied in the petty thoughts, inanity and mundanity of the quotidian, and whilst I appreciate these are an essential aspect of life, I don't seem to be able to properly compensate for the sense of solitude I once, and for so long, cherished. And it sometimes plays heavily...
But things change. As do we and our conceptions of ourselves.
The words of Xavier de Maistre in A Journey Around My Room express somethign similar:
"What a change in my ideas and feelings! When I compare them as they were and as they are today, I see them in a mortal frenzy, busied with plans that touch them no more. We regarded a particular event as a great misfortune, but the end of the letter is missing, and the event is completely forgotten: I cannot know what it was all about. A thousand prejudices besieged us; the world and the people in it were quite unknown to us; but also, what warmth in our dealings, what a bond of intimacy! What boundless trust!
We were happy in our errors. And now: Ah! It is so different! We have had to read, like everyone else in the human heart; and truth falling in our midst like a cannon shell, has destroyed forever the enchanted palace of illusion."