We die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them.
And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes be broken.
We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party (1949)
".....We should be careful of each other, we should be kind, while there is still time." Philip Larkin
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2011
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January
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- Si, si, Indio!
- Now tell me
- Mongolia on my mind
- Communion
- Reading
- L’Asie en notes et en motocyclette
- Returning
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Unblinking Grief
- Over the years...
- The hallucination of contemporary life
- I know it all
- Dave Barry: Bring Back Captain Video :) :)
- Home
- The molecule that helps us decide among alternatives
- I listen
- Returning to the Great Stories
- Morning
- Wanderer
- Mari
- Transient
- The life of the mind
- Discovery
- Go forth masked
- The option to change our minds
- Ghetto
- Stranger
- Does more information mean we know less?
- Joe Hisaishi
- Fast Enough
- Walk away
- Apoptosis
- There, rest. No more suffering for you.
- Poem written in the street on a rainy evening
- The debasement of language
- Aur woh hasthé hué kaha....
- Douglas Adams: Parrots, the Universe, and Everything
- Andrew Bird
- We're only passing through
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January
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2 comments:
Beautiful- Another favorite from Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot -- "Little Gidding" (the last of his Four Quartets)
Yes, indeed. Thanks for all your comments, contributions, and appreciation. Didn't really think that anyone would want to read all this. I was just trying to store the best of my reading before it's all wiped out by a failing memory. As the young man in Coetzee's 'Youth' wonders - is the life of the mind its own reward?
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