Finding Adonis
A trip to A favourite London bookshop unearths one of the great poets I’d never heard of.
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Alistair Appleton
- Jun 11, 2021
- 4 min
You are a child of the universe
A blog piece refurbished from the archives. But no one tires of hearing about amazing teenagers and the vast sweep of the future that...
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Alistair Appleton
- May 27, 2021
- 5 min
On reading James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’
This is another blog fished out of the annals. I probably wrote it about 10 years ago. I have subsequently read Joyce’s magnum opus for...
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Alistair Appleton
- Apr 23, 2021
- 4 min
The Supersumptuous
That voice is all wrong, really. It’s not formal, it’s not ‘correct’ but it gushes and it’s unstoppable. It IS supersumptous. And that’s wh
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Alistair Appleton
- Apr 3, 2020
- 1 min
Altogether elsewhere
The final two quatrains of W.H. Auden’s Fall of Rome have been circling in my mind during this extraordinary time in lockdown. Especially...
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Alistair Appleton
- Mar 24, 2020
- 2 min
“This is The Hour”
My friend Jane posted this from a shut-down Manhattan. It’s a quote from an elder of the Hopi Nation. And it sends shivers down my spine....
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Alistair Appleton
- Apr 14, 2019
- 1 min
greatness
The great arises out of small things that are honored and cared for. Everybody’s life really consists of small things. Greatness is a...
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Alistair Appleton
- Apr 14, 2019
- 1 min
No wiser than this…
If you let go a little, you suffer a little less. If you let go a lot, then you suffer a lot less. If you let go completely, all...
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Alistair Appleton
- Apr 14, 2019
- 1 min
oh how beautifully the year begins / the blazing starts, the terror dims
SNOW The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was Spawning snow and pink roses against it Soundlessly collateral and...
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Alistair Appleton
- Apr 14, 2019
- 2 min
Humani nihil a me alienum puto (I think myself estranged to nothing human)
In the magical way of stumbling, I stumbled across the famous Zen writer Alan Watts. He was one of the first people to popularize Zen in...
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Alistair Appleton
- Apr 14, 2019
- 1 min
with wings of drifted snow and eyes of flame
The degree of love we manifest determines the degree of spaciousness and freedom we can bring to life’s events. Imagine taking a very...
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Alistair Appleton
- Apr 14, 2019
- 1 min
Howard Zinn quoted by Noam Chomsky
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty,...
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Alistair Appleton
- Apr 14, 2019
- 1 min
station to station: island
Heaney meets Joyce in a carpark, after a fast and pilgrimage to St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Lough Derg. The tall, older man on his...
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Alistair Appleton
- Apr 14, 2019
- 1 min
the translation of nirvana: phew!
Alan Watts’ smoke-kippered and throaty laugh: & the perfect translation of nirvana – which means ‘blowing out’ at Sanskrit root – is not...
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Alistair Appleton
- Apr 10, 2019
- 1 min
SMELLING SALTS #6: Carl Sagan
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time. When the United States is a service and information economy;...
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Alistair Appleton
- Feb 13, 2019
- 2 min
Wordsworth’s Prelude: Stealing a Boat on Derwent Water
Wordsworth is a key figure in Reggie’s understanding of dharma. Strange that a 19th Century Cumbrian poet should feature so strongly in a...
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Alistair Appleton
- Dec 7, 2018
- 1 min
SMELLING SALTS #4: Viktor Frankl
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies all our growth...
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Alistair Appleton
- Dec 1, 2018
- 1 min
SMELLING SALTS #3: James Baldwin
People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the...
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Alistair Appleton
- Nov 26, 2018
- 1 min
SMELLING SALTS #2: Alice Walker
Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise. ALICE WALKER I’d love to know your thoughts about Alice Walker. Drop me a message with any...
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Alistair Appleton
- Nov 21, 2018
- 1 min
SMELLING SALTS #1: Elizabeth Bishop
Hoping to live days of greater happiness, I forget that days of less happiness are passing by. ELIZABETH BISHOP I’d love to know your...
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