A day of storm, wind blustering wild around this old house, and rain spattering on the windows, clouds and fitful gleams of sudden light.
It recalled to my mind this song that I loved so much as a teenager – one of those I listened to over and over and over again, until it fused with the substance of my soul.
The sentiments it expresses are fundamentally at variance with my own these days, but it still tugs at my heartstrings, and I still find it beautiful. Paul Simon is a superlative musician.
I don't miss my youth. So much depression, so much sorrow, so many difficulties. Impossible world. In middle age, I have found peace, though about old age I feel apprehension. But listening to this connects me up again to my 14-year-old self as if the years between had melted away. "Like the rain" indeed.
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The second of the two cat toilets. Freecycle flourishes in our town, and is much appreciated because many people live in significant poverty here. I love giving things away. It has the same joy as when I was a small child, sitting on the sandy beach at Scarborough, taking handfuls of the sand and enjoying the feel of it trickling away, watching its falling grains, their stream arcing with the wind current.
Famous books that could have been written by minimalists:
Goodbye To All That
Bleak House (a tale of Bitter Experience from those who overdid it)
And Then There Were None
To Have And Have Not
All Quiet On The Western Front
Grime and Punishment
Gone With The Wind
The Way We Live Now
Scoop
Things Fall Apart
An Artist Of The Floating World