“Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the Letter you must write immediately, and do all you can to console me in it—make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me—write the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain. […] Though I could centre my Happiness in you, I cannot expect to engross your heart so entirely—indeed if I thought you felt as much for me as I do for you at this moment I do not think I could restrain myself from seeing you again tomorrow for the delight of one embrace. But no—I must live upon hope and Chance. In case of the worst that can happen, I shall still love you—but what hatred shall I have for another!” — John Keats writing to Fanny Brawne, 3 July, 1819.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
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
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between the two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always –
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
— The final stanza of TS Eliot’s Little Gidding, keeping me company through the small hours of a restless night.
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“Science and art both teach you that you’ll never know really very much of anything. You’ll get a little glimpse of something way bigger and then that’ll lead you off in a whole other direction. […] It excites me that Einstein could, in five days, come up with the theory of relativity, […] or that you can write a song and change the world in an afternoon. And just think of all the afternoons there are …” — Josh Ritter
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Tried colour yet?
Kodak film processing envelope from the late 1950s
I can’t wait to have the negatives of these recently rediscovered family photographs scanned and properly archived for future keeping. Some beautiful images.
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