“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Sunday, August 11, 2013

Castlerigg

It has been the most extraordinary Wordsworth Conference. Still here. Ten days. Cottage by a waterfall. Many many things to relate. Family staying within twenty feet of the conference barn, sixteenth century buildings...

This couldn't wait. It's a stone circle and I love them. Nicholas Roe (the organizer) and I thought that the stones were placed like metaphors near the mountains that ring them 360 degrees: it is a living poem of mountain talking to stone, the shapes clearly analogous. Maybe there is nothing under this appearance. Maybe the truth is at the level of appearance: this is contemplative space, for practice.

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