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, 20214 min read
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, 20215 min read
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, 20214 min read
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, 20201 min read
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, 20202 min read
“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, 20191 min read
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, 20191 min read
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, 20191 min read
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, 20192 min read
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, 20191 min read
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, 20191 min read
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, 20191 min read
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, 20191 min read
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, 20191 min read
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, 20192 min read
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, 20181 min read
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, 20181 min read
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, 20181 min read
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, 20181 min read
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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