hush now, R.

"Not another post on religion...please!... For the love of God!, " I hear you say, dear reader (hey, that's Beckett, isn't it?). You really are too much of a joker to be religious...not quite the high-minded buffoon that is Herzog, but you're on your way up...

Feeling a bit shelled out nowadays. My mind, or what's left it, strays far too easily and I can actually sense the frame of my body aching, going through the motions. On auto-pilot, if you know what I mean.

Must read Schama's book on Rembrandt. Finally got to see 'The Jewish Bride'. And he was right: is there a finer example of delicate sensibilities in western art? The hands, of course (chiasm), but also the direction of light that catches part of us. Up close, it's just dry drabs of unexciting paint, so much so that one is reminded of the sheer materiality of not just the painting, but of our own existence. But from the right angle, if we look in the right way that is, we see the familiar in a different way, transformed into something magical: light, at any time, has the ability to pick out the gold, to bring it to the surface from the deeps. And brightness finds a pattern, makes it its own, no matter what.

Goodness:

Was thinking: is there really such thing as a good human being? A good cricketer, a good teacher, or son, or daughter maybe, but a human being? Isn't goodness fundamentally a quality of our relations to others and to the world?

It's now; always was. don't stop smiling, R.