Hope that the road is a long one1
I am a plant scientist, now retired, but there still beats some impulse for research, probing and delving, discovering connectivity, watching new ideas and theories emerge, unconcerned that we still don’t know everything about the world, that not everything needs to be explained just now. More than ever, we need our lives to be grounded on experience and evidence. It also allows us our fancies.
This site is therefore about things I like, and like to look into, the evidence and the fancies: old and rare books, history, science, poetry and writing, thinking. If there is a theme, then it may be knowledge and enquiry:
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown2
When you decide to put yourself a little forward like this, it is difficult to fade completely into the background; so we should not be afraid to deliver something of ourselves. However, this is more about sharing things, and, let’s be honest, perhaps also part of the journey of ageing:
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;3
And while we don’t always want to move heaven and earth, a slight tweak here or there might be good.
1Cavafy: Ithaca (tr Daniel Mendelsohn); 2Bishop: The Fishhouses; 3Tennyson: Ulysses
