Seriously, this is my question:

If you write more personally than before, what the hell do you do with it? Burn it, eat it, bury it in the garden, what?

I know I binned nearly all my life up 'til age 30, so that's taken care of, but I don't want to bin my current life.

Ensure I spend my waking and sleeping hours with fellow writers of stuff?

Totally unrelated: have some music: The Verve - Lucky Man

38593 views

I bet some of these are my own, but even so, that is a huge number of glimpses from around the place. I hope I have started some trains of thought and been helpful at some level to others.

Writing is helpful to me. It leaves a trail I can wonder at and chew over. My future interests might or might not be noted here before I am even aware of them.

When I encourage other people to write their own blog...

I mean that I appreciate seeing how a person lays out their thoughts. I like to see the words they choose. Even the spelling mistakes say something and any tiny anomalies of punctuation.

Interaction in person is fleeting and hard to recall, yet a composed creation is another side to a person and is something I happen to get a lot out of. It is easier to mull over and see in the round.

I like the variation in subject choices and the changes over time due to new interests. I like to see the flow of life, not knowing what might happen next.

Moors

'Swollen streams and rivers - the Beck and Brook. Hard to see which is snaking road and which river. Then up through a gate and across a cattle grid and you're on the moor. Three-foot pillars of granite, forming a hut circle beside the road. Low clumped gorse. Pony dung, sheep droppings, the great jagged Hound Tor. Clitters of stones and rocks.'

from 'Notes from Walnut Tree Farm'
by Roger Deakin

Can't get this out of my mind

'...To illustrate, begin with a classic case that took place in Wood Buffalo National Park, Alberta, Canada, in 1951. Two buffalo bulls and two cows are lying in the grass ruminating. Three of them are in good health; one cow is lame. Wolves approach and withdraw a number of times, apparently put off by a human observer. At each approach, though, the lame cow becomes agitated and begins looking all around. Her three companions ignore the wolves. When one wolf comes within twenty-five feet, the lame cow gets up on shaking legs to face it alone. It seems clear that prey selection is something both animals play a role in.'

Barry Lopez (1945 - ), United States

from The Bedside Book of Beasts - A Wildlife Miscellany -
by Graeme Gibson

Netted Together

'If we chose to let conjecture run wild, then animals, our fellow brethren in pain, diseases, death, suffering, and famine - our slaves in the most laborious works, our companions in our amusements - they may partake (of) our origins in one common ancestor - that we may be all netted together.'

Charles Darwin
from 'The Bedside Book of Beasts - A Wildlife Miscellany'
by Graeme Gibson

That moment

' "Dr Diamond," I said, "I am giving up."
"Now you are ready to begin." he said.'

from 'Beg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, Rep'
by Amy Hempel

How to be a wise prince

"So he should never let his thoughts stray from military exercises, which he should pursue more vigorously in peace than in war. These exercises can be both physical and mental. As for the first, besides keeping his men well organized and trained, he should always be out hunting, so accustoming his body to hardships and also learning some practical geography..."

"As for intellectual training, the prince should read history, studying the actions of eminent men to see how they conducted themselves during war and to discover the reasons for their victories or their defeats, so that he can avoid the latter and imitate the former."

"...A wise prince should observe these rules; he should never take things easy in times of peace, but rather use the latter assiduously, in order to be able to reap the profit in times of adversity. Then, when his fortunes change, he will be found ready to resist adversity."

from 'The Prince'
by Niccolo Machiavelli

Power

'Let us remind ourselves: words are very dangerous, they are dynamite. Jokes can't start a revolution, but they can loosen the bricks in the wall. A joke introduces a little anarchy into the world, a bit of disruption. It tests the limits; it pushes them.'

from the FT.com/magazine
by Hanif Kureishi

Finding a format

Some bloggers seem to have found a format they stick to and which is distinctively theirs. I'm still thrashing around and trying this and that. I want to put a photo in each time or even each day, but it isn't happening yet.

Anyone else with a similar state of confusion?

It doesn't help that T takes lovely photos and knows what he is about to take and what with. I wander around the garden mumbling that I don't know what the story is, why should I photograph this and not that.

Maybe I need to simply do mug of coffee garden appreciation and shelve any plans for mixing life out there with life tapping away in here?