Monday, August 22, 2011

The delight of unexpected words

Yesterday I spent an hour wandering through an exhibition at the British Library of that much under-rated and under-read writer, Mervyn Peake, of Ghormenghast fame. And I give below three lovely quotations of his for those who read this to ponder a little.

I particularly love the first, which echoes why we five element acupuncturists always, always, start, not, as is the unhappy custom now, from the Lung, but from that much more important organ, the Heart, which is numbered One in our Roman numerology of the 12 officials for that very reason.

“To live at all is miracle enough…
…. When every heartbeat hammers out the proof
That life itself is miracle enough.”

....“Neither be afraid of the unorthodox subject nor in finding delight in the contemplation of commonplace things. Anything, seen without prejudice, is enormous.”

....“For it is one’s ambition to create one’s own world in a style germane to its substance, and to people it with native forms and denizens that never were before, yet have their root in one’s experience. As the earth was thrown from the sun, so from the earth the artist must fling out into space, complete from pole to pole, his own world which, whatsoever form it takes, is the colour of the globe it flew from, as the world itself is coloured by the sun.”

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