a reflection so forceful at the centre of oneself that it feels sententious
The dim sea glints chill. The white sun is shy.
And the skeleton weeds and the never-dry
Rough, long grasses keep white with frost
At the hilltop by the finger-post;
The smoke of the traveller’s-joy is puffed
Over hawthorn berry and hazel tuft.I read the sign. Which way shall I go?
A voice says: You would not have doubted so
At twenty. Another voice gentle with scorn
Says: At twenty you wished you had never been bornEdward Thomas – The Signpost
Ah well, I remember walking in the dark up the incline by the mill and thinking aged 17 ‘if it all stopped now I would be ok with that.’ A nonsense. But a nonsense I still feel.
Reading Robert Southwell’s Humble Supplication and its language is surgically applicable to our days:
Yet when they see your Soueraigne stile soe abused to th’authorizing of Fictions, that the Magistrates of your whole Realme, must generally soothe* things soe directly disproved by common sence, and contrary to their own and all mens knowledg, it cannot but be a torment to their Christian mynds…*_soothe_. ‘To maintain or put forward a lie as being true’
Braudel from his Grammaires des Civilisations describes significant elements comprising the heavily used notion of ‘civilisation’:
La notion de civilisation, en effet, et au moins double. Elle désigne, à la fois, des valeurs morales et des valeurs matérielles.
And perhaps it is true that these go together. That is after all the argument of capitalism. In a discussion with a Marxist recently – fwiw I consider myself a part-time Marxist, the universally and correctly despised Laodicean in other words – that good Marxist said that people did not know what was good for them and needed instructing, a sentiment that increasingly I despise – telling people what they actually want is a disgusting habit, like telling people what they should like or enjoy. still, activities need to be co-ordinated to be able to live together.
Listening? Saw Avalon Emerson who was fantastic actually:
Johnny Blue Skies and the Dark Clouds is an immensely entertaining album:
he’s right to channel that ’70s sex-funk country style to tackle the current conjuncture, the US problem seems intensely psychosexual actually Matty Y
Something people don’t talk about so much these days is that in post-WW2 America, people took Freudian psychoanalysis very seriously for some reason.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 3, 2026
