Albert Read, 2023, 'The Imagination Muscle', Constable.

 

Albert Read

2023, The Imagination Muscle, Constable.

From the Introduction:

‘A wise person had once impressed on me the importance of reading what no one else is reading; of cultivating a rare mind; of forming perspectives individually arrived at, perhaps different from those of my peers. The purpose of such activity was to launch my own inner journeys; to land, if I was lucky, on original alignments of thought.

It sounded like a good idea at the time and I tried to follow the advice without quite knowing where it would take me. And so I would spend the evenings with one of the old books that I had picked up inexpensively. Reading partly released me from the numbness of a deflating, unimaginative working say, but it also held the more thrilling prospect of one of those promised inner journeys that could lead me to places of which I could not yet conceive, perhaps even revealing some first hint of an imagined destiny.’

oxygen9 April 2025

 

a door opens upon dawn

a door opens upon dawn / photograph by clh

 

'In this dark night that envelopes us the more the spectacle of current events hurts us, the more we must internally commit ourselves to justice. The more inhumanity we see around us the more human we must be. We see nothing but hatred all around. So let us resist. Let us nourish within ourselves the divine that never surrenders. The great sweetness. And the real thirst to love. The more disorder we see, the more order we must create. Care and scruples in the smallest things. As this arrogant brutality grows unabated and tramples on all that is venerable we must be more respectful in our hearts. As the night of lies darkens around us, we must master the truth. And never surrender an inch of it.'

From the French drama film Secret Name, 2021, directed by Aurèlia Georges, written by Aurèlia Georges and Maud Ameline and inspired by the 1873 novel, The New Magdalen, by Wilkie Collins.

Language and the ability it gives us to communicate, separates us from animals. We can use it to harm, or we can use it to heal; we can use it to stir up hatred, disrespect, fear and division or to create paths to understanding and to find ways to protect, nurture and honour the truth that is within us all. Caring about the words that we use is a first step. A writer isn't someone who is necessarily good at writing or anything else. As the German novelist, essayist and Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann said, 'a writer is a normal person who finds writing more difficult.'It is the need to be your original self in writing that makes it so labour intensive.

Jesus said, 'In everything, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'

Rabi Hillel, one of the Talmud sages said, 'What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour.'

Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, 'None of you truly believe until you wish for others what you wish for yourself.'

It is too easy to talk about and engage with what is wrong with the human-created world, and much harder to look beyond to the unchanging, untrammelled peace that is always present. Roald Dahl wrote The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar about a wealthy man who like many other wealthy people had only one desire — to become more wealthy. But he happened to stumble upon a book about seeing without eyes — about accessing the power behind our physical senses. He practised developing his concentration assiduously, looking forward to going to casinos and using his new abilities to win a never-ending stream of money. However, when he began to gain the winnings, he found he had no interest in the money. The practice of meditating had changed him. He kept on gambling though, and all his winnings went into establishing orphanages.