People keep writing to me from the States saying they’re having difficulty finding copies of my books there… I’ve no idea what the situation is with book stores, but they’re certainly available online here and here (in paperback and hardback)… Do please let me know if you are unable to get them this way…
artigo do João Seixas na revista Os Meus Livros…
July 10th, 2010
artigo de João Seixas, Os Meus Livros, Edição nº 88 – Julho
artigo de João Seixas, Os Meus Livros, Edição nº 88 – Julho
coming up for air…
July 8th, 2010
sitting on my new garden seat...
ok, anyone visiting this blog may well have noticed that I have recently disappeared without a trace. Some of this was due to the pressures of organizing my midsummer party – an annual event – and one upon which the sun shone :O) – In Scotland this is not something that can be counted on. The reason I host this is because the life of a writer can be very solitary and I have many friends that I love dearly but rarely see. Some indeed came from far afield – including Joanne who I have seen only once since we shared various mind-numbing university lectures in extremely abstruse mathematics. There are not enough of these events that, momentarily, provide a node where many people’s lives meet…
After that I went camping in the Lake District with some friends. This too is an annual occurrence – though, normally, we go off into the wilds of north-west Scotland – which wildness perhaps better suits my temperament…
Before all this madness began, I was having some difficulties with my ancient historical novel. I had started writing it, but it simply wasn’t ‘energizing’ me… I pulled my head free of it and surveyed the ‘view’… and discovered that I was doing it all wrong! I simply wasn’t being ambitious enough. I know, I know… look what a mess ambition got me in last time *grin* So, I’ve worked out what I need to do to my historical book to make it challenging enough for me and, hopefully, worthy of my readers’ attention… This said, I have put it aside for a while because I am working on another book. It came to me suddenly and I have vanished down a rabbit hole pursuing it ever since. It looks like being a cross between fantasy and sci-fi and is pleasingly bizarre and very strange – just how I like it! *wide grin* I am going to try and write this one quickly… but no promises…
I intend to resume a more regular pace of blogging… but, again, no promises…
Meanwhile, here is a link (it begins on page 12) to an article to which I contributed some muddled thoughts. It’s about Google’s ongoing attempt to put the world’s books online. Overall, this is a goal I tend to feel good about, but I am not at all sure that the way Google is doing it is a good way – indeed, I am a tad suspicious of Google’s motives… This said, I don’t really understand the issues well enough – for some reason, I just have not wanted to engage with them – not sure why, but there it is…
One final thing, I would very much like to put as many of these blog posts up in Portuguese… Though in matters concerning Portuguese editions I am prepared to muddle along in my rather dodgy Portuguese, I really couldn’t face trying to ‘translate’ a blog of this length. If there is anyone out there (or a number of people out there) who might like to do this for me, I would be very grateful…
oh, and I am going to FINALLY get round to responding to a number of comments that were left hanging…
psychic origins…
June 1st, 2010
twisted trunk...
Been somewhat busy of late engaging with a massive restructuring of my garden – involving the moving of many tonnes of earth and the building (by stone masons) of some rather lovely retaining walls of local stone… but that’s for a future blog – when I shall attempt to express my delight in natural materials and the skill and craft of human hands…
Now I would like to share what I believe about an aspect of the origins of the individual psyche… This goes to the roots of what I understand about my own psyche.
It could be the case that a psyche is like soup – to which experience is added as ingredients that constantly change its flavour. By this reckoning, it should be possible, by adding a little pinch of this, a little pinch of that, to sweeten the soup if it is to bitter; to add a dash of bitterness if it is too sickly – and thus to transform the psyche to a perfect balance…
Alas, my experience of therapy suggests to me that this is not possible. Instead it seems to me that the psyche is like a seedling that grows into a tree. At any point in its life, the form this tree takes is the sum of all its experiences: the sunlight of love that has fallen on it, the nurture that it has been able to draw up through its roots from the soil in which its seed fell, the storms it has endured. But it is clearly the case that the further back to the seed we go, the more fundamental are the influences on its future form. In its adult form, the psychic tree will need a gale to tear off one of its branches. By contrast, as a seedling, a glancing blow might be enough to take that branch off in its embryonic form…
No form of healing can hope to replace a branch lost in ’seedlinghood’. What therapy can do is to bring awareness of how small that injury was – though it came to have such massive and lasting consequence – and thus a psyche can come to understand, accept and value the shape it has, without regret, as the natural consequence of its life experiences…
my mailing list…
May 17th, 2010
For a while now I have been aware that, though more people keep registering with my mailing list, the overall number of people it claims to have on it doesn’t seem to be growing. I am concerned that there are people out there who have been dropped of it for some reason. So, if you’ve not received a mail shot from me over the past few weeks, please re-register here…