I Think The Virtue I Prize Above

I Think Vestigially There's A Synesthete In Me But Not Like A Real One Who Immediately Knows What Colour Wednesday Is.

There Is A Peculiar Aesthetic Pleasure In Constructing The Form Of A Syllabus, Or A Book Of Essays, Or A Course Of Lectures. Visions And Shadows Of People And Ideas Can Be Arranged And Rearranged Like Stained-glass Pieces In A Window, Or Chessmen On A Board.

Things Are Not What They Seem.

Don't You Find It Rather Heavy, To Have Everything Really In Front Of You – All The People Who Are Going To Matter, Whom You Haven't Met Yet, All The Choices You Are Going To Have To Make, Everything You Might Achieve, And All The Possible Failures – Unreal Now? The Future Flaps Round My Head Like A Cloud Of Midges.

I Know That Part Of The Reason I Read Tolkien When I'm Ill Is That There Is An Almost Total Absence Of Sexuality In His World, Which Is Restful.