The Idea That Memory Is Linear Is

Perhaps I Shall Not Write My Account Of The Paleolithic At All, But Make A Film Of It. A Silent Film At That, In Which I Shall Show You First The Great Slumbering Rocks Of The Cambrian Period, And Move From Those To The Mountains Of Wales...from Ordovician To Devonian, On The Lush Glowing Cotswolds, On To The White Cliffs Of Dover... An Impressionistic, Dreaming Film, In Which The Folded Rocks Arise And Flower And Grow And Become Salisbury Cathedral And York Minster.

And In Another Year Everything Will Be Different Yet Again. It Is Always Like That, And Always Will Be; You Are Forever Standing On The Brink, In A Place Where You Cannot See Ahead; There Is Nothing Of Which To Be Certain Except What Lies Behind. This Should Be Terrifying, But Somehow It Is Not.

Getting To Know Someone Else Involves Curiosity About Where They Have Come From, Who They Are.

I Have Long Been Interested In Landscape History, And When Younger And More Robust I Used To Do Much Tramping Of The English Landscape In Search Of Ancient Field Systems, Drove Roads, Indications Of Prehistoric Settlement. Towns And Cities, Too, Which Always Retain The Ghost Of Their Earlier Incarnations Beneath Today's Concrete And Glass.

All I Know For Certain Is That Reading Is Of The Most Intense Importance To Me; If I Were Not Able To Read, To Revisit Old Favorites And Experiment With Names New To Me, I Would Be Starved - Probably Too Starved To Go On Writing Myself.