In Lieu of an Introduction

. . . he recommended to all those who might be impressed with a sense of their importance to bury a copy or copies of each work properly secured from damp, &c. at a depth of seven or eight feet below the surface of the earth; and on their death-beds to communicate the knowledge of this fact to some confidential friends, who in their turn were to send down the tradition to some discreet persons of the next generation; and thus . . . the knowledge that here and there the truth lay buried . . . and was to rise again in some distant age . . . —this knowledge at least was to be whispered down from generation to generation.

—Thomas De Quincey, “Walking Stewart”

Livius Andronicus: An Odyssey is peregrinatory, and an Iliad, no doubt, genocidal, but an Idyssey is gestational as regards idiosyncrasy--or oddness.

Dr Johnson: Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.

Mrs Thatcher: There is no such thing as a womb with a view.

Ben Jonson: By G—, ’tis good, and if you like’t, you may!

—Petrus Tornarius, Imaginary Conversations

Snatched from the great gulf, like oysters by bibliomaniac pearl divers, . . . they first rot, then what was pearl . . . may be seen as such, and continue as such.

—Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, ch. 5, “The Fourth Estate”

Parenthesis

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

—Tennyson, "Ulysses" (1833)

Have I still got anything in me?

Is there anything left to say?

These are the questions that perplex me

As I slouch in bed today.

All the ads out there distract me,

Feeble content lies in wait.

Few, indeed, the friends who read me,

Dulled the once romantic state.

There is, I fear, no simple answer

Silently in awe to heed.

What I have is that I have to—

If the Other has agreed!

Sedgefield, Western Cape, South Africa, April 18, 2026

Palimpsest

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.

“Never miss a good opportunity to shut up.”

—Will Rogers

When I was wise I sought obscurity,

And I’ve achieved it now in witless age.

Undone these days, I banish history.

The words I write must wither on the page.

Telling stories, it's said, is telling lies.

A fallow field is “honour’d in the breech,”

And silence, you’ll concur, best sets off speech.

There’s time enough for nothing if love dies.

Tuesday, April 14, 2026, Sedgefield, Western Cape, South Africa