As I was growing up I found I was attracted to certain minds… nearly all of people no longer living.I could not understand much of what they wrote but I definitely had a strong instinct about who they were.One difficulty was they seem to be mainly men.That’s because it is much harder to find women who had the time and talent to create and become part of the culture.
But how strange is it to feel kinship with someone when you cannot understand much of what they wrote?
I liked

Blaise Pascal

Spinoza.

John Donne

Andrew Marvell

Wm Wordsworth

Wm Blake

Soren Kierkegaard

Rainer Maria Rilke

Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The people who wrote the Psalms.

Montaigne whose diaries are still read.

Paul Klee

Marion Milner.

Leslie Farber.

Stephanie Dowrick.

There are more.

These people seem to have some kind of feelings which resonate with me. were not usually scientists and Pascal attracted me because he was a mystic as well as a mathematician.So it’s something about how to relate to the world….with the heart and soul not the intellect alone
I also read many novels which is/was my favourite activity and I could not discuss that here as I have read thousands and re read thousands.I like the Chekov of suburbia ,Stanley Middleton after whom I named Stan in my stories…… despite his limitations.
I may write many funny pieces but I am a deeply serious person following a trail left by someone unknown…I recognise it when i get the clues.But who leaves them for me?

Here is a passage I like from Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke
“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

As I was growing up I found I was attracted to certain minds… nearly all of people no longer living.I could not understand much of what they wrote but I definitely had a strong instinct about who they were.One difficulty was they seem to be mainly men.That’s because it is much harder to find women who had the time and talent to create and become part of the culture.
But how strange is it to feel kinship with someone when you cannot understand much of what they wrote?
I liked

Blaise Pascal

Spinoza.

John Donne

Andrew Marvell

Wm Wordsworth

Wm Blake

Soren Kierkegaard

Rainer Maria Rilke

Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The people who wrote the Psalms.

Montaigne whose diaries are still read.

Paul Klee

Marion Milner.

Leslie Farber.

Stephanie Dowrick.

There are more.

These people seem to have some kind of feelings which resonate with me. were not usually scientists and Pascal attracted me because he was a mystic as well as a mathematician.So it’s something about how to relate to the world….with the heart and soul not the intellect alone
I also read many novels which is/was my favourite activity and I could not discuss that here as I have read thousands and re read thousands.I like the Chekov of suburbia ,Stanley Middleton after whom I named Stan in my stories…… despite his limitations.
I may write many funny pieces but I am a deeply serious person following a trail left by someone unknown…I recognise it when i get the clues.But who leaves them for me?

Here is a passage I like from Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke
“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet