Favourite Paintings - Hilma af Klint

Hilma af Klint - Group IV No 3 The Ten Largest -  Youth 1907

A Swedish artist and Theosophist who I had never heard of until the exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, is probably the first pure abstract artist. The painting above was painted in 1907, before others such as Kandinsky.

For a brief biography, see here

See more of her paintings here

The Forms of Love

Love comprehends the complexity of human relationship in all its forms. All of us hold feelings for others, but these feelings differ according to the people involved and the circumstances under which we interact. In the English language there is only one word to describe all of them: Love.

It wasn’t always so. The Ancient Greeks had around thirty words to describe Love in all its shades and complexities. The most easily recognizable of these forms are generally accepted to be the following seven:

Agape – the love of humanity (also known as ‘Love without desire’)

The kind of love which makes us sad when we hear of a crisis in another country (or our own); that makes us give our time or money to charity; and makes us feel connected to people we don’t know simply on the basis of our shared experience as human beings.

Storge – family love

The love a parent or grandparent has for a child, or the love a child has for a favourite aunt or uncle. Equally, the love a foster parent feels for children in his/her care. Also of course the love between siblings.

Pragma – love which endures

The love between a married couple which typically develops over a long period of time. This is the love that endures in sickness and in health and is also the love which exists between old friends (of the same or different sexes) and which causes one to care for another in later life.

Philautia – self-respect

The love we give to ourselves. This is not vanity, like narcissism, but our joy in being true to our own nature and values. It gives us the strength to care for ourselves so that we can in turn care for others.

Philia – shared experience

The love we feel for people we combine with to achieve a shared goal – our fellow workers, the players in a team or soldiers in an army.

Ludus – flirting, playful affection

The feelings we have when we play at what it might be like to be in love with someone.

Eros – romantic and erotic love

The one which is most often thought of as love but is really based on sexual attraction. It can turn into other kinds of love – like pragma – but it starts as romance.

Favourite Quotations - Oscar Wilde

                      

“I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.”

Favourite Writings: Jalaluddin Al-Rumi

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” 

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”

“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”

“The moon stays bright when it doesn’t avoid the night.”

“What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.”

“Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?”

“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.”

“Stop behaving small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”

“Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape.”

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.”

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”

“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you?”

“Only with the heart can you touch the sky.”

“This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First, to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without your feet.”

“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”

“Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others’ faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.”

“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.”

“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames”

“Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison when the door is wide open?”

“Put your thoughts to sleep, do not let them cast a shadow over the moon of your heart. Let go of thinking.”

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor…Welcome and entertain them all. 

Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

“In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.”

“Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.”

“All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”

“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.”

“I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside.”

“You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!”

“Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of gold lies within you?”

“There is a fountain inside you. Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.”

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

“That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.”

“What you seek is seeking you.”

“Do you know what you are? You are a manuscript of a divine letter. You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you are already that.”

"Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion."

"Whatever lifts the corners of your mouth, trust that."

"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."

"Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop."

"I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my Soul."

"In the blackest of your moments, wait with no fear."

"These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them."

"Close your eyes, fall in love, stay there."

Jalaluddin al-Rumi

See also, Jalaluddin Al-Rumi

Favourite Poetry - Wind

Wind

This house has been far out at sea all night,

The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,

Winds stampeding the fields under the window

Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky

The hills had new places, and wind wielded

Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,

Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as

The coal-house door. Once I looked up -

Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes

The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,

At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;

The wind flung a magpie away and a black-

Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note

That any second would shatter it. Now deep

In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip

Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,

And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,

Seeing the window tremble to come in,

Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

Ted Hughes (1930 - 1968)

There is a marvellous BBC documentary on Hughes which should be watched 

Ted Hughes: Stronger Than Death 

Favourite Books - Wait For Me by 'Debo' Devonshire

Ashtall Manor

Wait For Me by the youngest of the Mitford sisters, Debo Devonshire, is a delight, describing their lives and as well as hers in a warm and humorous way. It is a life full of public service as well as glamour and beauty and she writes simply and movingly about hers and her family's many tragedies.

Delightful stories abound: her irascible father walking to the Army & Navy Stores in Victoria with a lurcher and labrador at his heel and have them sit in the entrance.

Eddy Devonshire tying flies and lying in the bath imaging that he was a salmon while Edward, the butler, pretending to be a fishing rod, jerked them over his submerged head.

Tom Egerton (a friend of Andrew's) being famous for rescuing the marmalade from the officers' mess at the Siege of Tobruk.

'When Uncle Harold [Macmillan] was very old he came to stay for weeks on end. I met him one afternoon in a passage looking rather anxious and forlorn. 'The trouble with this house,' he said, 'is that you have to throw double sixes to get out'.

James Lees-Milne advocating friendship with Germany and her father turning him out of the house. 'Poor Jim went to his motorbike but it was raining hard and would not start. In despair he found the back door and and was rescued by Mabel (a parlourmaid) who hustled him upstairs . As he was creeping out of the house the next morning, he met her father. 'Good morning' he said. He had forgotten the whole episode and offered Jim our usual generous breakfast. 

Her mother believed in wholegrain, stone-ground bread - 'nothing added and nothing taken away.' She was critical of Lord Rank, 'the wicked miller' and regarded his ghost-white loaves and pale brown Hovis a confidence trick because because the germ of the wheat had been removed.  

Her husband, Andrew Devonshire was painted by Theodore Ramos (as was Ayako).

For me too it was particularly interesting to read about her early life at Ashtall Manor, where my step-grandfather Sir Alfred Herbert lived and the Mitfords acquired after he moved to Dunley.

See also this interview here

Old Swan House Garden in July

I had thought that the garden would look near its best in June, when the euphorbias and roses were out, but in fact it seems to be flowering better in mid July, and the grasses are better too as they have gone from being green to golden, and so look much lighter. My neighbours buddleija adds a strong burst of colour now as well.

For more photos, click here

Herry's 70th Birthday Party

Photo by Robery Wu of Herry and the party guests


Herry's 70th birthday lunch was held for 70 people at Old Swan House on 11th July 2015.

Cascades Flower Festival in Winchester Cathedral

Cascades, a beautiful modern flower arrangement exhibition, was held in Winchester Cathedral between 23rd - 28th June 2015, some of the arrangements seemingly inspired by the Tower of London poppies of 2014. The exhibition was directed by Hans Haverkamp with support from Bill Dixon and Pauline Harran.

For more photos of the exhibition, click here

Favourite Places - Wells Cathedral

The famous west front of Wells Cathedral contains one of the largest collections of mediaeval sculpture 

At last I have managed to visit Wells Cathedral, which I have long wanted to see. A flower festival was held in the Bishop's Palace Gardens which was interesting, but the C12th Cathedral was superb.

The famous scissor arches supporting the tower.