I'm not really in the know about copyright etc. and I hope no one minds me using this stuff. They're bits from my favourite stories, poems, quotes, songs and anything else I could think of. If any members have something to contribute to this section of the site please send them in to the usual address...

Cosi tra questa, Immensità s'annega il pensier mio: E il naufrager m'è dolce in questro mare 

Thus, in this immensity my thoughts do drown, and it is good to suffer shipwreck in this sea.

 by Leopardi L'infinito 

 

'She seemed a thing that could not feel

The touch of earthly years,

 

No motion has she now - no force;

She neither hears nor sees,

Rolled round in earth's diurnal course

With rocks and stones and trees.'

 

We see everything in a glass, darkly. Sometimes we can peer through the glass and see what is there on the other side. If you polish the glass, you can will be able to see what is behind the glass much clearer; but you will be unable to see yourself. 

                                    Jostein Gaarder; Through a Glass Darkly

The Lady of Shalott, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

 

On either side of the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye

That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

And through the field the road runs by

To many-tower'd Camelot;

And up and down the people go,

Gazing where the lilies blow,

Round an island there below,

The island of Shalott.

 

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,

Little breezes dusk and shiver

Through the wave that runs for ever

By the island in the river

Flowing down to Camelot.

Four gray walls, and four gray towers

Overlook a space of flowers,

And the silent isle embowers

The Lady of Shalott.

 

By the margin, willow-veil'd,

Slide the heavy barges trail'd

By slow horses; and unhail'd

The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd

Skimmed down to Camelot:

But who hath seen her wave her hand?

Or is the casement seen her stand?

Or is she known in all the land,

The Lady of Shalott?

 

Only reapers, reaping early

In among the bearded barley,

Hear a song that echoes cheerly

From the river winding clearly,

Down to tower'd Camelot:

And by moon the reaper weary,

Piling sheave in uplands airy,

Listening, whispers 'Tis the fairy

Lady of Shalott.'

 

'I become a transparent eyeball...' Ralph Waldo Emmerson, Nature

Ariel was holding her hand tightly. He looked up at her and said, 'You're even more beautiful sitting here.'

'But I can't see that for myself, because now I'm on the other side of the looking-glass'

As soon as she said that, Ariel let go of her hand.

He said, 'You look like a splendid butterfly that has flown from the hand of God.'

She looked at the room. A narrow strip of morning sun had fallen on the writing desk and the floor. Under Cecilia's bed a few rays had found their way to the Chinese notebook. She saw how all the silken threads shone and glittered.

Jostein Gaarder; Through a Glass Darkly.

The next extracts are two parts from what has to be my favourite book in the whole wide world. I went to Switzerland this year, (as my friends know because I never stop going on about it - sorry!) and this book, Bloomability, by Sharon Creech is another girl's impressions of the country, which seem to totally reflect my own feelings and my own trip.

---------------------------------------------------------

First I'd see the water and the banks, and then if it was clear like this river, I'd examine the bottom, and then I'd look at the riverbank and the trees, and then it would happen. I would see things that weren't outside of me, but were inside me.

And while I was seeing them I had two contrasting feelings. One was complete happiness, as if I was in a comfortable place with people I knew and who knew me. The other was complete and overwhelming homesickness. It was if the two feelings were taking turns, and I was waiting to see which one would win.

In the end neither won. They were both still there, but I packed them away inside my bubble and headed home.

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Three thousand feet up in the air, you could see the whole of blue Lake Lugano, and you could see beyond Lugano, across the Alpine foothills, and you could turn and see Italy and Lake Maggiore and the Lombardy Plains. An impossible blue sky stretched over blue lakes and over row upon row of mountains - some green, some almost blue in the light, and some in the distance still snow-capped. 

I had an odd feeling, as if I were aware of being a speck on this mountain, a speck in this wide scene, my little dot self, but also, simultaneously, I felt a part of it and above it and very, very free, as if this were my world, mine. Libero, libera. I breathed in the air, and I thought: This - this is me!

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