Saturday 24 December 2011

Trivial Musings


I am not here. This post is programmed and, all being well, I am probably somewhere on the M6 Toll in the back of a car, sleeping the sleep of the unjust. That means that all you get today is this lovely little piece of prose from a book called Trivia from 1917. I have spent much too much time on Oxford Street in the last week, and this description of that occidental bazaar therefore bores into my very soul:

One late winter afternoon in Oxford street, amid the noise of vehicles and voices that filled that dusky thoroughfare, as I was borne onward with the crowd past the great electric-lighted shops, a holy Indifference filled my thoughts. Illusion had faded from me; I was not touched by any desire for the goods displayed in those golden windows, nor had I the smallest share in the appetites and fears of all those moving faces. And as I listened with Asiatic detachment to the London traffic, its sound changed into something ancient and dissonant and sad - into the turbid flow of that stream of Craving which sweeps men onward through the meaningless cycles of Existence, blind and enslaved forever. But I had reached the farther shore, the Harbour of Deliverance, the Holy City; the Great Peace beyond all this turmoil and fret compassed me around. Om Mani padme hum - I murmured the sacred syllables, smiling with the pitying smile of the Enlightened One on his heavenly lotus.

Then, in a shop-window, I saw a neatly fitted suit-case. I liked that suit-case; I desired to possess it. Immediately I was enveloped by the mists of Illusion, chained once more to the Wheel of Existence, whirled onward along Oxford Street in that turbid stream of wrong-belief, and lust, and anger.

Merry crimble.

7 comments:

  1. "I have spent much to much time on Oxford Street"

    Looks like the programming gremlins have been having fun with the spelling in your absence.

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  2. Merry Christmas to you! Mine certainly was delightful, as my mother surprised me with the Etymologicon, which she somehow remembered me mentioning and managed to track down a hard copy of here in the United States (this is reportedly a difficult task). I gleefully have been regaling the family with favorite sections of the book.

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  3. I was lucky enough to receive your book for Christmas - I think it's wonderful and look forwards to exploring your blog and (boring) my family with a joy of words that I try to share with them!:)

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  4. It certainly is a nice little piece of writing, with an early modern tone and preoccupations. Who wrote it?

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  5. Just want to say I had never heard of this blog, or your book until I spotted its red cover in the window of my local independant bookshop here in Somerset. Do you know I have been obsessed with this very subject matter for nigh on 40 years and felt in some strange way validated in my obsession, by reading your excellent book(which I eagerly purchased and starting reading almost immediately). I then found you have this wonderful blog too - so you have a further reader and fellow enthusiast absorbing your words of wisdom (one more fan of many I'm sure). Oh Happy Day!! ;-)

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