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Good session last night with Dougald's Q and A with beauty to hand. Thanks for the chance. And I liked the audience Q & A. Excuse my bullet point format - comes in handy for jottings that might be future coherent thoughts. Smile.

1.Your 'flyer' email a few days ago had me burrowing again in Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos. He recalls his old friend WB Yeats asking Beardsley why he drew horrors. 'Beauty is dificult' came the reply. This becomes a theme recurrent in these Cantos, with beauty constantly appearing and disappearing in the poems, but remaining present.

2. I found therein also 'Pull down thy vanity, pull down ...' 'To have gathered from the air a live tradition or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame This is not vanity.'

3. From your Q & A re Craft / Art - I remember Mandalas from India in coloured sands erased and renewed daily. Our youngest daughter told us this long ago.

4. Or on another hand, the pianist rehearsing Chopin into old age, each day the music dying away.

5. I liked the notion of spells quoted by the magical animist lady written into the wooden boats, and I wonder about spiritual protection.

6. You made me think this morning about the coherent large 'brain' in the heart, autonomous as much as these things ever are, that talks with the hemispheres.

Thanks again!

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Oh Caroline. Such a beautiful piece. It brought tears to my eyes. YES!

This has become my inquiry of late, when faced with any decision. "“Will this make me feel more alive, or is it just allowing me to be comfortable?” As someone raised at the teat of the machine (mixed metaphor, I know), I have tended to orient toward comfort and convenience. But life beckons. I'm willing to "get in the water" and I'm learning how to swim.

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