Monday, 26 April 2010
Saturday, 24 April 2010
more than one iron in the fire
The ‘How to be A Success’ book says : Choose just one project – to the exclusion of all others – and see it through to the end. Answer just the three most interesting emails. Trim your weekly social calendar down to the one event you just can’t do without. Do all these things, and you’ll be A Success (my son). It’s a fascinating prospect – though why should I want to be A Success at the age of 82, I’m not quite sure. Perhaps it’s just the book suggests something I’d not tried before. A novelty. It began well enough. I was booked to give a talk on a puzzle I still hadn’t solved. I began a complete re-write of the talk I’d given two months before. Then I bought a new computer – with an operating system I’d never used before. It was complex. Intriguing. I needed a book of words to expose the less obvious facilities. The unfinished text of the talk lay gathering dust in one of the pending trays then indulged in parthenogenesis and grew until the whole caboodle overflowed onto the floor when it immediately began to build a new and unstable pile. Then I stopped to think. I’d never been that single-minded. There was always more than one thing on the go. Even in my early schooldays there was piano practice as well as school homework. And piano practice requires taking a number of pieces – a recital programme – and working on all of them until they’re polished and perfect. And even then the process is never completed. Give the same programme to an audience six weeks later and there’s more work to be done to get back up to satisfaction. Happy is the expert who writes the superb text of a talk, delights an audience, then puts the text away in a drawer until the next time it’s needed. It may never call to be edited again. It’s always there. One item. Complete. Take a break. Do something new. Just one thing until it’s polished and honed to perfection. At the age of 82 I’m not like that. I never have been. Life’s been too full of half-a-dozen different things going on at once. It’s been fun. It still is. francis cameron, oxford, 24 april 2010
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
reincarnation
Before the day begins its disturbances I have time to sit and think, to meditate on ideas long present in my mind, to allow fresh seeds to germinate and to emerge into consciousness. Elsewhere in the day, one of my main preoccupations is with the paper I am completely rewriting on pagans and others in the roman empire. I am attracted by a reference to Gregory of Nazianzus (308), his speculation concerning the child in the womb where soul is joined to body, intellect manifests, and the power of reasoning becomes an attribute of the human psyche. Human psyche. That’s an interesting concept. Human is physical. Psyche is metaphysical. In this life the physical body is the instrument for the metaphysical psyche. It is the means by which the psyche gains experience of the physical world. It is also the means, ultimately, by which the psyche communicates its findings to the physical world. Which leads me to reconsider the nature of reincarnation. Until eight o’clock this morning I was aware of each individual soul as a single discrete entity successively inhabiting a series of mortal bodies – and between these incarnations considering the experiences of the one most recently ended and, consequently, preparing for the next sojourn on earth. I wonder, is it quite as simple as that? When I consider the three most recent of my previous incarnations, I am uncomfortably aware that the chronology is very tight. So tight that I am bound to consider the possibility of an overlap. Which leaves me even more unsettled. A simpler explanation is that – somewhere along the line, between incarnations – I have so thoroughly absorbed experience with another individual soul that this experience is now completely melded into my own record. That makes sense to me but it means considering a much revised understanding of the nature of reincarnation. francis cameron, oxford, 21 april 2010
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Monday, 19 April 2010
the oxford union society
It was the October of 1949 when I came up to Oxford. They called it Michaelmas Term. Within a few days I had contracted to buy life membership of the Oxford Union Society
In those days I went regularly to the Thursday evening debates. Robin Day. Norman St John Stevas. The Right Honourable Sir Anthony Wedgewood-Benn, Bart. Rees-Mogg, already looking as he does today save that his hair is now white.
It was late Lent of 1980 when I renewed my acquaintance with the Union. Such a welcome enclave in the city centre. A slumberous library with a familiar collection. Old and trusted. A bar with good cups of coffee. The cheapest in Oxford. Other friendly facilities. And good company.
Today all is open again. They call it Week Nought . Gradually it returns to seething young life after the pausa between Hilary and Trinity.
et in saecula saeculorum
francis cameron, oxford, 19 april 2010
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Friday, 2 April 2010
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