Follow The Light

To the Lighthouse lilted Virginia Woolf in a beautiful narrative first published in 1927. 

Many hearts have beat and slowed and stopped since then. 

I have a heart which loves many things, people and their inspiration, unhinged and let loose, it lives. 

Another bright light in the world of literature is Muriel Spark, a Scottish writer, born in 1918, dying some eighty-eight years later, in 2006.  Her famous novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was first published in 1961, a stage adaption following in 1966. 

Here am I, a fickle whelp, untutored, untamed, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, but make lists. 

Visible sun rays are seen as what is known as ‘white light’, although this is not a true description, for if such light is passed through a prism, the colours of the spectrum will be found, so it is documented in The Hamlyn Children’s Encyclopaedia.

Sing to me children, a song of sixpence. 

Dramatically placed is Neist Point Lighthouse which was built in 1900.  The light is 43 metres above sea level and can be seen up to 16 nautical miles off shore. 

Did you know that our shores bring Freedom of Speech which is one of the characteristics of a democracy?

Is this concept sliding under the radar?

A song from under the floorboards, sings Morrisey.   

‘I prefer the pen.  There is something elemental about the glide and flow of nib and ink on paper’, says James Robertson of The Fanatic.

Miscellaneously thriven, driven by division from life as I knew it.

‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again’ said Robert The Bruce before defeating the English at Bannockburn, 1314.

A term picked up and adopted by my dad.

If Not For You, sings Dylan.

Edinburgh Castle is in the old part of the city, sitting high on a rock, from where it sees everything.  Memories hold me there.    

Rock and Roll me there.

While Arthur’s Seat lies dormant.              

In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst tried and succeeded in forming the Women’s Social and Political Union, and then chained herself to some railings. 

Mary Ann Evans, author of Middlemarch, wrote under the pseudonym George Eliot.

‘Animals are such agreeable friends, they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms’, Mary Ann Evans is known to have said. 

Are my writings valued by man, I said?  Not so much said, but certainly thought. 

In Together Alone, Crowded House got Locked out and with it brought inspiration to write. 

In 1859, Charles Darwin’s great work on The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’ introduces a variety of ideas and observations about how the species evolved. 

‘A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life’, Darwin said. 

The tree of life. 

There are about seventy species of coniferous trees, all of which are evergreen, to name but two – The Scot’s Pine, Pinus Sylvestris and The Chilean Pine, Araucaria imbricata, known more popularly and affectionately as the Monkey Puzzle Tree.

The Orang-utan, meaning the old man of the woods in the Malay language, responds well to training, like the wise old men of the city and towns.

The scribe in ancient Egypt, then an illiterate country, was highly revered, being an educated man who could read and write.

Words are the basis of all stories.  Poetic, prophetic, magnetic, majestic words woven and thread. 

Rupert Brooke wrote The Soldier, gloriously inspired by WWI.

Charles Darwin was also known to say ‘If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week’. 

‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.  If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowances for their doubt’ sayeth Rudyard Kipling in If.     

Say I, ‘if you can follow your heart, if you can see where it beats, allow it the space to beat, cradle the words and suffer your silences, then you will keep your head’.