And That Was All The Part Of

Iconic Paris Tells Us: Here Are Our Three-star Attractions, Go Thou And Marvel. And So We Gaze Obediently At What We Are Told To Gaze At, Without Exactly Asking Why.

We Live On The Flat, On The Level, And Yet - And So - We Aspire. Groundlings, We Can Sometimes Reach As Far As The Gods. Some Soar With Art, Others With Religion; Most With Love. But When We Soar, We Can Also Crash. There Are Few Soft Landings. We May Find Ourselves Bouncing Across The Ground With Leg-fracting Force, Dragged Towards Some Foreign Railway Line. Every Love Story Is A Potential Grief Story. If Not At First, Then Later. If Not For One, Then For The Other. Sometimes, For Both.

(on Grief) And You Do Come Out Of It, That’s True. After A Year, After Five. But You Don’t Come Out Of It Like A Train Coming Out Of A Tunnel, Bursting Through The Downs Into Sunshine And That Swift, Rattling Descent To The Channel; You Come Out Of It As A Gull Comes Out Of An Oil-slick. You Are Tarred And Feathered For Life.

Those Were The Days In This Country Where H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw And Conan Doyle Could Have Influence, And Thats Gone, Thats True. But I Dont Think We Have Less Influence In The Hearts And Minds Of Readers. I Think, If Anything, We Have Just As Much, If Not More.

Loving Humanity Means As Much, And As Little, As Loving Raindrops, Or Loving The Milky Way. You Say That You Love Humanity? Are You Sure You Aren’t Treating Yourself To Easy Self-congratulation, Seeking Approval, Making Certain You’re On The Right Side?