words in the morning

I’ve been up early, but to write instead of run. I read somewhere about a pulp writer who didn’t allow himself his first pee in the morning until he’d written a thousand words. That’s dedication my bladder won’t allow, I’m afraid. I fear it may lead to a somewhat strained and impatient prose style, as well as the odd mess.

It’s just me and the cat at that hour. The house is quiet but for the cat’s impatience. Not content with my lap, he’ll leap to my desk and cross in front of my laptop as I try to type. I throw him aside a couple of times and eventually he gets the message.

The words come though, some mornings faster than others. I don't know where they come from. My legs don't even work yet, and my fingers couldn't tie a shoe, but they find their keys and letters and words and phrases and sentences appear. Hemingway said to write drunk and edit sober. I'm having a go at writing while still asleep.

My editors are going to love it. 

Or kill me.

Buy My Book. Please. 

be de plage

There was this one night in France. It was the first night. We sat around a table, dinner finished, tasting some wines and chatting about whatever. We were the last ones in the restaurant. It wasn’t bad, as seaside *** hotel restaurants go. The colour scheme, with its luminous orange napkins and waterglasses, may have been ill-suited to January. The orange may have clashed somewhat with the battle-ship grey upholstery adorning the chairs, but the food was decent and the wine list good. My bavette was chewy, but bavette is supposed to be a bit chewy. 

I was tired but relaxed. I think we all were.

I watched him walk through the door. Fashionable and drunk, with exaggerated movements of all limbs. I knew he was English, though his look had a Gallic edge to it. I could see the barrage of profanities swelling inside, seeking some poor member of staff to pour forth upon. As he entered further into the restaurant, someone at my table recognised him and called him over. We all shook hands. He wasn’t quite sure whether to speak in French or English. He swore the restaurant was shit. Told us we needed to go to this place.

‘The B de Plage, man. I’m sure there’s something funny going on there. Must be loads of coke in the toilets. It’s the place to be. What are we drinking? More fucking Grenache?’

‘Syrah.’

‘More fucking Syrah, then. I’ve lost the key to my room. I think I left it at the B de Plage. We’ve got to get there. It’s the place be.’

We sipped our glasses as he patted his pockets again and again, looking for the keycard to his room. Every few seconds there came a shit or a fuck as he failed to locate it.

‘So we’ve got to get out of here. Got to go.’

‘Go where?’

‘B de Plage.’

‘It’s the place to be, apparently.’

‘Yeah, but there’s something on going on in the toilets. Have you seen my key?’

We all fancied a beer. The sober one of us offered to drive. Where to go?

‘B de Plage.’

We piled into the rental. My search for B de Plage on google maps failed. The one way system of Le Gau du Roi confounded us; we wound up driving in all manner of circles. Drunken directions erupted from our guest from time to time. Often just ‘no, no, no... it’s just over there’ or ‘I’ve no fucking idea where the fuck it is’ and often 'it's by the fucking beach, obviously, it's the B de fucking Plage'.

Doubt spread among us. It became Cortez’s city, or de Leon’s fountain. We aimed for the beach, and frequently missed. Still my map showed no prize. We were driving blind, guided by a howling drunken lunatic whose ravings could well have been that of the ancient mariner for all we knew. All attempts to apply logic to our course failed. We hit the same roundabouts and took different exits, only to find they led to the same places and yet more roundabouts. The rental car took some speed bumps a bit too fast and we hooted as the car leapt; cringed when the undercarriage simply scraped along.

Another circuit and we admitted failure. Decided the ancient mariner had imagined it in a booze-tinted haze. The car pulled up to the hotel and as we tumbled out I heard him say,

'I found it.'

'What? The bar? It's not fucking here, is it?'

'My key.' 

He wandered inside, sanctuary rediscovered. We decided to drink on the beach under the stars. The January air was mild and the sea lapped quietly at the sand as the constellations twinkled and we drank our wine. 

Glasses empty, we wandered back to the hotel, into the empty lobby. One of us picked up a black business card from a table covered in fliers and such things for local venues.

There was a gold 'B' emblazoned on it, and, in smaller text beneath, 'de plage'.

It existed.

pale light

Limping from bed this morning. My calves hurt because I ran yesterday; for the first time since the last time I wrote about running. I woke up early enough to do it again today, but the ache has caused pause. I'll take a day off. 

The day's pale light starts a littler earlier. Not early enough be useful, not yet. It doesn't hang around too much longer. It will still be dark when I walk home from work. 

Two weekends in a row of old friends, good food and too much drink. I discovered that the Red Socks Carignan 2010 that I made is a perfect match for haggis one week and that Fuller's ESB goes great with guinea fowl pie the next. At one point there was a great jukebox and a pub in Essex rang with the tunes of our university days. It had the curious effect of making the beer slip down faster and in perhaps greater quantities than normal.

I'll shake the rust off and get ready to face the week. Should be a good one.

Buy My Book. Please.

no hot water

I was sound asleep when February started in Western(ish) Europe, but not for very long. I was in a strange hotel in the town of Vienne, just south of Lyons. It looked, from the outside, like a grand townhouse. On the inside it was more of the student hall of residence circa 1978 sort of decor. It had an odd odour and I saw not a single female guest in my brief stay. I tried to shower at 4am (early flight) and there was no hot water.

Finishing January and beginning February on a whirlwind wine tasting/buying trip of Southern France and the Rhône seems to be as good a sample of the year so far. Moving quickly, a lot to do, not much time to pause, but fun while it's happening. There were bad wines and good wines; wineries seemingly at the end of civilisation and the odd revelation. I wrote only tasting notes and read only descriptions of cuvées and wineries and regions and yields and grams per litre of residual sugar and not much else. 

So I've drunk beer today. And a small sip of wine someone forced upon me, but mostly beer. I'm writing this and other things. I'm going to watch a cheesy movie and eat curry. I'm going to think of things not wine for the rest of the night.

Buy My Book. Please.

smoked tea

I smell of wood smoke at the moment. One of the fireplaces in my local pub has some venting issues, and so my jumpers smell like bonfires. It could be worse. James at work tells me I reek of a mixture of lapsang souchong and pepperoni.

I remember losing my last remaining respect for a particular wine writer when she was asked what wine went with kedgeree and responded ‘lapsang souchong’; that’s about a poor a wine recommendation as you can get.

I like lapsang souchong. It’s good for the mornings you want to be drinking Laphroaig or Ardbeg but still need to function beyond breakfast.  

The snow was supposed to start at eleven but actually started about quarter to nine. It was small flakes to begin with, no more than an icy dusting. It got thicker as I walked to work. I paused at the entrance to Chiswick House; the entrance with the obelisk. The icy dust lay unbroken, like the thin frosting on a cake. I wanted to turn in and wander the empty snow-covered grounds but instead I stayed my course. The growl of revving engines and shriek of slamming brakes reminded me that snow in Britain brings out the worst in drivers. I was happy to walk.

Buy My Book. Please.

getting over the firsts

I'm not sure how we're already halfway through January, but we are. A 24th of 2013 is complete. It's disconcerting in that I've got quite a lot to do and instead of doing it, I'm sat marvelling at how slow the days go and how quickly the weeks pass by. 

I've only noted two firsts of the year - my first curry of the year and my first run of the year. Neither killed me. The former was something of a disappointment. There are dozens of good curry restaurants within delivering distance and yet I've found none that I like as much as the ones I left behind in Scotland. 

The latter felt great, and were there more light in the day I would be out there first thing, dodging the swampy puddles on the pathway by the river on the south bank. It's not the mud or the wet but the cold. The involuntary sucking in of air when that icy water charges through the thin webbing of my running shoes throws off my breathing something rotten. 

Cornwall sits relegated to memory now, though it was only a couple of weeks ago I was there to bring in the new year. It was a good trip, with a lot of laughs, good company and a sense of coziness that seemed taken straight out of a hollywood ideal. It seems now like stolen time; a brief week without worry, heading from cove to cove in search of pirates, antique shops and decent pubs (of which there were several). 

I'm off to France next, though that's for work. I would say it's my first trip of the year, but I started the year on a trip.

I'm not sure why there's a tendency to mark the first - it's not as though I'll be counting afterwards.

 "...we die, my Friend, 

Nor we alone, but that which each man loved 

And prized in his peculiar nook of earth 

Dies with him or is changed, and very soon 

Even of the good is no memorial left."

- Willam Wordsworth, The Ruined Cottage

It's hard to start the new year with a loss. We all do from time to time, I suppose. I've not the words, so I'm using Wordsworth's. I'm more of a Coleridge fan usually, but there you go. This is a somber moment of reflection before revelry and the embracing of friends in a rocky little village in Cornwall. The knowledge there's one less in the world will make those embraces a little longer, and a little warmer.

and to all a good night...

My whisky glass wants not for a top up, and Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacColl serenade me for the first time this year. On a chair behind me sleeps the cat. Aside from the two of us, the house is empty. I decided against a tree in the end. My presents sit in a pile behind the chair the cat sleeps on. There are four, and I know what three of them are. I still leave them unopened. They're there for the morning. 

It's quite a shift going from The Pogues and 'Fairytale…' to The American Boy Choir singing 'Once in Royal David's City', but it seems right. The organ kicking in in the latter lifts in much the same way as the rapid duet in the former. 

It's a strange Christmas this year, but that's ok. I don't quite know what I expected. I don't really know if I expected anything. 

That's a lie. When you don't really expect anything, you expect everything and are just curious as to which eventuality pops up.

Happy Christmas, folks. hope it's a good one.

some sunday notes (undecked edition)

I'm writing this because writing is preferable to shopping, and no, I've not really done any Christmas shopping yet. I bought a present in desperation, having browsed for an hour and not seen anything that clicked. I like getting presents, usually. Or I used to. Buying the perfect gift for someone is an admirable skill. My sister, Suzanna, possesses it. And I used to. But now I stumble from shop-to-shop and stare at bits and bobs and wait for something to leap out and grab me. To shout out "OH MY GOD, BUY ME, I'M PERFECT FOR X,Y or Z".

There's no leaping or grabbing this year. I did have one spectacular idea for someone, but the problem with great gift ideas is that the particular gift has to actually exist. Sadly, it does not. I could attempt to make it, I suppose, but I'm neither a cartographer, book-binder, or 19th century printer. Were I those things, I know what everyone would be getting from me this fucking Christmas. 

My Christmas tune this year has been AC/DC's "Mistress for Christmas". It may be my Christmas tune every year from now on, you never know. I've got the house to myself this season and as I'm going to Christmas dinner at a friend's there's been internal debate as to whether I'll bother with a tree. The not bothering side is winning for a couple of reasons, the primary one being general laziness. I might put a wreath on the door. I don't mind privately being a grumpy shit, but it's my folks' house, and the neighbours shouldn't think they're being unseasonal. I may change my mind; I could see myself rushing up to the high road tomorrow, desperate to get the last tree and decorate it before midnight; who knows? But for now my halls remain undecked. 

Friday night I cooked for the first time in ages, rediscovering my love for prepping my mis en place. I used to hate it; loathe it, in fact. I'd farm out prep to any unwitting sucker who dared ask if I needed help in the kitchen. On Friday evening I put "Four Days In October" on my iPad and chopped away at shallots, onions, mushrooms and potatoes and the stress of a week of wine-merchant-ing in the lead up to Christmas just disappeared. 

Dinner was good, though somehow I managed to lose a bag of scallops between the high road and home. We opened bottle after bottle of wine and stayed up until the wee hours. It was the perfect sort of revelry to kick off a holiday with, capped off with swigging Madeira from the bottle and better than average misbehaviour. Old friends, new friends and friends not seen in far too long all seemed to get along just great. 

It meant yesterday, however, was a write off. I spent all of three hours out of my pyjamas, and two of those were at the pub, bathing in the quiet and nursing a restorative pint or three. The bar staff wore Santa hats and sympathised kindly with my state.

That's enough for now. Time to gird my loins and get some shopping done. 

Buy My Book. Please.

morning tumble

I find it easier to get out of bed at 530 than at 715. I'm not sure why, but at 530 there's no flailing for the snooze button and crawling back under the duvet, curling back into the bit still warm. I tumble out and rub my eyes. The cat looks at me funny, if he's there. Sometimes he's gone for an early breakfast, and is returning up the stairs, surprised to find me stumbling down in the other direction. My legs take awhile to work in the mornings, due to a condition called 'getting older' and getting down the stairs is precarious to say the least. At 715, I know I can get away with a minute here or there. An extra 9 in bed can be made up by skipping a shave or espresso. In fact, my espresso machine is on the fritz at the moment. Verging on calamity, that.

At 530, though, there isn't time to mess about. If I've set my alarm for so ungodly an hour, it's because I have something to do. Make wine; catch a plane; make a train. Something that just won't wait is afoot, and somewhere along my staggered road to being a grown-up, I've managed a degree of diligence in such things. I don't like it. I like waking up at 930.

930 is early enough that you can have breakfast without it reducing the appetite for lunch, while still giving you the satisfaction of not waking up at 530, 630, 730 or 830.

In any case, I made my train with ten minutes to spare. The tube was quiet, and the train nearly empty. Heading north as the bleak turns to dreich. It's a random trip, this. I'm not sure what on earth I'm doing, but hopefully I'll work it out by the time I head back tomorrow.

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every bit as crowded

The tube home at about midnight was every bit as crowded as the one heading into town at about six, though there were a fair few more drunks. 

The plan was BBQ, but the BBQ place had a 2 hour wait, so we traversed Soho and hit the Mexican instead. There wasn't a quiet restaurant to be seen, but the Mexican had only a half hour wait and a tequila bar downstairs. So downstairs we headed to get margaritas and quickly the girls accompanying me became fixated with our bartender as danced with the cocktail shaker.

The drinks were good. I was hungover, so the sweet and sour and salty citrus acted as a sort of rejuvenating ambrosia. By the time they were finished, our table was ready. More margaritas an another beer. The chat turned towards veganism, as we were to be joined by a vegan. We all agreed it was probably best not to talk about it at all once she arrived. So we howled with incredulity that anyone could be a vegan and then the vegan arrived and shortly after that, the food came. Bright, technicolour dishes laden with veg and spice and meat and cheese and sour cream. 

We ate and talked and I felt somewhat bemused at being the bloke at a table of 4 women but there you go. Full and shocked at our gluttony, we stumbled out the door and headed towards a cocktail bar that's something out of the 20s. Dark and moody, with pristinely prepared drinks we sat and sipped and soon the conversation slipped me by. They talked about boys and men and sex and laughed at jokes told in some sort of code. I sipped my drink and nibbled on the odd spiced nut or olive. 

I faded fast; we all did. Out into the cold London air we poured and went our separate ways. I went Westbound Piccadilly, where the tube home was every bit as crowded as the one I took into town, though there were a fair few more drunks.

crawlers

Yesterday was a quiet Sunday. I wrote and baked bread and stole away for a pint at my local while the bread cooled. I sat at the end of the bar and made some scribbles in a notebook, outlining a chapter with some details, happy with the flow of it. There were arrows and bullet points and even something verging on a diagram. It's the 'history' chapter of the book. Since it isn't a fiction, I feel more comfortable doing all this laying out of things. It wouldn't do for me to put the Battle of Dunkirk (very different from the evacuation) before the Albigensian Crusades in a fit of writing fervour, as the former took place nearly 400 years after the latter. 

While scribbling notes and sipping a pint, an army of neck-tied student pub-crawlers invaded the quiet confines of the local. I think it was a rowing team, but if so there were too many coxes. They were loud and drank Fosters and every time I thought that must be all of them, more arrived. Soon the bar was packed, and they just seemed to get louder. One or two gave a couple of locals a bit of lip, and for a split second it looked like it would get a bit messy at the other end of the bar. I just kept scribbling.

They left faster than they arrived, off to annoy some other folks enjoying a quiet Sunday pint. The echo of the door shutting behind them was followed by a loud 'What a bunch of cocks' from on of the guys at the other end of the bar. I shut my notebook and nursed the very end of my pint, remembering that it wasn't all that long ago that I was like that. Bursting into bars, thinking I owned the place. Possessing no volume control and the firm belief that everything I uttered was important.

I always drank better beer, of course, but still. 

And now I'm the quiet, grumpy one at the bar, trying to ignore them, cursing their invasion of my little corner of the world. And they don't give a shit.

Which is fine. When I was their age, I didn't give a shit either.

ikea desks and bad bookshelves

There's no rain to wait for today, but still I sit here with a coffee and ponder awhile before heading out for my run. I wrote around things yesterday rather than through them, but it cleared enough of the to-do list to give me some breathing room.

I'm sat at my dad's desk instead of my own. Mine's in my room and I find it somewhat tough to work when I know my bed is behind me. My father's retired and so his desk goes much unused. It's become a storage shelf for the mountains of paperwork having a pension generates. There's also an unused MacBook Air, one of the "Fenway Bricks" with his name inscribed along with the years that he was a batboy for the Red Sox. It's not his proper old desk, sadly. That's in storage. This thing came from Ikea. I helped my mom build it some years ago. On the wall to my left is a large, Victorian print of Boston from the air. It's only just occurred to me that it must have been sketched from a hot-air balloon. On the wall in front of me is my dad' degree from The Naval Academy, the odd commendation and a beautifully calligraphed print of The Prayer of a Midshipman. Next to these is a window that looks out onto the back garden, where the leaves seem greener than they should at this time of year. The other half of the room is the library, though it represents so small a percentage of the family's books that it seems a bit of a misnomer. The rest are in storage. Next to the horrid black bookshelves are tall stacks of volumes for which there is no room. There's a tv in here as well, but you'd barely notice it if it wasn't on. 

We moved in here in a rush, in 2006. Our old house sold and we had nowhere to go. I found this place for my folks as kind of a stop-gap, as somewhere nearby to set up home until something better came along. We didn't want to sell the old place, but shit happens.

I don't feel quite at home here, which is fine, I won't be here for long. I'm used to a sense of displacement. 

But nor do my parents, which is a shame as it is their home, or what's passing for it at the moment. 

poor lager and cocktail sausages

I'm waiting for the rain to stop, so that I can go for a run without drowning. The cat is feeling mischievous and lingers just around the corner, or peeking out from under a chair, somewhere he feels unobserved, where he can watch and plot. As soon as he realises I've seen him, he bolts, disappearing up the stairs. Or he just starts nonchalantly licking a forepaw, as though he was never really interested anyway. 

Last night I brought a few wines to my local, wines that I'd made, as they'd asked to try them. The owner and the manager liked them. I liked them. It was that nice time in a pub just before it gets busy on a Friday. Everyone walking through the door genuinely happy to be there, to be finished with the week. We sat and we chatted and tasted and folks arrived and drank their beer while we sipped wine in the corner. A spittoon made a brief appearance but was put away because it was a Friday evening, and there's little point spitting on a Friday evening.

After the pub and wine I went to a friend's office for beer and nibbles. Friends and strangers milled about and when the good beer ran out, the bad beer was drunk. It was late when I left and the walk home seemed particularly long. I was full of poor lager and cocktail sausages. It wasn't raining, but the streets sounded damp and wet. 

The rain's just got harder. I ate some eggs and bacon so have to wait a bit longer if I want to run. By then it will be dark and the mud along the river thick. The cat's not hiding anymore. He's napping on a chair behind my desk. 

It seems the perfect sort of day for ignoring everything I have to do.

stop. hermit-time.

There's a dangerous friction between the number of words I have to write in the coming weeks and the amount of times I'm expected to appear in either a social or professional context. I'm not good at saying no to people. I like seeing my friends, raising a glass or two. I'm easily flattered - the idea of being needed professionally plays well to my vanity, and having spent a year unemployed (freelancing, of course), I'm loathe pass up on opportunities to help out, and even get paid for it.

I like being useful, and around friends. 

But I like writing more. I love it. It's what I want my work to be. I like having my cup of tea next to my keyboard, my notebook open while I try to decipher my scribbled missives and improve on the words as I transcribe them. I like wearing my big headphones and listening to Miles Davis or Beethoven. I still find it hard to write to music with lyrics. The only words I want to hear are my own. I like the give of the keys beneath my fingers, the abstract rhythm they reveal when the letters turn to words turn to sentences turn to paragraphs turn to chapters turn to a book.

I lose myself in it, and that's a good thing. 

Time to decline invites. Switch my phone to airplane mode and make sure my polite 'no's' will not be easily converted into 'just the one'. It's time to go back to the writing hermit that I was 6 years ago, to place the book in front of everything else save maybe remembering to breathe and wash. 

Time to remember what I love doing, and do that. 

fleeting

Once again the weekend went too quickly, and I find myself having crossed out nothing from my rather long to-do list. In fact, quite a few things got added to it. Big things, important things. The road isn't so much forking as it is dividing exponentially. As a recovered comic book reader, it's as though I'm staring at a multiverse of futures, with the only constants being irksome, inescapable truths. 

And so I wake up on a Monday with a clenched chest and play decision-tennis in my head while I sip my espresso, munch on toast and catch up on Twitter. And then I look at the clock and see these brief moments to myself have taken too long, the decision-tennis rally is on-going, like those old Sampras/Agassi Nike adverts. 

So I write something, anything, to break the rally. To be doing instead of pondering and worrying. 

And so I'm late.

saturday morning notes

I didn't bring any wine or whisky back this time. My train was early, and goodbyes at this point seem as clichéd as commenting on the weather, or asking whose round it is. I thought maybe while I was up there I would set in stone a date for my return, but I didn't. There are possibilities, some quite close, but nothing solid. Like a spun out yo-yo, there's nothing yanking me back up. Well, nothing except nostalgia and missing my mates. 

We ate at the local last night. My oldest sister's over from Ireland, and while I'm sure she's still crazy, it was lovely to see her. The pub was warm and all the tables seemed happy with their respective company. It was loud and lovely and the food, beer and wine all tasted great. 

The future's a little clearer. Well, parts of it are. The book and the books that follow are no longer mirages in the distance. Slowly, potential new adventures take shape. 

It was raining earlier and now it's not. Instead, a grey Saturday with puddles to dodge and closed umbrellas. Might go for a run. From downstairs I can hear the espresso machine pushing out coffee and I think maybe I'll have a cup first.

The last of the coloured leaves cling to the branches, holding on to the autumn and refusing to let winter blow them away. 

Buy My Book. Please.

visiting rights

A somewhat barren and grey autumnal England gave way to some sun north of the border and white horses riding the waves of the sea to the east. I have two small rucksacks with me and that's all I'll be bringing back after this brief visit to Scotland. Both may be laden with wine, but there won't be any more baggage. What's there will just be heavier. 

This trip was planned awhile ago, before I left the last time with a van full of all my stuff. I knew I would be back for this. I'd sorted out a place to stay, two lunches and a nice bottle for my host. As of yet, though, I've no return planned. When I leave Thursday morning, that's it until next time, and I don't know when that next time is.

 

And that's a little strange for me.

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back on the path

The following was written Sunday, 11 November, but I thought the Vonnegut quote more apt to post that day:

It rained last night. Quite a lot, as it happens. It woke me up in the wee hours and I got up to shut the window. The cat wasn't too bothered. He thought maybe for a moment that I was getting up at 4 in the morning to feed him, but then he's not very bright. He's just a cat, after all.

It had stopped by the time I rolled out of bed. I put my running kit together without too much of a problem. Everything where I left it over a month ago. I wore a hoody over my t-shirt because it's November. I selected the short run playlist on my iPod. 

It was muddy, damp and crowded. My legs felt caked in rust; muscles, tendons and joints shrieked in discord and disharmony. Two miles in and my lungs got used to it, at least. It felt wretched. Every other runner was faster, and seemed a great deal less on the verge of death.

I tripped at one point, and somehow managed to right myself with out careening head first into the mud. Ninja-like reflexes revealed themselves that have never been there before and I doubt will appear again.

I reached the end and staggered through my cool down walk. Armies of runners passed me; fitter, faster. 

But I made it. And I'll do it again. And it will get easier. 

Or that's what I keep telling myself. 

…and all music is"

From Kurt Vonnegut's 'Breakfast of Champions' - 

"I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is."

There are some quotes, some pieces of writing, that I cling to; that I clutch in my head and heart and hold tight. I call on them to remind me of the beauty and truth of great writing. This seemed a good time to share this one.