Tonight I read an article, "Donald the younger", by Donald Horne, which I really love. It is not only engaging but interesting. I really like the inner thoughts he wrote about. It is hilarious at times..esp the intro few paragraphs and you really gotta read the whole article to appreciate it. But I would like to share a few paragraphs with you.
(By the way, I really like the Leunig cartoon on 22 May paper too)
SO here we go: (btw it's from Spectrum..those of who didnt' buy the paper might be able to find it on the net)
"Can illness be good for the mind? One example of how it can are the insights that can come from the turning of things upside down from a fever. My most recent fever produced a sleepless-hysteria at night - partly about not going to sleep and partly that I might forget to go on breathing. But during the day I had a comfortable, reflective lassitude with a tranquil sense of indifference to the affronts and failures of the past, acceptance of folly as part of the human condition and of the need for this as a way of seeing things. ...That these insights might have come too late was also a matter of comfortable indifference.
I have accomodated myself to the fact that I 'look old'. I know that , because of my deficient lungs, I now appear to the world, and indeed am, someone who is walking slowly, but one can take an intelligent interest in enforced slow walking - comparing the degree of slowness todya with yesterday, examining the performance on a slope, contemplating the effect of heat and humidity.
There was another change in public performance when I began using a walking stick because of a slight stagger and occasional stumble. There can be a sense of skill and style in using a walking stick. One can imagine one is brigtening up the street somewhat, with dexterity in using the stick as rudder on the flat and as alpenstock on slopes, and versalitity in switching to shooting-stick mode when stopping for a rest - not to mention the swinging of the tip with every second or third step to show who is in control.
Yet, to the uninformed eye, i can seem an old man lost. For some years, (having earlier realised that sitting in a bus looking at people can be as good as a visit to a portrait gallery) I have been standing still looking at street scenes 'turning them into paintings'. Several times, while I stand on the pavement, imagining a painting, a stranger has come up and asked if I know where I am, as if i need to be directed back to the nearest nursing home.
...
Reflection on one's life is available to anyone who can manage it - at any time, of course. Since you're living a life, why not take an intelligent interest in it? (My particular obsession at the moment is to examine my life as an example of both the failures and successes of enthusiasm.) ..."