Blue shadows pass

I was alone most of the morning and into the afternoon reading Zen Buddhism. Silence.

Taking up a point I mentioned on Saturday about Helen Vaughan; her poems seem to describe satori-like experience, especially the famous stanzas that begin: “Blue shadows pass . . .” and “The harp of the heavens. . . .”

In the evening I watched a BBC programme on the Falklands and, when I objected—naively I suppose—to shots of Marines singing “We’re all going to kill a spic or two . . . we’re going to blow them to bits,” Dad got all worked up and we got into an altercation. I should learn to keep my mouth shut.

I waited up into the early hours to watch for Perseid meteors but when I eventually looked again at two it had clouded in.