Leaving the furrow

“But the point is, now, at this moment, or at any moment, we're only a cross-section of our real selves. What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time, and when we come to the end of this life, all those selves, all our time, will be us -- the real you, the real me. And then perhaps we'll find ourselves in another time, which is only another kind of dream.”

- J.B. Priestley, Time and the Conways

I have been back to the Bradford Literature Festival, this time for a talk on “Mysticism in the Work of J.B. Priestley”, which was fascinating stuff, demonstrating once again just how ahead of his time the man was. Since attending a talk at last year’s festival on his theories of time (clearly as Priestley is by some way Bradford’s most distinguished literary son there is something about him every year) I have read “An Experiment With Time”, by J.W. Dunne, a book which influenced Jack (as I believe he would have wished me to call him) enormously. My reaction to Dunne’s work was essentially “Hmmmm…”, and to be honest I am not suggesting that you follow my lead. I did try the experiment on myself, with results that failed to prove anything about me and what I dream about that I couldn't have told you in the first place.

As usual I came away from the talk with some reading to do, this time around the concept of bardo; it’s just possible that it will provide an explanation as to what has happened to wargaming activity in the Casa Epictetus over the last few months.