"When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. It probably doesn't matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life's many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong think or light up with wonder like the children we all are. It probably doesn't matter if a passerby sees us dipping a finger into the moist pouches of dozens of lady's slippers to find out what bugs tend to fall into them, and thinks us a bit eccentric. Or a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other, its color hitting our sense like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move." 

Diane Ackerman, from A Natural History of the Senses.

 

This is the Marrian web site. Sad to relate Mrs Marrian wants nothing to do with it. Her watercolours are beautiful but she's shy. She has many talents but she's still shy. She can't get away from the brilliance of her school though

I'm asked: why do you want the world to read about you? I'm even asked this by people with Facebook pages and lots of friends. It's a good question and I sometimes wonder myself. With social networking sites, you can control who partakes of your offerings; here you can't. But, I don't want to select who might or might not read these pages. The world is full of unknown people. There is stuff here; admittedly, it is my stuff or assembled by me but some of it might be helpful to somebody, or of interest. This is how I communicate. I don't like socialising; I'm no good at it; never was one of the boys. I used to like listening to the grown-ups talk; still do; just listening, not talking. The fact is, though, that nobody reads these pages; that's what the stats tell me; it's not that they come here and never return; they just never come here; it's the serendipity of it that I like. But most of all, I'm open to the world because it disciplines me; the writing, such as it is, is more considered, more thoughtful and better for that. It is cathartic. It is not for nothing that every page has at the top "include yourself amongst those you love". I must learn to love myself and being proud of what I write helps me to do that