Speaking of [Philip] Larkin, in his poem about the First World War he wrote something like, "Never such innocence, before or since, that turned itself to past without a word".

People didn't talk about paedophiles in the seventies, I don't think.

I went on a meditation retreat. In 10 or so days, I spent about a hundred hours meditating, observing 'noble silence' the whole time, and so on. This was an interesting experience, which has had some beneficial effects for me.

This is the strange thing about existing in time. As [Philip] Larkin puts it, "truly, though our element is time, we are not used to the strange perspectives open at each moment of our lives" - something like that.

I went for a walk in the rain. Recently, whenever it rains, I feel like I want to go for a walk.

In the meditation, of course, the question is repeated and repeated until you run out of answers - or so I hear.

Zen, on the other hand, is not so dogmatically sterile, though there are certainly traces and more than traces of this austerity. However, with Zen we have not only the void, but the fertile void. The ink lines in a sumi-e painting show this fertility of the void ever ready to brim over into existence.