Hasankeyf - a place I will, in the run of most statistics, never visit. It doesn't take much to go there - except a mountain of inertia and fear. But how haunting that name....

Diana Athill - "This isness business - what smartypants called it that? - is, to me, too obvious to be chic........It is the obviousness-the obviousness of the quiet throbbing of life in every object-which has filled for me the silence that should have been left by non-belief, and which makes me question whether I did in fact, stop believing......My senses tell me, not that 'God exists', but that 'it is'." (from 'Instead of a Letter')

Ian Brown - "Set my baby free" (from 'Golden Greats')

What do the above three have in common. Only one thing for me - Honesty. It is honestly where I am now. And it is where life has been lived to the bone.

But you must understand, sometimes with our very thin skins, skin-deep is as close to the bone as we can sometimes get. Sometimes, there is no less love there, you know.

People, people, lovely people,
All sorts, all lines, all colours,
Again Diana has already spoken -
Sometime beauty is reason enough for life....
And for those of us who do not have this
Beauty
How can we justify?
(But you smile...)
Sometimes life is itself a justification,
The isness of all is the reason
And there will be time, some sort of time.

Some sort of reconciliation -
And a beauty
You will see.