on the page again..

so here I am at the desk.. back at the tree to be precise.  the apple tree  beyond the sunroom window... for company today I have two blackbirds -male and female- hopping on a couple of branches  that are higher than the ceiling of this room.. now they're resting in the leaves.. above the greenery a nest of blue sky..

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I've been reading a series called My Hero in The Guardian..  Nick Clegg, the leader of the New Democrats considers Samuel Beckett his hero. Why? He admires the fact that the Irish author asked dangerous questions... Doing so came naturally to him..It was just his particular way of thinking I suppose..  Anyway like many others, I regard this as a refreshing insight into the mind of a politician..

Thinking about Clegg's choice prompted me to look back and see which heroes others had nominated.

Gordon Brown whom one of his party's candidates recently called  " the worst Labor Prime Minister the country's ever had"  was  more predictable in his choice.  Nelson Mandela.  According to Brown, Mandela is a man "whose generosity of spirit and capacity for forgiveness make him a true hero for our times."

Aside from those politicians,  I was actually more interested in the selections Irish writers Colm Toibin and John Banville had made. 

Jack Yeats, the painter and younger brother of the famous WB  was Toibin's choice. Apparently the artist spent much of his life trying to understand  and capture in his work  the  light of the Irish landscape. The  play of light that he saw in the sky, in city streets and as it fell on the faces of  people going about their daily lives. This is what most fascinated him.  Painting with the right kind of light  was the thing he tried to do - over and over and over.  Toibin says that Yeats left no record of himself other than his paintings and "it seems there is no evidence he ever in his life discussed anything that was of great private concern to him"
Could this be really true?

Banville writes about a labrador named Ben.   Not a word is wasted.  I take the liberty of quoting the final paragraphs of his piece.

Though Ben was a handsome fellow he was not overly bright, as is the way with labradors. He could be annoying, was often smelly, insisted on what he considered to be his rights – good grub and plenty of it and two walks a day – and could lick himself with noisy relish in places the equivalent of which in a human being are not even visible to the person's unaided eye. Yet he cared for us, kept us exercised, tolerated our children and even, when the occasion required, guarded them; and, a gift above all gifts, he made us laugh.

Nietzsche writes: "I fear animals regard man as a creature of their own kind which has in a highly dangerous fashion lost its healthy animal reason – as the mad animal, as the laughing animal, as the weeping animal, as the unhappy animal." Ben, I am certain, recognised our terrible, human, predicament and tried to help us as best he could along our hard road. We were, however, a constant mystery to him, and it was in his brave, unwearying, dogged efforts to understand us that his heroism lay. Good dog, Ben.