Author Archives: Lee

Dissembling

Posted on January 14, 2026 by Lee

“… And I who am here dissembled / Proffer my deeds to oblivion…” (T.S. Eliot, from “Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree,” in Ash-Wednesday.) “Dissembled” here seems to be intended to suggest “disassembled,” since the bones of the … Continue reading →

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Fog

Posted on December 31, 2025 by Lee

In “Morning at the Window,” T. S. Eliot is looking down at a foggy street and it’s the brown fog itself that seems to throw up to him “Twisted faces from the bottom of the street, / And tear from … Continue reading →

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Impatience

Posted on December 29, 2025 by Lee

“The conscience of a blackened street / Impatient to assume the world.” I’ve been thinking about these lines from T. S. Eliot’s “Preludes” over the past couple of days. The street is silent and empty at night, but we are … Continue reading →

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Shedding a Light

Posted on July 21, 2025 by Lee

In the third part of Les Misérables, Victor Hugo describes the street-urchin of 19th century Paris in a sweeping, comic-philosophical style that Henry Miller must have admired, leaping from one pithy aphorism to the next to give us a portrait … Continue reading →

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Victor Hugo Takes His Time

Posted on July 14, 2025 by Lee

I’m reading Les Misérables for the first time and I really enjoy the way Victor Hugo takes his time telling a story. The battle of Waterloo is discussed at length, and many details of it described, just so that a … Continue reading →

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Rules for Writing

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Lee

I’m trying to write something for my Substack, which I haven’t updated in months, and it’s got me realising how much I still have to learn about the business of writing. I’m reading Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and thinking … Continue reading →

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Solitude and Struggle

Posted on March 28, 2025 by Lee

Haven’t blogged for a while. Sometimes it’s hard to know what to write, why write, why share what I write. I write almost every day and I know at least why I do that: it’s for myself, to get my … Continue reading →

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Angels and Alchemists

Posted on December 3, 2024 by Lee

There are lots of tantalising ideas in Gary Lachman’s The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus. For one, the notion of a prisca theologia (“ancient theology”) or “perennial philosophy” that was handed to humankind at the dawn of time but has since … Continue reading →

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The Politics of Eternal Winter

Posted on November 8, 2024 by Lee

Sometimes things can happen that make you think: the world has become a terrible place. But I think it’s refreshing to remind yourself that things got really bad a long time ago. We’re all familiar with some version of the … Continue reading →

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Rushing Ahead

Posted on August 28, 2024 by Lee

A paradox: standing around waiting is a kind of rushing ahead. Though the queue barely crawls forward, your mind is rushing ahead to the future, consuming every present moment greedily as if to move more quickly towards the anticipated event. … Continue reading →

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