This is an occasional blog for occasional writings (‘Notes from a lummox from Limoux’ – or sometimes from an oik from Hawick). It is highly personal and makes no pretence to fix the world or analyse the state of knowledge of burning issues. Much of the material is from my diaries, dating back in a few cases up to 20 years. It covers diverse topics – spirituality and spiritual practice, music, bread ovens and bread baking, poetry, language, men, beauty, the land, Central Asia, Russia and the Great Steppe, bicycles, looking for or building a spiritual culture, the transformation of the climate crisis, the quest for a meaningful occupation, the search for a beloved who remains persistently hidden. It may appear overly introverted – but it is offered on the basis that it is basically harmless and could throw light for others of a similar bent.

The entries here are varied in subject but united by a theme, sometimes overt and sometimes implicit, of life and being, seen from a more or less unified perspective. I look at you and see myself in you: I see you as other, and relish that other, yet that other is somehow the secret to how I know myself.

‘Flummoxed’ is a humourous take on the notion of bewilderment – where reason fails and yet a certainty arises from a deeper place, seeing the truth in everything including opposites, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ alike, reasoned and intuited alike, old and new alike. I was beflummoxed; being flummoxed was a process of shaking down, releasing the dross of mental idling, until clarity called me by its name, then lost it again, then refound it, and on and on…

My name is Robin, I’m almost 60 and live between Scotland and France. Feel free to make comments in the spirit of conversation and exchange, as that otherness is what we all yearn for, the I-Thou spoken of by Martin Buber, even as it informs us of our intimate bond.