or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. There is a space between my name and the minus sign and NO space before 'caldwell' to eliminate the name 'caldwell' in the Google listings
Originally 40/- or £2, but, to me in 2022, free outside a villager's home. It has £3 penciled onto the inner fly leaf above a National Trust stamp, yet, this book has been invaluable to me for inspiration when I needed a new path of creativity; when I cannot quite remember a word I have only heard once, many years ago, but never used, and when I have merely been mildly curious. It has bookmarks poking out of it, some might say like arrows from a fallen person in a Cowboy and Indian film from the 1950s with whooping Red Indians, their legs tightly gripping stuttering horses, circling the pages; others may say, marking passages in time, similar to a clock-face with many hands frozen in place, like a watch recovered from the chilled depths that shows exactly when the Titanic sank.
It is both of them; it has the excitement of black and white Westerns that leap into colour when I look at its pages and read words I have never read before, and it has a bound and circumscribed quality of order and structure, wherein not only words are held in place by their definitions, but where also my searches are pinpointed; my imagination, my intent, and my focus. Yet, it is even more than that. It has a past. A number of owners have cherished its presence and its validity.
Perhaps it was sold, perhaps in the summer of 1962 immediately before the winter of 1962 or 1963 when Britain froze, in what must have seemed like a mini-ice-age, with snow falling to lie higher than cars, and bungalows in Cornwall and Devon were buried. The owner may have frowned at the short skirts and loud music that was the effervescence of youth resulting from the strong rebellious influence of The Beatles on music and social attitudes alike; marveled at the technology of the 1980s that allowed a writer or lecturer to save and recover and cut and paste and eventually digitally send. Perhaps it changed hands, after it had lain unused on a shelf that seemed to grow dustier and dustier every week in a room that no longer smelt of fresh flowers in summer and wood polish, pipe-tobacco and perfume throughout the rest of the year; when the curtains and windows were shut and only the wood-fire, sometimes spitting and crackling interrupted a large ticking clock that kept time to the click of keys being struck on a computer keyboard. Perhaps, the cheerful voices of the first owner's grand-children had softened when they entered the home, and the hush marked a nostalgic joy as they gently packed the contents of the room. Perhaps, the Cowboys and Indians and the Titanic imagination was lifted from the shelf and with little understanding of what was inside, because the bookmarks meant only where words are, donated it to Wimpole Hall where it was sold for £3, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, to a casual buyer; a buyer who knew its value and regarded themself as a good recipient for its hidden splendour; who had an expectation of wonderment that all the Disney cartoons and dusty tomes of law would not match; a person who knew that they held a match to light the kindling of their imagination or drive.
Years later, It was probably left on the little table in someone's drive in my village because though useful, the life of the person who had visited the National Trust property of Wimpole Hall and bought it had wound to a close, and the wrinkled eyes that had once strained to see had finally closed.It may not have been picked up by the dog-walkers who have the internet on their phones and it may have waited for years before someone who eschews the linear path of understanding that is a modern approach, picked it up.
This book has value. Modern approaches to words held captive in books with no story, are different to when the book was first excitedly bought with perhaps a last few shillings that meant not joining fellow students at Cambridge for cakes in grey duffel coats and six feet long Saxony wool scarves for a week or two. Yet, this book has been respected for sixty-six years by its owners, and that respect carried on and imbued into the last handler before it came to me. Perhaps, because the person knew how important it was for their parent, and how respected it was, but perhaps knew not of its value, then it must be important enough to be saved and passed on to someone who can unravel the secret of not just words but also meaning and complexity and exuberance and structure and excitement and order.
This Roget's Thesaurus shall never see the inside of a plastic bin. This book will be respected by one more owner after me; a rare person, one who is warmed by discovery and who stands on a bridge and watches a flood wash fallen trees and rocks and pieces of wooden structures pass underneath. That person is the one who sees a story in every passing object; a past, a present, and a future in everything. If I cannot find that person the book will go by fire. Its heat and light will meet with the flames of consumption; a fitting end to something that gave so much to perhaps only two people.
A Book of Imagination and Order
All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551
or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. There is a space between my name and the minus sign and NO space before 'caldwell' to eliminate the name 'caldwell' in the Google listings
I am not on YouTube or social media
Cadwell NOT Caldwell
A Book of Imagination and Order
[ 4 minute read ]
Spissitude (solidity, inspissation, constipation, concretion) - Roget's Thesaurus, 1962. Longman
Originally 40/- or £2, but, to me in 2022, free outside a villager's home. It has £3 penciled onto the inner fly leaf above a National Trust stamp, yet, this book has been invaluable to me for inspiration when I needed a new path of creativity; when I cannot quite remember a word I have only heard once, many years ago, but never used, and when I have merely been mildly curious. It has bookmarks poking out of it, some might say like arrows from a fallen person in a Cowboy and Indian film from the 1950s with whooping Red Indians, their legs tightly gripping stuttering horses, circling the pages; others may say, marking passages in time, similar to a clock-face with many hands frozen in place, like a watch recovered from the chilled depths that shows exactly when the Titanic sank.
It is both of them; it has the excitement of black and white Westerns that leap into colour when I look at its pages and read words I have never read before, and it has a bound and circumscribed quality of order and structure, wherein not only words are held in place by their definitions, but where also my searches are pinpointed; my imagination, my intent, and my focus. Yet, it is even more than that. It has a past. A number of owners have cherished its presence and its validity.
Perhaps it was sold, perhaps in the summer of 1962 immediately before the winter of 1962 or 1963 when Britain froze, in what must have seemed like a mini-ice-age, with snow falling to lie higher than cars, and bungalows in Cornwall and Devon were buried. The owner may have frowned at the short skirts and loud music that was the effervescence of youth resulting from the strong rebellious influence of The Beatles on music and social attitudes alike; marveled at the technology of the 1980s that allowed a writer or lecturer to save and recover and cut and paste and eventually digitally send. Perhaps it changed hands, after it had lain unused on a shelf that seemed to grow dustier and dustier every week in a room that no longer smelt of fresh flowers in summer and wood polish, pipe-tobacco and perfume throughout the rest of the year; when the curtains and windows were shut and only the wood-fire, sometimes spitting and crackling interrupted a large ticking clock that kept time to the click of keys being struck on a computer keyboard. Perhaps, the cheerful voices of the first owner's grand-children had softened when they entered the home, and the hush marked a nostalgic joy as they gently packed the contents of the room. Perhaps, the Cowboys and Indians and the Titanic imagination was lifted from the shelf and with little understanding of what was inside, because the bookmarks meant only where words are, donated it to Wimpole Hall where it was sold for £3, in the late 1980s or early 1990s, to a casual buyer; a buyer who knew its value and regarded themself as a good recipient for its hidden splendour; who had an expectation of wonderment that all the Disney cartoons and dusty tomes of law would not match; a person who knew that they held a match to light the kindling of their imagination or drive.
Years later, It was probably left on the little table in someone's drive in my village because though useful, the life of the person who had visited the National Trust property of Wimpole Hall and bought it had wound to a close, and the wrinkled eyes that had once strained to see had finally closed.It may not have been picked up by the dog-walkers who have the internet on their phones and it may have waited for years before someone who eschews the linear path of understanding that is a modern approach, picked it up.
This book has value. Modern approaches to words held captive in books with no story, are different to when the book was first excitedly bought with perhaps a last few shillings that meant not joining fellow students at Cambridge for cakes in grey duffel coats and six feet long Saxony wool scarves for a week or two. Yet, this book has been respected for sixty-six years by its owners, and that respect carried on and imbued into the last handler before it came to me. Perhaps, because the person knew how important it was for their parent, and how respected it was, but perhaps knew not of its value, then it must be important enough to be saved and passed on to someone who can unravel the secret of not just words but also meaning and complexity and exuberance and structure and excitement and order.
This Roget's Thesaurus shall never see the inside of a plastic bin. This book will be respected by one more owner after me; a rare person, one who is warmed by discovery and who stands on a bridge and watches a flood wash fallen trees and rocks and pieces of wooden structures pass underneath. That person is the one who sees a story in every passing object; a past, a present, and a future in everything. If I cannot find that person the book will go by fire. Its heat and light will meet with the flames of consumption; a fitting end to something that gave so much to perhaps only two people.