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Apr 1·edited Apr 1Liked by Richard Partridge

You stopped me in my tracks, and it was lovely to hear your voice, Richard, and I certainly didn't want to "just" "like".

When I think back on instances, over a half century, that made impressions on me, I have to confess - if this be my work - that the deepest impressions made upon me by others were invariably of utterly no consequence to them themselves. It's not that I remember the irrelevant; it's that the inconsequential was often so relevant to me.

It's a theme I reflect on here, if you'll pardon the wild self-publicity, on top of your own Wilde publicity: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/suicide-is-painless.

Not being Roman Catholic myself, I've never been in a confessional box. But I have confessed without the intercession of a priest. Does one make moral arguments and present justifications when confessing? Or does one simply open the conscience and recognise its taint? Even churchmen conceive of sin as one of seven deadly acts, and, yet, our confession is dependent not on what others tell us about what we do, but on what we tell our confessor of what we do. Of our work. For confession is not to seek the judgment of a third party, but to seek the judgment of him whom we have wronged.

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I hate to recycle - oh, right, I DON'T hate recycling in this case - it has to start somewhere. Dry facts can't always spell out a story.

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