Inner

Four decades ago this  month I left Aubagne, without any photos - which I sometimes regret, but I was young and stubborn and romantic and weird - but with images imprinted on my mind, and maybe my heart, forever.

Indeed, over the intervening years, these images have grown much stronger in relative terms, and moved closer and closer to the front and centre of the painting of my life, even as other, once seemingly permanent formative experiences have gradually faded.

This is an evolving manifesto, more modest than great charters calling for widespread political change, or updated commandments for our time, or even simple poems for our time.

Instead, our small charter will be primarily a call for inner change, leading to outer change. We want to help people think more about how they can nurture key values. 

According to Open Culture, Orwell's Animal Farm was almost never published.  The manuscript barely survived the Nazi bombing of London during World War II, and then initially T.S. Eliot (an important editor at Faber & Faber) and other publishers rejected the book.  It eventually came to see the light of day but, reportedly, Animal Farm still can’t be legally read in China, Burma and North Korea, or across large parts of the Islamic world. However, the Internet Archive offers free access to audio versions of Animal Farm and 1984.

See also:

• George Orwell: A Life in Pictures
• Orwell vs. Kafka

Please see below "talking change" pages, containing a wide range of quotes - some famous, many unavailable anywhere else - covering each of the 150+ elements of life that Halcyon writes about.

This is a work-in-progress and many more talking change pages will be added in late 2024.

See also:

• Talking Change - Acceptance
• Talking Change - Activism
• Talking Change - Animals