The category of “Inside Out” could be replaced by “Miscellaneous.” These posts are about anything that I have encountered in my daily life, be it  a thought, memory or emotion that comes to me, an experience that has given me pause for reflection or simply made me feel good. In other words, they are a random set of notes about my inner and outer life and the interactions between the two.   Putting them out there for the world to see is part of a personally enjoyable and satisfying process of teasing, out of my own randomness, patterns that I can make good use of.

I never quite knew, when I was an undergraduate reading French Language and Literature at Oxford, what to make of poets who went around talking to and taking dictation from women that no-one else could see. Nevertheless, the concept of inspiration interests me — coming from the Latin respirare, it incorporates the meaning of breath.

Hence the picture shows the Greek poet (also economist, writer on religion, astronomer, expert on time measurement and agricultural expert) with his hand being gently guided by that of a Muse.

 Go to Wikipedia for more on Hesiod

 Hesiod and the Muse, by Gustave Moreau. – Photo is Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=470789    Here, he is presented with a lyre, which contradicts the account given by Hesiod himself in which the gift was a laurel staff.