Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Dear Maud,

If you must know, my greatest weakness is imagination. For this wraithlike faculty acts upon me like a giant swing, one to which I cling like a child: now brought face-to-face with reality, now snatched from its very sight. Thus have I despaired at the raw intensity of existence, and revelled in each escape from its fretful clutches.

And yet fuzzy-wuzzy Einstein himself declared: ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’

Maud, I believe him! Why? Because, when properly harnessed, imagination is the truth-finder – the pig that noses out the truest truffle. Or, in the winged words of one John Fentress Gardner:

When true thinking speaks inside the soul, it is the world itself that is speaking. The objects and events of the world utter their secrets in man; the thoughts he thinks – in so far as he lets them develop life and character – are these secrets.

If you must know, Maud, imagination is my greatest strength – if not today, then tomorrow.

Yours etc.

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