Back at home, we are left with imagining an early morning walk by the ocean. Before the heat piles up, before the surf works its way up the beach. Imagination provides such richness in our lives–one wonders how it came about. Yes, I can imagine it fulfilling evolutionary needs: shall I create all sorts of eventualities to protect against, shall I think of all the ways a predator will get at me and mine. But how from such instinctual needs do we get Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D or Bach’s Cello Suites or Virginia Woolf’s . . . well, her anything. Or the world complete of Middlemarch or Trollope’s cathedral life in the Barchester series. An excess of imagination spilling forth, frothing over top the tankard. I suppose we begin by imagining a morning walk by the sea.
Morning by the Sea
Grendel or Darcy 