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Simplicity.
16-Apr-10“At times I feel as if I am spread out over the landscape and inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in the plashing of the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the procession of the seasons… I have done without electricity, and tend the fireplace and stove myself. Evenings, I light the old lamps. There is no running water, and I pump the water from the well. I chop the wood and cook the food. These simple acts make man simple; and how difficult it is to be simple!
At Bollingen, silence surrounds me almost audibly, and I live ‘in modest harmony with nature.’ Thoughts rise to the surface which reach back into the centuries, and accordingly anticipate a remote future. Here the torment of creation is lessened; creativity and play are close together.” – Carl Jung.
From Jung’s astonishing autobiography, which I picked up and now can’t put down. The quotation marks – ‘modest harmony with nature’ – refer apparently to the title of a Chinese landscape known to Jung.