Author, artist, and misfit.
Born of an Irish family in 1950 Paul was brought up in England until moving back to Ireland in 1985. In 1965 he attended Chester School of Art but dropped out because he wanted to do fine arts but had to do graphics, so instead went to London and worked in the Middle Earth Club, Covent Garden. He travelled round Europe hitching down to the South of France singing ‘National 7 is a long long road’ all the way, and then on to Zagreb were he got a bad throat infection and nearly died, so this cut short his quest to get as far as Japan. He later managed to get much further out East by road on the Hippy Trail that went through Afghanistan, Pakistan, to India. On his return from the East Paul visited Norway and lived in Oslo for 3 months, and on his return to England went to live in Glastonbury, and also at a later date joined the Buddhist Sangha for two years.
He lived with his wife Karen on the Aran Islands, Ireland, for 7 years, and they were told they were the first outsiders to live on the middle of island of Inis Mean since 1947. (Middle = Mean). While on Aran Paul painted and had exhibitions of his art work in various places including the Peacock Theater in Dublin. After Aran they purchased a small farm near Achill Island were they grew organic vegetables and cut their own turf bogs for over 10 years. At this time Paul started working on a new version of The Chinese Book of Changes (never published as yet), and then worked on an introduction to it that turned into ‘The Sum of Things’ (its working title was ‘An Expression of Insanity’).
Paul now is looking after his youngest daughter Lillian in a small fishing village on the NW. Coast of Mayo, Ireland, famous for its 8th century round tower that belonged to St Patrick’s Monastery. As you can seen from the blog Karen died over a year ago from cancer. Paul is now writing to various forums, gathering more insight into how The Book of Changes fits other cultures and practices whose knowledge has come down to us through various paths - an ongoing learning process.
Tuesday 21 August 2007