Marion Milner's sequel to "A Life of One's Own" and "An Experiment in Leisure" explores a way of keeping a diary. Recording or recalling "the small private moments that come nuzzling into my thoughts, asking for attention," she builds up a store of "bead memories". A carved duck, a sprig of asphodel, moments captured in her travels in Greece, Kashmir and Israel, circus clowns, a painting - each makes up a bead that has "a warmth or glow which comes in response to asking the simple question: what is the most important thing that happened yesterday?". These moments of heightened perception act as "bridges between different levels of psychic functioning: integrating thinking and feeling, reason and imagination". And from these beads - sacred, horrific, profane, funny - grows a sense of an "answering activity", the result of turning one's attention inwards to experience real joy. What Marion Milner conveys most vividly inspirationally to her reader, is her lifelong intention to live as completely as possible in the moment.
