Explore · older
“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
“The full moon (not quite full) was among a company of shady island clouds, and the sky bluer about it than the natural sky blue.”
Look up when you feel heavy, for there is often a brightness waiting just beyond the greyest things you see. Do not turn your eyes from the light that waits above, but let it soften what lies before your feet.
“If I were the Duchess of Richmond, I should be very miserable about my son’s choice.”
I was called yesterday by a debt collection agency, chasing money owned to HMRC.
This upset me more than it should, because the debt was not mine, but that of a company I established, then left six years ago.
Despite complaining and asking HMRC to update their records, my phone number remains the one associated with the company. I find this exasperating and have to explain each time, why the debt is not mine.
“Such stand simply elevated upon the goodwill and the fortune of him who has elevated them—two most inconstant and unstable things.”
“What does it matter if I have not published such and such investigations, if another has published them?”
One seeks a name on a plaque while the earth turns without asking who stands upon it. It is a quiet vanity to hoard knowledge one could share, as if truth belonged to a single person rather than the air we all breathe. We forget that discovery is not a trophy for the finder but a light for everyone walking in the dark.
Time feels slow and fast at the same time.
At this moment, I am not yet 30 years old. Sometimes I live through months and then look back, and it feels like yesterday. But when I am here and now, this second also feels like however.
I am very, very confused about my own life. I spent much time thinking about why I am different than other people around my age. Why can’t I just be normal and stop…
In answer to Gibran
What have you kept back from others because you feared they would not deserve your gift? I ask this because you must understand that to withhold is to perish.…
Non-fiction author exploring how our past is increasingly informing our future.
I’ve had a thought provoking weekend.
On Saturday I saw the premiere of a new opera ‘My Father Cannot Speak’ at Britten Pears Arts Snape Maltings. Created by Ben Parry and Gareth Bardsley and sung by Roderick Williams it vividly describes a man’s relationship with his now dead father and his grown up son. My father died nearly 45 years ago, and we did not get on for a variety of reasons, but in some sense…
This particular question completely misses the point of giving and empathy.
I am frankly too busy to keep a ledger along these lines. It’s also a huge waste of time. Most importantly, it does not honor volition. If I gave willingly to everyone and demanded some lavish reciprocal display, that would be the apotheosis of hubris, wouldn’t it? Let me offer an example. Recently, I purchased a Chinese food lunch special for a homeless man. (I despise advertising my good deeds.…
Oh my. What arrogance this question implies! What gifts do I have that could ever be undeserved?
It seems horribly arrogant to say who does and who doesn’t deserve something.
I couldn’t hold my hands up and say I deserved very much. In fact, I’m with Homer Simpson. Every day you don’t get your comeuppance, that’s a good day.
“The gross feeder is a man in the larva state; and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them.”
I watched men eat until their bellies hung heavy with the weight of things they did not need, forgetting how to think while they chewed. They were indeed caterpillars wrapped in fine cloth, crawling through life too busy filling themselves to ever rise as butterflies. Before nightfall, lay down your plate and ask if that last bite served your spirit or only your stomach.
Tomorrow, I will be having brain surgery to address Chiari malformation that has been causing many troublesome symptoms for the past 2 1/2 years.
It took a long time to figure out the diagnosis and I’m very grateful to have a highly specialized neurosurgeon performing the operation.
The recovery is estimated to be 3-6 months because my brain hasn’t had adequate cerebrospinal fluid for so long that it will take a long time to heal. I’m not sure when I will be able to write again but will try to pop in when I’m…
“He thought that the woman’s stomach was stronger than the dog’s.”
The week’s question
Have you kept some old truth because showing it would make the confusion worse?
I ask this for those who see too much and fear the unity of sorrow.
“what associating league to the imagination can there be between the seers, and the seers not, of a presential miracle?”
“Other things of this life are the less to be sorrowed for, the more they are sorrowed for; and the more to be sorrowed for, the less men sorrow for them.”
I once watched a man weep so loudly over a lost coin that he forgot the poverty which made its loss fatal to his family. We often invert our grief, pouring out tears on trifles while ignoring the wounds…
Gosh, a new website.
I am pleased to be a part of it and will be interested to see what everyone has got to say. It seems that here I am writing to people and not into a void of crawling bots.
Whilst I am writing the page is politely offering me a chance to invent a pen name for myself, but of course I am not going to bother. I am too old…
“Tom Topcroft, the mad bricklayer, has broken loose again and ranges the country half-naked, threatening to kill any one who approaches him.”
“The morning is the youth of the day, when everything is bright, fresh, and easy of attainment; we feel strong then, and all our faculties are completely at our disposal.”
I learned this truth not from books but from watching my own mind fail me when I delayed rising. In the light, reason rules clearly; by evening, fear and imagination distort every concern into a monster. Do not waste your day’s springtime on idle talk or unworthy tasks, for once night falls, clarity is gone.
“What grace is to the body good sense is to the mind.”