I know that Jane Austen’s novels have much literary merit. She confronts social injustice with a sensitivity and occasionally very subtle and sardonic humour that few can match. She is justifiably considered to be one of the pre-eminent minds of her time. Even 200 years later, in countries and cultures far removed from Victorian England,... Continue Reading →
It’s Always Ourselves We Find In The Sea
maggie and milly and molly and may went down to the beach (to play one day) and maggie discovered a shell that sang so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and milly befriended a stranded star whose rays five languid fingers were; and molly was chased by a horrible thing which raced... Continue Reading →
A Poem About Being Haunted
Being haunted is, relatively speaking, easy. When you are old enough – and sometimes, more tragically, before you should be – you have interacted sufficiently with the darker side of human nature to have been hurt profoundly. People hurt other people. It is one of the inescapable legacies we leave. No matter how much we... Continue Reading →
You Don’t Need To Be Extraordinary
The world can be divided into two basic types of people: those who, when overwhelmed by sufficient levels of desperation, internalise their feelings and commit suicide, and those who externalise those feelings and resort instead to homicide. My experience of a presentation I recently attended has left me relatively certain that I fall into the... Continue Reading →
Deconstructing Setebos
A truth I regard as an absolute is this: people will always – consciously or not – attempt to shape the world so that it meets their deepest needs. Every person has a set of core assumptions about what the world ought to be like, and we filter all out experiences through these assumptions, and... Continue Reading →
No, All Religions Don’t Basically Teach The Same Thing
I hear it often. Whenever conversation turns to religion, as it occasionally does, somebody invariably makes the following statement: “After all, all religions basically teach the same thing.” It is normally stated in such a way that this should be completely self-evident. Except it isn’t. Entirely by the way, isn’t it bizarre that social... Continue Reading →
A Face to Meet the Faces That You Meet
Have you ever looked at a photograph and wondered what the people are really thinking and feeling behind the pinned-on smiles? Do you sometimes imagine what stories are masked behind the poses? There is an inevitable disjuncture between who we are in private and who we are in public. I think that is the way... Continue Reading →
The Gift of Flight
I made a decision that I was going to enjoy today’s flight. I need to be completely honest and admit that the fact that I had accidentally left my book at home was a fairly instrumental factor, but there was nevertheless a Wordsworthian determination to revel in my wanderings among the clouds. It had struck... Continue Reading →
titanic
titanic - peter (1975 - ) the grey day deepens, darkens into dusk; the writhing waters, softly sighing, resign themselves to powers beyond the brooding sky. far below the restless, shifting surface of the sea, where night and day and season cannot reach, the ghostly bulk of a rusting wreck rests in the frigid... Continue Reading →
A Meditation on Futility
In 1874, farmers in the Great Plains had their crops devastated by a swarm of locusts, the like of which the world had never seen, nor is likely to see again. Witnesses say that the swarm was as much as 110 miles wide and more than 1800 miles long, at times blocking out the sun... Continue Reading →
Vapors In The Wind 