Seasonal Variations

Have you ever noticed that Doubt can sometimes move in waves? Lots of people I know are currently doubting — what to do, what to believe, who to listen to, where to go, who to love? In The Curly Pyjama Letters Mr Curly writes to Vasco Pyjama:

Dear Vasco,
swirling…

Everything he touches comes alive

Most of us don’t have any regular contact with the Aged. Maybe you make a semi-regular visit to a relative, maybe you come across elderly people in your line of work, and for most of us that’s probably about it. I’m reasonably sure that there aren’t too many people of…

The gift of an Enemy

But my enemies are vigorous and powerful; many hate me for no reason. 
—Psalm 38:19

One of the most strange and estranging experiences of life in our age is the absence of enemies. At least, I think that it must be so. I don’t feel like I have any, and I feel…

The Ariadne of Darlington

Much attention has been given, in this fortieth anniversary of the Lunar landing, to the causes which propelled Man to the Moon. According to Wikipedia there were three essential elements: Science, Technology, and Imagination.

On Weariness

One of the unusual, and I think powerful, features of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy was that he took moods seriously. For him, a mood can be an insight into the real, bare-bones conditions of our human existence:

A mood makes manifest ‘how one is’ and ‘how one is faring’. In this…

Easter Saturday, the endless ‘Today’ of this time between times…

Easter Saturday is a grey ocean of sorrow,
and a man in a little boat. Peter escaping
A World paused and become inscrutable.

29 years, 373 days…

Pains tend to run much more deeply into us than our pleasures. A true pain never really seems to leave you. It can always come back, fresh and revivified, even when the details fade from your memory. Suddenly, you’re right back there again. Even the greatest pleasures only ever come back as…