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I recently saw an article online about the diminishing number of American college students choosing arts-related degrees. Liberal arts degrees have de...
There used to be a bookstore maybe twenty miles from me called Daedalus Books that sold publishers remainders or overstock at good prices. They always...
"When I went to Venice, I discovered that my dream had become – incredibly, but quite simply – my address." Marcel Proust
Venezia - Peder...
“Spring drew on...and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night,...
Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing. Camille Pissaro
...
"I admit that my own experience, as a minor poet, may have jaundiced my outlook; that I am used to having cosmic significances, which I never suspecte...
Dune by Frank Herbert is one of the great science fiction books of the sixties, and I usually read it (and sometimes the entire...
How the story began
...continued
That spring, on his weekly expeditions to market, William fell in with a lively crowd from...
How the story began...continuedFrançois André Vincent 1798"Plough a straight furrow, lad," William's father would counsel. "Fix your eye on the far si...
...continued
"Ah, Leicestershire," sighed John Wesley as his mount kicked over a stony track, "where I always feel such liberty and see but lit...
As an expatriate Irishman now based in London who has lived out of Ireland since 1979, I have been back many times over the years but a trip completed...
This is the reimagined true story of one community's struggle to bring New Jerusalem out of the clouds during a quarter of a millennium of radical cha...
Artist unknown
All-presuming is the nightand thin the treaty with the lightA fitting canvas for the deedsof those whose wit...
This is how my plays are written.
I was feeling pretty down today and not at all like writing but I opened the laptop and looked at some of my...
Twenty-five years ago, I left home on a cross-country road trip that somehow changed the direction of my life.
A Transcendental Journey was...
Experts tell us that Hummingbirds are not nocturnal creatures. They need their sleep -- surely as much or more than I do. They are amazingly energetic...
A short visit to my father turned out to be another blessed moment with him.
Asleep at midday, I sat beside him in silence, holding his...
I had a dream that when we die, the story of our life is added to the universe.
A good life becomes light. A bad life becomes dark energy that sends ...
Something has devoured my flowers.
I suspect it was...
The thunderstorm donates its wares
On highly indiscriminate grounds
Till finally in the slight depression
Where the reeling hills conve...
"And therefore sit you down in gentleness And take upon command what help we haveThat to your wanting may be minister'd."As You Like It
Al...
I am reading Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron for the first time. I know Shelley well, and Keats, and some of Coleridge and Wordsworth...
The second edition of Sonets from the Chesapeke is available today, with additional sonets (the sonets have two five line stanzas with a concluding c...
Past Life Regression.
Have you ever tried this?
It does help resolve haunting issues of the past.
At least for me, PLR has done me good.
...
Umbria, 2010
It seems like a timeless place. But in the old town in the hills, the bells count the hours and the quarter hours, as they have for gener...
This is something called Watchathon week on cable here, where they give free access to various channels. One was a classical music channel and...
It was a golden evening and Barrio San Blas was charming. We were well fed on the local version of Ají de Gallina and a favorite local pilsener follow...
Leaves are rustling, it’s happening again.
It’s in the still of early morning where it’s loudest, a pre-dawn chatter between the folds of night where...
A friend’s father passed away.
She was overwhelmed with regret.
Could have called or visited more often.
Should have, could have or would have.
I ...
What a joy it is for me to hear my father say, “thank you Rina.”
It’s affirmation that he still recognizes my voice.
Touch and sound of one’s voice ...
Surprisingly, even with Dementia, dad still has moments of lucidness.
I am lucky and grateful to be able to catch these moments.
Most of the time he ...
On St David's Day, a poem by R S Thomas
I have seen the sun break throughto illuminate a small fieldfor a while, and gone my wayand for...
Taking care of a pet is like taking care of a child.
It requires time, dedication and a support system.
Just like with family, when mom is out dad s...
Sacred riteof pure intentionjoy and griefa sword between thempromise Land
oblationfor the wayward worldlamb's blood iswhat wise elders knowof heaven
...
Her name is Tenten.
She keeps daughter no. 2 company since she moved out.
I’ve made a few changes.
Spruced up her room and turned it into a day lou...
You're neither cold nor hot, he saidYou're somewhere in betweenYou're sitting on the pale, he saidSurveying pastures green
You wander in the wildern...
Daughter no. 2 is moving out today.
I’m not sure what I am feeling.
She has plans for herself.
Starting off with living independently.
I welcome h...
While my daughter stays in isolation, I have the luxury of puttering around inside our space.
I am blessed to have enough space and a balcony to breat...
"Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not...
The Magi - Henry Siddons Mowbray
Epiphany, the Light for the Way, falls just over the threshold of each new year.
As the fatherly advice at ...
Covid has landed in my household.
I have to admit, it frightened me.
Thank God for vaccines and boosters.
We all had our jabs.
Still, it scares me...
My dentist, Dr. Lee fills me with his kindness.
Genuine human kindness.
He takes his sweet time, conversing while working on my teeth.
When done, he...
Can I please have your hand?
Thank you.
Tears well in my eyes.
There is no adjective to describe how grateful I am to have blessed moments with dad....
There was a Christmas long ago
And I was there and so were you,
And when we gathered by the tree
Joy had had gathered too.
...
What happens when one dies with unresolved issues?
What happens when the heart stops beating while still yearning for answers?
I worry about my fat...
If there is one thing I am learning about ageing, it’s finding your truth.
Things seem clearer to me now.
Looking back, lots of humps and chall...
The soul knows no bounds.
The physical body may be weak and the mind may be lost to dementia.
But it’s one’s soul that truly knows.
I believe tha...
There is LIFE.
There is FAITH.
My father at age 95 believed he could do it.
He thought he had it all figured out.
After 8 years in dialysis, hard...
There is no right formula for Life except to live it well as can be.
Living well has no formula either.
It is unique to every individual and withou...
A year later since the pandemic, so much still happening.
Situations test one’s patience.
Every day, for me at least, is a work in progress, keep...
I got lost!
Unable to recall where I missed the turn.
It’s been two years.
A lot of changes that took me wandering off in different avenues.
S...
I’ve bought a guitarIt’s a stranger to meI’m a stranger to itBut we’ll see what we seeI’m chorded and wordedAt least in my headB...
What makes people unsatisfied
is that they accept lies.
If people had courage, and refused lies
and found out what they really felt...
When I go for a walk, I often have my head down. So far I haven't bumped into anyone. Or they haven't bumped into me. I suppose social distancing h...
Our thoughts bewitch us at times. A certain rough edge of our perception snags an errant and unsettled hint of trespass. Like time is standing still....
I walked her to the bus stop.
We sat quietly together.
There was not much more to say.
Her bus came and left...
but she was still here waiting.
She lo...
Just outside my patio there is a large azalea bush. It blooms beautiful pink-orange blossoms for about two weeks each year, usually in May. The res...
On this D-Day anniversary, I have to admit I don’t watch war movies, even very good films like The Battle of the Bulge or Saving Private Ryan. I do...
There was a 1962 movie called Day of the Triffids, starring of all people Howard Keel, about an alien invasion. That is what it feels like around m...
"Stephen Evans’ short story collection, The Mind of a Writer and Other Fables, serves as a loving tribute to Evans’s late father, remembered here as a...
You are alone. No one will understand.
No one will ever know what you have done
Or ever read a word that you have written.
When you are...
This is a wordcloud for my book Funny Thing Is: A Guide to Understanding Comedy.
“A perceptive dissection of the science and philosophy of comedy ...
Giving comes easy to some. It’s a natural extension of who they are and it seems to flow from inside of them, without any thought to the act of giving...
Behind my home there is a young tree, a sapling I suppose, planted a few years ago to replace another that had died. It's a maple I think and this...
The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make. So said William Morris, textil...
There are places beyond the usual limitsof space and time.We go there – when the time is rightto see what is mostly unseen.
This is not a different wo...
It is so tiresome now.
To have so much to do;
but cannot do it.
To have so much to say;
but cannot say it.
To have so far to go;
but cannot journey.
O...
“I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world al...
On Brighton Beach, the tourists say,
the ice cream vendors come this way,
and come and go,
and come and go,
on Brighton Be...
The trees were winking at me this morning.
Or maybe it was morse code.
Tiny brights lights kept going on and off, as if someone was hitting...
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
...
Weaving and swirling, casting a hand of stealth healing. High they fly, low they crawl. Magical. Merciful. Gracious and humane, forever genuine.
They...
A friend recently reminded me of the power in kindness when she asked, what makes an urban area kind? My first thought was, how can an object or mass...
The other evening, my wife and I went for a stroll along the Thames Path
not far from London's Chelsea Harbour and stopped to sit awhile in a
deligh...
“I was inspired by the marvelous example of Giacometti, the great sculptor. He always said that his dream was to do a bust so small that it could ente...
Over the years, I’ve written about some of life’s certainties — birth, death, time and change. You can guarantee we will all experience those things.
...
This is the moment she lets down her hair, newly washed at the Belfast sink, and offers it to a beneficent sun. The coiled braids, set...
It is said that John Milton was Blind
And the world that he served was Unkind
So he waited to See
Standing Gloriously
For he couldn’t go blind in ...
Samuel fancied a Dream
But Xanadu vanished Abeam
Of the pipe and the Puff
For the love of the Stuff
He imagined a higher Esteem...
"The problem is not so much to see what nobody has yet seen, as to think what nobody has yet thought concerning that which everybody sees"
Arthur ...
Mopping my floors is a time consuming, mundane job when most of what we walk on in our home is polished wooden boards. No one’s home on this particul...
She sobs, walks in a wallowing of bowed head. Her pace is steady. Purposeful.
She forces him to walk in front of her, so he’s walking backwards while ...
“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may gr...
It’s been the darkest winter I can remember, skies uniformly leaden, the earth deluged, the nation divided, and the world angst-ridden in the throes ...
As part of my stay-at-home regimen, I have been rereading Walden. I have consulted it often, but not read it through for many years. When I first rea...
a riverhesitantin the darkstabbed with lightplays with my mindcrescent sleekwhitesuspendedin aerial pitchblacknessgiving false securityas we are dispa...
Am I haunted by an old place or just by forgotten spirits?Guadalupe sits in the hot sun by the edge of the river.La Senora Guadalupe: Wind, cold, san...
I watched the movie, Puberty Blues, the other night. I didn’t mean to, just found it as I was scrolling through for a movie to watch. It’s an Austral...
My mother used to tell me a story which her father would tell her. My grandfather was Iranian (half Azerbaidjani, haf Turkmenistani), and this may be...
Tall or short, thin or round. Blue-eyed, brown-eyed, maybe even one of each for a touch of the unique. Blonde hair, brunette, curly or shaved head, e...
“ The summoning of Courage is the most dangerous of spells. For you cannot summon Courage to do one thing. You must summon Courage to do all things.”...
The one thing in the world of value is the active soul,—the soul, free, sovereign, active. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains with...
Glazed Nativity inside the old Conduit House, ...
In Winter rain, the birds are flying
Branch to branch, tree to naked tree.
I can’t help wonder why.
Why this one flies to that.
Why those descend t...
It seems fitting that finishing off my PhD research should come with a last Farm Reflection. I only wrote a few over the three years of the research ...
In the corner I am here
Standing as I do every year
So the light that shone for them
May shine for you....
The first time I heard the phrase 'a way forward' was in the early years of the millennium and it rang with the darkest irony. My husband was d...
Padre Felipe was laid to rest in the Camposanto. He was a good man – from just over the mountain. Not far – He knew this place. He was one of us...
I was on an unintended winter walkthrough a quiet streamside forest. We call it a Bosque in these parts;that’s the old Spanish name. I had nowhe...
To wish all American friends and colleagues a Happy Thanksgiving Day
A Pilgrim's Prayer
...
“All-changing time now darkens what was bright,
Now ushers out of darkness into light”
...
Laying bricks is honest work. Hard, straight forward work.
It is repetitive. You do one thing and then the next and so on.
It can almost rely on muscl...
Night is slowly permeating the evening sky in Place André Malraux. The rain has eased into a steady drizzle and the yellow street lamps have come on....
So there’s this cricket.
He comes to visit every August, and he stays in the wall of my bedroom. His living room seems to be the window frame by...
Yes! I am ready.
Finally cut the cord.
Made that leap of faith.
When it’s right it will feel right.
No explanation necessary.
Walk away from...
My thoughts are hazy.
Sleep last night was interrupted.
A premonition of sorts?
Maybe just a reminder of what needs to be done.
They...
"What do you mean, it's wrong? In ethics we learned that the truth is always subjective!"
There can be no doubt that the teaching of correct wri...
In the South of France.
Second time around, the love gets stronger!
Thousands of miles away, her mind is able to switch off from reality.
Her hear...
Struggling to break free from a toxic work life,
I've forgotten what a quiet moment sounds like and feels like.
Staring at the window and watchi...
The crescent of a new moon is slowly emerging through the darkening sky. A pale silver at first, now with a bright, almost golden glow. A waxing n...
'Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
is heard in our land.' &nb...
"I am grown old and my memory is not as active as it used to be. When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but m...
As we all know, I have a low threshold of fascination. Today for example as I have been working on a book, I have also been keeping an eye on my pet...
We were in Paris this time last year. I was enjoying the buzz and feeling shortchanged: we don’t have national holidays in England, at least none t...
"There is nothing inorganic... The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by ge...
The fountain pen feels heavy in my hand. I haven't written for a long time. I mean written – not typed. That I do every day, all day. Click, click...
Tennis courts may be covered over and croquet lawns have disappeared to overgrowth upon overgrowth, but the football pavilion still stands and dallia...
A poem for the season of Ascension and Pentecost...
Like whispering silk, the elm
Like Bridal Veil the birch
The Groom is gone...the Gro...
I don’t know why the caged bird sings. But I think I may have finally figured out why the others do.
I take walks every day down a wooded path behi...
In the movie version of Harvey, the character of Elwood P. Dowd says, “Years ago my mother used to say to me... She’d say, ‘In this world, Elwood, you...
I have a secret to share.
Does sharing defeat the meaning of the word Secret?
How about?
I have something to share but please don’t tell anyone els...
[embed=audio]{"uri":"post:1805/A-Brief-Brexit-Daydream-12.33pm---Friday-19th-April-2019-1.m4a"}[/embed]As I sit here in a greenish part of London over...
I"m getting ready for a long road trip -- heading east along the old Santa Fe Trail. Eastward, a thousand miles across Dorothy's Kansas with the wind ...
A shadow of her former self…
Like a cat leaving a room
What do you do when home is far away
Music for leaving
Not sure wh...
