[For my mum, because I was thinking of her on Mother’s Day] I don’t know how many times my mother read the Pilgrim’s Progress to me when I was young. It was certainly enough that the story has become part of how I process my experience of…
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering…
Chasing after the Wind In the armpit of a tree between striking chords of grass everything chasing nothing everybody chasing breaking wind to interrupt the symphony of airconditioners I think he left a note somewhere Waiting on the obverse of a kite.…
For Emma, on her Birthday. 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. Of course, sometimes the somethings that Wikipedia does not say speak…
Murray Bail makes me fall in love with reading again. I picked up his newest novel, The Pages, yesterday – bought it on the basis of his name and the blurb on the back. No one writes Australia like Bail, his description of driving along Parramatta road in the first chapter…
Happy is England! I could be content To see no other pitches than its own; To feel no other breezes than are blown By her tall seamers with guileless bowling bent: Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment For wickets ‘Strine, and with inward groan Hunger for fields and Foes…
Consider my enemies; they are numerous, and they hate me violently. Psalm 25:19 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,…
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 season…