Category: General
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Fable Sixteen – The Fatal Allure of Fundamentalism
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This short piece examines the topic of fundamentalism and offers some thoughts on its origins in human nature and behaviour. The piece opposes any notion that fundamentalism is limited to religious faith, or – for that matter – that false or idolatrous worship is limited to issues associated with religion. But there are principles that…
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Diary of a Time-Traveller
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Morning, first thing. Before packing and leaving, I booked some train tickets online, for another journey due in a week‘s time. I hate and still fumble at dealing online. I feel lonely and a bit panicky in the whole robotical procedure, with the pretend friendliness and informality of the words onscreen only adding to my…
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Fable 15 – Jane Smith Goes to the Doctor
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This short piece explores the experience of being trapped in a category. Here is a link to it. In this case, the category is a medical one, medicine being a benevolent discipline which means only well. Yet still it can be painful and debilitating to be put in a box, even a benevolent one, and…
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I See Everywhere the False
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I see everywhere the false, the masked, the sleek and hollow, the bought and the creatured. Their words twist the wind tug at my mind and steal from me the hymns of my life the sacred. True words die the moment they pass between these creatures’ teeth. Humanity is on the…
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Did someone turn the lights off ?
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Last week-end, on Saturday 21st, mid-summer’s day, there was a demonstration in London involving 50,000 people. They were demonstrating against the “austerity cuts” of the UK’s Coalition Government. The police reported no arrests. It started just outside the BBC’s Broadcasting House and finished just outside the Houses of Parliament, two places closely associated with free…
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Travels of the Last Emperor
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I wrote “Travels of the Last Emperor” at different times over a period of around twenty years. It is made up of five poems of varying length. This spring 2014, a friend filmed me reading them in Mallorca, in an old monastery on top of a hill. You can access the film here on You-tube.…
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Our present democracies will not rescue us from ourselves.
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For the young, it will already seem a long time ago that the Soviet Communist bloc effectively closed down, its remarkable leader Mikhail Gorbachev introducing “Perestroika,” its various constituent states, including Russia itself, “giving way” to democracy in remarkably quick succession. A major symbol of that dramatic and joyful time was the destruction of the…
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Resurrection
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You have left petals on old stones and memories that chase the rhythms of my blood and activate my bones and through my gathering shadow guide me. Are you re-born in me or have I eaten you, perforce, that I take your scent with me through my days and…