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When trees sink and rocks float

Is a saying in Japanese. It refers to occurrences that contravene the norm. Things the world sees as trivial acquire weight over time. While other things considered weighty can reveal themselves to be only hollow shells. In the realm of art such reversals take place all the time. The unending

Merry Everything

What is this wonderful gift with which I present you today? Why, of course, it is nothing. It’s the idea of something. It’s a good wish: –Good vibes –Good thoughts –Prayers. It’s the wish that if everything feels like a disaster right now, something feels like hope

Lost in a prison

Beware of the writer who puts forward his concern for you to embrace, who leaves you in no doubt of his worthiness, his usefulness, his altruism, who declares that his heart is in the right place and ensures it can be seen in full view. What is presented as a

Confront this nausea

I have mixed feelings about words myself Moving among them –sorting them out Watching them –appear on the page From this I derive a considerable pleasure But at the same time I have another strong feeling about words which amounts to nothing less than nausea But if it is possible

Something or nothing

A blank page is both an exciting and a frightening thing. In that page is something or nothing. You don’t know until you’ve covered it. And there’s no guarantee that you will know then. But it always remains a chance worth taking. In 1962 playwright Harold Pinter

Near nakedness

I think that we communicate only too well in our silence, in what is unsaid –and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. There are two silences. One when no word is spoken, the other when perhaps a torrent of language

We do not want riches / We want peace and love

Look at me I am poor and naked I want you to help me To get what is right and just All I want is right And justice I am glad I have come here And that we could understand one another I am very much obliged to you For

We are all bound up together

I stood within the shadow of my home, a great sorrow had fallen upon my life. You speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. Are there not wrongs to be righted? I feel I am something of a novice upon this platform. We are all bound up together in

Beating

Beating, my heart once beat its way through a strange and sprawling world. The past comes and walks by your side once more. Don’t linger take leave of the time and hold onto your gratitude and enchantments. Illuminate the dark that created us. Clarity shines in every depth. When

Finding treasures in darkness

Post-traumatic-growth. There was a time when I didn’t know if I would ever laugh again. Grace is: –the ability to put one foot in front of the other. –the ability to get up and get through another day. –the ability to live one more day without your loved one.

Small Book

I want this to be a small book, a small slight book, easy to carry. A melancholy impulse –with rage in it as well. The sort of book that passes itself from hand to hand, unnoticed by most, like a microbe. What will it say? It will say what it

An 'Ernaux' Book Spine Poem

I remain in darkness, simple passion, A Man’s place, A Woman’s story. Exteriors, the Years. A short one this week from the spines of 2022 Nobel Prize Winner Annie Ernaux's books. Dream intentionally - while you're awake.

Nonsense

The market for nonsense is infinite. Somehow the appeal of fake certainty is so hypnotic it completely by-passes our ‘BS’ filters. Content-light soundbytes, and over-simplified drivel, masquerade as– profound wisdom. Nonsense when earnest, is impressive, and sometimes takes us in. If we are in a hurry, we occasionally mistake it

Memory in the blood

Where do we go when we yearn for something beyond actual memory, beyond knowledge of our actual being; when we suspect, realise or recognise that there is more to us than what we remember of our own experience? We have to go back before our time, into our heritage, into