Just over seventeen years ago, I did my first black belt grading and I recently stumbled across an essay that my sensei at the time requested as part of the examination process. Although it in many ways resembles something you’d be asked to write by your English teacher towards the end of secondary school, especially […]
“…the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves.” Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian I recently went to my local cinema here
I swam in horrible conditions the other day. It was not long after dawn on a mucky Monday morning and big, unpredictable swell, with huge surges of cold, dirty water, was moving me around like so much flotsam. I tried to use my usual landmarks to keep my bearings while at the same time avoiding
Each day must be begun anew. Sleep is the restorative. Waking is the opportunity. To open your eyes and be able to say “still here, still alive” surely has the potential to infuse you with renewed vigour and appetite for life. Somehow, no matter how paltry your contribution to humanity, no matter how insignificant your
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties. In form and moving, how express and admirable. In action how like an angel. In apprehension how like a god. The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
I wanted to write about Prometheus, but I couldn’t find the right peg to hang him on, so I just ended up feeling pretentious, as if I was secretly aspiring to be outed in Pseuds Corner. I was going to propose that we are all somehow in defiance of the gods, that the wars that
Protection It’s a fucking racket. This life. This extraction of self. This whip. This lash. This excoriation. This garotte. Putting yourself on the rack. What truth to extract? Relentless interrogation. Examination. Subjection. Subtraction. Negation. Enervation. A skin full of knuckles and rocks, and breaking, crushing things. Shredding. Biting. Spitting. Snarling. Screaming. Roaring. That part of
“This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to
Wisdom on Buses A madman broke it down for me. “You’re a late bloomer,” he said, “The best is yet to come. You were a troubled child, A rebel. You liked fine wines And women’s thighs. You set yourself apart, Or were set apart, I don’t know which, And it made you solitary but also
A seasonal short story for those in the mood. Happy Christmas The Prague Bauble They weren’t bothered either way if he made himself a cup of tea. Why would they be. It was his place now. To do with what he wanted. He heard the sounds of drills and banging and didn’t move. There was
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