During last year’s coverage of the Oscar Pistorius trial a South African legal commentator said something that stuck in my brain. Trying to anticipate Judge Masipa’s ruling he was talking about what punishment the accused’s crime would warrant and by way of offering a context of scale of punishment in relation to particular crimes he […]
And the sentence is… Read More »
A festive story written for the season that’s in it. Happy Christmas. Iron Man Jimmy was buried beneath his duvet listening both to the sound of his breathing and his mother’s footfall on the stairs. As the bedroom door opened he shut his eyes tight and imagined himself a winter hedgehog snuggled in a bed of
Karate-do means The Way of the Empty Hand. The hand is empty because it is not holding anything. While this can be interpreted symbolically, it is rooted in historical necessity. The originators of karate were forbidden to bear arms so an unarmed style of fighting was developed to be a match for adversaries who did
A friend asked me today if I was happy. No big deal. A straightforward question to which the easiest answer is of course ‘yes’. Naturally, that didn’t enter my head for a second. I suppose for many this is a relatively innocuous enquiry akin to “how’s it going?” or “all good?” or “how’s tricks?”. Something
The photograph above was taken seven years ago during an acting workshop I took part in in the southwest of France. The workshop consisted of a week of methodical theatrical experimentation with the text of Cervantes’ Don Quixote and it was one of the best acting experiences I’d ever had. The French director, seated, was
Evil does not exist ontologically. And that’s why it’s so powerful – because it’s so parasitic on our deepest desires – and why so oftentimes the most profound evils that are perpetrated are done in the name of the good. If God does not exist – at least the God we worship and Jesus Christ
Here’s a revised version of a 1000-word short story I wrote a few years ago. It was for a competition and had to include a key sentence that I never warmed to. That line is gone. I hope you like the story that remains. Night Trip He leaned over her silently and carefully gathered
A long time ago, in an Irish town far, far away, there was a tiny little swimming pool. It was a Friday afternoon and in this pool there frolicked the excited and heavily chlorinated attendees of a little primary school. I was among them. Even though the pool was small, we were small, so it
I knew that would happen! Read More »
Sex is a problem because it would seem that in that act there is complete absence of the self. In that moment you are happy because there is the cessation of self-consciousness, of the ‘me’; and desiring more of it – more of the abnegation of the self in which there is complete happiness, without
As a schoolboy I recall being quite deeply affected by the plight of lemmings. I was morbidly fascinated by their suicidal compulsion (not actually suicidal but a compulsion that often resulted in death nonetheless). I thought it eery and unsettling. It didn’t occur to me to judge them for their lack of prescience, the inability
Energy, auras, and vibes, man Read More »
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