My daughter is doing her absolute best to send me to an institution. She revels in breaking my concentration, in pulling my focus, in distracting me in any way she can from whatever task I am feebly trying to complete. Even though she runs the risk of being on the receiving end of an apoplectic outburst on my part, she…
Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise (Daniel 12:1) In a crisis, I look to myself. It is rarely my first instinct to seek help or counsel elsewhere. I partly do this because I have a certain amount of faith in my own resources, and I partly do it because I possibly have less faith in…
I had hoped not to end up writing about the pandemic, but like the damn thing itself, it has become unavoidable. Apart from those whose occupations entail meeting the Coronavirus head on, life is being lived in low gear and in a minor key. We are in a permanent state of crouch, feeling the weight of shared anxiety and uncertainty,…
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 being swept on to them.…
“…my personality had been completely erased. That’s why I’m so boring. People stopped listening to what I was saying, and didn’t seem to notice I was there. Everybody forgot about me. I wasn’t a boy, I wasn’t a girl… I was just a cypher, a sort of glyph. Life’s very difficult when nobody knows you’re there. I couldn’t get a…
Relationships. They’re important. They define and guide us. They provoke and becalm us. They diminish and inspire us. They enchant and destroy us. They can as easily be razing fire as empowering foundation. And so much store is set in those primary relationships in our lives: parents, siblings, confidantes, teachers and various others. And from about eighteen months of age…
It was hot in Melbourne yesterday. Thirty seven degrees (99°F). Not off the charts hot but hot enough to make you sweat doing nothing at all. And if you weren’t doing nothing at all? If you were pushing hard in the heat with demands being made of you, emotionally and psychologically? If you were pushing hard for a few hours…
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 mused that while Pistorius was…
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 have weapons at their disposal.…
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 that can be answered with…
