If you could make your pet understand one thing, what would it be? We have lived with Daisy, our Staffie, since we bought her from a rescue centre about eight years ago. Yet, although she clearly loves being with us and can be deeply happy, rolling in the grass when she enjoys her walks, she … More To trust she is safe with us and will always be loved. To Daisy.
If you could un-invent something, what would it be? Un-invention is, like invention, a means of realising through thought and work some solution or respite, pragmatic, and perhaps temporary, though it may be, to ones currently unmet desires or the dread of anticipated fears. We un-invent in order to pretend something never existed: the ending … More “… / And Time a MANIAC scattering Dust”: Uninventing ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI)’: What it feels like to read true ‘science fiction’: Benjamín Labatut (2023) ‘The MANIAC’.
My photograph of page 12-13 Jean E. Mills (2024) ‘Gertrude Stein’ in Richard Scneider Jr. (ed.) ‘Outer Appearances: More Faces from the Annals of the G&LR’ (a retrospective on the art of Charles Hefling), Illustrated by Charles Hefling. Pages 32f., Like most people who do it, I communicate too much online. Some who do it pretend … More ‘There ain’t no answer. … That’s the answer’.
I truly write for myself most of the time, I claim, and most often there there is no intentional untruth or even known self-delusion in that statement. Not reading, and now writing about my reading, has become a need – to evidence, as I have always put it that I am learning and growing in … More How often I must have said: ‘I just don’t feel heard’. But perhaps that is because I didn’t look out for responses. Mea culpa.
Have your even seen ‘old Durham Town’? Not till Ben Myers showed it to me again! The role of art in turning places into spaces in which the imagined can dwell. Geoff and I are just on our way to see Poor Things, an exceedingly well-received film in the newspapers based on one of my … More Have your even seen ‘old Durham Town’: Not till Ben Myers showed it to me again! The role of art in turning places into spaces in which the imagined can dwell.
This trip involved stops in Athens, Delphi, Mystra, Yithion, and Olympia before a return home.Unforgettable and eventful, I can barely think how to describe it, for the memory is, I think, enough. The highlight remains Athens though Delphi and Olympia absorbed me as they have many others and in may accounts – in novels like … More The Peloponnese to Athens, Thebes, Delphi, (vis Arcadia) Mystra, Sparta, the Mani, Olympia. Return to the East coast
Once we normalise play and rid ourselves of ‘Bunbury’, then at last play loses its integrity in order to be just playing Earnest (not fun): Queer play in Christopher Marlowe, Michelangelo & Oscar Wilde I am intrigued by this question and have always been interested as a student of literature, history. art and psychology in … More Once we normalise play we ‘Bunbury’ it and it is at last play in Earnest (not fun): Queer play in Christopher Marlowe, Michelangelo & Oscar Wilde
What is your mission? Each day he used the same route to work and each evening the same route in reverse back to his home. Each evening, he sat exhausted in front of the TV, and registered very little from its surface. One day, his employer decided that the business needed revamping, and found a … More ‘Hector’s Mission Statement’: a parable for a world that never thinks and feels at the same time.
Do I really ‘want’ to read more books by Naguib Mahfouz? The psycho-cultural limitations in creating and destroying the desire to read & the ‘vital necessity’ of reading. Prompted by his 1975 novella Heart of the Night (trans Aida A. Bamia, 2011, The American University in Cairo Press). Naguib Mahfouz (2016). “Sugar Street: The Cairo … More Do I really ‘want’ to read more books by Naguib Mahfouz? The psycho-cultural limitations in creating and destroying the desire to read & the ‘vital necessity’ of reading.
Rhetorical questions are those which ask you to assume a lot of meaning before you answer them. ‘Where can you reduce clutter in your life?’ First of all I must assume I accept a common definition of clutter. Yet there is no definition of this word that is culture-free and value-free. It assumes notions of … More The fallacy of ‘allow not nature more than nature needs’. The danger of reductionism and a blunt Occam’s razor.
If you started a sports team, what would the colors and mascot be? Sports have never been my thing, and to be frank I don’t think, but can’t be sure, that this has anything to do with what people used to see as a masculinity compromised by me being queer. As a student in London … More Men in Lycra (to play Sports of course), it’s time to forget your ‘Macho’: Let ‘The Shiny Shrimps’ Ride Again (in rainbow colours)!
Seeking streak numbers growth’s an affliction Just to find a topic from the day’s hoard That captures my taste for fact or fiction, Won’t bore me! Try be the freeway billboard?
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