Friday My penis and I had a long chat in the shower this morning. It grabbed my attention by pointing out a startling white pubic hair. “Oh my God”, it said with shock and a hint of waspish judgement “Look who’s moved into the neighbourhood” I gasped and then groaned, another portent of seasons shifting. […]
I’m awake in the thin hours again. I dreamt that I was flying through a furious storm with a choir of wounded Angels. So I lie here, thoughts drifting through my mind like falling feathers, some dark and threatening, others mere wisps, barely formed. The dark ones cast a pall over me- leaving tight, anxious […]
And now? Now that the crushing tide of work has abated briefly, just long enough to take small sips of life again. Now friend, what do you find? Being still floods me with a gentle anxiety, a deep sense of being alone in a vast universe, yet intricately, inexplicably connected to others through gossamer threads […]
Today’s selection — from When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. In May 2013, at 36, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic lung cancer. At first, Paul prepared for death, then, he and his wife Lucy decided to have a child. ” Flush in the face of mortality, many decisions became compressed, urgent […]
Being a rescuer of others in emotional distress is a popular gig. As children, many of us learnt that fulfilling this role afforded us a modicum of immunity within our often volatile family ecosystems. Being the emotional support of a sick, depressed mother, or alcoholic personality disordered father may have brought a degree of proximity […]
It’s been a tough couple of months. Love and I have had some fierce skirmishes. I’ve retreated from the field, confused, battered. Now is time to examine my strategy, courageously, honestly. “Love is the hospital for our old wounds”- Hollis wrote. Love changes us, as it works on our painful personal histories (loss, abandonment, betrayal, […]
We’re not talking about the extreme, most paralysing, regions of despair – where external medical help is vital. Our target is rather the times when we feel – as indicated by Henry David Thoreau’s phrase – mired in moods of ‘quiet desperation’: a large, grey hinterland in which beneath an outward surface of endurance, we […]
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