The Life Sublime
What’s the Use of Poetry?
Evidence ‘A great deal of anecdotal evidence suggests that we respond positively to birdsong.’– Scientific researcher quoted in The Daily Telegraph 8.2.2012 Centuries of English verseSuggest the selfsame thing:A negative response is rareWhen birds are heard...
When words healed the wounds of war: Library War Service during WW I
"Stories are sometimes better than doctors"-Theodore Wesely Koch Books can heal people. They have the power to transport you to another world. The words they contain can soothe, entertain, educate, and enlighten. Once you immerse yourself into the world...
Hedonic Adaptation I: The Happiness Grinder
Listen, happiness is a slimy creature. It will slip between your fingers, no matter how tightly you make a fist. You can build walls around it, but walls will eventually crack, and soon enough happiness will seep out, like water dripping from a faulty plumbline....
The Meaning of Our Bodies
"How problematic to have both a body and a mind, for the former stands in almost monstrous contrast to the latter’s dignity and intelligence. Our bodies smell, ache, sag, pulse, throb, and age. They force us to fart and burp, and to abandon sensible plans to lie in...
The Happy Buddha and his Happiness Mantra
"The happy Buddha,mounted his yellow-red scooter,of wheels made of hope,a boot stashed with dreams,and headlight beaming sunshine. The happy Buddha,his jowls jiggling in mirth,his belly roiling with eternal bliss,went out on his yellow-red scooterto find a kindred...
On Nature’s Solo Travellers
There is something meditative about the silence of single-occupancy hotel rooms. A top floor window facing out to a limitless sky, and the thoroughfare of clouds, some smokey gray, some salmon pink, a few orange-rimmed, and an occasional one with a silver lining...