Stayin’ alive
The older you get the more your focus shifts from ambition to survival
cancer
One moment
The other day, in a waiting room of a medical scanning centre, I saw two elderly ladies. One went in for her scan while the other waited anxiously. When she came out they held hands, talking quietly and seriously about what had been done, been said, staring into each other’s eyes. Then they left and
Dark stranger
Every New Year’s Eve, we say to ourselves – “Well I hope next year is better than this year”. But, as every New Year’s Day rolls through the door, we realise it was probably a forlorn hope
I breathe, therefore I am
I am breathing in, breathing out, like all the other living creatures sharing this planet and this air. But more, that air has been shared by all the creatures who ever lived, been refreshed by all the plants that ever grew, since the beginning of Earth time. Each new breath combines all the old breaths
I breathe, therefore I am Read More »
Life time
Approaching 74 and every ache, every niggle, every unexplained twitch in the night, presages doom and a twinkle in an undertaker’s eye. Half way through 73 and sour memories bubble up like methane in Lake Baikal, erupt randomly like black mud in Rotorua, old regrets seem once again possible triumphs, old grievances can once again
Seasons in the Sun
Impossible to decide which season would be best to die in: Summer with its heat and blue skies; Autumn with hints of frost and snow; Winter with the warmth of hearth and home: Spring with flowers and promise of flowers. But whichever I choose I would be desolate not to see the following one.
Seasons in the Sun Read More »
Valediction
I have never had, in a long life of creating ideas, and things, a serious review of any of it. No serious consideration of what was attempted, what were the problems, what was achieved. But then you don’t get that for your life itself I suppose,
Stayin’ alive
Strange, I guess, how reluctant humans are to accept that the world managed quite well without them before they were born, and will manage just as well after they die. Strange too, I suppose, that in a world where all organisms die, after one day for a Mayfly, or five thousand years for a Bristlecone
Oumuamua
Oh for heavens sake how can it already be nearly the end of twenty eighteen? The years are flashing past faster than that rock from another star that whizzed through our solar system to fast to be properly observed
Words words words
How many millions of words have I written? Half a million in one book alone, other millions scattered from one end of my life to the other. It would be nice to think one or two will be remembered, else why did I bother?