The walk from the hotel to the U-bahn took in rows of tenement buildings. In one of them there was a congregation of young men, all white Austrian, some with muzzled dogs – very unpleasant and intimidating. It was one of those situations when I look inwards and studiously avoid eye contact. I felt restrained…
Literature
Lagos
We are in the Algarve. Today, our last day here we caught the free bus from Rocha Brava to Carvoeiro. It stopped at the beach, the Praia. We had lunch: chicken baguette for me, salad for Jan. Then we took the coastal path back. From Carvoeiro you can look back at Lagos. Today Lagos…
Winter Blues: I begin to discern the profile of my death
Oliver Sacks has just revealed that he has terminal cancer. This sad news from the voice of humane medicine put me in mind of Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian, an account of the last days of a great man, looking back and forwards, in a letter to Marcus Aurelius. The letter opens…
Continue reading ➞ Winter Blues: I begin to discern the profile of my death
Café society
At Caffé Nero, on Thursday mornings, there's a chance to see a slice of the world sit in varying poses, attired in the daytime frocks of winter. Today, two young men with their computers and headphones, a single woman dressed in black sipping her coffee, and a middle aged man reading Girl With a Dragon…
Spittoons of light
Abracadabra, well that’s a word to conjure with! Words are all like that, magical and like charms, conjuring visions and images and sometimes like talisman, fending off demons. Another way of putting this is to say that words are concrete objects, that they have a taste, a texture, a shape that fills the mouth, distorting…
Pirandello and social reality
What is reality? How are we to know what is ‘real’ and what is merely imaginary? Pirandello (1867-1936) dealt with these matters in his drama. In Henry IV, he created a character, Henry IV, who was deluded. He falsely believed that he was Henry IV. His father, Marquis Charles Di Nolli, employed a number of…
Icefield Parkway
The Athabasca Waterfall lies on the Icefield Parkway. It is just there, shortly after you join the Parkway from Jasper. The water falls down a canyon and flows into a lake. The colour is turbid blue from the rock flour that the waterfall has ground down along its course. The canyon is itself surrounded by…
Pan(ic)demic
What is terror? Is it that flash of white phosphorescent light that started in the innards and exploded soundlessly? First, a seizure quickened the pulse and the muscles of the heart, and then it dried the mouth, propelling every sinew, every nerve of the four limbs into a rush of running. It is definitely…
Pestilence
Sophocles’ Oedipus The King starts with lamentation. The priest cries A blight is on the fruitful plants of the earth, A blight is on the cattle in the fields, a blight is on our women that no children are born to them; a God that carries fire, a deadly pestilence, is on our…
Chekhov and Love
Chekhov's (1860-1904) love stories are not romantic accounts of unrequited love or of love at first sight. Or, even of tortured love that is amplified by the agony of being unfulfilled. No, these are Chekhovian tales that surprise and intrigue our imagination. Chekhov, exactly like Ibsen, knows his characters very well. He knows them well…
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