Author: gozzter
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Full o’ th’ Milk of Human Kindness?
I used to drink a lot of milk when I was a child. It was 1950ies Winnipeg and milk was still delivered to the house in those clear glass bottles with the little bulge on top to hold the supernatant cream. I never much cared for the cream, but my mother always found a use…
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Make not your thoughts your prison
What can we do with those who flout the laws of the land or openly disrespect the prevailing mores? The usual answer is to punish -to retribute, either by restricting the offender’s rights, or their freedom. And sometimes, depending on the crime, even ending their lives. Prisons have traditionally been the means to rid…
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Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye?
Isn’t it interesting how differently we look at things? How the same bridge crossed by ten people becomes ten bridges? How beauty is so subjective? So ephemeral? Just think of how Shakespeare opened his second sonnet: When forty winters shall besiege thy brow and dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field, thy youth’s proud livery,…
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This Thing of Darkness
We all walk the earth in egg-shell armour at the whim of Nature. There is little of any of us that will not break if chaos strikes, or heal without a scar. You’d think that, given our fragility, we would opt for conciliation or compromise, and yet more often we challenge those who are not…
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Life would not yield to Age
There are times I think I’ve missed out on a lot. It seems to me that in my day, if a man re-chose a woman, he would almost always go for someone younger than himself. The reasons were obvious even then: overweening hubris, and expectations beyond capability. Indeed, dating sites online still seem to confirm…
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It’s About Time
‘What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.’ So wrote Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, more than fifteen hundred years ago. And we’re still confused… Okay, I’m confused. When considered philosophically, you’d…
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Such Sweet Sorrow
I kind of figured sugar would sneak back. It always does! Just when you think it should be terminally ashamed of the stuff it’s done, it shows up as somebody else and fools everybody. I mean, forget trying to pretend that you don’t recognize it in a crowd, that you can’t see under its mask.…
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The Grey Dog
I was once a moody child; I’m still a moody child… sorry, adult. Anyway, I’m also a bit sensitive about the topic. It’s as if being moody means being naughty, or maybe contrary. Not quite right in the head, or something -not well adjusted, at any rate. I take exception to that. I mean, just…
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Time
Days, half awake, immobile as old men leaning, Hours stacked in untidy piles around the room, Minutes stretched along the walls like arms, unlinked- All immune to the pale blue infection on the window’s breath- Lounge, cow-eyed In the tedious drag of shadows across the floor. And me? Forced to spend what seem like years…