Category: Uncategorized
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The ceremony of intangibles
Meetings! Why do we meet each Wednesday morning? Why does Harbir usually choose a black turban for our meetings, although sometimes when I see him on the street, he’s wearing a blue one? And why is he always so cheery, his eyes twinkling, his entire face smiling…? For that matter, why is Jamie always so […]
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A touch that never hurts
What is it about touch? Why is it often more personal than sight, friendlier than sound, more reassuring than words? Not all touch is equal, of course, and yet there is a reciprocity to it that the other senses lack: we can speak without being heard, or observe without being seen, but touch is mutually […]
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Simple truth miscalled simplicity
It’s interesting: the older I get, the more I prefer the doing to the done; the learning to the knowledge; the journey to the destination. That’s backwards isn’t it? Counterintuitive. All these years I have been told that the reward is in the prize, not the race… Where have I gone wrong? Even the very […]
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Truth is truth to the end of reckoning
Truth is an interesting concept don’t you think? In a way, it is an autological word which often prefers to use itself for its own definition: Truth is, well, Truth; it describes what is… Still, there was a time when I thought I understood it as something else -something more…sacred perhaps. But now I’m not […]
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Adab, more or less
I’d like to think that I am usually polite; that even if I am unhappy with a turn of events, I can control my words, and arrange my outward face. Of course I’ve lived with myself long enough to know that is not always true. Sometimes I can no more control my emotions than a […]
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Is memory the warder of the brain?
I have to be honest, I do not understand the younger generation -well, anymore than it understands me, I suppose. But I recognize that, unlike them, I am not working from a clean slate, and although I have usually tried to think for myself, I am still affected by things past -in fact, I imagine […]
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Oh world, but that thy strange mutations make us hate thee
Do you sometimes use words you do not really understand? Words that swirl around you like autumn leaves in the wind; words that come to you as innocent as children, playing; as strangers, lost? Words can be like that: splashing against you by accident then sticking like mud. Sometimes, they are only substitutes for something […]
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What my tongue dares not that my heart shall say
There was a time when I thought that feeling pity for someone was a virtue; it meant feeling discomfort at their situation, I suppose, but perhaps it was also tinged with relief that their situation had not happened to me. And yet was that all I felt? Surely there was some concern and a wish […]
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Speak low if you speak love
When I was a naïve university student, I read that far from missing out on the thrill of the chase in youth, the elderly are usually liberated from the (presumably) hormonally mediated need for sexual gratification leaving time to evaluate other things. Since procreative duties -or possibilities- would no longer loom large in their thinking, […]
musings on women's health 