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Death be not proud
Sometimes I think I spend too much time with myself. I realize, however, that the only way to spend any time away from me is to die, and that seems a bit harsh. Death is one of those subjects they never taught in school -in my day, anyway. Of course, when you’re young, Death is…
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Come to my woman’s breasts and take my milk for gall.
There are times when it is apparent that I have lived a rather cossetted life; when I realize I have been coddled in one gender, and misunderstood the other; when what I assumed was ‘common-sense’, was actually ‘male-sense’ -and not even widely shared, at that. But, I suppose that what we learn from the dark…
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Oh, coward conscience
Most of the time I think of myself as a tolerant person -grumpy, maybe; at times even impatient with opinions not my own, but by and large, accommodating. Of late, though, I have come to recognize that with many things, tolerance is not actually acceptance; it is more often putting up with something which I…
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The ceremony of innocence is drowned
Every so often, things are not as they seem. Perhaps that should come as no surprise to an ever-curious septuagenarian, but sometimes I realize I have been misled, lulled into a sense of complacency by the reigning Weltanschauung; or, to be clear, the previous one -the one in which I received my formal education. But…
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Wild Medicine
I think it’s good to keep renewing our perspective on things, don’t you? What we view may be similar, but it’s how we see it that might differ; it’s how we value it that could change. When I was a child, my mother was convinced that standing under oak trees was dangerous. At the time…
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Sifting through the noise
Listening requires special skills which, like muscles, weaken with neglect; they might not always be needed in retirement. The need should be weaker there I imagined -retirement is more transactional, with each of us intent on regaling others with our own contrasts in exchange for hearing, but not necessarily listening, to those of our friends.…
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God-damned?
Sometimes there are no easy ways to cross a swamp and many of us have chosen to live in areas so removed we cannot even see the marsh; do not understand that it may be difficult for others to reach us; do not care that they may not want to. I have seldom privileged beliefs…
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Speak me fair in death
There is a question whose answer I think I should start preparing. It’s not one that would make a large difference to me at this time I suppose, but it still needs some serious thought, some proper wording. The problem of formulating it too far in advance is that its validity might be questioned. Some…