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What did you expect?
We have become obligate avoiders, dwellers in the middle of the field well away from boundaries –the just-right-baby-bears of the Goldilocks tale. We seek to protect ourselves from edges, no matter how pervasive, how common, how important they may be. It was for a very good reason that the American folk hero, John Wayne, felt…
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The Unfallen Yellow Leaf
‘Age, with his stealing steps, hath clawed me in his clutch,’ as the gravedigger in Hamlet says. I’m not so sure I agree –he was speaking about a skull, after all- but I have to admit there are times when I do feel old, and shipped ‘into the land as if I had never been…
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The Custom that dare not speak its name
The custom that dare not speak its name… Not until recently anyway. Now it seems all the rage to study the practice –expose it, as it were. And while I confess to paraphrasing the famous euphemism used in the trial of Oscar Wilde in 1895, I’m talking about something completely different. I’m talking about… well,…
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Biding the Pelting of this Pitiless Storm
Hubris –the extreme arrogance that was so offensive to the old Greek gods that they reacted with punishment and an exile from grace- is that what this is? I’m not sure anymore… It’s not, perhaps, so obvious as the vaulting ambitions of a Macbeth or the arrogance of a Caesar, nor even the overweening pride…
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The Impossible
So, Trump has convinced his country that he should lead. I did not think America had drifted so far; I did not realize it was so out of touch with us -and me… It brought to mind a poem I wrote years ago, not ever believing the impossible could come to pass: The Impossible…
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Is Beauty really skin deep?
Although love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, as Shakespeare reminds us, there is a redness of the cheek that is not as kind as a simple blush. So may the outward shows be least themselves, he also says. The world is still deceived with ornament. Acne arrives at the wrong time…
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Hide and Seek
I guess the hunt is never over. Just when you think you’re winning, a sleeper cell surfaces, one you hadn’t even suspected, and closets itself somewhere you’d never think to look –an endless game of hide and seek. A Samsara of possibilities. An yet, what would be the thrill of exploration if you knew all…