Friday 13th May 2022 It is, without doubt, one of the very very worse acts carried out by human beings I have ever seen in my life. And it was by the Israeli police in Jerusalem at a funeral procession. Yes. At a funeral. As you know if you follow…

The Denial of Agency. What is left when we strip the layers of veneer away from our lives? When we remove all the coats of paint that have been applied to the continually changing image of ourselves to the world? Who are we in essence? Can we even know who…

“Amor animi arbitrio sumitur, non ponitur.” Well? What else was I to do? To stop loving you. How do you stop loving someone? To leave. To go. To distance from you. It was impossible. Out of sight is not out of mind. As you knew. So. To continue on and…

Filthy Art (Part IV) — “All I can say is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims– and as far as possible one must refuse to be on the side of the pestilence.” ― Albert Camus, ‘The Plague’ A very simple question. But I would gainsay for each of us, it…

Filthy Art (Part III) — “Solitude produces originality, bold & astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd, and the forbidden.” ― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice A few weeks ago I purchased The Magician by Colm Tóibín which is a biography of Thomas Mann and was an absolute joy to…

THE FOURTH CHRONICLES OF DUKE — The bolt of powerful energy that cut into the darkening sky above this motley crew of shapeshifters, clones, human saviors and Magi could be seen for miles and miles. It would gain attention, there was little doubt of that. And that is exactly what Merlin wanted. A message was being…

Justice Alito and the Denial of Liberty — It is — or at least it comes across to me — in the draft of Justice Samuel Alito as, first and foremost, an act of personal catharsis. He has been waiting his whole life to put these words down in a legal document on banning abortion and overturning Roe…

THE FOURTH CHRONICLES OF DUKE — Merlin awoke. He had seen once again an outline of a future. It was never clear or obvious. Faces he recognized, but places he did not. It never got any easier to move along the timeline. The visions drained him every time and each time he knew his body came…

The ‘Violin Analogy’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. — It was over two and a half years ago in 2019 in Episode 9, Season 3 of The Handmaid’s Tale that our iconic heroine June and the viewers witnessed the deliberate prolongation of a woman’s death for months to facilitate the growth and maturation of the fetus she was carrying…