This autumn in northern Europe is unseasonably gentle and warm. The turning of the leaves from deep green to all the colors of flame and sunset, the baring of elegant dark, sloping branches, the abundant soft coverings on the ground, the scents of damp earth, fallen apples and acorns, crumbling organic growth. All these magnificent…Read more A Gentle Autumn
Inspiration
On Writing
When I first met the editor, I could tell she was not happy to meet me, perhaps she wasn’t even expecting me, perhaps my friend had just snuck me into the writer’s meeting without telling her. It was becoming clearer by the minute that this was indeed the case. “The writing industry is oversaturated.” When…Read more On Writing
The Edge of Summer
Summer is moving steadily and surely towards autumn. We are right on the edge of it. The deep lush green of an unusually long, hot growing season is giving way to the blazing colors of countless sunsets. First it comes in fitful bursts: swathes of yellow, lashings of red, streaks of pink. Growing bolder and…Read more The Edge of Summer
On Art
As much as I love words and communicating, I have to admit, there’s more to life. Why can’t things just be? Why can’t you just do something because it’s fun or it just feels good? You don’t have to explain anything to anyone if it doesn’t concern them. In the popular wisdom of the day:…Read more On Art
Half Lives
It is early morning. The world is dark blue and cold. A thin pale line traces a horizon that wasn’t there a moment before when the earth and sky were merged in darkness. The sky lightens faster and faster, from a dove grey to the silver of vacant mirrors, rose-tinted edges rising up, spreading out…Read more Half Lives
Portrait of the Artist
What are you afraid of? That they’ll see right through you? See through your farce? Your vain bid for importance? That no amount of effort will surmount the appraisal of your surface? Or insubstantialize your many failures and shortcomings? (In fact, make them all the more obvious.) That you will be deserving of neither attention…Read more Portrait of the Artist
Lasting Summer
My earliest memories make no logical sense, one moment I’m standing in a field of sugarcane, the next moment I’m with a flock of ladies in a churchyard, in another moment I‘m running up the front steps of home. The green cane stalks loom above me in my toddler height, bowing in the wind as…Read more Lasting Summer
