clinging to the wreckage

  A walk in the woods at sunrise. Awakened by birdsong and tree branches swaying lightly in the breeze. It is 7am and the day is just about cool enough to walk now… later it will not be the same. Sauntering home to collapse into the pool, swim a few lengths... and the day stretches out before me in beautiful solitude. No plans. No commitments. I see a fascinating article, apparently Christians claim they are persecuted because Coca Cola won’t print ‘Jesus is King’ on a can. It makes me think back to last night at the bar with a couple of colleagues. They arrived more than one hour late and, upon arrival one asked what brand of Ginger Beer they had and how much sugar this brand contains. The server was astonished, said he had no idea, and my colleague settled on a diet coke with a slice of lemon and a glass of water ‘light on the ice’ haha. It’s another realm for some people.   After that, I watched a film called ‘The Invite’. It was a very bizarre film, but it did remind me of...

  Trying to describe a ‘pram’ to an American colleague… what’s the word? The thing you push a baby in. ‘A stroller’. Yes, a stroller. And the baby has a dummy. What’s a dummy? Hmm, the thing you give to a baby to calm it. ‘A pacifier?’ Ah, yes, a pacifier.   A weird conversation that I had yesterday that made me feel like I was speaking to someone who spoke a different language. In many other ways, Americans and English can be very similar. Today is one of those days I feel grateful to be where I am… in Texas. The heat can be insane, and then we have severe ice storms in winter, but, in general, the weather is good.                     I ventured out to Midori Sushi for lunch and had to struggle with guilt as the cat was under my car, asleep, and I had to wake her up to safely move her to another cool and shaded spot. The sushi was incredible, the atmosphere was great, and I even had a Sa...

  Increase the Pressure is an album by English punk band, Conflict. When I was 15 or 16 years old, I got hold of a copy on cassette, it had been recorded hundreds of times from cassette to cassette, and the sound quality was terrible. But I loved it. In the years that followed, I strived to find it on vinyl (this was before CD) but that album was impossible to find or to get hold of. This was 1988, 1989… there was no internet allowing us to simply jump online and purchase or stream an album. Today, at the age of 52, in 2026, I sit in my home office, working, and I am listening to Increase the Pressure after purchasing it from the iTunes store for $9.99. It still transports me to my youth, it is still an album that I love, and it astonishes me how simple and easy it was to obtain a digital copy.                     I am grateful to have grown up in the time before cell phones and mass interne...

  Today would have been my mother’s 78 th birthday. Sadly, she passed away just under three years ago after a lengthy period of trouble related to years of spinal surgery and, ultimately, damage to nerves that prevented her from walking. My only consolation is that I got to spend the last Christmas and New year of her life with her, and it was a happy time. We ate out, we drank wine, we laughed and we talked.  My mother inspired me throughout life with her kindness, compassion, generosity, vision, intelligence, and understanding of the human condition. She was extremely sensitive and suffered tremendously from the suffering of other people and animals, and she gave everything she had to give to provide my brother and I with the best possible life we could have. And it was a good one.  To this day, my father is benefitting from the financial decisions that my mother made and some of the foundations that she built, and, following her ways, I have also built significant pra...

  Three weeks until San Diego… another eagerly anticipated silent retreat to a city I dearly love. There is so much to see and do there, but I also want to spend a portion of time doing nothing else other than read books. I’d started contemplating renting a car and going to Hollywood to visit the Lemmy Lounge at the Rainbow Bar & Grill, but I think that will be saved for a separate trip.                     San Diego holds the beauty of the harbour, and the harbour cruise that I always do when I visit. Then there is Little Italy, Balboa Park, Ocean beach and, finally, on lazy days, or evenings after an eventful day, there is the Ketch Bar and Restaurant directly across the street from the hotel that I stay at, where one can sip a beer or a cocktail whilst watching the sun set over the sea. The scenery and the people are beautiful.          ...

  Complicated conversations cause complexities and anxieties throughout the day. Professional ones, not emotional or romantic. There is nothing wiser said than ‘pause, think, reflect’ before acting, before responding.’                   For peace, I turn to the current Eileen Chang novel that I am reading, Half a Lifelong Romance , and, as always, it is beautiful to read. I love the intricate detail that Chang fits into each passage… the protagonist arriving home to find her brother kicking a shuttlecock into the air and then seeing her sister talking on the phone in the hallway, and describing every detail of the clothing her sister is wearing, how she is moving and bumping against a telephone book, and even the sweat stain on her clothing caused by the hand of a dance partner.                   Aside from that, M...