clinging to the wreckage

  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...

Light gently pours into the inky black sky and a calm quiet Sunday morning forms with peace and a promise that the day is mine to do with as I please. In the realm of dream last night there was a beautiful woman who suggested we take the risk and simply enter into a relationship without consideration. I agreed. I was terrified. It was exciting. Waking, I am grateful to be alone, to be single, to have peace.                   The cat was asleep on the ledge beside the door this morning, as it so often is these days. I put a bowl of food down, as I do each morning, and she walked over to it, took a few sniffs, and casually walked away. It’s difficult to read a cat. Today’s bowl was also what I consider to be her favourite flavour… she usually devours it. Perhaps she had eaten something during the night.                   ...

  Almost two years… two years and, so far, most of us have survived. Not all of us have survived. There have been casualties of the illegal diversion wars and raids and attacks and stupidity. There are still some people who support this. Yet, somehow, most of us have survived almost two years under a moronic anti-science, anti-education, anti-vaccine, anti-everything that is not white male leader. The most idiotic of idiots support Marco Rubio and Elon Musk… they have NO CLUE what they are talking about or doing, they simply think with the head between their legs.                     Old fashioned conventional traditional thinkers… no concept of reality and modern ways of working, no understanding of the efforts and responsibilities and ways of working that other people have. Like a classic late Gen-X/Baby Boomer, no ability to understand the view of anyone except their own, yet claiming super...