Fog
This morning, for the first time in a very long time, it was really quite foggy here in Prague. We live at the top of a hill and it was quite bizarre driving up the hill into the fog. For a moment, my imagination was off and I half expected to emerge on the other side of the foggy wall in a parallel universe. Most disappointingly, I didn’t. When I was a boy, there seemed to be much more fog. Maybe there was as in industrial Britain of the 1960’s it was smog rather than fog that we were dealing with. Perhaps, it was just Hull situated between the coast and the River Humber on the flat plains of Holderness. Always damp and cold, fog just seemed a natural part
Read More »Poetry…
I have three books of poetry in print. This is their story…. I began writing poems when I was a boy. It was an outlet. A few years ago, I found a huge pile of handwritten poems that I had written dating back to 1974 and, trust me, some were just downright embarrassing! Some, however, weren’t all that bad. I put these in a pile and typed them into MS WORD for better keeping and put them all in my poetry directory on my PC. I had about 50 poems there so I once again selected what I thought were some of the best and made them into a book. It was self-published off course but it was a nice little book of poems called Weird Tales: Other World Poetry
Read More »Time
I remember my Grandmother telling me that time sped up as you got older. I was probably 5 or 6-years old at the time and, for me, time was a mystery. On the one hand, Christmas just seemed to take eons to arrive and then, when it did, it was over in a flash. The month of December was like torture really. Each day, you would open one door on that advent calendar but each day seemed like a century. Now, of course, I understand my Grandmother’s point of view. Weeks and months flash by so fast I could swear it was still August if it weren’t for the weather and falling leaves. Time is a funny thing. We can measure it very precisely but what exactly are we measuring?
Read More »Drifting
Drifting No anchor attached Drifting Sinking Foundations of sand Chained thoughts became prisons Drifting Going with the flow Feel no center to my soul I am detached and Drifting Floating Terrified Cause I no longer have the illusion Of control Exhausted From the struggle Emptied Of energies Drifting Back home From my second book of poems – Poems for the Little Room – Lulu, 2012
Read More »Complexity Unchained
How many passwords do you have to remember? To be honest, I don’t know if I could count all the passwords and PINs etc. that I need to remember but I would guess it at around 75. Life is complex. I won’t get into all of the details but being a citizen of two countries and yet living in a third is part of the complexity – especially if one of those countries – the USA – treats its exPat citizens as criminals. My US tax return recently filed ran to 122 pages! I killed a tree for the US Government folks. Oh, and I still had to file my FACTA as well and my Czech tax return – which despite the love of bureaucracy here – was just 3
Read More »A Photo
A photo of my Dad looks back at me from my desk in my home office. He sits in rainproof gear and back pack with a big smile on his face on the top of the Sgurr of Eigg. It was chilly and drizzling that day but we had climbed the Sgurr in the morning and were now examining the remains of the Iron age fort at the top and admiring the views periodically visible through the mist. After a sandwich and crisps lunch, we would walk down the other side of the Sgurr talking animatedly about the Iron age, geology and Scotland. Half way down, I would step inadvertently into a hidden crack in the peat and have to endure a smelly, wet and very darkly stained foot and
Read More »Chapter 16 – A Lost Soul
Chapter 16 from The Last Observer selected at random to tickle your fancy…. Alison’s heart was beating fast and loud. She dare not move nor look up. Around her, she was aware of movement and chanting. Inside her head, there was a shadow. She was not alone. There was an indwelling presence inside of her head and it wasn’t a nice feeling. She felt as if she could hear something breathing inside her head. Another existence now seemed to share her consciousness. What had she done? She lay there prone in front of the altar for what seemed like an eternity; a shared eternity. Then, she felt hands on her shoulders, they pulled her upright, and then she was face-to-face with the man she knew as Zeltan. He looked her
Read More »New Age Socialism
What exactly is it about following a spiritual path that suddenly brings out the nutty side of people? Do people suddenly leave their brain in a jar by the door? Why do new age people think they need to be nut job environmentalists and socialists? Do they think that to be spiritual requires this? If so then they should reconsider. More or less the first thing we all learn studying magic is about duality and polarity. We learn that everything is polar and that what we need to do is try to balance everything out – reconcile the opposites. It’s not easy to do I will admit but we learn that one polarity is just as bad as the other in terms of what it is not. The Tree of
Read More »Currency Blues and Other Topics
So these days I get paid in the (not so) mighty Dollar. Right now, the USD is falling against most other currencies due to the US Government shutdown. It is now below 19CZK – $1 which just a couple of months ago it was 20CZK per USD. This is not at all good news as for every 1CZK it slips, I would lose 5% of my income in CZK……. The US shutdown is costing me money…. Meanwhile, inflation here continues. In fact, everything I earn more or less is in USD compounding the issue. Even the books are mostly sold in Dollars. I had decided to go out and buy an exercise bike. One that had the heart rate program to try to lose some of the weight I appear
Read More »Magic As A Reality
The word ‘magic’ can mean different things to different people. For some, just watching the sunset or seeing a beautiful view can be magic, for others it is trickery and sleight of hand and yet for others, me included, magic is real magic. Real magic is making something happen through willing it to be. However, before we go too much further, let us make a few discoveries together that may convince you that we are all magicians and that we work real magic each and every day. As you are reading this, your eyes are taking in light from the computer screen. The light enters your eye. It is then converted into electrical signals and they are then sent to a part of your brain where they are processed back
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