Loving foreign cities is a bit like having an illicit love affair with someone you know is bad for you, but damn, he smells of hotel rooms and leather motorcycle jackets on hot summer evenings when time is nothing but a concept. You just cannot help yourself: salvation might be a wonderful thing but the… Read More The Allure of Cities
He did what he did every evening. It was a complete violation of protocol but he never varied from this pattern. It was his moment of silent rebellion, something he would never explain even if someone had asked him about it. No one ever asked him to explain. At 8.30 he walked from his room… Read More Chronos 8
My grandfather loved fountain pens. He collected them, testing each potential new one carefully in the shop before he bought it and then, carrying it home wrapped in tissue paper, already anticipating which ink he would use first . He slipped out in the evenings, leaving the noise of his eight children and many grandchildren… Read More My Grandfather’s Fountain Pen
It was cool that evening, the soft summer breeze touching lightly along the treetops, the flowers by the walkway, winding towards the door. She often stood outside in the early evenings, just for a moment or two, reflecting on the day’s events. Some days were good, some days were bad, but mostly all the days… Read More All the Boys of All the Wars
There are tangos that beguile you with their elegance and focus. There are tangos that slither up beside you on a bar stool in Buenos Aires, and steal your money and your dignity, dripping in silk and deception. There are tangos that rescue you from loneliness, wrap you in firelight and tenderness. There are tangos… Read More Blood Tango
Wisdom keepers are the guardians of the sacred and the true, often lonely voices in an increasingly loud and shrill world. Chief Oren Lyons, of the Turtle Clan of Onondaga, First Nations Peoples, is one such voice and he sounds a warning that the earth has entered a period of degradation. There are two signs… Read More Earth Songs
Wolves are one of the last great free spirits left in a world hurtling towards standardisation, uniformity and mediocrity. Wolves represent the poet voice, still moved by moonlight and northern winds, still searching for wild, untamed places, still drawn by unexplored, free spaces. They are the guardians of the wild, in ways humans are only… Read More When The Wolves Ran Free
In Rex Stout’s evocative story, the Bashful Body, private consulting detective Nero Wolfe leaves his New York home to visit a renowned orchid grower in upstate New York. For Wolfe, an avid fan of orchids and their cultivation, the trip represents a pilgrimage of sorts. He is a recluse, but for the chance to acquire… Read More Orchids: Nature’s Rebels
hollow places 