Lately I’ve been reading about the collapse of the Roman republic in the last century BCE. Some historic documents (Cicero’s Letters to Atticus) and some thoroughly-researched historical novels (Colleen McCullough’s ‘Masters of Rome’ series). The parallels with today’s situation in the US are compelling. Politics then as now was rife with corruption, mangled by the …
Author Archives: Ciel
Life In Chaos
There are so many absolutely appalling human-generated crises going on in the world. People of normal conscience and intelligence, basic humanity and awareness are in fact appalled, are outraged; some are speaking out, protesting and resisting… Some are feeling simply powerless, wondering how these terrible things are being permitted to go on happening. Wondering who …
After the Storm
After all the chaos subsides, after some court cases and sentences, possibly after some funerals and other relocations, life in these United States will not go back to ‘normal.’ Nor should it: “Normal” was so dysfunctional on so many levels, largely before this country refused to learn from the past or even remember its own …
The Joy of Reading
I’ve always been a reader from around 6 years old, finding immersion in other times and lives and worlds such wonderful adventures out of my own reality and whatever its limitations and frustrations. I devoured Laura Ingalls Wilder’s ‘Little House books,’ and read ‘ALICE IN WONDERLAND’ and ‘…THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS’ and all the Pooh …
What Lasts
In the chaosconstructed by human connivance,greed, and blinkered self-deception, I look to the treesrising, indifferentto human madness,slow-reaching skyward,slow-flowing sap to nourisheach twig and leafand tiny single cell… I look to the seasrolling on and on,uncaring of Man’s designs,against the sands, the cliffs,or flinging wildlypartnering with rocky shoresto dance, force meeting gravity,to graze the air and …
Voting for or voting against…?
It’s never actually ‘either/or.’ When we vote against what we don’t like, we are voting for the other candidate whether we like them or not. Those who voted against Harris because she was Biden’s VP, against the woman, against the not-white candidate, voted for Trump. Those who took it all for a lark or a …
Wakeup Call
Morning creeps in,My head is not ready for it.It glows against the mountainagainst the quiet cloudstinging all things goldenas they brighten to full day… I am not readywanting the landscapes stillof dreamsof comforter and bedpillowing my headin sleep, dayless,consciousless… Slowly,relentlesslyday pushes outthe shadows of the house;world sounds,the silenceof the head and house… Body nagsits various …
To Eat or Not To Eat
Watching nature documentaries, another dichotomy of living in this world comes to mind: Predatory/Prey. There is very little life on Earth that does not have to kill to eat. Speaking with scientific dispassion, every organism has to acquire and transform other life forms to nutrients in order to live, to thrive, to perpetuate its own …
FIRE!
I watched a documentary series about The Great London Fire of 1666. I can’t recommend it for the writing, so cliche-ridden, so larded with tabloidesque expositions, delivered with such earnestness by a team of narrators who can’t be blamed for the material they’re given. Despite that, the information about the Great Fire itself is worth …
Juneteenth: An American Celebration
I hear the outward celebrations of Juneteenth are being scaled down due to expectations of backlash from bigots, basically. In the current national atmosphere, it’s understandable, and in some degree wise. Like not setting off fireworks in a dry meadow. But the historic moment is most certainly not canceled, it is not going away: Those …
LOOSELY SPEAKING... 