Blogs

     At this point, another colloquy on Israel is a pointless endeavour, and I apologise for the role I’m playing in pulverising this dead horse to a mushy pulp. Yet the sadomasochist in me can’t resist reaching for The Daily Rag and skimming past all those Boxing Day advertisements to seek out the latest coverage depicting this bloodbath as a righteous struggle between Pure Good and Unholy Evil - the latest mass media fairy tale coming right on the heels of their similar production: “Glorious Ukraine VS Putin the Disturbed.”

Soon, another Christmas will have come and gone. Gifts that were the wrong size, not needed or not wanted will have been returned. The Christmas parties and banquets will be over. People will be celebrating the start of a new year, and making resolutions. There will be the usual, often short-lived pledges to quit smoking, lose weight, and watch less television, TikTok or YouTube. Here’s an idea for a resolution that should be easier to keep. How about resolving to make next Christmas more meaningful?

"O see the darkness yielding, that tore the light apart

Come healing of the reason, come healing of the heart."

- Come Healing, lyric by Leonard Cohen

The word 'apocalypse' has come to mean a widespread, violent and calamitous event. In Jewish and Christian literature it refers to the ultimate destruction of evil and the triumph of good. However, its original meaning was simply a disclosure or revelation.

I apologize for my absence, fellow spiritual wanderers: I have been somewhat busy of late poring over Sigmund Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams," which has led me down a very steep rabbit-hole indeed. After all, how can I interpret the appearance of my dentist with dishevelled hair and blood-shot eyes standing in a room fluctuating between my kitchen and high-school science lab? Perhaps it is a calling to professionalize myself (represented by the dentist), get serious about my cooking (kitchen), and experiment in the manner of a chemist (science lab)?

 "You know all those foreign policy decisions I've made in the past? Well, I'm going to keep doing them. America is #1." - Joe Biden, urgently updating the public with a hastily written Washington Post editorial

   I was born into a well-off and well-educated family, but, due to social circumstances mostly beyond my control and influence, I spent my adolescence and adulthood mostly among social pariahs; the misfits, rejects, undesirables and untouchables. However, the advantage of that path through, and perspective upon, life was to learn quite readily that social classes are illusions, and that we're all misfits and rejects to some degree, even, and perhaps especially, the "one-percenters".