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This ageing game
Posted by Simon Parke, 16 Jan 2019
Daniel Holland recently initiated a merry exchange of tweets on the subject of getting old.
‘What are the signs of the passing years?’ he asked - and started the ball rolling with ‘I think the most ‘old person’ thing I do is feel brave and reckless if I begin watching a film after 9pm.’
And other suggestions followed, the tell-tale signs of age:
‘I have “a spot” on the couch,’ says Rebecca…
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The appeal of emptiness
Posted by Simon Parke, 15 Jan 2019
We live in an era of techniques, courses and qualifications.
‘If you want to improve yourself, use this technique.’
‘If you want to better yourself, go on this course.’
‘You’ll need this qualification if you want to progress, if you want a top job.’
The insecure energy behind all this…
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The confessions of a cello player
Posted by Simon Parke, 7 Jan 2019
‘I think, therefore I am,’ declared Descartes, famously.
But Buddha, 2500 years before him, would have drawn the opposite conclusion.
For him, the human race was in fact lost in thought, comparing us to a monkey swinging his way aimlessly if effortlessly through a forest, grabbing at one branch, then another – one thought, then another…
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The Christmas tree - a lament
Posted by Simon Parke, 7 Jan 2019
You may have long forgotten your Christmas tree.
It may have been back in its box or out in the street a while ago.
It’s only a tree, after all.
But the truth is we found it pretty hard letting go of the Christmas tree…
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A daily epiphany
Posted by Simon Parke, 7 Jan 2019
How to describe your essence - the reality at the centre of your being?
It’s difficult, for beautiful states are not best served by words. Who, after all, can describe the scent of a hyacinth?
While an interviewer once asked the dancer Pavlova what her dance meant.
‘If I could speak it, I wouldn’t have danced it,’ she replied…
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Julian of Norwich, contemporary of both Chaucer and Langland, was the first woman to write a book in English. Yet remarkably, she disappeared from view for 600 years, before her rediscovery in the 20th century. My new novel is Julian’s own telling of her life.
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In the first of my Abbot Peter mysteries, in a prequel to the Abbot’s Stormhaven adventures, Peter takes us back to the monastery of St James-the-Less. There in the shadows of Mt Sinai, Abbot Peter faces a discomforting cocktail of deception, delusion and death.
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