Fabled Bear Attack

While I've never ventured deep in dangerous forests, I've tread through a fair share of cities, and let me tell you, it's a jungle out there.  Any city kid has grown up on a small diet of fair warnings of the risks lurking in

Sympathy for the Light-Bearer

Everyone has a take on Lucifer. Lux-fer would be the etymology. The Light-bearer in Latin. That is the whole of his title — light, and the carrying of it. This figure never changes and the facts around him never change. What is up to debate is the story we

Canto V

Yes, great idea, I thought, when a friend suggested we write on the topic of lust. I began closing my apps. Gallery, Messenger, browser, dating app. Of course. The cold wind of personal recognition that I too am a dirty sinner destined to the pits. In Dante's mind,

Memento mori

Everything comes to pass. This moment too shall pass by because you will continue- like with everything else in life.  You will continue like you have always done and these words will too soon be behind you.  Good times come and go, and bad times come and go.  No thing

Méritance

Ah yes. The international online sport of French bashing. This social hobby dates back to the Hundred Years' War and can be traced through the ages with every political tension when France has policy disagreements with its western neighbours — and some of those disagreements are weighty enough to deserve

On Justice.

On earth as it is in heaven. My feelings on justice are that I'm sitting on a fence. With one side being condemnation, and the other being justice itself. It would be so easy and satisfying to just let wrath loose. It's so satisfyingly consuming to

The Good

We’re so focused on beauty, so desperate for truth, we have forgotten the good entirely. The Good is what makes us wrestle, alone, with our inner world. It breaks down our internal presumptions and barriers. It puts us in a place where we must choose for ourselves to become

Karma

I was eleven, maybe twelve, and fasting with my father in high summer. I was sitting on a floor cushion in front of the TV in mid afternoon, watching with the kind of attention children often do. The summer holiday left long, time expanding in relation to my grumbling stomach

Vipers and cherries

I found myself washing in the Vatican showers, probably not all that far away from the pope, and thought how hard it had been to arrive even here. I wasn't sure if it was the Italians or the church that were bloody useless. And I thought — why in

A Warmonger You Are

One face is named love. The other is named war. The name of the coin is passion — and when you stop looking at which face you're holding, you've left the outcome to chance. We don't think of ourselves as people who wage war. Warmongers

The flasher’s trench coat

A critique. No. I haven't read Hegel. And I know what you're thinking if you have- tugh, she hasn't even read Hegel. (Told you) I've not read Hegel because it's not that his ideas lack value, but because the way

The salmon

A true salmon is immortal till the day it dies. Born to a fresh-water river, it grows then is washed downstream till it hits the ocean. Saltwater infiltrates every cell, burning the fish, reshaping it from within. It then spends years in vast waters, learning everything there is to

Cultural Inheritance

-Mother My mother has an almost cellular connection to Andalusia. On top of having great taste, she's always drawn to late moorish art and architecture. This woman has been quietly, and often loudly, by my side through thick and thin- Regardless of the ease of our relationship status.

Thé favorite flock

Let me tell you about the boy who cried wolf. There was once an orphan shepherd boy. The shepherd wished to be the best the world had ever seen — in memory of his father. He'd have a strong flock, and sweet pastures. He dreamed of becoming the mightiest

MERCY FOR THE PIG

*Mercy is deserving worse and receiving better.* --- **Abstract** For millennia, Abrahamic dietary law has prohibited the consumption of pork. In the contemporary era, the legitimacy of this prohibition is frequently interrogated — and just as frequently, poorly defended. The explanations most commonly offered: hygiene, parasitology, desert ecology. These are insufficient. They

The Camel's Eye

-Good advice was once worth a camel. Now that it is free of charge, no one takes it- Money talks. Wealth whispers. Whispers are silver. Silence is golden. I strongly advise refraining from attempting to decipher the thickness of somebody's wallet. Money is a private affair. None of

God King Google

By trade I built homes. By income I dig holes.

By trade, I'm an artisan of stone. A single artisan in the grand tradition of craftspeople. Well, more simply, I'm a builder. Oh, how I like to think if I so pleased I could just go and make my own abode, seeing as it's

Art of the Catch. Plenty of fish. (for men)

Lesson 1 – Mineral TIL: The immovable rock meets an unstoppable river. ① Never make the first move! (ii) Do not kiss her first (iii) Do not touch her (with sexual intent) first (iv) Do not undress her unless she asks or suggests first. i.e. removing your clothes for you. (v)

Stone cutters and masons are the republic… for 9.52€ the hour

Dear reader, Peace is paradoxical. Find it in one place and it surfaces elsewhere as its opposite — a low-grade disquiet you can't quite locate, like a sound you stop hearing only when it stops. April arrived. I removed my socks and shoes, hitched the skirt up, and