Death’s Cha-Cha Step

Posted on September 7, 2016 by McPhedran

Thinking is bad. Or more specifically trying to put your head in order, that is bad.There’s experience and caring and many, many other things. And then there’s death, being no longer. There is stone. Or nothing. Someone else might write that story. But probably not. There are no notes to be reviewed. No follow-up meeting. You’re done. Dead. The world is only how you knew it, how you had it, your memories. But when that is done, whatever you did, good or bad, that is gone too.

Jose Saramago Updates “Cain”

Posted on July 3, 2014 by McPhedran

Cain and Abel were, according to the Old Testament, two sons of Adam and Eve.
Cain is described as a crop farmer and his younger brother, Abel, as a shepherd. Cain was the first human born and Abel was the first human to die. Cain committed the first murder by killing his brother. Interpretations of Genesis have typically assumed that the motives were jealousy and anger. Jose Saramago offers a different story in his final work, Cain, stating that Cain killed Abel because he couldn’t kill God. Saramago’s Cain states: Our god, the creator of heaven and earth, is completely mad.

Only a madman unaware of what he is doing would admit to being directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and then behave as if nothing has happened, unless of course it’s not a case of real, authentic madness, but evil pure and simple.

(Photos: Istanbul, a 2600-year-old city of 14 million people and many old things.)

Rocks of Greenland

Posted on July 30, 2013 by McPhedran

While the ice-scape dominates Greenland, the rocks can be stunning as well. Churned up by the glaciers, left in the moraine, popping out of the sand, dotting the coastline, almost as if they are watching.

Obsession III: Rocks

Posted on May 1, 2013 by McPhedran

I picked up my first rock with purpose in the summer of 1983. I was sitting beside the road in Prince Edward Island on a hitch-hiking journey across Canada when I saw this rock and decided I should keep a memento from each province. I continued to collect sporadically over the years. It became ingrained in me when I hiked the mountain trails around Vancouver, beginning in the early 1990s, bringing a rock home every time.