Taxonomy

Hidden but still felt.

Today, the Church commemorates the Day of the Unborn Child and urges its members to be the voice of the unborn child, who does not have a voice. I dare say that the sanctity of life is universal but it is the definition of "life" that remains controversial. Does a human life begin in the womb or only after a certain period in the womb or only upon leaving the womb? I take the stand that life begins in the womb upon fertilization and that a life is a life; there are no sub-categories of life form within the human species. Any draftsman worth his salt will know that the crafting of definitions must be done with care as there will be ripple effects in the use of such poorly defined terms. To define life as requiring certain cognitive functions or certain physiological functions, in essence functions that a fetus lacks, has repercussions beyond the womb. Lest we forget that the Jewish Holocaust arose out of the definition of a people being physiologically and mentally "lacking", "inferior" or "inadequate".

Pigasus

Write or Wrong, Why do we try?

"If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that make a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story."
~John Steinbeck

Pot

A pot poured out
Fulfills its spout
~Samuel Menashe

A simple poem, that fulfills itself. I like how perfectly the verb "fulfills" fulfills the promise of a generous thought. A promise, a mission, an obligation, a nature. These are the things that it is possible and desirable to fulfill. fulfills the promise of a generous thought, a promise a mission, an obligation, a nature. And so a pot fulfills its spout, but what do we fulfill? This question becomes more pertinent after a long week at work.

Descendants

Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.

This photo was snapped in Bosra, Syria where I was being spied on by a curious bunch of kids who were hiding behind a wall. I must have been a peculiar sight, wandering around in an un-touristy area with a big camera. I remember seeing them duck for cover as I raised my camera to shoot them, with cheeky grins on their faces. It was part game, part shyness and only after one or two approached me did the rest pour out from behind the wall, running and laughing. As I watched the news this evening, I couldn't help but think that a perverse version of this scene is happening now in some Syrian cities, where kids are hiding behind walls because strange men are shooting at them, just that this time with bullets. The death toll rises in Syria and more women and children are being slaughtered. In war, it is always the children that suffer; always the innocent. And as talks go on now at the UN on how to deal with this crisis the bloodshed continues. If only the problem could be talked away.

Massah

Thirsting, testing.

We are made of the material and so we thirst, for so many things that do not really make us happy. We spend our lives searching and at times wandering in the wilderness, compromising ourselves only to realize that we become even more thirsty with this emptiness.

Deluge

To aid digestion.

It is one of the unexpected disasters of modernity that our new unrestricted, unparalleled access to information has come at the price of our capacity to concentrate on anything much. And as if this phenomena is not bad enough, we have now become a generation of searchers but not retainers; taking comfort in the fact that the information we want or need will always be there somewhere in cyberspace. In a way we have outsourced the key functions of our brain at an age where we need them the most. What a shame.

Looking

On yet another trip to the vet.

...and she is only an animal
but I miss her
and I am only human...