The Seasons Wheels

I love my friends, believe me - I rarely say it though - For us they have their uses - But they also deal their blows - Daily I try to act more upon my dreams - How bright a soul forgiven bleeds - How bright a soul forgiven bleeds — Hothouse Flowers

The babble recedes: Some general theories on love

Whether or not we all share the impulse to connect with another human being to the same degree, there can be no denying we all recognise it when it happens. Whether we are searching for it or whether we are satisfied to live without it, we know beyond any doubt when that strange something has …

In love with love: Encounter with Pauline Gatto

It's too easy for me to forget that love is a force and not so much a feeling; a way of knowing, and not so much about the object of that knowing; and not really a glitch in the matrix as much as the mechanism that destroys it and offers us a fuller life. That's …

Remembering Gracetown: How life looks from the ‘outside’

To this day I am fearful of cliffs and rugged west coast beaches because of what happened at Huzzas in Gracetown, Western Australia, on Friday, September 27, 1996. Twenty-two years ago.  After days of rain, the limestone overhang beneath which surfers had sheltered for years before heading out to the surf breaks at Huzzas or …

Where love is, there is meaning: Jared’s final words on hope

The other day I posted some of Jared Noel's reflections on the meaningless of suffering, and how the realisation of that helped him to face five years of a terminal illness. This snippet is the second part of that reflection, in which he goes on to talk about love and hope. Unless we go there, …

Suffering is meaningless: the hope of Dr Jared Noel

I met the extraordinary Jared Noel on August 26, 2014, at the West Auckland hospice where he was dying. Our first conversation was about the meaninglessness of suffering, a thesis I had taught, controversially, at Laidlaw College, and which a friend and colleague was now teaching in my place. Jared had come across the teaching …

Back to black: Amour and Amy

One movie ... every night ... for the next year ... Two pretty confronting movies the past two nights: Amour and Amy. Both of them devastating, and both very similar in their depiction of the slow degradation of health and life and love. The first is a French movie, superbly written, acted and directed, that …

Turning back the clock: About Time

#2 in the Dysfunctional Williams Family's epic attempt to watch all 367 movies in our iTunes library over the course of the next year was About Time. We have several family favourites that score quite low on the Rotten Tomatoes index and this is one of them, rating just 68% (which is a bit bizarre …

So many movies, so little time

The Dysfunctional Williams Family began a very cool project last night—watching every movie in our iTunes account, nightly, for the next year. Yes, that's how many movies we have. And before you get your calculator and work out that I've spent a squillion dollars on movies, rest assured that many of them were bought when …