Archives

On Crying

Like laughter, tears (which often go together and are separated by the thinnest of membranes) are a testament to our humanity, of our capacity to feel. Contrary to popular belief, crying does not come from a position of weakness, but of strength. For it takes a particular sort of strength to allow yourself to be […]

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The Beauty of Melancholy Faces

When we speak of beautiful faces, a generic set of assumptions and descriptions arise: proportionate features, geometrical perfection, and symmetrical smiles. Perhaps a residue of Renaissance art and its use of the golden ratio, we tend to find people whose faces are the most balanced, proportionate, symmetrical, that is to say, mathematical, the most beautiful. […]

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On Growing-Up

‘The expectation’ for ‘help and protection’, writes Carl Jung in The Structures and Dynamics of the Psyche, while ‘normal for a child is improper in an adult’. In Psychology and the Occult he makes a similar point, remarking not being able to psychologically mature is just as absurd as not being able to outgrow child-size […]

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Melancholy of A Beautiful Place

The sun is disappearing below the horizon. The sky is soaked in a whirl of pink and purple. It looks almost like a surrealist painter took his brush to the clouds. Arrows of light splinter through the leaves of the tree you are sitting under as a gentle breeze caresses your skin. It feels sublime, […]

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Nowhere

McDonald’s prides itself on the fact their hamburgers taste identical no matter where in the world you are; Bombay or Barcelona, Milan or Madrid, you are guaranteed an entirely replicable experience. Looked at from one angle, this is a wonderful example of uniformity and consistency. From another angle, it is the deletion of local flavour […]

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On Living & Dying

‘The psychological curve of life’, writes Carl Jung in The Soul and Death, often fails to conform to the natural curve of our biological development. Acting like it is morning when it is midday, ‘we straggle behind our years, hugging our childhood as if we could not tear ourselves away’. He notes, We stop the […]

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How To Be A Good Creature

Journeying across generations and species, How To Be A Good Creature by Sy Montgomery is a celebration of friendship transcending time, place, and genes. Featuring charming illustrations by Rebecca Green, How To Be A Good Creature is a textured weave of auto-biography, naturalism, poetry and philosophy. It is a love letter to the complex beings […]

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On Feeling Ugly

You’ve made a point of avoiding it. You consciously avert your gaze. Walking past it one morning, your attention slips, and you come face to face with your reflection in the mirror. The crooked smile, the crippled finger, the attenuated eyebrows. You’ve put on weight, you don’t look happy, your smile doesn’t have the exuberance […]

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The Brutal Functionalism of the Modern World

The modern world is, in many ways (and with little energy required to find examples), quite ugly. It is not that someone has attempted to make something beautiful but through lack of imagination or lack of will, mutilated the task. Rather, we live in a world that is seemingly unconcerned with beauty altogether. On the […]

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The Fertility of Silence

Silence is more than a phenomenon marked by the absence of sound. Silence is an ideal. It manifests in at least two forms. The first is what we may call ‘imposed silence’. Imposed silence stems from an inability to speak up. It is the disempowered silence of the listener who is denied access to a […]

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