Of Dames and Baronesses

Never call a baroness, dame
Or the other way around

You will offend both
Along with a taxonomy
Honed through years
Of meticulous study

Notice how the dame slides
While the baroness slithers

One withers
The other wears out

Pay attention to dames

They are more subtle
Restrained
Domestic

Beware of baronesses

They will reproach you
Tame you
And then dance with the curtains

When the dame is lost for words
The baroness will produce the right statement
When the baroness looses control
The dame will bring her to her senses

One is not better than the other
Nor higher
Nor more sophisticated
Nor even more evolved

They are just different

And when you miss human differences
You are less human yourself

Minute nods

Life in the city is made possible by a fragile web of mutual trust, though a filigree of unspoken pleasantries, and an intricate meshwork of altruistic gestures. A permanent exchange of mute interrogations and minute nods between strangers forms a complex language that ensures the common conditions for survival. Of course we can see bodies looking past other bodies, trying to walk though, overtake, get there before them, without knowing very well where exactly is there, or whether there is in fact a desired place, or if what there is to do there is actually what needs doing. But that is always what is emphasised when talking about the city, isn't it, the rat race. It's a gross version of urban metabolism in which life and its processes are reduced to competition between contained unities, as if one had just arrived from a rushed reading of the theory of evolution and had forgotten how life is sustained by a convuluted tangle of symbiotic connections with other animals, pla...

The boy and the soldiers

Sitting on the riverbank I watch what floats by. The stream brings a child sitting on a hospital bed. He must be 12, about my son’s age. A bandage hangs from his left shoulder where his arm should be. He cries conpulsively, in a foreign language, so I can only imagine what he is saying. His wailing reminds me of phantom pain, and the tearful words seem to mourn the sudden amputation of his childhood, possibly performed without anaesthetic. But then I realise that his cries may refer to a deeper pain. Maybe the blast that took his arm also took his mum. Maybe all his family, as many in Gaza these days. Before this story enters into a loop, I flick it away with my thumb, making the stream move forward. Another image stops in front of me. Three young men on a desert road dance to Staying Alive by Bee Gees. Their faces look very familiar to me. But it’s not easy to see their faces. They are partially covered with helmets and their bodies are surrounded by military gear. They don’t sp...

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