-
Closing A Chapter
All the best films starting with a scene set in a cemetery seem to go for rainy weather. A small group dressed in black, under umbrellas, gathered around an open hole in the ground as a pastor says a few words from the little black book, and the casket is lowered into the grave. Sobs and sympathy all round, flowers and earth on the wooden box, and off we all go. There follows the usual words as people walk off, or the detective in charge comments to the Sergeant, or the lover races up to the waiting limousine hoping that now the time has come....
-
The Urge to Travel
The season has hardly begun, and in some areas the snow has barely melted from the roads, but the first motorcyclists are venturing out, letting the breeze blow - symbolically - through their hair as they blow the cobwebs off winter-stored bikes and warm leathers. I sit, almost every working day, in my commuter train and dream of places further afield, of packing a small bag with the bare necessities, and just taking off again....
-
Stone by Stone
Freemasonry is, partially, built upon a system of symbolism which is used to assist with ethical, logical and philosophical discussion and learning. It takes a raw recruit, or candidate, into its Masonic workshop as an Entered Apprentice; rough and unready for what is to follow, for the learning process, for confronting new ethical and humanitarian ideas. Symbolically, this new candidate is shown as being a rough stone, fresh from the quarry, torn out of the mother rock, and unprepared. ...
-
The Best Laid Plans
I am one of those older people who is not young enough, nor old enough, to wish to celebrate a birthday. I am past the stage of claiming each quarter of a year to increase my age, and not yet at the stage of adding each quarter of a year to my time spent on this small planet to impress with my longevity. Unfortunately there is never an age when other people do not wish to celebrate your birthday, whether they do the same with theirs or not....
-
The Big Gold Nightmare
I met a North American from the United States in a small town in northern Germany a few years ago. He was sitting on a bench under a tree in what passes as the town's main square, where the May Tree is erected each year, and looking very sorry for himself....
