Light and shadow

Any religion is a shadow of God.
But the shadows of God are not God.

        Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Women Who Dye Their Hair

Some of us have done it since our twenties
when our hair turned white on the death of a loved one
or it ran in the family like baldness, and some of us
spray red or purple on shaved stubble,
and others have let it creep up on us,
counting the odd hair, then the fifth, the fiftieth,
till our teenagers point out how old we’re getting
but our lovers who hate anything artificial
like make-up and sequins, though they accept
icecream and the Pill, say we shouldn’t bother,
so we steal home from Boots with the ColorGlo
and lock ourselves in the bathroom in rubber gloves,
emerge an hour later ten years younger
with a smart grey streak over one temple
and mahogany smudges round the jaw line.
And when the roots start to show we carelessly
pop into the hairdresser and book a colour
which means a cut and finish and takes all morning
so we can catch up on our reading, extending
our knowledge of the stars and multiple orgasm,
but we have to go every six weeks or it starts to fade
and by now the local firm is turning our hair to hay
so we find a better one at fifty quid a splash,
a rollercoaster we can’t get off of,
and we decide to let it all grow out and be our age
which isn’t a hundred and five but might as well be.

                                Janet Fisher

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fair warning

One of the saddest lessons of history is this:
If we’ve been bamboozled long enough,
we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.
We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth.
The bamboozle has captured us.
It’s simply too painful to acknowledge,
even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken.
Once you give a charlatan power over you,
you almost never get it back.

             Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

 

 

 

 

Lost in translation

Do not imagine that art is something which is designed
to give gentle uplift and self-confidence.
Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the English sense.
But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for life-jacket.

            Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot

A good bet

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

        Franz Kafka The Zürau Aphorisms 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Think twice

Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas
are not only ill prepared for making discoveries;
they also make very poor observations.

        Claude Bernard, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine

 

 

 

 

 

Honor where honor is due

May we learn to honor the hammock, the siesta,
        the nap and the pause in all its forms.

                        Alice Walker, The Cushion in the Road