ofthewedge

rooting around for grubs in diverse soils

Flotsam and jetsam

  • Beim Schlafengehen

    Nun der Tag mich müd gemacht,Soll mein sehnliches VerlangenFreundlich die gestirnte NachtWie ein müdes Kind empfangen. Hände, lasst von allem Tun,Stirn, vergiss du alles Denken,Alle meine Sinne nunWollen sich in Schlummer senken. Und die Seele, unbewacht,Will in freien Flügen schweben,Um im Zauberkreis der NachtTief und tausendfach zu Leben. Hermann Hesse was not old when he… Read more

  • On letting go

    And you’ll miss me more as the narrowing weeks wing by. Someday duly, oneday truly, twosday newly, till whensday. James Joyce, Finnegans Wake Nature, so hard at work all spring, now displays the results of its endeavours, and May Day offers a moment to admire them. Lady’s smocks with their pastel gossamer petals belilac the… Read more

  • The purging of all meats

    Though much is taken, much abides; and thoughWe are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Tennyson, Ulysses Looking for Jesus Somewhere… Read more

  • Spring Notes Vol. I

    in Just-  spring          when the world is mud-  luscious … E.E. Cummings Severe cold came in January for a week and then snow fell from the heavens and stayed for a while like it was smothering with an alien simplicity all that was impure in our world, until the snow itself became crunchy and differentiated, complicated,… Read more

  • Everything is irksome! -Notes on The Wanderer

    I have wandered far from that ring-giver and would not renegue on this migrant solitude. I have seen halls in flames, hearts in cinders, the benches filled and emptied, the circles ofcompanions called and broken. That day I was a rich young man, who could tell you now of flittings, night-vigils, let-downs, women’s cried-out eyes. From Seamus… Read more

  • Symptom Recital

    Manchester 1996 Carly: he’s a rather sad Byronic figure don’t you think? Imogen: hmm, no, more of a Dickensian chimneysweep He, who grown aged in this world of woe, In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life, So that no wonder waits him–nor below Can Love or Sorrow, Fame, Ambition, Strife, Cut to his… Read more

  • Ubi sunt

    This week I discovered my five-year-old, the star of my previous offering, in the shower helpfully cleaning my mudcaked running shoes, doing so, unhelpfully with my toothbrush. She has form, our wee chickadee. A couple of years ago she determined it was necessary to clean (umyć in her native Polish) the TV. This she did… Read more

  • Notes from Autumn

    Images of our species’ capacity for depravity and cruelty are served to the screens on our desks and in our pockets. My daughter notices other things on her daily scoot to school along the back roads. The little bollard that flashes rhymically unless it detects sunlight, the opening in the row of conifers exposing an… Read more

  • What if? Football minus sportswashing

    “Khaldoon said he would rather spend 30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world to sue them for the next 10 years.” The football association, according to the email, now had the possibility “to avoid the destruction of their rules and organization.” Der Spiegel If professional football is now a deep cesspit of… Read more

  • Race and the European Union: Can the subaltern speak?

    They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte At the end of a podcast interview with author Rafia Zakaria, the presenter said the European Commission had been asked how many members of the current college of commissioners were persons of colour. The reply was that the question… Read more