"The only thing that will make you happy is being happy with who you are, and not who people think you are." Goldie Hawn
08 May 2016
Browsing category: Essence
03 May 2016
"Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others." Rosa Parks
05 Apr 2016
"We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.”
John Fowles
22 Mar 2016
“Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.” Friedrich Nietzsche
16 Mar 2016
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
Rumi
04 Mar 2016
On a recent trip to North Carolina I got to taste Moonshine. I'm not sure how genuine its manufacture was and I seriously doubt that a clandestine outfit up in the Appalachian Mountains was concocting this 'water of life' on dark, moonless nights. The oily slick of the liquor followed by the throat-burn and then the warm internal glow it gave me had me imagining what sort of ingredients went into the distillation process that delivered this impactful liquid. I remember studying chemistry at school and university and for some
22 Jan 2016
"The effect of being bombarded with all of these points of view is that we don’t have a point of view and we don’t have a story. We lose the continuity of our experiences; we become people who are written on from the outside." Sam Keen
18 Nov 2015
"In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different." Coco Chanel
15 Nov 2015
One of the characteristics of having an uncommon name like Callan is that it can cause you to become self-conscious when you are young. I have mentioned this before in relation to the choice of my children’s names. Growing up I never encountered another soul called Callan. The first time I met another Callan I was in my 20’s. I asked him, “Do you like your name?” He shrugged, smiled and said, “Yeah, I actually do.” Up until then, for me, the name had been burdensome - always having to repeat it, spell it, correct people who
01 Nov 2015
One of my favourite writers is the Danish story teller, Karen Blixen. She wrote under the pen name of Isak Dinesen (amongst other names), and I love her stories (like Seven Gothic Tales and Babette’s Feast). Her most famous novel is Out of Africa and the iconic line, “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills …” has echoed in my brain since first reading it and then hearing Meryl Streep annunciate those Danish-accented words in the movie of the same name. Blixen’s life fascinates me and when I was fortunate enough to