Projection; the missile of evolution.
Human beings don’t just adapt to their environment, they create and control it. Ever since the early hominids developed an opposable thumb that enabled them to grasp and manipulate objects, they could make things happen. The ability to throw missiles is a metaphor for how we could influence events at a distance, not only in space but also in time. The use of tools to make shelters, to control external sources of energy allowed us to escape the urgent prerogatives of survival and find time to think. Within the space... Read more »
Running from women with reindeer and other obsessions.
The U boats lay in wait for us as soon as we rounded North Cape. There was only a narrow passage between the tundra and the ice, and as they closed in on the convoy underwater, Stukas from their Norwegian bases, dive bombed us from above. It was hell! The... Read more »
Life expressed in water.
Our world and everything in it including ourselves has been shaped by water. Yet how much do we understand it. Left to itself, water approximates to a sphere, circular currents bounded by surface tension, but when subjected to gravity, then the circular forces in the water turn the flow into... Read more »
Climate change; the role of the artist.
What role does an artist have in the debate about the environment? Surely it all depends on scientific data and predictions. The solution must be based on interpretation of evidence and engineering solutions, mustn’t it? But it is not as easy as all that. There are so many factors to... Read more »
Back to Basics
The cottage peers anxiously over the terrace wall to where the road leaves the rushing Esk and winds up the hill to the rocky platform upon which the Romans built their marching fort and complained about the rain. Then the focus is taken up again, up the repeating green slope... Read more »
Nature cure; a case of living in the moment.
When I read Richard Mabey's book, Nature Cure, I could feel the how removing himself to a cottage in Norfolk for several months cured him of the ennuie and depression that had afflicted him after completing the mammoth enterprise of Flora Brittanica. The book was like a course of treatment,... Read more »
