It was visible from some way off, this ancient camel thorn. It demanded to be viewed in its full glory, with nothing of the shrub-land obscuring it. Even in death it still towered over its surroundings, more mesmerising than in life. A piece of sublime earth art. It tells, with agonising clarity, of hundreds of years of life in its brutal world. How it had hopefully pushed out its new growth. How the rough winds and the eland bull’s horns had torn at it and split it, how the long droughts had slowed it, then stopped it, and its...
Continue readingManipulation of perceptions at warp-speed
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – the more things change, the more they stay the same. Said to be an old French proverb, but also attributed to Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808 – 1890), French novelist, journalist and one-time editor of Le Figaro. In the St James translation of The Bible, Solomon is said to pronounce in Ecclesiastes: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” Every generation, as we older people know, confidently pronounces the most damning prognosis on the...
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