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With the beauty of the moment and its surroundings. Time passes but the memory lasts.

And He called And He said But our ear is hard of hearing The land is not mine I inhabit a space A loan from Heavens An Abode above the Earth Where Birds chirp under the canopy of Trees I did not plant nor watered nor tendered as they grew. The land is not mine. I inhabit this space and this small body for a time the boundaries of this Eternal Soul I have been granted weave into…

Is the opening line of a 19th century poem by Galician poetess Rosalía de Castro. Though I have studied the poem and generic Galician and Spanish Literature since my time at school, I have yet to be convinced that there was no political nationalism embedded in the lyrical ode to our shared homeland. However, I am equally unconvinced this political budding nationalism is not a flower  stem of the…

I shouldn’t leave the asylum Without going mad. Why does every old lunatic end up searching for the answer to their Life unanswered questions At the end of the world, As if there wasn’t already a million Other answers they could have taken? Is madness the end result of a failed quest Or the only reason for the pilgrimage? Yet again, I wonder who is crazier: The ones that search Or the…

Is not paved in gold or silver But sodden and tough Where feet are muddied Boots stuck And not a soul is there To see us through The Road to Knowing Has no end and but a faint beginning It has no voice but the sound of birds and insects Intersected with waves The whisper of the breeze And the hum of a distant motorbike Crying to be heard How do I know I have arrived if I have yet to…

Like seconds moving on an old fashioned watch Miracles shine a light without a stop: The wonder comes not from the heart, Apreciative, But from the knowing, haltingly, That every one of them had not to be Yet still was. There could have been no morning But there was. There might not have been moonlight But there was. There needn´t have been a heart Beating within Or a soul reading…

As I watch the wind rise horses in the bay Another Jew drops caution to the wind That darkens the cloudless sky of Erezt With shadows darker than darkness itself A product of an absence of 13 as black as The blackest life absorbing hole In our galaxy. Thoughts that should have never been engendered barely skimmed The realm of the mind and in the hands and weapons of the unholy…

The 17th century in Europe saw achievements in literature and art that are still the centrepiece to much of the word’s art education, yet when Pulitzer Award winner Saher Alhorra re-created one of its most renowned genres, none of the world’s educated journalists was able to see through the deception, or genius, in the remake. Madonna and Child, by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo Bartolomé Esteban…

There’s only sea Beyond the gentle sound of Lapping waves. But perhaps the infinity of its hues Of blue commands the urgency Of a love greater Than we can grasp Deeper than the ocean’s Vastness, Larger than its permanence. Majestic as is Unbounded. Love that has no beginning And no end That lives forever Demands nothing Gives endlessly in return Of nothing And, as the…

I have no understanding of the mystical meaning of numbers, I only know I have a faint and largely irrational dislike of even years. However, I do understand there is a battle the world at large seems to be losing. At least, the world I know. As many people casually do on a Sunday, I opened Facebook, only to find the following repost by an old friend, from my time at university and more…

Of moon and fragrant air, When the days are shorter Than darkness And warmer than the morning breath. Time doesn’t pass. Time is. Life.

The guy who tried to assassinate DT last night is a teacher.I have been a teacher longer than I have been an adult.I have taught at 15 schools, 6 language teaching centres and 3 universities/colleges in 4 different and 2 continents.I was a manager at the IBO for 3 years and an international examiner for 8 more.I think I know the system and I have been worried for over 10 years but also shocked…

“The human heart needs to believe something, and it believes lies when it finds no truths to believe.” M. José de Larra (1936) On Saturday afternoon, Goretti Sanmartín, the minority mayor of Santiago de Compostela and a member of the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG), unveiled a statue in one of the city’s main streets. The statue depicts a young man who died at the age of 25 in a shootout…

Pedro Sánchez, the Pope, Francesca Albanese and Antonio Guterres all stem from different countries, have different languages of origin and varying home and school backgrounds. However,they share two intrinsic characteristics not many are open to discuss: they hail from countries which not only have a long history of Christianity as a firm pillar of their stability and by default the anti-Semitism…

Sometimes we think life is like a movie, but reality always surpasses imagination, both in kindness and in evil. Most of the time, we live in a haze, not knowing where is good. That’s why we search for answers outside ourselves. The fact is, sometimes we see things that can never be unseen. Some friendships cannot be broken because they were born outside the haze.

When I think about the way the world is trying to erase the memory of the Holocaust by inverting reality, I think about all the times I watched a movie about the Shish or read a book; from Anne Frank to Man’s Search for Meaning through The Sound of Music and Life Is Beautiful and I wonder how all those who thought they knew how to be good turned out to be the same as the ordinary Germans, Polish…

As the waves through the flat looking ocean draw the day to an end, I have only one question and the faint mist of an uncertain answer: what have I learnt today? As the world balances on the edge of yet another war, while a host of smaller wars are eternally been waged in places we do not seem to talk about that much, I double down on my stubborn reason de vie, I learn not from those who pray…