: it has been over a year since I took a blog break. . . . :  it was not meant to be so long but life has its own purposes, it seems to me, within which my will and desire are no more than receptive or resistant pawns.  : for instance, I wanted to write about India. I had  just...

: Some say horsemen, some say warriors, Some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest Vision in this dark world, but I say it’s What you love. sappho . . . : gazing down at the shining ocean surrounding Santorini Island, or walking through over-peopled Fira,  in between bouts of furious work, thoughts drift through my mind like untethered...

there are places that change you . . . . . travel is all about metamorphosis. : but there are places which, though you may never have been there before or even thought of going there, answer a question your soul did not know until then, that it was asking.  I felt this sense of profound recognition the first time...

 . . . there is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. : . . . over a decade ago, in 2002, river Vltava flooded. : people called it a Hundred Year Flood (some said Four Hundred...

    one of the most beautiful, moving, poetic films I have ever seen is Wings of Desire.. . . .  : i mean the original Wim Wenders version in German with subtitles  (German title literally translates as Wings over Berlin), with a script chiefly written by the brilliant and controversial Austrian writer Peter Handke. Not the hideous American remake...

taking a walk around my neighbourhood in Prague one windy day last week, I found myself reflecting upon the online month long self destructing launch of my first self-published E book, Greylands, in the light of the sales figures I had just rounded up for the first time. . . . : the launch took place late last year and...

   . . . i like that phrase. The small perfection of it. : what it means:  the fraught anticipation rising from the knowledge that there is something more to come. : the implication is that an event- the dropping of the first shoe  – occurred and that by so doing, implied and heralded a second event –  the dropping...

(with Crow) :     : Part 1. Being on tour is being inside a kalidoscope.   everything is turned inside out and upsidedown.  It is all bright flashes and shifty jewels. You try to work and you are being interviewed and photographed constantly for different articles and different publications. You are meeting fans and other writers, some old friends,...

it is important to be alert.   :   photo by Jan . . . being alert requires us to be present in the present. : by this, I mean we must be aware of what is happening in the present moment; Conscious of the people and things around us now, rather than always thinking about what will happen or...

: pictures by Jan Stolba . . . I think a lot about silence. . . . . . . i used to equate silence with power because for most of my life, I felt powerless and was talkative.  Silent people seemed mysteriously powerful to me, and I saw words and speech as lesser weapons for survival. They were all...