Claire > Recent Status Updates

Quickly, While They Still Have Horses the title of a short story in which a foreign girlfriend of a Belfast born young man, both living in London, on learning they can visit a horse, finally agrees to visit his hometown, after refusing every other invitation.
It is not for him, or his family or the town, but the chance to witness something that represents an aspect of the past, something now considered of no use.

A thought-provoking conversation between a political scientist/freelance journalist and the man who dedicated his later life to family therapy and constellations.
Looking deep into the matrilineal lines, I noticed patterns and sensed, decisions and movements made and why. A kind of resonance and acknowledgement. Interesting to see how this relates to Hellinger's way of seeing. It feels very similar.

Philippe Sands writes of a visit to the Chagos archipelago 3 yrs after the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled it was part of the territory of Mauritius and that Britain must end its illegal occupation.

He travels with Liseby, to her birthplace, Île du Coin, a visit made possible by the case brought by Mauritius against the Maldives in Hamburg, at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

A Walk in the Theban Necropolis by Rosemary Mahoney

Walking to the Temple of Hatshepsut on the Eest Bank of the Nile she steps on a bone fragment with 4 teeth in it. And pockets it. A neglected pit yields other fragments. A burial ground. They succumb to the Amelia Edwards syndrome, the contradiction of deploring and denouncing sepulchural excavation, legal & predatory only to readily indulge in it themselves.

One essay, The Mother by Hisham Matar, is a painful recollection of days spent at his mother's side where she is helpless and everything about her body and vitality is diminishing. He carries out gestures to try and help her, ease her discomfort.
As a 2000 year old mummified body is readied for its return to Egypt, Matar facilitates his mother's departure from Cairo to London, keeping her alive and comfortable.

"I immediately felt an unmistakable familiarity with the space around me: a total understanding of the way things and people were in this place, as if nothing here could surprise me, and at the same time a feeling of total unfamiliarity, a painful separation from the me who grew up in this place, because the person I had become was irrelevant here."

Imagination is our only way to see beyond the present emergency. Imagination allows compassion, even to those who do not deserve it. Imagination is willing to tell the story again. Imagination is the power to change.

"Anyone who joins another story by chance, knows they will have to rewrite it later. Who am I? That question takes on deeper meaning if you have arrived in your story with the first few pages ripped out."

Hearts break when hope is gone...
Imagination is key. To see past the present, with its assumptions and constraints. To see around corners.
For me it was literature. But all art is there to develop our imaginative capacity.
That's crucial.