I went to Cornwall to escape broken things. I thought it was my work, a doomed quango project to build the unbuildable database that no one wanted, but Marie assured me it was our relationship. Do you really want to do this? I’m sick to the eye teeth of your back-end issues. We were both strung
Read MoreGuru Dan Fennel ambles across the maple floorboards of Yoga Sky Studio. His elegant toes scatter cushions and stroke the cheek of a young disciple, supine on her mat. Dan once travelled from Madras to Seoul on foot. On the way, he threaded the following beads into his string of malas: dharma transmi
Read MoreWhen he asked me if I was the writer I just laughed. You know the laugh. You once described it as drier than a corked bottle of Chardonnay and no less unpleasant. But he persevered, told me he had a story for me. What is it about people and writers? Would they tell a painter that they had a picture
Read MoreGeorgia Leland had forgotten to water her indoor garden and the leaves were fading from green to brown. Perched on a wide wooden windowsill, exposed to the bright Kansas sun, her stem-and-leaf children yawned lazily and stretched out, searching for drink. It was the longest they’d gone without it
Read MoreThe afternoon sun hit the terrace at a one hundred and thirty-five-degree angle. The shadow cast on the wall by a figure about halfway through a yoga routine suddenly straightened up and stood motionless, silently observing. The figure continued with its routine, oblivious, until, reaching the floor
Read MoreThe pebbles hurt the soles of her feet. She doesn’t care. Hurting is good. Pain is what she deserves. She steps into the water. The sea is deceptive. The shallow, nibbling waves with their light froth of white are not the warm waters of the Aegean. They freeze her ankles, her shins. She shuffles f
Read MoreOne day, towards evening, as the sun was declining over the distant hilltops, and dusk thickened the air like dust rising from the winding road, a figure appeared some way off, approaching the town slowly, steadily, until some minutes later we could make out that it was a man. At that time, we had b
Read MoreIt’s their highly responsive MHV! Aurelia said, adopting that high-flown tone of hers. They were discussing the intelligence of birds. Aurelia had edged the conversation in that direction, maybe as a way of proving, if proof was needed, how very clever she was. Her PhD had been on avian cogniti
Read More