Variation on a theme of Sappho

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 04/26/2015

Except for one, we only have fragments of Sappho’s poems. Among the best known is Fragment No. 104A, which Anne Carson translates into English in this manner: Evening you gather back all that dazzling dawn has put…

Of ghosts and broiled fish

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 04/19/2015

I do not believe in ghosts, and yet I am afraid of them. Staying alone in a room at night, even in our own house, gives me the shivers. In order to sleep, I must cover myself…

Treading on roses

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 04/12/2015

That sunny morning, having come out of a bookshop, I passed by a young woman by the entrance of a car park selling plants. She had before her about four or five flowerpots. One held a lush…

Treading on roses

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 04/11/2015

That sunny morning, having come out of a bookshop, I passed by a young woman by the entrance of a car park selling plants. She had before her about four or five flowerpots. One held a lush…

Two ways of looking at the crucified Christ

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 03/29/2015

In 2012, the wife and I visited the Monastery of the Incarnation in Avila, which St. Teresa entered at age 20, and in which she lived for 30 years and wrote and had many of her mystical…

Seeds for the journey

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 03/22/2015

On a trip to a distant province to attend a court hearing, I struck up a conversation with the in-house counsel of a mining company. He told me, among other things, that he could go home only…

Angel key

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 03/15/2015

When I retired, I had my personal belongings brought home from the office, which included a steel filing cabinet.  During the years of my judgeship I made sure to keep the cabinet unlocked because I had lost…

No dogs allowed

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 03/08/2015

At the end of a Mass that we attended, the lector announced that churchgoers should not bring their dogs with them into church.  The prohibition seemed reasonable, and I knew why it came about. We had seen…

Forty shades of gray

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 02/22/2015

Gray — the color of overcast skies and the sea under them, the color of silver, of distance, of twilight.  And of the brain, perhaps the reason why we associate gray with intellect, wisdom and knowledge. The…

The hug that’s as good as a healing

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 02/15/2015

In my mind I keep images of Pope Francis to retrieve whenever I need inspiration, much as one would keep one’s spouse’s or friend’s photograph in one’s wallet. For already, in just a few years, the media…

God of the streets

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 01/18/2015

The girl sat in front of us, a baby half her size across her lap. To her left many other children, likewise in their preteens and selling candles, squat on the ledge that protruded from the footing…

River

Simeon Dumdum Jr. 01/11/2015

Not too long ago, while travelling to the south of the island, we chanced upon a river that had split into two.  The municipal government had deemed it practical to reroute it, but when a typhoon bore…

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