cacoethes scribendi

Dire mirth and stories of our time

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    REFLECTIONS THE DAY AFTER THE ASCENSION OF LEO XIV  or: BRIDGEHEAD REVISITED Well, yesterday was a day, wasn’t it? It was for me (so many of them are now), especially as I had secured the most coveted table at my local cafe – an accomplishment in and of itself but worth the assay as I…

    SDW

    May 11, 2025
    whimsy
    catholic, faith, LEO XIV, Pope
  • Notes on Watching the Coronation of King Charles III From a Dentist’s Chair

    I remember back to the day Dr Ramsay introduced headphones to his dental practice. Finally! I thought. Now’s my chance to hear Rach 5 – I can only hope my time in the chair lasts at least forty one minutes and forty seconds, I wouldn’t want to miss one agonizing note. I was nine, you…

    SDW

    July 4, 2023
    Uncategorized
    coronation
  • Atwood, Eyes Closed

    Look at her. That’s her portrait. Her eyes are closed. Her smile more enigmatic than the Louvre could contain. She could be dreaming. She could be recalling the warmth of his arms. She could be remembering the garden. She could be imagining peace and birdsong and the bee-loud glen, of beauty none of us would…

    SDW

    July 4, 2023
    Uncategorized
    a word after a word, Margaret Atwood, philately
  • Jimi In July

    Every summer, ‘round about the start of July, I have to crank this one up just to blow out the cobwebs. I guess I’m getting soft and maudlin in my old age but I find Hendrix is beautiful to watch in this performance – the expressions on his face are understated, natural, caring, veiled with…

    SDW

    July 4, 2023
    Uncategorized
    Hendrix, Jimi, Jimi Hendrix, Star Spangled Banner
  • Poets Beware!

    SDW

    June 18, 2023
    Uncategorized, whimsy
    MÄRKLIN
  • Two Corkscrews Loose In The Morass: Only One Gets a Hammock

    Picture us then, with a wide shot of Danny Rae and yours true stranded in the jungle swamps of Louisiana – in a sweltering bayou hell. Now a close up on me, mired to my knees in sulphurous muck in a cyclorama designed by Edvard Munch, had he vacationed in the tropics more often. If…

    SDW

    June 2, 2023
    whimsy
    1970s Canada, Carleton, drunken professor, lecture, ottawa, pipe smoking, safari, student, tobacco, university
  • Evelyn

    Evelyn looks up from the flowered branchlet to see her William, returned to pre-war youth, unkempt, hair absurdly long but (she slips a decade) the way of the world since the Beatles, he’s wearing his favourite olive-green corduroy blazer still a size too big, a labourer’s denim pants. Her heart swells, brimming with joy, her…

    SDW

    May 25, 2023
    Uncategorized
  • Manufactured Coincidence

    It can be entertaining to pretend there are no coincidences, that they exist only as subjective observations like last night driving alone in the rain with the bluetoothed music out of my control – for some reason the streaming service jumps to a phantom playlist of “song suggestions” every time I restart the car. Since…

    SDW

    May 25, 2023
    Uncategorized
    "As I Lay Sleeping, georgia o'keefe
  • 421

    April 21 stands out for two reasons: My brother’s birthday (his name is Bill but he likes to be called William, should you ever have the pleasure of meeting him) and the memory of a Canterbury morning when some of my students were writing the morning announcements.  Yesterday they had proposed making some sort of…

    SDW

    May 25, 2023
    Uncategorized
  • Innocent Abroad

    (part three) ****An excerpt from The simpletones Chronicles****      Four fresh Newcastles materialize.   “We decided we might as well stay the night on the top of the hill – it was Summer Solstice and there were others with the same idea. We socialized a little with some of the hippies who had made the…

    SDW

    May 25, 2023
    Uncategorized
    1971, bowie, glastonbury
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