Samuel Wood

Samuel Wood

WRITER – EDITOR – TEACHER

  • WHY A RHINOCEROS?
  • Aunt 5 – Ly Kim Hài

    The mediator who worked on the divorce of my Aunt 5 was quite astonished to see her always calm and smiling before the often difficult and exacting questions of their meetings often held. My Aunt 5 explained to us that she smiled to have the time to conjugate her verbs in her head without showing…

    Samuel Wood

    February 4, 2023
    A Montreal Diary, A Reader’s Diary, Living, Reading, The Perils of I Am
    Being Here, cooking, English, français, Grammar, Kim Thúy, language, vietnamese
  • Remember …

    . . . there is a war in Europe, . . . there are people, including the police, shooting each other in the United States, . . . this county, Canada, is extraordinarily complacent about its wealth and security, . . . there are refugees dying in the Mediterranean and Central America, . . .…

    Samuel Wood

    January 22, 2023
    Living, Writing
    activism, anxiety, calm, guilt, living, mental health, state of the world
  • The Perils of “I Am” – 3

    There are perhaps only three statements one can honestly make about oneself in the so-called English present simple. (So-called because the statement “I leave tomorrow” is grammatically correct.) These three are: “I am here”, and by extension, “I am of the world”, and, “I am mortal”. Philosophy, theology, ecology, and physics might quibble, but whatever…

    Samuel Wood

    August 14, 2022
    Living, The Perils of I Am
    English, Grammar, identity, language, self, zoom
  • On Death 3

    Some might say that such a vision might produce a callous indifference to life and its problems. After all, if everything will pass and is fleeting, then on a cosmic level all is the same. But I do not find this to be the case. Rather than indifference, life’s very fleetingness, be that a moment…

    Samuel Wood

    July 2, 2022
    On Death, Writing
    capitalism, death, fast food, life
  • The Perils of “I Am” – 2

    There is a terrible trick of language going on here. English-speakers learn, and every English grammar tell us, that we use the present simple for that which is true and that which is habitual and routine. The exception is those most fleeting of our experiences: our feelings. Perhaps because of their intensity, the grammar of…

    Samuel Wood

    June 21, 2022
    Living, The Perils of I Am
    English, Grammar, identity, language
  • The Perils of “I Am” – 1

    The first things we feel about ourselves are our body and our feelings (I am hungry; I am thirsty; I am hurt; I am content; I am discontent). The second often arise from the first (I am cared for; I am neglected). It is only later that we feel or believe ourselves to be something…

    Samuel Wood

    May 28, 2022
    Living, The Perils of I Am
    English, Grammar, identity, language
  • On Death 2

    When things have all got a bit too much (and if I remember) I sit and imagine our planet and the noise we produce seeping out into an empty and silent universe. Perhaps ours is the only sound of what we call “life”. At some point, those sounds will end, and the universe will return…

    Samuel Wood

    February 10, 2022
    On Death, Writing
    buddhism, byron, death, ecclesiastes, extinction, jodie foster, sci-fi, tara brach
  • On Death 1

    It is the first week of January, and I’m standing in the Chapel of the Nine Altars at Durham Cathedral. In front of me lies a gravestone, on top of which lies my four-year-old nephew, acting out his current obsession. Behind me are the remains and shrine of Saint Cuthbert. To my left, an altar…

    Samuel Wood

    January 30, 2022
    On Death, Writing
    childhood, christianity, death, durham cathedral, paula rego, science, thomas more
  • Why a rhinoceros?

    Behold! Albrecht Dürer’s rhinoceros! It is a marvel of imagination and technology. Not only did Dürer make his woodcut from written descriptions, but, with the arrival of moveable type printing, it became one of the best-known images in sixteenth-century Europe. The rhinoceros was the Grumpy Cat of 1515. The rhinoceros and printing mark the start…

    Samuel Wood

    January 26, 2022
    Uncategorized
    dürer, editing, proofreading, renaissance, rhinoceros

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