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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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
WRITER – EDITOR – TEACHER
Samuel Wood 