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Halcyon actively monitors change covering more than 150 key elements of life.

A Mundane Comedy is Dominic Kelleher's new book, which will be published later in 2023. The introduction is available here and further extracts will appear on this site in the coming months. Please get in touch with any questions or thoughts.

The 52:52:52 project, launching both on this site and on Twitter in mid 2023 will help you address 52 issues with 52 responses over 52 weeks.

Love

On Love
Post Secret
Halcyon In Kal… 29 May 2023

 

At least until the transhumanist dream becomes a reality, which according to one leading modern philosopher may be never, we will cling on to whatever we can that reminds us of our loved ones.

On Dante
Dante
Halcyon In Kal… 27 May 2023

 

Is it possible to appreciate fully Dante’s work without understanding the man himself and the society in which he lived? A recent book attempted to shed new light on what some have called the greatest of all European poems.

What's Changing? - Love
Love
Halcyon Imagines 14 May 2023

 

Please see below selected recent love-related change.

 

See also:

 

March 2023

On Provence

Provencal

 

Now online, Paul Hillier et al's Proensa interpretations of the troubadours have long enchanted me - although perhaps not some of the dinner party guests on whom I inflicted the vinyl version at various times in my more earnest past!

Is it really as long ago as the 1980s that I specialised in Medieval Provençal and wrote my dissertation on the amour de loinh of Peire Vidal? Rupert Gordon and I were the only students at Edinburgh to choose the option in many a year (perhaps since the 1950s, judging by the stamps in some of the books I borrowed!), and having been back in the George Square library for the first time since then relatively recently, I wonder whether anyone else has borrowed any of these books since!

What's Changing? - Presence
Presence
Halcyon Inspired 28 February 2023

 

Please see below selected recent presence-related change.

 

See also:

 

February 2023

 

September 2021

On Leonard Cohen
blog image
Halcyon In Kal… 27 February 2023

 

So come, my friends, be not afraid.
We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made;
In love we disappear

On Poetry
Poetry
Halcyon In Kal… 18 January 2023

 

I share below (without comment...which is a personal act that belongs in the real, not the virtual world), an evolving, far from exhaustive, but from an emotional point-of-view, highly illustrative and authentic selection of my favourite poetry and lyrics...

 

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And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace
And a wound that will never heal

- from Tom Traubert's Blues, by Tom Waits

 

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(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift

The Uses of Sorrow, by Mary Oliver

 

What's New? - Love
Love
Halcyon Identifies 1 January 2023

 

Halcyon curates the most significant love-related content from carefully selected sources. Please contact us if you'd like our help with love-related challenges.

On Xenophilia
blog image
Halcyon In Kal… 25 November 2022

 

During dark days of worsening refugee crises and increasing populism, can we still imagine reaching a state of "xenophilia"...overcoming our "homophily", i.e. the love of that which is like us, and reaching the love of that which is different?

Indeed, if we're ever going to care enough about conflict, genocide, poverty, hunger etc. enough to act on them properly, then we need to try much harder to avoid conflict with people we might not yet fully understand.

 

 

On Legacy
Christopher Hitchens
Halcyon Inspired 11 September 2022

 

As people try to come to terms with the passing of HM Queen Elizabeth II and on the 21st anniversary of the September 11th attacks, I was reminded of this earlier post on legacy...especially the words in bold.

In the last months of his life, a physically weakened Christopher Hitchens travelled to the Texas Freethought Convention and while there, an eight-year-old girl asked Hitchens what books she should consider reading. Intrigued, Hitchens spent 15 minutes chatting with the youngster and sketching out a reading list (below). His last words to her? "Lots of love...remember the love bit..."