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The 52:52:52 project, launching both on this site and on social media in early 2024 will help you address 52 issues with 52 responses over 52 weeks.

A Mundane Comedy is Dominic Kelleher's new book, which will be published in mid 2024. The introduction is available here and further extracts will appear on this site and on social media in the coming months.

This site addresses what's changing, in our own lives, in our organisations, and in wider society. You'll learn about key changes across more than 150 areas, ranging from ageing and time, through nature and animals, to kindness and love...and very much else inbetween.

Halcyon's aim is to help you reflect on how you can better deal with related change in your own life.

Love

On Bob Marley

Bob Marley

 

Bob Marley has enchanted me since the summer following his very untimely death. Too young to be very aware of him in his short prime, I discovered him during those long, languid days in my always special place.

Belvedere

On Calvin and Hobbes
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Halcyon In Kal… 27 June 2018

"Possibly the best comic strip EVER in the history of the entire universe", claimed one commentator.

I think Dennis the Menace (in its heydey), Gaston Lagaffe and one or others may occupy the same pantheon as Calvin and Hobbes, but there is little doubt that, for all those of us who have been deeply touched by the warmth, humour, sheer humanity with which Bill Watterson blessed us over so many years, these creations occupy a very special place in our hearts.

On Echoes

Sometimes we choose to wander, sometimes we are chosen to wander, down the dark deserted halls of memory:

'Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream...
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years...
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.'

On Altruism

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Imagining, while still healthy, donating organs to total strangers without expecting anything in return. The BBC nterviewed a man who did just this after his wife committed suicide.

She had been suffering from progressive multiple sclerosis, and when the pain and suffering became too much for her to bear, she took her own life, leading him to a suspended prison sentence - for failing to stop her - and ultimately to the decision to help others to live by doing as much as he possibly could - by giving away one of his kidneys and part of his liver, and then waiting to become a bone marrow donor.

On "Favourite" Songs

Many evenings of my youth were spent listening to Radio Caroline's "Personal Top 30s", from 6-9pm and 9pm-midnight on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings. My friends and I would write down, swap, be inspired by and gently criticise each others' choices, but none of us ever got round to posting ours in, and our chance vanished into the North Sea with the Mi Amigo in March 1980.

However, since 2008 I have listened almost constantly to Caroline, which plays "Personal Top 15s" every weekday at 10am CET, but again, I've not summoned the nerve to send mine in.

On Birthdays

My heart is like a singing bird, whose nest is in a watered shoot.

My heart is like an apple-tree, whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit.

My heart is like a rainbow shell that paddles in a halcyon sea.

My heart is gladder than all these.

Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down.

Hang it with vair and purple dyes.

Carve it in doves and pomegranates.

On The Great Gatsby

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Can we ever escape - do we even really wish to escape - our own green lights flashing across the bay of memory, across the sound of time?

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart.

The too obstrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing.

They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity.

The rhythm of the year, summing up and sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes.

It took me - at least - half my life to pick up and read such a slim volume, but now I find myself entranced by the clarity, craftsmanship and compassion permeating The Great Gatsby.