Fire and ice

Sweet fire smoothed the ice before him burning and freezing his arm . He snatched it back sucking In his breath with a barely suppressed moan. He could see her on the other side. She was not looking at him, her eyes focussed to the left at something he could not see. 'Liliana?'. He spoke her name quietly, with a tentative smile. She did not react. He spoke loudly this time, 'Liliana!'. Nothing. Twenty minutes passed and suddenly she noticed him and smiled, smiled the old smile. For a moment the fire died down

Relaxing

Simon sat heavily, then sank back tentatively into the cushions. The TV chattered away to itself, quiet gales of laughter punctuating barely heard words. The carpet caressed his bare soles. He wiggled his toes. He could not, or would not, move. He breathed in, then out, feeling the pleasure of breath and calm. Simon looked at the floor.

she lay quietly listening to her own breathing, trying to time it with the rain hitting the roof. She found the rhythm sold, comforting, the regular beat matching life. Well, it had matched life. The bastard. He ruined it all. Now the rain comforted. She could breathe easily. She could stop thinking and be comforted by
solid things, real things. She could stretch in the morning and feel smooth silky sheets. There was no rush, no needs, no demands. No him.

A completed and complete poem

An incomplete poem

It felt done when I did it, but now that I've decided it isn't......

More wisdom from John Ruskin

you have been so created as to enjoy what is fitting for you, and a willingness to be pleased, as it was intended you should be. It is the child’s spirit, which we are then most happy when we most recover; only wiser than children in that we are ready to think it subject of thankfulness that we can still be pleased with a fair color or a dancing light. And, above all, do not try to make all these pleasures reasonable, nor to connect the delight which you take in ornament with that which you take in construction or usefulness. They have no connection; and every effort that you make to reason from one to the other will blunt your sense of beauty, or confuse it with sensations altogether inferior to it. You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased by them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance; at least I suppose this quill I hold in my hand writes better than a peacock’s would, and the peasants of Vevay, whose fields in spring time are as white with lilies as the Dent du Midi is with its snow, told me the hay was none the better for them.

Apple and Textbooks

As I am in the early stages of researching and writing an academic, university level textbook [which I hope will have some interest among general readers too] on the complex relationship between religion and society in the Atlantic world - and as I intended from the outset to publish this as a multimedia eBook - Apple's news is an unmitigated good for me.....but here is an early review focussed on its impact on the publishing world....

The Bookseller

Alone sphere insert

Simon rushed home. He had to before he forgot, before it was gone. He shoved the door back and slammed it behind, tripping on a bowl lying on the floor, then woke his computer, swearing at its slowness. He wrote.

She smiled. She was pretty - not perfectly so - her nose turned up too much at the end. But pretty. The cashier at the next till distracted her. The other girl was blonde but plain. Somehow the blonde annoyed Simon, her plainness bashing into him, upending the smooth tones vibrating through his whole. Then the beauty of his cashier turned back to Simon, penetrating and pleasing and assaulting, battering barriers silently. They chatted (Damn! Why couldn't he remember what they chatted about! No matter, he would describe the sense not the words). He smiled and looked into her soul - a counter attack of warmth but she evaded and plunged ever deeper inside Simon. She packed and smiled and talked and lifted bags into Simon's cart as he stood helpless watching owned by her, defences down in ruins. He said goodbye smiling and stumbling over ordinary words. She turned her beauty and warmth full on and he surrendered abjectly, turning and leaving aloneness breached and bleeding.

At last!

Here is the announcement:

http://www.ebookmagazine.co.uk/apple-announces-textbooks-and-ibooks-author/20122196

Here is a review:

http://www.ebookmagazine.co.uk/creating-books-with-apples-ibooks-author-is-a-doddle/20122198

It looks like it works!

When I started writing multimedia eBooks, I used Apple's Pages word processor because I could drag and drop media files into text documents and manipulate their appearance, size position easily - and wished Apple would come out with an e-publishing program that worked as well - it seems they have!

January 18 day of protest

The internet is under attack by large, traditional media companies who are using legislatures to contain, restrict and mould the net, including the world wide web, into their restrictive practices. Tomorrow a number of sites will be 'black' in protest - I took this from the Wikipedia English language site, but it applies generally - even here:

We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it.
But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.

The Mystery of Relaxation

Simon sat heavily, then sank back tentatively into the cushions. The TV chattered away to itself, quiet gales of laughter punctuating barely heard words. The carpet caressed his bare soles. He wiggled his toes. He could not, or would not, move. He breathed in, then out, feeling the pleasure of breath and calm. Simon looked at the floor.