“Life was different back then,” old people say. But Izra's life seemed to mirror mine. A vigorous young man in his twenties, Izra was poised for the next leadership position in church. However a series of events tarnished his reputation, and it would be forty years before he was cleared of his “bad name”.
I've tried using neem soap on my itching skin. It has been two nights so far, and it does seem to soothe the itch.
Why haven't I heard about it earlier in my life? I asked Jill, my friend from England, and she said that the Chinese people do not usually hear about neem because the tree simply does not grow in China.
However the medicinal effects of neem appear to be well-known – or, dare I say, even ubiquitous – in India. (according to Wikipedia: “Margo soap uses margosa [also known as neem] as its main ingredient.“)
Warning: image-heavy content follows.
Elga tossed her hair in the mirror and looked at her red evening-dress. It still frightened her sometimes, how she was alone in a hotel room, far away from home. She found herself missing her mother – how far she had flown, beyond her mother's soft lap!
Elga wistfully moved her thoughts away from her mother's gentle yet firm touch, and settled her mind on the little plushie that she had bought from this country's National Oceanarium: a penguin. Snuggled next to the moon-white pillow in her room, it'd be her companion for the remaining five days.
Looking at herself one last time in the mirror, she took a deep breath, and strode into the bar, where a waitress in red lipstick and power blazer stood to attention. “Table for one, please. I'm fine by the bar.”
Mamood tossed restlessly on the wooden floor. This abandoned shophouse lay next to a busy road, and the chatter of motorbikes, and blares of overloaded trucks, ate into his thoughts whenever he tried to focus his mind.
It was no good. He couldn't think properly, at this rate.
One moon cycle has passed, once again.
I've been disciplined about applying betamethasone cream to my eczema skin.
Weather has been pleasantly cool – albeit a little grey – and
Let me replay some oft-repeated statements.
“This island suffers from a scarcity of land.”
“This is not just population density, this is hyper-density.”
(source: a 46-minute documentary. Metropolis – The Search For A Third Place. Hosted on Channel News Asia. includes advertisements. Published on 13 Sep 2025. Accessed on 15 Sep 2025.)
Hi, by way of introduction: I have gone by many names, and now I'm trying to move 3C humans (Curious, Creative, Crazy) from a place of suffocation and over-crowdedness in urban settings, to a sense of spaciousness and easy (or at least, easier) breathing. I do this through the following methodologies:
To do this, I must first:
The hoped-for outcome of all these practices: a sense of joy, identity, and meaning, in the life of a human being whom I shall term Hearth-Dweller Aleph.
My heart is stone The moon is silent and absent Like my mother
O Mother — Thou art dead!
My Buddhist friend, Maia Duerr, publishes a public newsletter upon every moon cycle, and I want to follow suit.
And I believe that this moon-aligned behaviour is alive in practitioners of the Jewish tradition.
Different faiths, same moon. Different beliefs, same planet.
without further ado, here are snapshots from my part of the world:
Warning: image-heavy content follows
A big Thank You to the magnificent vocalists – and distinguished instrumentalists – who have given me an education in jazz repertoire.
This list is, of course, not exhaustive.
I told my sister-in-Christ that I was reading up on the Balkan conflict and various historical tragedies. Then she said, “why do you need to read that? the Bible already has war and violence.”
So, I will now direct my attention to visual depictions of Biblical violence.
The above list is certainly not exhaustive.
The somewhat provocative title of this post is a nod to Simone de Beauvoir's famous book, “The Second Sex”, where sex is a somewhat quaint word for gender.
As an aside, a quote that has stuck with me from that book is: “a woman finds her value in her reflection in a man's eyes.”
And: “a young girl is taught from toddler-age that she has to behave in a feminine way. She must not open her legs wide; she must make sure her skirt does not reveal her panties while she is playing with other four-year-old children... These norms are imposed by a congregation of much older women, who confine her with a multitude of rules that delineate feminine behaviour and un-feminine behaviour.”
Okay, back to my post.
If the second sex is female, and the first sex is male, what is the third sex? I submit that the Third Sex is the male that crumbles apart in a family context, when he navigates married life with a spouse. Suddenly he finds that his own boyhood has not prepared him to handle the storms in “adult” life. All his life he has whined about – and resented – his domineering father, and now, suddenly, he himself has a mewing infant in his arms.
Now what?