This World, This Life

  Today is a good day. The sun shines brightly and warm in a cloudless blue sky. Not as hot as in other parts of Europe in this blistering heatwave, for sure, but a pleasant 25C nonetheless. Certainly hot enough for me. Outside, there is peace and tranquility. Butterflies flutter aimlessly past the door, bees flit clumsily from bloom to bloom - not too many in this place, not yet, but it's coming. The grass is green in patches, bare in others, and freshly cut this past weekend: I need to get some lawn feed and nourish it. All in good time. In the distance, I can hear the constant thrum of traffic on the Warsaw by-pass, the A2 that leads away westward to Poz ń an and beyond (unless you branch off a couple of kilometres from here and head southerly through Wroc ł aw to the Czech border, and on through Austria to Croatia and the warm and clear Adriatic deamlands. Or an hour's drive further, and branch off north towards Gda ń sk and the Baltic coast). Eastward, beyond Wa...

  I'm currently reading a book by acclaimed author Salman Rushdie called Languages of Truth .  It's a collection of essays and speeches he has written or made between 2003-2020, rather than the novels he is more well  known for, and I have to say I'm enjoying it more than the novels I've read (his two most famous: the Booker Prize winning Midnight's Children  and the Muslim upsetting Satanic Verses - and I enjoyed both of them very much) .  The essays cover a wide range of topics, from appreciations and criticisms of different authors, both old and new(er), a section on what Rushdie terms "WonderTales" - the age old myths and legends from Greece and elsewhere, and in particular his native India, that led him to become a writer, their influence on his work, and what it actually means to be a writer, its trials and tribulations and triumphs.  It's a fascinating portrait of a renowned author at the top of his game, and for anyone interested in the craft ...