Chosen family are the ones we forgive,
and who forgive us our trespasses
within finite degrees of mutuality,
whilst keeping the language light and easy.
Unchosen family are the people
we find it wise to keep at the distance
where we can observe what they do,
and balance knowing their character
and knowing the flaws in ourselves
whilst wishing that with both
they were someone more malleable.
I never thought to turn to the existentialist playwright
Samuel Beckett for advice for job interview technique,
when I applied for jobs that I did not get,
and then applied for more jobs I did not get.
I missed the opportunity when I was before an employer,
to paraphrase Samuel Beckett, as I explained to them
'With each application for a job where someone else
got the work, I was training myself in how to fail better.'
and give the employer the whole Beckett quote
'Ever tried. Ever failed, Try again. Fail better.'.
Employers are not reknowned for their absurdist,
existentialist, sense of humour. If they were,
and I had used my explanation, I might have got the job.
....must look just so. His face is turned towards the past.
Where [what] we see [as] the appearance of a chain of events,
he sees one single catastrophe,which unceasingly piles
rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet.'
- Walter Benjamin (1892 - 1940). Benjamin was a German philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist.
To find out more about him please left click here.
A friend with who I liked to think
I did not censor myself with
asked me about how I connected
with family. She stumped me,
left politely floundering for words
when I tried to compose a reply.
She is part of a close extended family
for whom, when the women folk met
on their own terms, they could talk over
each other so agreeably they were blind
to how rare such ease is,and even blinder
to how some families struggle with the language.
Weeeks later, and pondering on my own,
the reply that was honest and tactful
that I should have shared with her
finally came to me:.My family saw me
the way that the Church of England
saw converts to it, the church engaged most
when there were big changes were afoot:
hatches/baptisms, matches/weddings
and despaches/funerals, where if before
the support had been poor their departure
could be a lukewam/threadbare affair.
Confirrmations are an added bonus.
In between the great events of life,
most of which I was ill prepared for,
my family had.little to say for themselves
or to each other. They now get their cards
at birthdays and at Christmas, they did not always.
They send their cards to me,
I find it hard to be sentimental
amid such threadbare language.
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| On the beach in Newcastle, County Down, one sunny September day, 2026. |
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| The breakers are worn smooth from sea washing over them every tide. |
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That these stumps of breakers are less than a foot tall, many much shorter, are so naturally sculpual makes me admire them all the more. |
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| And when the shapes they are so worn as to lend themselves to, well, maquettes of statues that Henry Moor never made, I can't help but like them even more. |
The idea behind 'Grief Tech'
- digital technology that remembers our griefs
and recreates the dead as they might have been -
might be sold as 'new'. Sold as a previously unknown
form of memorial. But it is as old as the motive behind it.
The only new part is the technology, which will decieve us
with the ease with which it recreates what it stores.
Our memories remember best, and help us to forget best too.
Memory allow us a flexibiltiy of recollection
where we are the change we need to be, today.
Whereas our technology only stores echoes of us.
