____

Another horrific case of "honour killing" draws to a close. Easy (and wrong) to generalize from a few specific cases-not least because it means glossing over individual tragedies. The mind at a depressing blank when you consider how much human stupidity and viciousness there is. Not much good saying Bach, Rembrandt...Sometimes a moderate kind of utilitarianism, whereby the ordinary lives of  large numbers of people are made better, seems attractive. In an age which is obsessed by "inwardness", "states of mind" and "spirituality" you wonder if a dose of pragmatism isn't in order: Good states of mind require things to work (Keynes). You wonder if it isn't time, if it isn't always time, to pack one's library.

You don't quite trust anyone who isn't, at some time or another, sceptical of books/academia/ religion. Not the virulent kind of fanaticism of a Dawkins, mind ; but a gentler type of questioning, which is really bewilderment. Ho hum.

~~~

The colours of the heart. What would you know!

Officially the heart is oblong, muscular, and filled with longing.
But anyone who has painted the heart knows that it is also spiked like a star
And sometimes bedraggled like a stray dog at night
And sometimes powerful like an archangel’s drum
And sometimes cube-shaped like a draughtsman’s dream
And sometimes gaily around like a ball in a net.
And sometimes like a thin line

And sometimes like an explosion.
And in it is also a river,
A weir and at most one little fish
By no means golden.
More like a grey jealous loach.
It certainly isn’t noticeable at first sight.
Anyone who has painted the heart knows 
That first he had to discard his spectacles,
His mirror, throw away his fine-pointed pencil
And carbon paper and for long while
Walk outside.

---Holub.