On the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, I was thinking about how we relate to those events – both at the time and after the event. We have our experience – traumatically close or vicariously distant – and then there is the “World’s experience” conjured up by a thousand newscasts, […]
From the date on the cartoon, this blog was originally written in 2008. An almost mythically long time ago. But the thoughts on caring still seem relevant. Perhaps even more so in this Instagram age where everyone cares so very much if people ‘like’ them. It’s worth persevering to the end for the very funny […]
This is another blog fished out of the annals. I probably wrote it about 10 years ago. I have subsequently read Joyce’s magnum opus for the third time. Not to crow but just as a triple advert for its brilliance. Perhaps it might tempt you to dive in! Just finished James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ for the […]
This is another find from the archive. It must have been more than 7 years ago that I revisited Berlin. Post pandemic the idea of international travel for no other reason than to visit people seems incredible. And the reflections about doing things rather than conceptualising them also seems salient to our lives as we […]
Browsing through the big archive of material that used to sit on my alistairappleton.com blog, I came across this cri-de-coeur from my self around 2009. It’s strange how – as you get older – these things seem to settle. I no longer feel at all squeamish about my dreams or mythology or the mystical. Cambridge […]
This is a ‘re-run’ of a blog I wrote more than 10 years ago but still seems relevant – especially to the 5th Being of the Beingfulness practice: Being Emotional. I’ve been filming down in Herefordshire and Dorset for ‘Escape’, which means I’ve also been out in the cold a lot in this chilly Northwind. […]
This is a tidied up transcript of an answer I gave in the Live Sessions in February 2021. Tamsyn mentioned her dislike of reading Freud during her therapy training, and I jumped to his defence… The thing about Freud is, he is a stylist. Freud is a Viennese writer of the 1900s. He’s an amazing […]
When I was growing up, the mother of the family across the road, Marilyn Chapman was a teacher at a local school . I remember talking to her at some party at their house when I was 17 or so. I was talking about my French ‘A’ level set texts and was moaning about how […]
It’s over here in Newhaven. The zero winter, when everything is hard-frozen like stone and the rain, when it comes, is cold and steely. It’s already been and gone. The pagans say that Imbolc (Feb 1-2) is the beginning of spring Today, the first day after Imbolc, the rain comes down like spring-water. Clear, sensuous, […]
This is a transcript from a recent lesson at The Mindsprings Practice Space There’s a lovely teaching, by Pema Chodron about not mistaking control for love. If you want to control somebody or something or control your experience, we might think of that as being meditation or- even worse – we might think of it […]