World Without End

The only thing I know for sure about death is that it’s coming. I do not pick my way through life expecting much else. I learned early that death is the only real punctuation. It’s a good thing to keep in mind. It keeps the small stuff small; we can do no better than keep [...]

Humanity sprang from a vicious undergrowth of natural selection, and we’re kidding ourselves if we think we’re more than a whisper away from the wild animals who fathered us. I hope we brought a small element of instinctive love along the way – I hope it kept us sane while we let the countless casual [...]

My son observed sadly that the Christmas tree in his nursery has gone. He wants it to be Christmas again. I tried to jolly him along, but I floundered for a bit looking for something else for him to look forward to. His birthday’s not till September.
My little brother’s birthday was in September too, and [...]

There’s a side to my wife that I don’t get to see very often. It’s like living with two different people. One is a busy happy bouncy woman, full of childcare and hormones and hassles and all the usual stuff. I live with this person most of the time. She and I get on, usually.
The [...]

Humans and animals come to the same end–humans die, animals die. We all breathe the same air. So there’s really no advantage in being human. None. Everything’s meaningless. We all end up in the same place–we all came from dust, we all end up as dust. Nobody knows for sure that the human spirit rises [...]