Rod Fleming's Blog, page 93

October 9, 2020

Live, Love and Stop Making a Fuss.

[image error] Pic: Rod Fleming

On the end of an affair


Well, there it is; for the last fourteen months I was very much involved with someone, and now I’m not. It’s interesting to examine the feelings one has at times like this. Of course I grieve for the loss of love—and it was love, mutually—but at the same time I am aware that I am once again a free agent, faced, again, with the same choices. So how will I choose?


Buddha taught that all suffering is caused by attachment, and that is of course true; it is ax...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 09, 2020 05:03

Merry Xmas!

[image error] Pic: Rod Fleming

Merry Xmas, Christmas, Yule, Saturnalia, Holidays…it doesn’t really matter what it’s called, because the meaning is the same: this is the time of renewal, when we slough off the old year and the wearisome encrustations that have built up and look forward to the new. It is the time when our sun, Sol, which has been slipping lower and lower in the sky, at least here in the Northern Hemisphere, stops, and begins to rise again, bringing with it the promise of warmth.



Everybody who ...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 09, 2020 05:03

Time is Running Out!

[image error]Time Is Running Out! (To get your free e-book!)


French Onion Soup! my hilarious new book about life in France, is still available for free e-book download from this site, but time is running out. The offer is due to close on the 25th and thereafter the e-book will be available exclusively through the Amazon Kindle Store.


The downloads for the e-books are below; click and the files should begin to download automatically, depending on your browser.


(This offer is now closed.)


The print book is ava...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 09, 2020 05:03

Jesus? I have a better story than that…

[image error] Pic:Rod Fleming

Today marks the first day in one of our greatest annual cultural events: the winter solstice. From now until the 25th, the sun will appear to hesitate before it once again begins to climb into the sky. That of course, is the reason so many solar deities have their birthday on the 25th—Mithras, Dionysus and Christ being but three.


But what you may not know is that while these three ‘dying and rising’ gods, every one of them an agricultural deity, are clearly men, the very first wa...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 09, 2020 05:03

Christians is Bitchin’

[image error] Giant Xmas Tree at SM MegaMall, Manila. Pic: Rod Fleming

Christians is bitchin’—again.


Well they do this every solstice, so it shouldn’t be a surprise.


Personally I find the excessive emphasis on consumption, and the unstated presumption that one will go into debt to buy presents one doesn’t want or need to make other people conned into the same bollocks feel a bit better, a pile of crap. For want of a better word.


So I won’t be doing it. Sorry.


But I’m still up for a bit of Yuletide cheer; afte...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 09, 2020 05:03

Singing the World into Being

[image error] Aboriginal Rock Art, Ubirr Art Site, Kakadu National Park.

I first read about the Songlines in the late Bruce Chatwyn’s eponymous book, and even then the concept fascinated me. The Songlines are massively complex, but essentially devolve to the creation mythology of the Aboriginal Australians. In this, every animal had an anthropomorphic first ancestor—so there was Kangaroo-Man, Koala-Man, Lizard-Man and so on. Each human tribe is also derived from one of those ancestors. In the dawn of time, th...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 09, 2020 05:03

Happy Fire Festival!

[image error] Picture: Rod Fleming

Well, it’s the Fifth of November; Samhain (that’s pronounced sow-en) is very much upon us and winter, that bane of my life, is on the way. I’m already lighting the stove in the evening now, and of course fire is important in these Celtic lands. It’s the season of the Fire Festival, that ancient Pagan ritual. (Cheerfully adopted by the Christians, of course.)


Samhain was the Celtic version; it has equivalents all over the world. The Celtic year was divided in two ways, one so...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 09, 2020 05:03

Silas Farsight Update

Silas_Farsight_Cover Silas Farsight cover

Wow, Silas Farsight is NOW AVAILABLE through Amazon as a print book. Grab the chance while you can! All orders are fulfilled through Amazon, so I can’t sign them, but if you contact me through the comments box with your address I will send you a sheet with my signature and any dedication you would like for FREE.  You can then paste that into your copy. Can’t say fairer than that!


 


Ebook editions will be available through the Kindle bookstore and elsewhere soon!


Check the Am...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 09, 2020 05:03

Pork, Secularism, and Anarchy

anti-halal-pro-pork-poster The growng French anti-hahlal movement has seized on a blatant attempt to destroy French culture

Pork. It’s such a mainstay of French cuisine, that it’s frankly impossible to conceive of French food culture without it. Every thing from saucisson to saucisses, fried, grilled, cured, dried, you name it, the French have a way of eating pork like that.


It goes back to the time of the Gauls, you know, Asterix and his lads, roasting wild boar on spits. Ever since then, pork, whether from domestic farm...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 09, 2020 05:03

October 8, 2020

Silas Farsight

Silas_Farsight_Cover Silas Farsight cover

My first book for children and young people, Silas Farsight, will be published next week through CreateSpace as a print book and also as an e-book. It will be available through Amazon in both formats and as a downloadable e-book here and on my other sites.


Silas Farsight tells the story of a young river-otter, whose life is mapped out as a lawyer in a sleepy village in the Forest. But all that changes when a gang of six-toed Ship’s Cats kidnap his childhood friend, the Lady ...

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 08, 2020 16:58