Today is the solstice, my pagan roots are happy. The shortest day, the longest night. As I get ready for Christmas (my Christian roots are happy) and the new year celebrations, my thoughts turn, unavoidably, both backwards and forwards.
2018 was a very interesting year. I’ll spare you the details, but it was about things coming full circle, about new things desired and old things no longer needed. It was about shaking things loose to see what sticks and what falls away. There was also the very clear feeling that sand is shifting ever quicker through the hourglass, that the bottom part perhaps now holds more than the top. That generated some resignation but mostly, mostly, defiance. Insert Billy Idol sneer and fist pump.Read more
There’s no real way to easily do justice to a city like Cairo, so please indulge me. I’m on a small ship just south of the Sinai as I write this and it has been a few days since we left, I wanted to jot down my observations earlier, but you know, between drinking by the pyramids and diving on a WW2 ship that was sent to the bottom by the Luftwaffe, time was both a rare commodity and wisely spent.
Cairo is hot, dusty, dirty, sprawlingly huge, polluted, loud, ancient, intriguing and hides secrets and treasures. You also get the feeling of a city trying to burst free from its broken shell, without quite managing it just yet. An imperial ugly duckling so to speak.Read more
I’m not saying we’re branching out just yet, but the thought has been floated of adding an “S” to our initials and a surfboard to our logo. As we already have a surfer among the founding members of the D&C, the concept was not so outlandish.Read more
It’s the shortest day of the year, the day where night’s mantle spreads widest across our hemisphere. The flip side of this passage through Hades, this chthonic corridor as it were, be it literal or figurative, is that as of tomorrow, the days are getting longer. Not that you would know it by looking at the Canadian winter, but still. The minute the nadir is passed, the ascension begins. We will start looking to summer, after a fashion, and the full moon that will greet us on January First is certainly another auspicious sign; luminous silver to light our way in the coming year.Read more
As my wheels were spinning in the soft sand of a forgettable beach, not really making me move forward at all, and I was looking at an upwards trail that would have made any 4×4 take pause, I made Saint Christopher a promise. Get me out of here and I will make you an offering of your choice. Turns out Saint Christopher wanted a blog post.Read more
Scuba diving, quality cocktails, taking it easy and other treasure maps.
