Navigating Solutions and Darkness

Photo by  Mateus Campos Felipe  on  Unsplash "I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people,“ said the man. ”You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides. " He waved his thin hand towards the city and walked over to the window. “A great rolling sea of evil,” he said, almost proprietorially. “Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this will triumph in the end. Amazing!” He slapped Vimes good-naturedly on the back. “Down there,” he said, “are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you mi...

Photo by  Scott Webb  from  Pexels The entire familial unit was down recently for a visit, and I was braced for the usual volley of criticism. However, aside from the well-deserved declaration that my room smells of cat pee (I'm lucky to have an impaired sense of smell), and some unwarranted comments about how I laugh "like a hyena", all was smooth sailing. I mentioned that I needed a new cat carrier, because the one I'm using has a hole in it big enough to fit a skinny cat (read: Lydia). Predictably, my parents jumped at the opportunity, especially since the carrier had previously belonged to them. "It was fine when I gave it to you," my dad declared confidently. "What did you do?" "It was not fine," I snapped back. "The hole was there when I got it." "No, it wasn't--" he began, as I went to the offending carrier and turned it around to display the hole. And there, for all the world to see, was a crucial...