By: everylittlething How easy it is to forget the raw hands and wet socks of a snowball fight – to neglect to remind oneself that lying down with sunburnt shoulders is, to say the least, uncomfortable – and how the joy of collecting holly to decorate the house for Christmas is tempered by punctured palms,…
Category: Archive
Welcome to The Shiver Vaults: archived posts, from 2009 to 2018, still published on the ShiverWriggle website. The vast majority of archived posts are no longer published on the ShiverWriggle website. If you’re looking for something specific that you can’t find here, get in touch.
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #5)
By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: Albert Camus made a famous reading of the Greek myth of Sisyphus in which he characterized human life as fundamentally absurd. The image of a man forced by the gods to push, forever, the same boulder back to the top of the same…
Dear O2 Academy (Sadly, A Letter of Complaint)
By: Lydia Crow Dear O2 Academy, Firstly, I would like to congratulate you on the well-organised and fabulous evening which was the Ben Folds Five gig last night. The organisation at the door was smooth, the venue amazing and the music outstanding. Sadly, however, I must confess there was something which jarred slightly about…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #4)
By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: This seems to connect with something you touched on earlier, about definition. To define is to make a thing distinct, clear – definite. In boredom, the overwhelming feeling is, as you say, of anxiety, uncertainty. What one lacks is a definiteness about one’s…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #3)
By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: In your recent paper ‘Boredom and Consciousness’ you suggest that boredom may be as much a solution to the problem of meaninglessness as a cause or symptom. By inhabiting my boredom, I am forced to ask what I really want. Do you think…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #2)
By: Patrick Read the first part of the interview here. Interviewer: That seems like an important distinction, between ‘the meaning’ and the ‘meaningfulness’ of a thing. Yet, why is meaningfulness necessarily important at all? I can imagine a life in which pleasure, or satisfaction, or kindness – a whole array of dispositions – could…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #1)
By: Patrick Interviewer: In daily life we refer to different kinds of meanings: we talk about the meaning of a person’s actions, the meaning of a word, the meaning of life. What sort of meaning that you have in mind as a philosopher? Are these sorts of ‘meanings’ all the same? Patrick: The kind…
Sunday, Around Midday (2)
By: Patrick Walking back to my car, And suddenly the present, uninvited, emerges. It’s a cloudless, sunny day. I take in the birds, the cars, The voices of a couple of neighbours On the other side of the road. Autumnal colours And all that stuff That poets manage to capture so elegantly: A tree…
The Woman at the Foot of the Bed
By: Vague It was a dark and stormy night. Actually, this is a lie. It was a clear, windy, and typically Northern-Scottish-Autumn night, with the moon shining through the sloped window in my attic bedroom. I had no blind or curtain, not a problem in winter, but at this latitude summers are light, all…
Viola
By: everylittlething Earlier this month I was delighted to discover that one of my young friends has chosen Violet as the second Christian / given name of her daughter. “Vaahlut” as it was spoken locally when I was growing up is such a pretty name when pronounced clearly – “Vi-o-let”. Even prettier is “Vi-(ee)-o-letta”, as…