By: Patrick So anarchism was the theme for today’s meeting. Leading proceedings was Pietro DeMarco, a bearded bankrupt with badly bloated bowels. Perhaps my alliterative goals have done something of an injustice to Pietro, so I should probably try and rectify that before proceeding. Pietro is indeed a bankrupt and he does indeed have a…
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.
Sea
By: everylittlething Babar and Celeste, in a hot air balloon, survey the tiny houses, the field patterns and all of the pieces which make up the everyday patchwork of our lives, “And there was the sea, the great blue sea,” writes Jean de Brunhoff. How powerfully can a string of simple words convey a deeply…
In Search of the Good Life: Chapter 2, Part 1
By: Patrick Artie died today. Or, maybe yesterday, I don’t know. The email from the secretary wasn’t clear. And I didn’t know Artie well enough to consider the details worth chasing up. A lot of our members seem to die. I hope they die well. Otherwise we may stand accused of having let them…
In Search of the Good Life: Chapter 1, Part 3
By: Patrick Our final member that morning came in shortly afterwards. Luciano Corallo was one of Joey’s most devoted disciples. Young, handsome, passionate, he was one of the more militant enforcers of the primacy of the interpersonal in philosophy groups. Only recently I had been appalled as he told one of our speakers, a new…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #7)
By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: What about marginal cases, in which the person is – arguably – incapable of loving, such as a miscarried baby, or a person in a ‘persistent vegetative state’? Do these cases fall outside the category of those capable of living meaningfully? Do we…
In Search of the Good Life: Chapter 1, Part 2
By: Patrick Joey generally refused to eat or drink at the places we hung out. When put on the spot by a particularly insistent waitress, he would begrudgingly order some green tea or something, but generally he would order nothing. He felt that eating (and presumably drinking) was a waste of time, a way to…
Frost
By: everylittlething Frost matches snow for its ability to purify countryside and town. Like most people, I love the snow – the first real snow of the season is a source of great excitement. Those people who tell you they hate it can just go and suck a snowball. It is a wondrous garment…
In Search of the Good Life: Chapter 1, Part 1
By: Patrick We never really worked. Work was for bums, not philosophers. Bertrand Russell’s In Praise of Idleness was our Bible. We got by, well admittedly we got by largely as we were all retired having worked bloody hard all our lives, but be that as it may, the world of work was not…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #6)
By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: Are there specific things that are fundamentally necessary for a meaningful life? Some may suggest that experiencing love, or living for a certain minimum amount of time, or having a social life, are bedrock essentials for achieving meaningfulness. Do you think this is…
Holly
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,…