It has taken me nearly eighteen months to reach the stage where I felt mildly comfortable writing this summary and I began the task with great trepidation and with a sombre appreciation that I could not possibly do it justice. Shai was a deep thinker which influenced the way he chose to live his life. This meant that to meet the challenge of describing his intellectual journey, I would actually...
I wish that I could ask you[I] (not for an answer, just for the telling of the story): I split the world in half and put it back together, I saw the stars appear for the first time in the sky, and possibilities flicker in and out between seconds, minutes and days; grey fog becoming incandescent flowers, bodies dancing around me like clockwork dolls singing the hour. I saw everything I wanted I...
Editorial notes: One of Shai’s special skills was writing short stories in a style used by famous authors. The two short stories below are a reflection of these attempts. The first written in the writing style of the American-British novelist and screenwriter, Raymond Chandler[I] and the second in the writing style of Jorge Luis Borges. Instant Noodles with Egg by Raymond Chandler The night...
Editorial notes: This is one of Shai’s longest essays, written in seven instalments, six within a period of just ten days in 2016 (from 13th October to 23rd October 2016) and the seventh, a year later, on August 31 2017. Reflecting on Shai’s complete collection of writings, this can be seen, perhaps, as the zenith and culmination of his intellectual journey. As he was writing this essay he was...
[Fraudulent document? — Editor] Marcus Garvey’s diaries were amongst the improbable finds at Saddam Hussain’s ill-financed palaces. Their contents have always been overshadowed, by the incredible story of their theft and doctoring by the Church of Scientology away from the Catholic Church (who were hiding it from common knowledge). They describe a man who investigated other wisdoms...
Editorial notes: This post/story appears in two versions (see also Warm Rays in Cold Rooms (v1)) and it is not clear which one is the later or more up to date of the two, hence they are both published here. I was walking around the room, trying to focus on discovering new meanings between the storylines that were painted in items and their histories amidst history. I returned to sit on the bed...
Editorial notes: This essay/story appears in two versions (see also Warm Rays in Cold Rooms (v2)) and it is not clear which one is the later or more up-to-date of the two, hence they are both published here. After paying his respect to the anonymous pornstar, Professor Steven Stephenson, said, slurring his words [it was the one and only time I caught him blind drunk (nb. ethanol)], “I tried to...
A man receives a vision in the psych ward that causes him to perceive his own life in its terms. *foreshadowing* [The rest was added much later. That line was an idea I once had for a story about a man who is studying history and a crime that occurred in the past, when his (original idea was for neural disease/cancer) delusions overlap his life with the past, and he discovers that he was the...
It is oft-repeated that Buddhism is not a religion, but rather a pragmatic psychology – it is quite here that the controversy within Scientology found its ground-swell, ensuring that the archaeological finds be immune to apathetic amnesia. Professor Chowdhury and three graduate students were completing work at a monastic complex in northern India when a hermetically sealed cave was...
Editorial notes: These reflections are about the quest to find underlying enduring meaning in the transitory experiences and events that make up our lives and constitute our world. It suggests that there is no such underlying enduring meaning, at least none accessible to us. But there can be crucial turning points in which we are surprised by experiences that transcend what we thought were the...
