@michael-graeme
I am a writer, poet and amateur photographer from the North West of England self-publishing fiction, essays, and reflections. My work draws on dreams, folklore, mythology, and contemporary philosophy in exploring the connections between the inner and the outer life. Whether writing about myth, imagination, AI, memory, or the changing nature of culture, my interests lie in the ways meaning survives and expresses itself in a rapidly changing world.
The road from Windermere to the Kirkstone pass collapsed over the winter and is proving difficult to fix. There is an alternative from Ambleside called The Struggle, a very steep, narrow fell-road with hairpins. I've driven it many times, without difficulty....
I was walking a ridge in the far eastern fells, long ago – out for the day, with only myself for company. Cloud base had dropped to around fifteen hundred feet, which meant I was passing in and out of a silvery mist with intermittent light rain. I'd...
Greek myths weren't high on the syllabus of my village primary school, but I do remember a basic telling of this story, and it's stuck with me, because myths are like that. We usually start with the hero Theseus, who agrees to face the Minotaur, a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull. For generations King Minos of Crete has been demanding sacrifice of the youth of Athens — seven boys and seven girls, every...
I realise that for many years I have conflated these two concepts, and that we need to untangle them if we wish to make progress in understanding them and how they relate to one another. Recent dreams have helped with the former, which should perhaps have been obvious to me for a long time, namely that meaning in life is: Not a thing, not a charm of words spoke plain, spoke clear, or hidden in a secret book. Nor can it be...
I dreamed I was in a crowd, all of us pressed against an iron railing. Some unspecified event was taking place beyond my sight, beyond my knowing. It didn’t seem especially important; it was just noise at the edge of awareness. More immediate was the rain. It...
Here in the North we've reached our longest days. But although the solstice itself receives the most attention, a more memorable event for me occurred earlier in the week – this being the appearance of the moon's first crescent. By the Meeus system, this...
There is a mistake we relatively unknown, online writers make if we're not careful. We tell ourselves we write for the love of it, for the craft, for the truth of the thing – and then we check our stats to see how many people have read, liked, or followed us. The mistake is not in the checking, but in the gap between what we say we are doing and what we subliminally aspire to. And it is in that gap the suffering lives. Things...
In writing this piece I am trying to put my thoughts into some sort of order. Unlike code, they do not run in a straight line, nor do they loop with algorithmic predictability. A snapshot of my thoughts, a removal of context, would reveal something of a...
I've kept a dream journal for over twenty years now and am constantly fascinated by the things they show me. Of course, the culture is divided over the idea of whether dreams actually mean anything. If you're of a strictly rational frame of mind, you'll probably dismiss them as little more than day residue, while those with an interest in depth psychology, will want to explore them further. I fall into this latter camp,...
On the Nature of Love If there was an Internet in those days, you couldn’t do much with it. Digital cameras were beyond the pocket, and mobile phones were not nearly so mobile or as smart as they are now. It was an entirely analogue expedition then, the first...
This solemn tenderness for life I am sitting outdoors with coffee and a book, but I have set the book aside for now and am reading the sky instead. Rain is forecast and I want to see it in. The distant fells are spilling over with mist and looking gloomy, but...
The Ghost of Lizzie Deane We had not intended to run into the ghost of Lizzie Deane today, but a routine errand brought us close enough to the Ribble Valley that a visit to the village of Chipping was called for. It helped, perhaps, that I was not intent on...
Doing my best It was a Friday much like any other, the day I retired. Such a strange year, though. Most of the office had been working from home, the rest split into long shifts, so those still on site could maintain social distancing. This meant each shift squeezing the working week into three twelve-hour days. It had worked, as far as I know, and none of my colleagues had caught Covid, though we were all looking pretty worn...
His world of marvels I understand now why they took my father. To most people he was one of the nameless who went out nights, worked his shift, and came back tired. Someone was watching him though, someone who knew what he was really about, and that’s why they took him. He was also a writer, you see? He was an explorer of ideas, a lover of maps and books, but only those closest to him knew about that side of him. They took...
The Camera Shop I wish I could remember the name of that camera shop on Pall Mall. That’s Pall Mall in the little market town of Chorley, in the north of England, not the more famous Pall Mall, in London. It’s forty years since it closed, but I can still hear...
The Cat's Whiskers Thinking back to my grandparents’ time, their world was like another country. It was a pre-wireless world, one of books and close-knit community, of horses and carts. It was a world of work, the clatter of looms, and religion. It was Sunday...
Photographing trees Late May, about an hour from sunset. I've walked this path before, just the once, I think. It was coming on dark then, midwinter, the fells under snow. Was it thirty years ago? I wonder, can I be the same person? Biologically I suppose...