Issue 19 Originate – Sublime

Treeless Mountain

laurasan — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:07:35 +0000

The sisters are abandoned by their poverty- stricken mother to face their new role as burdensome children in the hands of their alcoholic Big Aunt. Brushed aside and ignored, Jin and Bin’s days are filled with the hope of salvation. Their goal lies within an unwavering, yet futile, faith in their mother’s promise: to return...

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Grimm’s Fairy Tales

laurasan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:49:29 +0000

In the 20th century the Grimm Tales were praised by W. H. Auden as one of the founding works of Western culture, while the Nazi party held them up as folkish tales depicting children with sound racial instincts seeking racially pure marriage partners. Conversely, writers about the Holocaust have combined the tales with their memoirs,...

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Metamorphoses

laurasan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:45:10 +0000

Broken up into various tales carrying a recurring theme of love, Metamorphoses was a major influence on medieval writers. One of the tales from the collection was adapted by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales, while Shakespeare, whose Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest all bear the influence of various tales, owed...

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Beowulf

laurasan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The earliest owner of the original manuscript was 16th-century scholar Laurence Nowell, who was thought to have acquired it through William Cecil when he entered Cecil’s household as a tutor to his ward, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Having suffered fire damage in 1731, there have been concerted attempts to rebind and restore...

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The Craft Society

John Grant — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:00:00 +0000

The word ‘craft’ has dubious connotations – macramé plant hangers, table lamps festooned with sea shells, dolls made out of socks and buttons, home-knit jumpers for Christmas … A 1970s that taste forgot looms in my mind, cluttered with knick-knacks and home hobbies. My father took up weaving lurid tropical-scene tapestries as a therapeutic hobby,...

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Meet The Family

Wayne Hemingway — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Funny old thing, family. Politicians regularly return to the concept of a strong family unit being the panacea for all social ills. Throughout political history fiscal policies skewed towards the ‘traditional family unit’ of two parents have been used in attempts to reduce youth crime and social inequality and increase educational performance. A recent survey...

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Eastern Promise

Hanspeter Kuenzler — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Upon arrival in Beijing, the first thing to strike those unfamiliar with China is the newness of it all. It begins at the airport. So vast and elegant and empty is this hub of future traffic that the far reaches of its taxiways disappear in an otherworldly (though probably industrial) mist. In town, hardly any...

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Breathing Fire

Simon Brett — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:00:00 +0000

When I first heard about the result of the climate talks in Copenhagen, I was puzzled. The flimsy ‘accord’ seemed such a massive anticlimax that I could hardly believe it was being trotted out to the watching world as any kind of success. I simply didn’t understand how the most powerful people on the planet...

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High Life

laurasan — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Picture this: bubble-like cells all joined together and floating in the sky. Inside each cell is an independent biosphere where whole communities live. For some, this is a utopian fantasy; for others, a dystopian nightmare. But whatever sci-fi image this might conjure up, to create a sustainable community that lives off solar energy is the...

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Cage Fighter

Stephen Armstrong — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

It’s a cod philosophical question that’s become the frame for hip-hop braggadocio: could you walk a mile in these shoes? Could you view the world through my eyes? It’s claiming the true perspective on pain, something you couldn’t possibly comprehend unless you saw life through the prism of someone else’s soul. In the real world,...

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