Dr Neville Buch
I wake reluctantly each morning to the knowledge that she is not there. I am in a state of disbelief, each day, before I am in despair.
Ruth died for my sins; Ruth died for my working life. None of my successes in the last decade would have been possible if she had lived. But this is not the despair. What are the successes worth? That is what I despair. Was it worth Ruth dying?
Some fools live life, thinking, it is nonsense to make purpose; that it is better to be a human machine that just follows instructions. They are the assholes of society. Such ‘persons’ deny their personhood: they have, or say they have, no genuine feeling nor real passions. Still, each person is a human being. I can’t deny their humanity as they cause me pain in their dismissals, in their acts of stupidity.
Enough of “them”. Let’s be honest about “us”. Are we not also inhumane while also being human? I start in the morning in the sudden shock of “me” but it soon becomes “us” as a comforting sop that I am not alone. Comforting but with truth. Yes, none of “us” can truly be alone. And so, the question of the successes of my working life…
It is the silences, and non-engagement, each day, as I publish my work, which is the despair of the morning after. Silence. No engagement. At best, it is only that everyone is too busy to care. At worse, the cowardness to reject out of hand, and never to say something.
The work is painful at times with machines that can’t find a basic past work or the machines occasionally losing a poem. Which is the reason why I can’t be poetic now. I despair that “our” life with the machines will be painful as we move into an unknown future.
Hope, that is all we have in our successes.
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Neville Buch
Latest posts by Neville Buch (see all)
- The Epistemology of Fanaticism: Wishful Thinking, Political Exploitation, and the Reclamation of Higher Values in Sport – September 27, 2026
- Agency, Spiral History, and the Market Chaos Myth: Reclaiming Human Authorship through the Contributory Economy – September 25, 2026
- The Nostalgia Trap – September 25, 2026