Not when the skies are clear and the day is bright, a lighthouse is only useful when it is dark.

5

Cardinal Wolsey's Final Prayer

"God, we have not spoken this long or as often as we should. I've often been about other business. If I wanted forgiveness I should ask for it, but for all that I have done and for all that I am yet to do, there can be no forgiveness. And yet I think I'm not an evil man. Evil men pray louder, seek penance, and stick themselves closer to Heaven than I am. I shall not see its gates Lord. Nor hear your sweet words of salvation. I have seen eternity, I swear. But it was in dream and in the morning all was gone. I know myself for what I am. And I throw my poor soul upon your forgiveness, in the full knowledge that I deserve none at your loving hands."

The Tudors

The Leitmotif of Vulnerability

"Singapore’s ‘encirclement complex’ is informed in the first instance by its material reality. It is a small, geographically confined state, lacking in strategic depth, with a mainly ethnic-Chinese identity in a predominantly Malay-Muslim region, “wedged between the sea and airspace of two larger neighbours with which [it] has never been politically at ease.” Furthermore, Singapore lacks a significant domestic market, and is almost totally dependent on external sources for capital, technology and, most importantly, raw materials – including food and drinking water. Accordingly, the government of Singapore has never taken the city-state’s survival for granted."

My Empire of Dirt

Immortalising a slice of human frailty, memory and space for those who have been.