Almost Composed

Meditation and curiosity

The Game Decays

July 31, 2019

This is a Quake 2 video I edited. It features some ridiculous and frags and trick sequences performed by my bro. If you’ve ever played an old school deathmatch game you’ll know how hard all this is: anticipating the location of your enemy, timing mid-air rockets, maximising your control of the map and trying not […]

categories: film and video

Rain on the terrace

June 16, 2019

Rain with the backdoor open. The smell is more than ozone. It’s healing. The downpour on concrete outweighs this patter of keystrokes tenfold. Vine leaves, acer, and privet reach everywhere to catch the moment. Devon is verdant even in a garden without grass. It’s only in remembering that we realise we have forgotten. Unloading the […]

The importance of wholesome structures

June 12, 2019

Matthew Crawford’s book, The World Beyond Your Head, has some important lessons for maintaining clarity and sanity in a world of proliferating distractions. In meditation circles, it’s common knowledge that prolonged stability of attention can create the conditions for deep insights to arise. However, we live in societies where attention is being monetised and manipulated by […]

categories: philosophy, reflections

Thoughts on consciousness

June 11, 2019

If we believe that consciousness is the only ground of meaning and value (i.e. a universe without any conscious beings to experience it might as well not exist) then three conclusions may follow. 1) There would be nothing more worthwhile doing than enriching the conscious experience of self and others through activities like philosophy, meditation, […]

categories: philosophy, reflections

Teignmouth Poetry Competition

April 20, 2019

In a spell of good luck I had two poems in the running for the 2019 Teignmouth Poetry Competition, which is linked to the poetry festival. ‘Since Eels do not Keep Diaries…’ was selected for the final ten by John Greening. ‘Chiaroscuro’ was awarded first prize in the local section. Here’s the judge’s report from […]

categories: poems