Almost Composed

Meditation and curiosity

Storm

March 20, 2017

The storm came today. I waited in the garden for it. Wind rumbled around the house talking through the gate, the fence, the bamboo chimes we bought, banging against their separateness: nothing more than the ghost of unreported rainfall in the air. Pay attention, said the gate. Do not be angry, said the fence. This […]

categories: poems

Of storms and night walking

September 20, 2015

There was a great piece in Tricycle recently, A Gleeful Foreboding, excerpted from Clark Strand’s book Waking Up To the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age. Strand describes what happened when his town near the Catskill mountains was bumped off the grid by a hurricane. “That the larger storms sometimes turn deadly does little to chasten […]

categories: essays, journeys, reflections

The New Default

September 1, 2015

Our gadgets come out of the box ready to bombard us with emails, distract with SMS messages, snare us with headlines, and amuse us with status updates. In our technocratic culture, the expectation is that we are always ready to respond. Yet the pace of information grows ever more frantic. We could create a new default. […]

categories: reflections

Josh Korda

August 26, 2015

Josh Korda’s podcast has been one of my favourite things to listen to over the past year. Josh is a meditation teacher at Dharmapunx in Brooklyn. A teacher in the Theravadan Buddhist tradition, it’s actually Josh’s keen passion for psychology that makes his talks so engaging, as well as his straight-talking humour. Josh will often start with […]

categories: reflections

“My God, it’s full of stars”

August 16, 2015

As far as I know, none of history’s greatest philosopher-poets had their best insights while holding a soiled cat litter tray. But there I was, in the garden after midnight, seeking truth and a clean gravel-filled receptacle for Mr. Biggington. The valley was cool and quiet. I looked up from the decking to see a […]

categories: philosophy, reflections