Almost Composed

Meditation and curiosity

In Which the Deceased Complains to Atum, the World-Creator

January 30, 2017

Deceased: Love is not made here. There is no air, nor bread, nor beer. It is doubly dark, which is to say that it has no colour. It is doubly deep, having no need of a beginning. It is doubly quiet, because I can hear myself. You have brought me to a place that does […]

categories: poems

Myths, legends, and lost tales

August 30, 2016

If you like ancient tales, I highly recommend the Myths and Legends podcast. It’s a funny and occasionally irreverent journey through world mythology taken thirty minutes at a time. Jason Weiser, the host, perfectly captures how absurd these stories can sound to well-adjusted modern ears like yours and mine. On the other hand, I think […]

categories: reflections

The Hero’s Inner Journey

November 14, 2015

This morning I belatedly saw a connection between two ideas I’m interested in: the hero’s journey and attachment theory. The hero’s journey is a fundamental narrative that’s claimed to be at the root of all stories. It was proposed by the mythologist Joseph Campbell in books such as The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The theory goes that […]

categories: essays, journeys, reflections

Perseus’ Flight

August 22, 2015

Gustave Moreau – Perseus and Andromeda. 1870. Perseus’ Flight Medusa’s murdered head drips blood into the sea. Curls twitch. Her filthy mane, dead but possessed by hate, disgorges poison through my grip. Even the white waves thundering below, Neptune’s loose cavalry, no longer gallop beneath winged shoes. They’re petrified by curdled Gorgon’s blood, gold calderas where […]

categories: poems

Restoration work

May 4, 2015

A paragraph from David Brazier in Tricycle caught my eye: “And what does that honest looking come up with? What trophies does it glean from the seabed and haul to the surface? Ancient amphoras. The broken pots of our earlier strivings. Shards of self-seeking in myriad forms, now strewn across the bottom of our ocean. Fragments […]

categories: music