Duende Cultural anthropologist writes for Aeon on the question of whether green funeral option are really all that green: In recent years, interest in green death has surged in the West, as the human impact on the Earth has become clearer. Far from a destructive or polluting act, human burial is being reframed as a chance … Read more“How to become a tree”
A new addition to the canon; adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague, Hamnet is a heartbreaking, inspiring study of love, spirituality and the redemptive power of art.
Petals fell, poetry was spoken and honey tasted today in commemoration of the life and death of Wellington, New Zealand filmmaker and documentarist Costa Botes. Costa was a decade older than I am, born in Turkey but raised from a young age in Wellington, as I was. We attended the same high school, ten years … Read moreIn memoriam: Costa Botes (1958-2025)
My daily riverside pilgrimages are becoming colder and much more colorful. Good apple doughnut weather … Flowers left by an unknown third party among the riverbank stones. The Duende skull is now placed on the right side of the vanitas shrine, facing left – “looking into the past” from the Memoria perspective – and is … Read moreMemoria 2025 (Part 2)
From the International Necronautical Society‘s Manifesto (1999):
Light a candle. Watch the flame for a while. Feel its heat, then blow it out. Watch the smoke drift away. Look at the blackened wick. That is birth, life, death, and non-existence. If you re-light the candle, that’s a new life; the original flame exists only in memory. Now remember the smoke and consider … Read moreAccept death, embrace life.
Participants at the recent Nightfall event – an annual, nocturnal celebration of art, music and performance at Brooklyn, NYC’s historic Green-Wood Cemetery – were afforded the opportunity to “rehearse” passing through the Veil between life and death. This imaginative and surprisingly meaningful mobile performance piece/installation/ritual was the brainchild of Greedy Peasant, a NYC-based pageant troupe.