Living in the future … the first wildflowers are appearing in the park and along the riverbanks, trees are budding or starting to leaf, and so another Floralia has arrived. I’ve repositioned the skull on my vanitas shrine – facing to the right, symbolizing “looking forward” – and re-dressed the flowered caplet in honor of … Read moreFloralia 2026
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)
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.
An unusually hot and dry Fall has delayed some of the usual seasonal cues, but now it is undeniable; Memoria has arrived once again. We actually began our observances very early by taking part in the annual Sacred Harvest event at Sky Meadow in Vermont. … and we’ve just returned from an anniversary vacation that … Read moreMemoria 2025 (Part 1)
Recommended viewing. There hasn’t been a new addition to the canon for quite a while; this movie qualifies.
In connection with the launch of Poetic Faiths: New Religions and Rituals as Works of Living Art, here’s my recent conversation with Metamodern Meaning luminary Brendan Graham Dempsey. We discuss the Poetic Faith ethos from a variety of perspectives, the structure and aims of the anthology, my own practice of the Mysterium as an example … Read more“Metamodernism and Poetic Faiths”
The first volume of the Poetic Faiths interview anthology is now available! Poetic Faiths: New Religions and Rituals as Works of Living Art is an anthology of illustrated interviews with an emergent counterculture of artists and activists who take secular humanism as a given, then ask, “Now what?” and find their answers in artistic creation. Poetic … Read more“Poetic Faiths: New Religions and Ritual as Works of Living Art” Vol. 1 now available