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.
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.
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)
Sam Dresser writes for Aeon: Two puny words shoulder a substantial, if diffuse, philosophical outlook: as if. Epicurus was perhaps the first to put this unexceptional construction to good use. He felt that life was about attaining whatever passing happiness we might find, while avoiding as much pain and suffering as we can. In neither … Read more“As If”
Poetic graffiti found on a bridge railing in Chicago’s Humboldt Park.
If I die young, Without having been able to publish a book, Without having seen how my verses look in print, I ask those who would protest on my account That they not protest. If so it will have happened, then so it should be. Even if my verses are never published, They will have … Read more“If I die young”, by Fernando Pessoa
Alexis Shotwell writes for Psyche on Ursula K. LeGuin’s practical philosophy: