Almost Composed

Meditation and curiosity

Sea swimming

July 26, 2015

There’s a charge to swimming in the Atlantic that you don’t get at the local leisure centre. Perhaps it’s the abrasive quality of salt, or the electric feel of the cold. Getting in is the hard part. The passive among us may let the waves do the work: a progressive submergence. The bold will run and dive, but […]

Of the combustible and useless varieties of trees

March 3, 2015

Reading Fire Season, Philip Connors’ account of his experiences watching for forest fires in the Gila mountain range, I was struck by the following passage: “My own insights are fragmentary, fleeting. I write something in my notebook and forget it an hour later. I do not so much seek anything as allow the world to come to […]

categories: essays, philosophy, reflections

You had to be there

February 3, 2015

We were talking about travelling and a friend said that if he were to embark on another big trip, he wouldn’t pack a laptop, tablet, smartphone or a camera. Not even a notebook. We’d been in total agreement until that moment. What would be the point of travelling if you didn’t take artsy photos with […]

categories: essays, reflections

Ye Olde Minecraft

August 8, 2014

My son and I took it upon ourselves to play Minecraft the old fashioned way: with wooden blocks. I put the Minecraft Beta soundtrack on the gramophone and the room took on a new aspect, that of a subterranean domain perchance akin to Plato’s fabled cave. I immediately embarked upon an ambitious scale replica of The Tyn in Prague. My son, […]

categories: reflections