Category: Alchemy

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The Metaphysics of Food: Kitchen Scenes With Spinoza, Brillat-Savarin And Def Leppard.

A four-mile walk from Nacka to Kungsträdgården, brings me face to face with Joachim Beuckelaer’s Kitchen Scene With Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1565) in the Nationalmuseum. Words are exchanged between us and a conversation about the metaphysics of food ensues. Examining the fundamental nature of reality, the relationship between mind and … Continue reading The Metaphysics of Food: Kitchen Scenes With Spinoza, Brillat-Savarin And Def Leppard.

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It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Lovecraft’s America: Victor LaValle’s “The Ballad Of Black Tom” And “The Thing In The White House” Is A Shoggoth. Episode 1.

With HBO’s Lovecraft Country based on Matt Ruff’s novel of the same name offering a new episode each week, and Black Americans and protestors being shot and villainized as speakers at the Republican National Convention and pundits at Fox News call for more “law and order” (i.e. targeting Black Americans and the #BlackLivesMatter movement), it’s … Continue reading It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Lovecraft’s America: Victor LaValle’s “The Ballad Of Black Tom” And “The Thing In The White House” Is A Shoggoth. Episode 1.

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Thinking About The Rona While Cooking Viltkött Bourguignonne And Talking To Hannibal Lecter, Agent Smith And Luis P. Villarreal Who Are All Listening To Nina Simone Sing “Black Swan.”

Nymphs and Satyr as painted by William-Adolphe Bouguereau and dated 1873.  My eyes were reeling with such images lost in my forest, but having found my way out of branches and roots and the winding, gyring paths of Dr. Seuss and Quantum Mechanics, I’m back home to cut a filet of elk into stew pieces … Continue reading Thinking About The Rona While Cooking Viltkött Bourguignonne And Talking To Hannibal Lecter, Agent Smith And Luis P. Villarreal Who Are All Listening To Nina Simone Sing “Black Swan.”

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Thinking About The God Pan While Taking A Walk With Arthur Machen, Nick Cave, Genesis, Sean Carroll And The Cat In The Hat As A Deer Stock Back Home Bubbles.

Look close at a tree.  I mean, really close.  A tree is really, when you look close a bit alien, a bit other than you, if you’re human, and then again there’s something familiar looking back out at you.  Other and you.  Rooted to place and branching above, its skin is alive and revealing of … Continue reading Thinking About The God Pan While Taking A Walk With Arthur Machen, Nick Cave, Genesis, Sean Carroll And The Cat In The Hat As A Deer Stock Back Home Bubbles.

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An Island In The Middle Of A Lake, And Yes, I’m Thinking About Rousseau And Bachelard And Jung, While Contemplating Roasted Salmon And W.G. Sebald’s “A Place In The Country” As Pan Appears With James Hillman And A Nymph And Everything Stops.

In Rousseau’s Fifth Walk, he writes about time spent on a small island in the middle of Lake Bienne in Switzerland. On the island there is only a single house, but a large, pleasant and comfortable one which, like the island, belongs to Bern Hospital and in which a tax collector lives with his family … Continue reading An Island In The Middle Of A Lake, And Yes, I’m Thinking About Rousseau And Bachelard And Jung, While Contemplating Roasted Salmon And W.G. Sebald’s “A Place In The Country” As Pan Appears With James Hillman And A Nymph And Everything Stops.

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A Walk And A Reverie With Apples, Cheese And Cognac Or How To Embrace The Pandemic And Meet Pan.

How does a journey begin?  Well, with a walk.  A church and a cemetery affords the beginning.  Bare branches on the edge of spring with stubs of brown-green grass and a path of graded small stones.  An avenue of trees really, as we look down the path past grave markers and towards the dwellings of … Continue reading A Walk And A Reverie With Apples, Cheese And Cognac Or How To Embrace The Pandemic And Meet Pan.

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What Does The Great Stag See From The Forest At The Turn of A New Year? Björkar, Björk And Calf Liver Served With Fried Egg and Potatoes, While Contemplating The Good Resonance Of All Things.

It’s good to think of Hannibal as we leave the Winter Solstice behind.  Well, at least remember the Great Stag who witnesses Björkar.  Birches.  Member of the Betulaceae family.  Deciduous hardwood.  Dropping what is no longer needed.  The falling away of what no longer fits.  Dark horizontal lines on white, paper-thin plates.  You can peel … Continue reading What Does The Great Stag See From The Forest At The Turn of A New Year? Björkar, Björk And Calf Liver Served With Fried Egg and Potatoes, While Contemplating The Good Resonance Of All Things.

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My Favorite Swedish Boulders, Seeing Faeries, Mycorrhizal Networks, Forests Thinking, And Roasting Pork Belly With Mark Rothko’s Color Fields While Dancing Tango And Listening To Astor Piazolla.

Boulders are everywhere on Nacka.  Granite boulders left by retreating glaciers or shaped out of bedrock by wind and rain.  Formed out of volcanic activity and millions of years of pressure turning stone into a metamorphic tale out of Ovid. Walking the forest back in August, I come upon them and they come upon me.  … Continue reading My Favorite Swedish Boulders, Seeing Faeries, Mycorrhizal Networks, Forests Thinking, And Roasting Pork Belly With Mark Rothko’s Color Fields While Dancing Tango And Listening To Astor Piazolla.

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“Ay, There’s The Rub” Or Hamlet Dreams Of Pork Belly, Marinade, Northern Forests And Charles Mingus.

Boulders and lakes and forests, oh my.  Långsjön calls me each morning to circle its depth of sky and water and trees.  A walk of ritual and greeting with the light ever pouring out green and blue into the air.  And in the middle, slowly turns a white platform from which you may dive into the … Continue reading “Ay, There’s The Rub” Or Hamlet Dreams Of Pork Belly, Marinade, Northern Forests And Charles Mingus.

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Days Of Summer 2019. Days Of Sunlight And Pork Belly With Caviar, Laphroaig and the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Light is everywhere.  Already the sun lights the sky at four in the morning and will not set until well close to ten at night–that is, four and twenty two.  Summer in Sweden brightens any sun-worshipper into a cult-member calling for the reigns to be handed to them so they can burn the sky and … Continue reading Days Of Summer 2019. Days Of Sunlight And Pork Belly With Caviar, Laphroaig and the Mahavishnu Orchestra.