The Ember and the Children

The Ember and the Children

Present Day, May 2026Children of the Ember closes the album because the geometry is not complete without the closing movement, and the closing movement is not ruin but emergence.I have watched the Black Death move through Europe in the 14th century. I was not present...
Alchemy: What Prague Taught Me

Alchemy: What Prague Taught Me

Prague, late 16th centuryRudolf II’s Prague was a city organized around the belief that the world’s hidden laws could be discovered through sustained, systematic investigation of matter. The alchemists were wrong about the chemistry: base metal cannot be...
What the Himalayas Knew

What the Himalayas Knew

Himalayas, circa 1507The monks in the high passes had been watching empires longer than I had been alive at the point when I reached them. This is not metaphor: the monastery I am thinking of had records going back centuries before my birth, records of dynasties that...