Unmagical Crystals

I’m a little surprised by how many people tell me they have no hobbies. It may seem a small thing, but — at the risk of sounding grandiose — I see it as a sign of a civilization in decline. The idea of leisure, after all, is a hard-won achievement;...

Confession: I haven’t been on a long-haul train journey for close to a decade now. Somewhere between the red-eyes and the fastest route(s) available, I became a co-conspirator to a culture that thrives on instant gratification, missing out on the pleasures of...

There’s a caustic irony in writing about the beauty of community when you’re alone (or in the suddenly casual parlance of the quarantined, “self-isolating”). A fortnight ago, I would have told you about the specific joy of threading together stories spun in the chaotic charm of city squares;...

My visit to India was of the work rather than spiritual variety but nevertheless, I was pulled along by the tide of energy that flows through the subcontinent. I didn’t know it at the time, but that journey would mark the beginning of a profound two year period...

Since the dawn of time, food has been a social act. It has signalled gathering, a coming together. To break bread is to resolve conflict amongst friends and enemies. The disciples tucked into wine and loaves at The Last Supper. The best part of a wedding – and...

The first thing you have to do is check the tides. I feel like an explorer— like someone who knows the names for various different knots—every time I log onto tides dot willyweather dot com dot au to find out if a trip to Lady Martins Beach in...

It’s not just OTB chips that make me fuzzy with nostalgia. It’s literally any kind of hot chip. Because these little wedges of joy are the ultimate symbol of community. Food has long been known as a way to bring people together. Hot chips go beyond that, by...

The time before I was last in Venice was in the claustrophobic heat of June, when I willingly paid [redacted] euros for the use of a hotel swimming pool, just to cool down. It was on this trip one afternoon when I found it: Gianni Basso Stampatore.

Before the advent of Google, smart phones and touch screens, there was the hotel concierge, who would happily point us in the direction of the closest McDonald’s (welcome to America). Weaving through the streets of some anonymous city (Boston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, if...

An orange fits in your palms like the golden ball in the fairy tale. Dig your thumbs in at the crown. Feel your nails slice into the hard peel and the bright, tender sting hit your nostrils. Pull away the dimpled skin and thick, clean pith. Dig...

Colazione all’italiana, breakfast the italian way, a joyful, sugar-filled, and chaotic affair. One that always starts with coffee. Whether at the bar or home, mornings for Italians means coffee, first and always.

In his 1983 travelogue Sans Soleil, the filmmaker Chris Marker advocated for “those memories whose only function was to leave behind nothing but memories,” the moments in our lives which may be banal, perhaps meaningless, but leave their after-image imprinted on us.

Since the dawn of time, food has been a social act. It has signalled gathering, a coming together. To break bread is to resolve conflict amongst friends and enemies. The disciples tucked into wine and loaves at The Last Supper. The best...

There was a time I consumed media other than pulpy thrillers replete with unreliable narrators who have undisclosed identical twins, triplets, secret sons, and step-daughters who step out of the woodwork, the shadows, and the literal shadowy woods, typically with a vengeance, and often to commit patricide.

Of all three-act productions that mealtimes inevitably stage, breakfast—not dinner, lunch nor afternoon tea, if you take it—is the most capricious and intimate. Menus, waitstaff, courses: none are as surprising as when they appear at breakfast, a repast that can range wildly from corner-of-toast...

Listening to birds, really listening, is meditation akin to cloud watching. The object of one’s attention is slippery, evanescent. It is new, new, still new again with each subtle modulation. My presence is irrelevant to the warblers’ morning performance, a reminder of my relative smallness.