Alistair Appleton2 days ago1 minPoetryBiology / Stephen O'ConnorI came across this short poem on the excellent Poetry Foundation app which randomly selects a poem for your pleasure. Stephen O'Connor is...
Alistair AppletonJun 202 minPoetryThe Swan / Mary OliverMary Oliver is the best-selling poet in America by a long shot. And her life, mostly in Provincetown, Massachusetts but in her last years...
Alistair AppletonJun 131 minPoetryThunder / Elizabeth BishopI love Elizabeth Bishop's poetry. The Moose and The Sandpiper are both masterpieces. But I came across this uncollected sonnet of hers...
Alistair AppletonJun 61 minPoetryWeeds / Maureen N. McLaneI came across this poem in the London Review of Books (which is the source of much of my knowledge about the world, but not often poetic...
Alistair AppletonJun 36 minLet the stillness soak through youI have to come clean. Sometimes I find it almost impossible to still my mind. I’m a meditation teacher, a therapist and a practitioner of...
Alistair AppletonJun 28 minCultureTwo reasons why “This Is Us” might be the greatest piece of art of the 21st CenturyDaniel and I sit down, rather solemnly. Me with a bowl of ice cream. He with a nice glass of wine. We want this to be a good and...
Alistair AppletonMay 301 minPoetryLana Turner Has Collapsed / Frank O'HaraI love Frank O'Hara's poetry and I wrote an IG post on his birthday a few months ago. "One of the most delicious and intoxicating poets I...
Alistair AppletonMay 261 minPoetryWe're building the ship as we sail it / Kay RyanKay Ryan is an erstwhile America Poet Laureate and a Pulitzer Prize winner. But what is so delicious about her poem are the mordent...
Alistair AppletonMay 232 minPoetrySunday Morning / Wallace StevensThis long poem by the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens is one of my favourites. He was an interesting fellow. High-ranking...
Alistair AppletonMay 222 minMeditationThe two big questions for meditation beginners.One of the MIndsprings members asked a very pertinent question today about starting out on her meditation journey: Where am I going to do...
Alistair AppletonMay 83 minCultureLetting the Holy Spirit in my EarphonesAlistair takes time to listen to James Macmillan's dazzling 5th Symphony, Le Grand Inconnu, and feels the Holy Spirit fluttering.
Alistair AppletonApr 212 minQuotesFinding AdonisA trip to A favourite London bookshop unearths one of the great poets I’d never heard of.
Alistair AppletonApr 12 minCultureVirginia Woolf: I finally get to the LighthouseI must have started and re-started To the Lighthouse three or four times in my life. I’ve always thought that I should love this book....
Alistair AppletonMar 311 minCultureRiverJust watched mesmerising film by Jennifer Peedom, simply entitled River. in the tradition of Koyaanasqatsi and Baraka it is mostly images...
Alistair AppletonMar 182 minCultureBe Here Now - at night, alone, with earphones.Sometimes when Daniel goes away, it's a chance for me to do nothing very much. When he's here we hang out or I have to carve time to do...
Alistair AppletonJan 214 minMeditationEvery broken heart is sacredThe final blog in my series of seven from 2013 is perhaps the juiciest of them all. I was all tender from a very intense, heart-breaking...
Alistair AppletonJan 56 minEmbodimentNo more future anymoreThis is a rather epic blog about the future and the nature of stress. Looking back from the vantage of 2022, I can see how the eight...
Alistair AppletonDec 15, 20216 minBuddhismLike worms towards the motorwayThe sixth of the blogs from 2014. This one is quite self-contained and doesn’t require many annotations from 2022. There is a Nibbana...
Alistair AppletonDec 15, 20214 minPsychologyBut now there is a forestThis is the third of the set of seven blogs I wrote back in 2014 following a chance encounter with one of my Buddhist teachers Ajahn...
Alistair AppletonDec 15, 20214 minPlaying at enlightenmentThe fourth of my re-vamped blogs from 2014. This one on play touches on the vexed question of boredom in meditation which usually...