Don’t forget, you’re going to die

A Bhutanese proverb says that you should meditate on that fact five times a day. In Bhutan, one of the poorest and one of the happiest countries in the world, the dead are everywhere. The ashes of the cremated are formed into items called tsa tsas and installed in public squares. Funerals go on for weeks. Death in Bhutan — I’m told; I’ve never been — is everywhere.

Enter We Croak. The app sends me a notification five times a day that reads, don’t forget, you’re going to die. …

I was never any good at it

In my teens, I got heavily into Warhammer, the tabletop strategy game set in a fantasy world. I bought an army of plastic miniatures which you first had to assemble and paint by hand. Hundreds of hours spent painting before you can take your army into the field. Then you would go to war with somebody else’s army, the outcome determined by strategy and rolls of dice.

I never got especially good at it. Not like my older brother, who could paint his armies with an astonishing level of detail. He was also far better at the battles. I never…

A funny thing happens when you look up at trees

Relaxing in a hammock or some reclining chair, or simply lying on the ground. Staring up at the sky and watching it change from star-dusted Oxford to pale Wedgewood blue. It seems like you’re always in the center of a clearing. Like the trees are rising up around you, holding up the sky that surrounds you, and you especially. The axis mundi. The central hub of the world.

Deep down, we all believe this. We can’t see anyone as clearly as we can see ourselves. …

We don’t live in the same world as animals

We barely live in the same world as each other. Brothers and sisters that we are, all of us descended from one terrifyingly narrow population bottleneck of just 10,000 people, we still struggle to see each other as anything other than enemies. My blue sky is not the same blue as yours, and my rain clouds drift in from a different shore than yours do.

How much less chance, then, do we have of understanding other animals? Look, I’m a pet owner too. …

Hummingbirds attack me in the yard

They don’t realize I’m the hooded god who fills the feeder they defend. Hummingbirds are territorial, and their tiny size makes their ferocity comical as they hover, chirping ecstatically, between wings blurred by speed. My cat has my back. Trapped indoors, she dreams of the hot explosion of their blood in her jaws like a French aristocrat dreaming of ortolan. But she doesn’t understand what the birds are saying. She doesn’t have my imagination.

I can imagine them issuing warnings and dire threats. Hurling insults from tongues that drip with nectar. But their worthless curses bounce off my tanned hide…

“Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those who are not entirely beautiful.” — William Butler Yeats

Butterflies are louder than you think

They don’t have the ecstatic, exhilarating roar and rumble of a jumbo jet. I’ll give you that. But when one lands on your head, right next to your ear, you hear the frantic fluttering of its papery wings and find yourself wondering what the fuck is attacking you.

I’d been waiting for the sun.

I’ve never been a morning person. In another life, the frosty darkness of winter mornings was spiked by waves of nausea as I dragged…

You Don’t Need a Reason To Listen to Marvin Gaye

That voice is enough. When you’re driving a mountain road through the faint haze of the early morning, that voice is exactly what you need. Powerful yet refined, clear as springtime. Ringing like a bell from the car’s speakers to accompany broad-winged birds into the blue mountain air.

What about this overcrowded land? How much more abuse from man can she stand?

Since Marvin sang those words, we’ve added nearly 4 billion more people to the mix. The fish are still full of mercury. The environment is even more degraded now than it was back then. …

“Just like Neil Armstrong, I went to space, and now I’m back and nobody gives a shit.” — Kenny Powers, Eastbound and Down

Some perfect Roman night

In my memories, it’s almost always summer. The sky as clear as a toddler’s conscience, and the starlings settling noisily into the trees along the river like flocks of tumbling stars. The old ruins glowing like broken teeth, lit up by the bright halogens paid for by the citizens of Stuttgart and Skänninge to make the imperial past shine. The towers and temples and palaces that burst like seedpods from the life they contain.

Who wouldn’t want…