"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

#Spooktober 22: The Spectre Barber

Today’s reading on my Patreon is “The Spectre Barber” by Johann Karl August Musäus translated and collected by Helen Smith in The Decameron of the West (1839).
Summertime

Ways for an Empire to Become a Ruin

Born Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis in Alexandria in 1863, the poet known as C.P. Cavafy is regarded as the greatest modern Greek poet, though he spent much of his life in the cosmopolitan world of Alexandria. He wrote only about 200 poems, many of them published

Read More »
August 21, 2026 6:00 am
Summertime

Report from the Besieged City

Zbigniew Herbert was a major 20th-century Polish poet, essayist, and dramatist, born in Lviv in 1924 and associated with a strong moral, anti-totalitarian voice in postwar Polish literature. Report from the Besieged City is one of his best-known poems, first published in English in the

Read More »
August 20, 2026 6:00 am
architecture, engineering and construction

The Anthropology of Turquoise

These last six days have been about materiality: one object, one specific made or found thing, and its exact physical fact being conflated with everything that’s accumulated on top of that fact through use, culture, or attention. A crate. A furrow. A toad in an

Read More »
August 19, 2026 10:00 am
Load More
Share on LinkedIn
Throw on Reddit
Roll on Tumblr
Mail it
No Comments

Post A Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

RELATED POSTS

Ways for an Empire to Become a Ruin

August 21, 2026

Born Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis in Alexandria in 1863, the poet known as C.P. Cavafy is regarded as the greatest modern Greek poet, though he spent much of his life in the cosmopolitan world of Alexandria. He wrote only about 200 poems, many of them published

Read More

Report from the Besieged City

August 20, 2026

Zbigniew Herbert was a major 20th-century Polish poet, essayist, and dramatist, born in Lviv in 1924 and associated with a strong moral, anti-totalitarian voice in postwar Polish literature. Report from the Besieged City is one of his best-known poems, first published in English in the

Read More

The Anthropology of Turquoise

August 19, 2026

These last six days have been about materiality: one object, one specific made or found thing, and its exact physical fact being conflated with everything that’s accumulated on top of that fact through use, culture, or attention. A crate. A furrow. A toad in an

Read More