Feb 15, 2026
Spiritual Materialism: A Cross-Tradition Comparison
A comparative note on how different spiritual traditions warn against turning practice into ego.
Stories
Field notes from the road
Medicine, culture, travel, food, healing, and human stories from my archive. Start with a trail, search for a memory, or move by year.
Roads, meals, clinics, and human encounters.Archive into inquiry
These field notes are not only memory. They are the ground from which my new field inquiries begin.
The current inquiry follows one trail through the archive: food culture, metabolic health, Indigenous knowledge, and Suriname.
Feb 15, 2026
Life Is Full of Unexpected Pleasures
A short field note on compassion, ordinary encounters, and the unexpected pleasures of a working day.
Feb 15, 2026
A Wonderful Diverse World in Miami
A Miami evening of friendship, language, and human warmth beyond ordinary categories of nationality or identity.
Jan 15, 2026
Travels in 2025, Hopes for More Travels in 2026
A year-end travel reflection on movement, memory, and the places that shaped the year.
Jan 15, 2026
When Empathy Erodes: An Anthropological Warning
An anthropological warning about the quiet social decline that begins when empathy weakens.
Jan 15, 2026
Dark Night, Whirlpools, and the Limits of Consolation
A meditation after Hafez on grief, uncertainty, and the limits of easy consolation.
Jan 15, 2026
France and My Introduction to Champagne
A personal note on France, Champagne, taste, and the cultural education of pleasure.
Jan 15, 2026
Anthropological Reflection: Medicine Without Walls
A reflection on medicine as relationship: food, listening, care, and presence beyond the clinic.
Jan 15, 2026
Empathy, Compassion, and Respect for the Other
Empathy, Compassion, and Respect for the Other In the span of a single week, events have unfolded with such density that one has the uneasy feeling that the political architecture…
Jan 15, 2026
Thinking of My Friends and Lovers in the Land of Fars
A note on Iran, friendship, meditation, and the discipline of holding one’s mind steady in difficult days.
Jan 15, 2026
Iran, Silence, and Waiting
A reflection on internet silence, distance, and the anxious waiting that follows when friends disappear from contact.
Jan 15, 2026
Colours Before Dawn: Notes on the Metaphor of Our Lives
A reflection on Japanese colour names, transition, and the brief emotional weather of human life.
Dec 15, 2025
Babies Without Diapers: What the Amazon Teaches Us About Care
Along the vast arteries of the Amazon River, Indigenous societies have raised infants for millennia without what the modern world considers indispensable: diapers. This is not an absence born of…
Dec 15, 2025
Worldliness as Cultural Capital: Notes on International Childhood
A reflection on international childhood, independence, and the early-acquired cultural capital that shapes how children move through the world.
Nov 15, 2025
It Is Easy to Learn to Speak English Poorly
It Is Easy to Learn to Speak English Poorly by Yehuda Kovesh MD (London), FRAI (London) A Frenchman’s Remark A French academician once observed: “English is a language that is…
Nov 15, 2025
I Am an Exile Only Because I Have No Desire to Return
A meditation on Istanbul, memory, wandering, and the strange freedom of exile without nostalgia for return.
Sep 15, 2025
The Magnet of Alligator Alcatraz
A political and anthropological reflection shaped by Suriname, migration, medicine, and the pull of difficult places.
Sep 15, 2025
Upper Class but Homeless: Nostalgia for Iran
A multilingual reflection on Iran, hospitality, exile, and the ache of belonging from afar.