When things feel overwhelmingly terrible and oppressive, and you feel like a rat trapped in a maze with no way out – it could be time for some Black Math.

This is a clean, elegant and resourceful process for interrupting any mental shitstorm going, assessing and taking action, and get out of the way long enough to stop from being flattened under the weight of self-created catastrophes.

So, below are two versions: the original, paraphrasing the steps given the benevolent anti-guru and cage-rattler Christopher S. Hyatt, and a second, with my modifications, complications and occultations.

Staring into a flame, then at the darkness behind your eyelids, can be a transformative and truly magical practice.

I needed to add meditation into my daily activities, and a good friend turned me onto this particular practice, rediscovered, developed and taken to truly ludicrous levels by Daniel Ingram and his conspirators – more details here.

The practice, as I understand and do it, is quite simple.

I made a little game.

It’s a card-based “activity generator”; basically, a set of open-to-interpretation prompts for actions that will enrich or improve your life, one way or another.

I call this game the Tarot of the Arriviste, mostly because it sounds badass, and I’ve been thinking about Austin Osman Spare a bit recently.

Things can get weird when you’re tired, exhausted, and out in the woods alone.

Fortunately I was on the home stretch of my first ultramarathon when the trees began speaking.

It was all so obvious, too; they’d been there the whole time, but this was just the moment they chose to speak, or I was able to listen. Unsurprisingly, they were pissed with humans generally, and especially about what we were doing to the air and water.

Alexandria is my favourite place in Egypt.

The sensuous curve of the long waterfront is a delightful walk; not even the starving, fornicating stray cats or the constant pestering horse-and-cart touts detract overly from this lovely seaside stroll.

The place does feel different from the more inland parts of Egypt, somehow – whether the gentle Mediterranean breezes, or the faint echoes of its legendary founding and subsequent cosmopolitanism seems unclear.