The Journal

Travels, poetry, and reflections on being a body in Nature.

Musings Mira Karakitsou Musings Mira Karakitsou

Tsai Tou Vounou: The Quintessential Greek Tea

Oh, the famous “Mountain Tea”; every Greek villager seems to know the power of this herb! Also known in English as Ironwort or in Greek as τσάι του βουνού, this herb is high in antioxidants and is traditionally drunk as a tea to support…

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Musings Mira Karakitsou Musings Mira Karakitsou

A Guide to Ancient Greek Instruments

Music accompanied most, if not all, rites of passage, communal events, and private life in ancient Greece. Here is an introduction to a few of the most well-known and important instruments of the ancient Greek world, including their myths and origin stories — the gods, places, and plants that were connected to the sounds of the ancient landscape.

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Musings Mira Karakitsou Musings Mira Karakitsou

What Did Ancient Greek Music Sound Like?

The lyre, kithara, aulos, frame drum…ancient instruments that create a sound so earthen, it makes the hairs on my arms stand on end.
Here is a curated selection of modern artists playing the ancient Greek sounds, as well as modern interpretations of the ancient Greek songs.

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Musings Mira Karakitsou Musings Mira Karakitsou

An Ode to Narcissus

The Narcissus are blooming in the garden, and so today’s post is dedicated to the myth of Echo and Narcissus. Their myth is one of my favorites — a meditation on desire, numbness, and reflections. Like many artists, I’m a bit fascinated by the concept of witnessing as explored in the myth: what it means to see and be seen, the way our hearts seek for mirroring in our Beloveds. Below you’ll find a curated collection of music playlists, self-portraiture, poetry, a podcast episode, and plant profile — all celebrating the theme of self-love, narcissism, mirroring, and the story of the beautiful youth who transformed into a flower beside a reflecting pool — and the nymph whose obsession with him led to her dissolution.

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Musings Mira Karakitsou Musings Mira Karakitsou

About ‘Pomegranates’

October 2023 and all the Pomegranate fruits are dead. By dead, I mean eaten; devoured by a creature, perhaps bird, perhaps squirrel, perhaps Persephone herself. They hung on the tree, hollow and rotting. I picked them all — as if they’d been ripe — and peered into the basket. It seemed fitting that…

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Musings Mira Karakitsou Musings Mira Karakitsou

Evergreen Trees of Greek Mythology

Learn the difference between the most common evergreen conifers of the mythic Greek landscape: the Pine, Spruce, Fir, and Cypress. Then we’ll look at a few other evergreens that you might come across in the Mediterranean (like the Juniper, Strawberry Tree, Yew, and more). And of course, along the way, we’ll touch on the myths, gods, and goddesses that are sacred to each of them.

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Musings Mira Karakitsou Musings Mira Karakitsou

Do Greek Forests Need Wildfire?

In the summer of 2021, in two weeks alone, wildfires burned over 100,000 hectares of land across Greece, including the island of Evia, areas of Attica, the Peloponnese, and northern Greece. Wildfires of this magnitude seem to be, from the research I’ve been doing, completely avoidable. But are all wildfires "bad"?

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Musings Mira Karakitsou Musings Mira Karakitsou

Liminality

I am in between — wandering a threshold — ghosting through fields of Asphodel — wondering how in the Hades I ended up here.

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Musings Mira Karakitsou Musings Mira Karakitsou

How I Learned to See in the Dark

It all began when I was living in Springfield — a city in southwest Missouri, USA. I was working as a cook in a health food store when one of my coworkers told me about a dance studio that she'd visited…

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