Zeitgeist captured in Drudge headlines

First new release in years to actually give me goosebumps. The lyrics cut to the bone… Oliver Anthony, “Rich Men North Of Richmond”

Social media interactions are surrogates for real connection. They’re not “bad”, it’s just they suck up your attention and thereby crowd out the time you’d otherwise spent talking to people on the phone or in real life. One habit I started is that I’ll often respond to people who text me with a recorded voice message. Voice > text. Another is just to unplug from social media. I may soon delete Nostr from my phone.

Someone reading a book outdoors, hadn’t seen that in a while.

To a newborn, the experience of leaving the womb may have felt like a near death experience. Perhaps that is also why infants are so blissful; they’ve died before they died and have peace with the natural cycle of life, of which growth and decay are integral parts. And perhaps that’s part of why many adults become anxious and miserable; they’ve forgotten about the ebb and flow of the universe, about the beautiful connection between all things. Feeling isolated and adrift, they anxiously cling to their present incarnation as to a single burst of fireworks that’s already fading in the dark night.

Thanks everyone for all the love following the WBD pod I did. Below is my naive “before” photo I sent to my family (just before ingesting the ibogaine), one photo from my room during the trip, and one from just after “waking up” in the airport, where I was glowing—feeling like a million bucks.

Late Sixties Austin TX — pretty wild!

Recently bought this for $45 from an online vendor in my neighborhood. Ironwood, unsigned. It’s given me so much joy already, clearly a labor of love by a gifted wood carver.

Listening to music from my birth year, that would be playing when my parents were expecting. Quite the trip. The Cold War era was a tough time. // I’ve come to believe a lot of memories are stored in the body, every in infancy. These imprints can flare up later in life. Hence “the issue is in the tissue” and “the body keeps the score” //

Classical Music: who are your favorite composers?