[Listen to the audio + music version of this piece by using the audio player up top.]

Apparently the true meaning of apocalypse, derived from the Greek word apokálypsis, is a revelation or unveiling, a disclosure of hidden knowledge. Today we use it to mean catastrophe — an end-of-the-world event, once a distant Bible School idea, now something I think about multiple times a week. But its original meaning is something softer, more dimensional. Apokálypsis means lifting the veil on divine truth or revealing what’s to come, rather than simply a total destruction or annihilation. It can signify the end of a corrupt era or the uncovering of a spiritual reality, something truer about humanity, consciousness or planes of existence.

The destruction is there, but it’s not the point. It’s the falling away, the caterpillar dissolving in order to become something else.

I read that definition last week and for a moment, my shoulders dropped.

We are embroiled in a war that none of the people in charge can properly explain. It’s creating devastating impacts on human lives, global supply chains and diplomacy between the US and its allies. It climaxed this week with the US president threatening war crimes to “destroy an entire civilization,” then a temporary and wobbly cease-fire. There is no clear end in sight.

In the US we are watching extreme corporate greed drive people into poverty, as CEOs make tens of millions while workers’ paychecks are squeezed thinner by rising costs.

We are witnessing and emotionally processing cascades of new evidence on pedophilia and other sexual abuse from business leaders and artists, priests and politicians. We are reckoning with deep longstanding patterns of oppressive and hypocritical behaviors from leaders claiming puritanical values. There will be many more reveals to come.

I’m not going to dismiss all this and say it’s ok, the apocalypse is coming and this is what needs to happen in order for us to find a new way forward. But the definition gives our painful reality one more color, a parable-like quality, that briefly makes the chaos feel like something other than pure collapse.

Maybe it’s how Christians feel when they let Jesus take the wheel.

I woke up the next morning to a pristine sky, slate clouds against a wide pale blue, a yellowing sideways light and a near-full moon that looked like a cloud itself as it sunk toward the horizon.

Later that day I found myself in Ross, balancing too many items in my arms. This is a toxic trait of mine, going in for one thing, then picking up many, many more but refusing to return to the front to pick up a basket. In this case I came on the hunt for sustainable, nontoxic, non-microplastic pollutant-free women’s underwear. I’m shopping at Ross so I can feel slightly less complicit in mainstream capitalism. I’m also wanting a deal, having a hard time stomaching online prices for fancy sustainable underwear — the merino wool versions highly recommended on Reddit were also upwards of $60 a pair — and I’m wanting to be able to hold it in my hands first instead of ordering it online, to assess if it will fit.

There’s a Target right next door, and they came up first on a local internet search for sustainable undies, but I’m still on boycott. Everything else was smaller online retailers, which felt better to support but required minimum orders for free shipping, and most of their sizing charts didn’t correspond to my body in a way that gave me confidence. These are the dilemmas of our time.

I find two sets at Ross, a Hanes version and some other brand, as I listen to a podcast on the Iran war and scan the other aisles. I think about gas prices skyrocketing, costs inflating to a new reality the reporter won’t even guess at other than saying it will be “much, much higher” than the current $6/gallon. I wonder what that does to daily life. Then I wonder if this is the painful push we need to get off fossil fuels.

I find a gourmet avocado oil, a big bag of Lesser Evil popcorn, a Bob’s Red Mill bean soup, a jar of the vegetarian bouillon we like, and a dermatologist-endorsed face mask. I am precariously balancing all of this on my forearm like I’m holding a baby, gripping the underwear’s tiny hangers in pinched fingers. For some reason I’m once again refusing to walk the extra 20 feet back to the front to pick up a basket. I’m almost done, why make the extra effort? Instead, I wait in line with arm muscles activated, eyes on the tall glass jar of oil as it threatens to slip, willing my tired fingers to maintain their grip.

I make it to the front and lean in, my treasures tumbling out of my arms. Usually I give some sheepish excuse to the cashier about how I found more than I came in for, feeling the need to explain my clumsy predicament to them and to myself. This time I just notice.

I can’t help but think of this as an extension of my lived reality as I casually continue to take on more and more and my feeling of overwhelm grows. But with every extra commitment, every “yes I can help, here’s my calendar link,” every saved news article to read later, every house project added to the list, my arms stretch wider, my grip weakens and my predicament grows.

I feel no shame for hunting at Ross, but when I notice the overload I get hard on myself. I feel like a woman who doesn’t have her shit together, didn’t have a clear strategy and doesn’t take care of her needs. It’s not a catastrophic trait — but it’s revealing.

What would it look like to pause? What if I took one extra one minute to walk to the front and mindfully load a basket? To move through the world with more dignity and ease? Why can’t I stop doing the same thing over and over?

Once I actually dropped a bottle of wine in a Trader Joes. My arms were too full of snacks, and the wine was the one to go. The bottle cracked when it hit the floor and bled into a wide puddle near the registers. You’d think that would have been my moment to change, but no. I guess a turning point happens when an event is so catastrophic and destructive that you can’t imagine ever doing it the same way again.

Back in the car, the interview continues. I think about the global supply chain ruptures, wondering about the way it will affect me and everyone else. Thank goodness for our local farmers markets, and our relatively simple lifestyle. We don’t cook meat at home, don’t eat much dairy, we make our own sourdough. But of course we’ll feel the crunch, everything will be impacted in some way, from the trucks that bring ingredients to the market to the fertilizer used on the farms. I can’t imagine how people living on fixed income or minimum wage are feeling, that is if they’re even hearing this news. I do a quick google search “Is Fox News reporting on gas prices?” The first headline that comes up, from a few weeks ago, reads “Admin official says there’s a ‘very good chance’ gas prices will be back to normal by summer.” Right.

If this war is an apocalypse, it is revealing war as a pointless and self-harming pursuit. Its qualities of aggression, ego and hubris are underwritten by domination and manipulation. Through reporting we can see the money being made off weapons, and through speculation we can learn of the potential blackmail behind the scenes. In a globally connected world, there are less secrets.

In the background, climate change continues its steady demonstration on faster and faster cycles that our actions have implications, there is no free lunch when you burn resources and chase material growth on Earth.

And AI is accelerating everything, simultaneously solving and creating new problems. and pushing us to the edge of our relationship with technology. We are building faster than we are asking why.

You can read more about my thoughts on AI in this recent piece:

It’s so extreme to be experiencing the overlapping conflicts, the acceleration of societal and environmental collapse, conflict and polarization, technology racing toward singularity and at risk of overtaking us. The internet is our external source of interconnectedness, our shared consciousness that we built to show ourselves to ourselves.But it’s happening so fast that we barely have space to imagine what comes next, the more beautiful world we could dare to envision, and maybe that’s because we don’t yet believe in it — we need to go through the apokálypsis first.

Maybe the catalysts of this moment that feel so monumental — war, climate, cultural reckonings — really are agents of revelation, here to unearth the corruption and spell it out in no uncertain terms, here to hold a mirror to our own self-absorbed and self-destructive behavior, here to usher us into the next chapter but we won’t know what it says until we get there.

The devastation of World War II led directly to the creation of the United Nations, an imperfect but genuine attempt at new cooperation. I don’t know what comes out of this moment - it feels bigger than anything in human history - but here we are.

During the pandemic, we were living in a 12-unit apartment complex in East Hollywood, and we got excited about victory gardens. The building had a communal design, with a central patio and a wide set of front lawns. But no one really used it that way, and our attempts at neighbor meetups flopped. The victory garden seemed like a worthwhile experiment to grow vegetables and do less grocery shopping, prove out what was possible even in the heart of a city, and share the bounty with our neighbors.

We mocked up a potential layout in photoshop, with beans and tomato plants and chard stuffed into two vibrant raised beds placed on the far end of the front lawn. But when we sent our enthusiastic proposal to our building manager he wrote back:
I spoke to my office. Unfortunately it is not allowed.

Part of leaving LA was to find more space, more nature, more ease. We now have six large vegetable beds and dozens of fruit trees in the backyard.

Andy comes from a family of food lovers — his dad ran a catering business, his brother is a chef, and our nieces can comfortably dialogue on the terroir of a cheese — but he is more interested in how plants work. When we drive by rows of commercially-grown vegetables in central California he’s glued to the window — wow, he says. Look at all that broccoli. In our own garden he is scanning daily for changes in growth, wilting leaves and budding flowers. He’s asking Claude questions about soil, light and space. He is in awe of nature’s miracles, a beautiful practice that I can’t help but absorb and then feel the same.

Like my own dad was, Andy sees the world and wants to understand how it works. Once he knows how it works, he is empowered to do it himself. He appreciates a fine dish but really, he appreciates the alchemy of sun, soil, water and attention that went into growing its ingredients that hold such vibrant flavors. He admires the farmers that grow nearby and spend long days walking the rows, modifying the soil, understanding the angle of the sun. He is a great apocalypse partner.

In Minnesota, the recent ICE raids sparked sophisticated decentralized response networks. Signal text chains facilitated self-organized neighborhood watch systems and rapid response to enforcement incidents. Locals didn’t wait for institutions: they organized. It was simple and it worked, and it feels like a clue to what’s next.

These past years I’ve been getting to know small farmers, shop owners and neighbors. As things get stranger, the answers feel less online and more local. I need to know who’s growing what kind of food, where our water comes from, who is vulnerable inside their home and might need help. The real web is human.

This week, NASA launched the first moon mission in 50 years. Some people debated the Artemis II’s purpose and timing: it wasn’t meant to land on the moon, just slingshot around the back to collect data and practice for future missions and longer journeys like Mars. Was it a good use of public funds in this stretched moment, when we have so much to solve at home? Or is it crucial to keep moving forward with science and space exploration instead of stalling out in our self-made problems?

The Overview Effect is a name for the feeling astronauts get when they see the Earth from afar, which first happened in the 1960s during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Our entire complicated world and everything that makes up our daily lives, our thrills and pains, conflicts and accomplishments, is all happening on a single spinning orb in the vast sea of space. She just keeps rotating and reflecting, steady and wise. And seeing the Earth from that vantage point, out in space, seems one step closer to divine truth.

We have stepped into the unknown, and I feel my eyes adjusting. Now it’s about putting down what I don’t need to carry, taking one step at a time, and looking around to see who’s walking with me.

Backing track: Original, Logic synths. Inspired by something I faintly heard in the overhead music at Costco.

“It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.”

― Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition

These days, part of my activist work includes learning and thinking about AI. I’m spending time talking to experts about how it works, and working in a few different ways and with a few different groups and coalitions. My goal is to make it work better for a particular audience, on a particular type of AI answer platform. Dipping my toe in the waters of AI was daunting, but now I’m finding the project incredibly compelling. The potential is enormous, and so are the stakes. Getting to know AI feels a bit like encountering alien intelligence that has recently landed on earth: fascinating, unfathomably powerful, generally poorly understood, and ambiguous enough that we’re not sure whether it’s here to help us or harm us — or both.

Over the past year, the rapid rollout of AI platforms and tools has come with a particular kind of queasy futility. It feels like the technology has finally taken the drivers seat, as we always feared it would, and that the people in charge of building it are speeding ahead, detached and out of touch. We’re offered clumsy home robots, insufferable chatbots and oceans of generative slop as the world burns. We’re told which jobs AI is “coming for,” we see billboards encouraging bosses to replace workers with high-functioning virtual assistants. Politicians shrug, throwing up their hands against any role or responsibility. When exactly did we get here, and how did it happen so fast?

I wouldn’t say I’m a full techno-optimist, but I usually find reasons to be hopeful in the face of struggles with new technology, and I always look for ways to feel empowered. My view on technology hasn’t changed much over the years: tech is not inherently good or evil. It’s a powerful tool, one that reflects a wide set of human priorities, incentives and values, an extension of ourselves and our consciousness. It has expansive potential for outcomes in all directions, and the future depends on how we shepherd and use it.

We made the tech, and despite what we’re often told, we still have some choice in how we live alongside of it.

But stewarding something this powerful requires clarity. We have to ask questions: Who is it serving? Who is it harming? What incentives are shaping it? And we need to be willing and able to articulate boundaries that reflect our values—even when the rollout of these technologies and their current political encasements make the trajectory feel inevitable.

Defining the “we,” of course, is tricky. Our current society is so deeply polarized, it’s hard to imagine a large enough group finding alignment, but that’s exactly why this moment matters. AI has arrived, but its norms are not fixed. There’s still an opportunity to participate proactively instead of reactively in what we want and don’t want from it.

Right now, three groups are clearly emerging: people who build and sell AI, people who use AI, and people who experience its impacts including real or potential harms. The builders and sellers are decision-makers who seem to sit far above the rest of us, insulated by technical expertise, enormous capital and a sense of urgency fueled by competition. They’ve raised billions and are racing toward the milestones they promised to investors. A few are in bed with politicians. If the public wants a say in what happens next, we’ll need to be organized—and loud.

Sometimes AI companies like to imply that intelligence itself dissolves accountability. When they describe the “black box” forming answers to people’s unique questions, they act as if no one engineer, project manager or CEO could be responsible for what pops out in response: the answer is a synthesis of Internet content, it’s ALL of our responsibility, or it just is what it is.

But accountability doesn’t dissipate when software gathers, constructs and even “thinks:” it moves to the people who design, train, deploy and profit from it. The companies may feel untouchable now, but that’s because we’ve spent decades treating tech founders like celebrities and loosening regulatory guardrails in the name of innovation. Public pressure still matters. Policy still matters, and boycotts and strikes still matter.

And I already see the public pushing back.

Nobody asked for this. (A reaction to new features that use excessive resources or threaten humanity’s unique gifts and roles.)

You don’t get to decide for me. (A feeling that there is an undue amount of power at the top, more or less deciding the fate of humanity.)

Kill it. (A sense that there are no viable ways forward, we’re doomed to self-destruct unless we commit to the most extreme way to reclaim control.)

There are so many valid reasons for resistance. We haven’t had time to build trust with this technology, and we don’t trust the vested interests at the top. We know these systems hallucinate, fabricate, and occasionally behave in disturbing ways. We see robots failing basic tasks while data centers devour energy and creative work is absorbed without consent. We’re watching companies build infrastructure and power on inflated valuations, before actual value has been proven out. We’re watching a water crisis unfold faster than the technology can solve it. There are plenty of reasons not to trust.

My focus right now is specifically on answer platforms. By the numbers, a substantial percentage of the population are already using the tools — Google’s AI summaries at the top of search results are seen by around 2 billion people a month, and ChatGPT claims 900 million users a week, or nearly 3.5 billion users a month (up from 3 billion just last summer).*

This uptake is massive, but also not surprising: the experience of getting information via direct, conversational answers to complex questions, answers that are based on large swaths of the internet, is a genuinely new and often better experience than what we had before. For many, it’s more intuitive and humane than traditional search, which required us to comb through suggested website urls, SEO nonsense and paid ads to find the same answers.

In practice, AI answer platforms can feel miraculous. In our house we’ve used it to ask gardening questions and get instant and wise planting advice. We’ve brainstormed script ideas for our sci-fi band (probably the most appropriate use so far). We’ve used it to troubleshoot code, and we’re given fast solutions with context. Many of these experiences feel closer to asking a knowledgeable friend than consulting a search engine, enhancing us instead of getting in the way. That feeling matters — and it helps explain why adoption is speeding up regardless of public discomfort or tangible environmental impact.

In a recent pod conversation between author and tech critic Tobias Rose Stockwell (who is also an old friend of mine) and Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology, one idea stuck out: at this moment, AI contains both positive infinity and negative infinity, stretching out in both directions. All the best outcomes are still possible, and so are the worst. It could just as easily carry us into an abundant egalitarian utopia where disease is cured, natural resources are preserved, no one has to labor and creativity is king, as well as it could drive us into climate catastrophe and technofeudal control. Liberation or destruction, it’s all on the table right now — pure potential.

What a wild moment to be a human.

People have all sorts of feelings about it — fear, excitement, dread — but regardless of how we feel, it has arrived and there’s no putting it back in the box. There’s no alternate reality—at least not that I know of—and I also don’t feel the least bit surprised that this is where we have found ourselves. We’ve been moving in this direction for decades, treating technology as an extension of our minds and bodies, figuring out ways to weave it into our daily lives. Our movies have shown us a robotic, agentic future. Our algorithms have gotten closer and closer to consciousness. And now here we are.

Some people have another way of thinking about AI’s inevitability, by theorizing that AI already existed and has always existed — all we’ve done recently is discover it. Like a mycelium network just beneath the soil, this is based on the idea that intelligence is not something that can be created: instead, intelligence emerges when the right energy and creativity is applied, like developing an understanding of math or markets. Today’s AI is built on our own language models, logic, learnings, and what changed was that we finally created the tools to reach this particular form of intelligence and learn how to host it. Mind-bending.

Whatever you believe, humans built this thing by running full steam ahead with hardware and software innovation for almost a century, because they could. Humans are curious, and ambitious, and this set of technologies kept feeling good in the dopamine receptors. Doesn’t that make it feel sort of inevitable, when you step back and look at how we as humans typically do things?

Now, the technology mirrors our own consciousness and capability closer than ever before, which inevitably raises uncomfortable questions: are we ultimately trying to replace or augment ourselves? What is today’s value of human vs. machine? Will we see it in time? Will we agree?

I suppose in that alternate reality, in a perfect world, we would steward this tool slowly and collectively, at a responsible pace perfectly supportive of human thriving while decoupled from capitalist incentives of money and power. We would train it to do the jobs that are unsafe and undesirable, freeing people to pursue their more fulfilling activities and relationships. We would prevent and correct all exploitative uses, like deepfakes and non-consensual porn. We’d solve natural resource consumption before it actually started over-consuming resources. We’d balance ownership so all people could have a voice in its design. We’d have blockchain technology in place embedding intellectual property credits into every online artwork and prose before it gets absorbed by the machines.

In a perfect world we’d prioritize planetary and social well-being alongside innovation. AI would lift us up, solving our toughest problems and accelerating us toward our utopia of peace and health and well-being.

But that doesn’t sound like it tracks with human history, does it? History suggests something messier. Instead we bumble our way through, swinging hard toward what we think is progress, until we’re forced to backtrack and pivot before we don’t blow it all up. See my pendulum theory idea here.

Corporations have a history of seizing on innovation and racing toward growth. Sometimes they get inspiration from sci-fi storytellers themselves, who come up with the shape of a device or the aesthetic of a thinking computer first, another trippy oroborous-snake-shaped creation story. Policymakers scramble to catch up, slapping up guardrails in response. AI feels like the latest swing of that pendulum — except faster, bigger, and more consequential than anything that’s come before.

A few of the big AI companies have expressed that they want to win the race so they can protect humanity and steward the technology correctly, essentially saying we’re the good guys. we need to get there first, so we can do it right. But as usual, no one can predict how it will all play out and who to trust. Instead this raises more urgent questions, like how do we hold corporations accountable when their incentives to maximize revenue conflict with public good, and the politicians are in their pocket? What does “protecting humanity” even mean in this context? Who decides?

Humans are all about learning from their mistakes, so here we are: compelled by the prospects of AI, teetering on the edge of losing control to it, burning through resources in the process of finding something new. As with social media and online ad businesses before, business incentives or motivators — like product dominance, ROI and control of the market — tend to be fundamentally misaligned with those of general public, which in the case of AI answer platforms means accurate, propaganda-free, ad-free information at low cost, the ability to opt-out and to stay digitally safe, to name a few.

My own work with AI is grounded in information hygiene. As I study how these systems answer questions on abortion access—what they say, what they omit, what sources they rely on—I think about the end user who needs and deserves complete, accurate information. I think about the pure potential of answer tools to serve up judgement-free, factual responses to complex questions. I think about the life-altering consequences of these answers as a person decides what to do next.

In health, AI is equipped to become a reliable, valuable resource by consistently answering questions on complex topics like reproductive health — more weighty in some ways than other health queries because of cultural stigma, relationship dynamics, fear of repercussion or legal risk. They could answer like only a robot would: maximally factual and evidence-based. Thorough yet clear, with learned compassion.

But right now this isn’t quite the situation. The current answer platforms often misrepresent reality, getting facts on available abortion clinics wrong or leaving out pills by mail because of confusion about legal risk. One of the ways we’re experimenting with to improve these answers is from the bottom up, seeing what happens when you improve the answers on the websites AI is reading, to better answer the question. Our simple theory is that if you clarify the high-authority sources of truth, and the answers will improve. We’re giving direct feedback on the platforms, which may sound like screaming into the void but at this point we believe there are still humans on the other end, responsible for taking in the feedback and making the product better. And we’re starting conversations within AI company’s trust and safety teams to explain what we’re seeing, why answers are getting derailed, and how they can participate in making answers better without getting derailed themselves by the politicized environment.

My issue area is far from the only one affected, but it’s especially acute because the person asking the question might be standing at a major life fork in the road, with AI serving as the next guidepost. If they see one answer, they go one way. If they see another more constricted, fear-driven answer, one that tells them they have limited or no options for ending a pregnancy, their life may change course against their will.

I’m hopeful that we can improve things, because we’re already seeing shifts in the quality of answers. When AI systems are grounded in better inputs, they perform better. This isn’t miracle-making, it’s stewardship. It also feels like we have a limited window to exert this kind of influence and build internal collaborations, before the tools and their heirarchies of power get too ingrained.

I’m enjoying the work because it allows me to get to know the tool before developing a hard fast moral judgement — is this tool Good or Evil? — by playing with its capabilities and getting to know the alien being. Then, spinning out best-case scenarios of how it can improve the online search for information, giving us the best possible experience of today’s ridiculously robust internet.

I’m also experiencing AI’s risks and pitfalls firsthand — namely misinformation, political influence and lack of control. Not to mention grappling with the existential and very real impacts of data centers and climate warming, AI slop replacing artist content, humans losing their ability to synthesize and process.

I understand the instinct to opt out entirely. On work calls, representatives from other repro organizations sometimes say to me with a wave of their hand, I don’t like AI. It scares me. And I get it.

But AI is here, whether we like it or not, and people are apparently using it by the billions. People searching for health answers certainly are — apparently 25% of GPT questions are around health. By refusing to give feedback or work on improvements, I might make a statement by distancing myself from AI companies but I wouldn’t be helping the people across the US who are already using it, people who need accurate answers on how to get help and be okay.

Not everyone has to embrace AI or to ride the wave. But those who choose to stay out of the water altogether, avoiding the phenomena of its uptake, capabilities and pitfalls, watching from the shore instead, are letting others dictate what happens next. Disengagement doesn’t stop the technology, it just cedes influence to the people already shaping it — people who are often the ones most likely to benefit. At the moment it’s hard to know how to tap in and influence, how to voice an opinion, but this is part of my research. I’m hoping to figure out what think-tanks, advocacy groups and organizations are being formed around AI stewardship and what trust and influence they might build.

Meanwhile, I’m informing my own ethical stance by staying in the tension: learning, experimenting, criticizing, and imagining alternatives. Holding contradiction. Paying attention to power, resources, labor, and control. Watching for more ways information could get skewed, like the inevitable introduction of ads, or the risk of thought-policing and ideological control we’re already seeing in the media.

I’m also watching closely as the economics of this technology rapidly unfolds: is it a boom, or a bubble? In classic silicon valley style, have these new technologies been massively overvalued, overpromising immediate monetization? Will they initiate another crash similar to the early Internet boom and bust, when reality gets reconciled with promises of usefulness and growth eventually deemed impossible? And will that be a distillation in itself, forcing us to answer the question of who is in control by seeing which companies remain?

Either way, the outcome won’t be neutral.

These are complex challenges, ones that require holding contradiction, holding many partially-conflicting ideas to be true at once: the inevitability, the benefits, the harm, the unknowns. We are collectively being called right now to create broader definitions of success in society, definitions more expansive than growth and dominance. It’s time for systems that account for people, planet, and responsibility — not just profit. And we need far more public imagination and participation in deciding what kind of future we’re building.

For now, I’m in it: researching, writing, thinking, experimenting — trying to meet the moment with curiosity instead of fear, engagement instead of avoidance.

If you’re thinking about this too, I’d love to hear what you’re reading, listening to, or wrestling with. And if you know people working on AI answer platforms, I’d love to meet them.

*This number may be inflated as it counts anyonymized/incognito questions as individual users.

Header photo by Olli Kilpi on Unsplash

No audio track this week; back next time.

I’m interested in two specific forms of protest and activism at the moment:

boycotts and strikes, and

projection art.

I am not interested in one-and-done rallies though I understand their purpose, to show numbers and create the feeling of solidarity, but I’m interested in actions that have long-lasting leverage or reach people across dividing lines. Strike seems like one of the few points of leverage we the public still have, to directly affect the corporations who are amassing power at laborer’s expense and negatively influencing politics at the same time.

Next week a nationwide general strike is taking place, led by a coalition of grassroots groups including an organization called Blackout the System. The “economic blackout” is set to take place from Tuesday November 25 to Tuesday December 2nd.

Instructions are:

1. to refrain from working as much as possible, a recommendation which varies depending on a person’s situation. It helps that it’s happening over a long holiday weekend, which I’m sure was part of the plan.

2. Don’t spend any money at the businesses held by major corporations. Shop local if you need to shop.

3. Avoid travel or dining out. Again, unless it’s with small “mom & pop” businesses.

4. Cancel streaming or digital subscriptions if possible.

This is also intentionally happening over “Black Friday,” the kickoff to holiday shopping. I really love the idea of interrupting this tradition. One time as a teenager I trailed along with my best friend and her mom as they woke up early to hit the mall for black friday deals (this was pre-internet). I found it all so strange and uncomfortable, the celebration of capitalism and the way we were meant to feel like we were winning even if it was just some price adjustment that the marketing folks had calculated would make us buy things we didn’t know we needed.

I’ve also talked to my family about reducing gift-giving this year, focusing just on the kids instead and suppressing the urge to give everyone something, just because. They’re on board, and I’m not sharing this as a virtue-signal but as proof that it is possible to downsize our participation in these things. We agreed that if we spotted something that deeply inspired us — a piece of art, for example — exceptions were acceptable. The point is to break the cycle of checking boxes, shopping down a list and buying much more than we used to or needed to, out of a sense of balance or fairness or just habit.

It sounds like economists aren’t convinced it will make a meaningful impact, but this is the kind of practice I’m interested in: building the muscle of withdrawing from the treadmill of consumption and reminding corporations that we massively outnumber them and their paychecks and dividends are because of us. If we stop buying it, they stop earning it: full stop.

It’s been working at Target, where boycotts began after a 2023 pride month in which conservatives rejected their pro-LGBTQ+ choices, then progressives rejected Target’s attempts to pivot and walk it back. Many more dropped Target when they unapologetically ended their DEI policies right around the start of the DT administration’s loud anti-DEI proclamations in early 2025. By September Target’s stock had dropped 33% and lost more than $20 billion in shareholder value. I’ve managed to not spend money at Target since this all went down in January, a decision that has created zero hardship in my life.

The second idea motivating me right now is projection art, as a way to get offline and a workaround to our siloed messaging channels. In this slippery news environment, where every fact about what’s going on is subject to the messenger delivering it, I want to see more points of view reflected in the areas of the country largely tuning into the Fox News POV.

I think folks would want to know, for example, that congresspeople like House speaker Mike Johnson get a $92 per diem on days where they’re in DC, to reimburse the cost of a fancy lunch or dinner. They receive this on the same days that they take a pulpit arguing against giving low-income people SNAP payments averaging $2.11 per meal or just above $6 a day. 39% of all SNAP recipients are children, and nearly 86% of benefits go to households with a child, elderly adult, or disabled person living in it (ref here).

The Congressional meal stipend is almost 15 times the SNAP amount which, if the anti-SNAP Congresspeople think about it at all, must require playing mental gymnastics, confirming to themselves that they deserve this while others do not. Mike Johnson uses the argument, from his $223k/year position in a Congress that has worked less than 1/3 of this year’s workdays, that working class people are defrauding the system.

The scandal is not people taking advantage of SNAP. It’s that full-time workers can’t live without it (idea originally heard via Liz Plank in her post, Not to Be Woke But I Think Kids Should Eat).

I’ve noted a few effective projections lately, one that showcased images of Epstein and DT on the walls of Windsor Castle during a US visit, another that told the story of Elon on the side of a Tesla building. We’ve done them in the repro movement with phrases like “Abortion is Freedom” projected in different languages on the buildings of downtown New York. But I’m interested in seeing more of the Windsor and Tesla style projection art: reveals, fact-sharing, laying out stories that the public might not otherwise know in a format that’s impossible to ignore.

I’d be curious to see the facts about meal reimbursement projected on the wall of a building in Shreveport, Louisiana, the Speaker’s district. I wonder how people would respond.

Fact: Your rep [NAME] gets a $92 meal reimbursement in DC as he votes to limit $6 SNAP payments for low-income families.

Fact: Your rep [NAME] has comprehensive health insurance through the US government as he votes to inflate your health premiums by 18% to 114%.

As I write these out, it still sounds political, like an argument for one candidate or another. But there is a way of presenting the truth artfully and compassionately that just might break through. Projection art can rebalance the playing field, hold people accountable to the impact of their actions. These facts will never show up on Fox News, as it does not benefit the narrative. But civilians deserve to know about any instance of hypocrisy that directly impacts their lives. It’s time to explore creative ways of sharing information that does not rely on the channels of the internet or television: like light projections on blank building facades, bridges, the sides of trucks and vans.

Projections are captivating and insescapable. They play on the way the brain processes visual information faster than any other stimuli, and they don’t rely on breaking through media channels or paying tens of thousands in advertising fees. If they take place in a small town, they catch the passersby directly on their way to work, school, dinner.

Like any action, there is potential for consequences and the artist-activists must understand the risk. The four Windsor Castle artists were from a campaign group called Led By Donkeys, and were detained after the activation for reasons of “public nuisance and malicious communications.” They were ultimately not charged. I’m not sure of the UK’s free speech laws versus the US, but in the US if something is factual and is not presented as slander or causing immediate harm, it should qualify as free speech — at least for now. Which is why these facts should be amplified sooner than later.

I’m taking a local craniosacral therapy class this fall, to learn the fundamentals of giving craniosacral treatments. When friends ask, I tell them I was inspired to learn as part of my long arc of preparation for becoming a witchy old grandma, one who runs sound baths and tinctures and card pulls in her garden. Cranio involves gentle holds and manipulations of the skull and body to encourage the flow of craniosacral fluid, our body’s quieter and longer pulse (it’s quite amazing) and facilitating conditions for realignment, healing and vitality.

It’s an extremely subtle art, one requiring deep presence and listening and 1:1 attention. I find it to be an anecdote to our noisy chaotic world, a chance to listen to the immediate needs of another person’s body while also tuning in to the shared energetic field between. It requires trusting one’s intuition of what should happen next, and letting go of any expectation of fixing but instead allowing answers to arise. As usual, it contains metaphor upon metaphor for living.

My favorite part of the experience is the syrupy slowness of the class, in a dark low-ceilinged room with rows of massage beds and a balcony overlooking the downtown strip. By the end of a Friday afternoon, the ruckus outside is unavoidable: usually what sounds like a college marching band mixed with groups of friends walking and talking and cars revving their engines. Inside, we move between “listening stations,” from the heels to the hips to the cranium, creating gentle pressure on the skull plates creating slight changes in the sutures between them, shifts that feel so much bigger in the body than they are in real life - because it’s new information, and it’s vulnerable.

These are practices that cannot be scaled, they require individual attention and touch and I am only at the beginning of the learning journey. The medical terms for bones may be unfamiliar but the concepts click right away, harmonizing with ideas on healing I wrote about here, ideas on energy and potential and reorganization of matter. It’s adding a practical layer to my theoretical and spiritual exploration of what could be true. It also offers the brief rebellion of being off my phone, practicing presence and using my hands. I feel compassion for the soft, vulnerable bodies of my classmates and for my own. I zoom out in time and space and see us all on a longer arc of existence, one that has landed us here, now.

I wonder else can we get back to a shared reality. But this is one place I can start.

Backing track: Original music, Modal Cobalt8 and Moog Minitaur analog bass.

Audio voiceover is back.

One of my earliest school memories is from the first grade, the day I got my name on the board. This was a bad thing, a punishment for not following the rules. If you got your name on the board, it sat there all day on display, next to the grammar lesson or math problem, and for a good kid like me it was agony. I earned it that day by talking after the bell rang at the end of recess. The rule was that when the bell would ring, all the kids were supposed to freeze in position, for about 20 seconds, until a teacher would blow their whistle and release us back to our classrooms. But that day I was excited to tell my friend Sara one last thing, and after that bell rang I decided to kept talking and get in my thought. It turned out my first grade teacher was standing close enough to hear, and he barked my name and said something like “when we get inside, your name is going on the board.”

I remember the waves of shame and embarrassment washing down my small frame, and sure enough when we sat back at our desks he fulfilled the threat. There it was, “Amy” (along with a few others), the letters smarting and throbbing in my heated field of vision. It was erased at the end of the day, and the next morning a clean chalkboard offered all of us a fresh start, but I’d never forget that feeling. I’m sure it did its job, teaching me not to talk after the bell rang. And it wasn’t the last time I got in trouble for talking to my friends during class. But in that moment there was no one to tell me that it would be okay and help put it in perspective, and it left a small scar that stung when I thought about it until years later, when I was old enough to know it was comically not a big deal, and in fact I got a kick out of reimagining the performance art of hundreds of kids frozen in position: arms out, elbows bent, mid-stride or kick, while I yammered away to my friend.

Last week we witnessed a full moon passing over our valley and setting behind the horizon. For a few hours each night its white light shone directly into our bedroom window. I recently learned about an ancient 13-month calendar based on the moon’s cycles, with 28 days in a month instead of 30 or 31. The 13-month calendar shows up in the history of multiple cultures: Mayan, Celt, Norse, Native American, but it eventually fell out of use in favor of the Gregorian one. Or, maybe it was dominated out of use? A moon-based calendar makes so much more intuitive sense to me, but I can’t imagine us ever agreeing to change.

We launched a new website last week (news article here), a redesigned and rebuilt site for Plan C to better represent the robust information landscape at hand and describe the various options and resources in a cleaner, more understandable way. Admittedly, the project has taken almost two years total, because of stops and starts and unexpected hurdles: we were led astray by a terrible development firm, then started over with someone new who was good but moved slowly. We also lined up rounds and rounds of user interviews then took time to process feedback, make technical changes and keep iterating. We finally reached the home stretch in September, when we essentially had to create our own finish line and say after these next priorities, we are done.

The launch date was set for October 6, a full harvest supermoon. This is a harvest moon because it would traditionally extend the farmer’s workday as they finished collecting the crops, and a supermoon in that the moon was as close to Earth as it’ll come this year. I scrolled back in my calendar app to see that October 6, 2023 was the date we first scoped out the work with the i ll-fated development agency, the project kickoff. The week before, September 29, was the date of the initial conversation, the “discovery call:” and also happened to be the date of the 2023 fall supermoon. I appreciated the connection between these long sine wave arcs of time, months stretching over years only to perfectly align at the end.

Because the website is about ending a pregnancy or regaining a period, my mind also went to the moon-menstruation connection, or the body’s mirroring of the soft gravitational pull from above on a near-identical cycle length. The internet told me this month’s supermoon in Aries represented action, courage, and authenticity: energies which also seemed correct for re-launching this particular website in all its direct and empowering, and highly polarizing, information.

So much has happened during those two years: we weathered an election season and its media cycle. We saw power switch hands, and felt it as the crosshairs of punishment were turned to our neighbors and friends. In my line of work, we’ve watched as politicians designed new attempts to block old medications and punish provision of care, doubling down on stories of morality and protecting women. I’m a rule abider by nature, and some days I’m struck by how I’ve chosen to exist within something that directly challenges my own wiring. The work is one of my greatest teachers, and it’s made me more discerning and more brave.

Maybe every governmental system feels punitive if you’re sitting on the wrong side of it, but we’re watching our so-called leaders reinterpret or ignore the constitution and steamroller established laws on free speech, bodily autonomy, protection from unlawful search and seizure. We’re watching fear of criminalization used as domination in ways we’ve never seen. Others within the machinery of the system who want to right the ship are grasping at accountability, wondering how forcefully they can counter without putting themselves in the same line of fire. It’s a massive game of capture the flag, on shared territory and in dusky fading light, except the opponents are not neighborhood kids but intractable enemies.

Watching the ICE raids and Venezuelan boat bombings, my mind keeps going to: why? Not just, why is this happening and who does it benefit? But why are these violently punitive strategies not only the obvious way to dominate, but also used to generally maintain order?

Is it just human being’s best playing cards, are the true power levers ever only muscle and money? Laws themselves are threats, a promise of violence or payback by the dominant team against the other. In an alternate reality, enforcement of a law would ideally come from a loving desire to correct exploitation and harm, and keep individuals and the collective safe and prosperous. But most often, laws and enforcement hold the energy of retribution and anger. Do we intentionally choose this as our foundation, or is it the default because it’s the most forceful, loudest and scariest and it ensures compliance? Is it utterly unrealistic to think we humans could ever keep each other in line without violence?

The US has a long history of anger and retribution in general, as does the religion of Christianity which has seemed to become part of the justice system somehow. It’s where we come from, how we do things here. Maybe it comes from righteousness, getting steeped in a point of view and feeling fired up about anyone violating it? Patriarchy, the masculine role of protector, getting spun out to the nth degree until it loses touch with what it’s protecting? A crusade of morality crushing certain behavior in pursuit of perfection?

I imagine that for certain people, there’s a lot that feels good about living in a punitive pseudo-Christian system. There’s a clear moral code, established by an unquestionable god and interpreted by uncompromising judges and leaders. If you’re on the right side of it and your team is winning, I’m sure punitive law can make you feel safe: they’re reining things in, getting the bad guys, restoring order. The problem right now is that the teams don’t agree on who the bad guys are and what safety looks like.

The whole idea of redemption, of forgiveness and second chances, seems to be missing too. Last night Andy reminded me that this is hard in US culture because we aren’t good at loving or forgiving ourselves.

Last week the Texas AG charged a midwife with 15 felony counts for allegedly performing two abortions, and arrested eight of her associates of whom they claimed several are not citizens. Their midwifery practice serves a predominantly low-income, non-English speaking community, generally folks facing higher barriers to reproductive care and also probably confused or fearful about what’s still allowed. According to an “Anti” article, she’s also apparently delivered hundreds of healthy babies over the years — they cited this fact in lamenting her decision to help people end their pregnancies. So under someone’s moral framework, she has been deemed the bad guy for the abortion part, and of course the color-of-skin-and-status part. Is this use of time and resources really understood as keeping people safe? Who, exactly? The unborn fetus above all else? Is it helping churchgoers feel safe as they pray to end abortion, in what they have decided is gods will even though it’s not addressesd in the bible? Is it giving them the feeling of a win in this chaotic world? A fetus is pre-sin, pre-judgement—easy to crusade to protect. Adults are flawed, entangled, tribal—easy to categorize and condemn.

But these policies and laws operate on multiple planes, appealing to morality then reinforcing a political goal. In terms of safety, it seems like the politicians might be the primary beneficiaries protected by the action against latina midwives, keeping themselves safe by reinforcing their brand and rallying their base.

Why is safety treated like a zero-sum game, where someone has to become unsafe in order for others to feel safe? Does my own rely on someone else not having it? Logically, wouldn’t the opposite be true?

When I think of a world where safety rules and punitive approaches have been replaced by peaceful ones, I think of a Dr. Seussian village with people holding hands and smiling and rocking side to side. Is this absofuckinglutely ridiculous? In order for us to even start down the path of pursuing that vision, we’d need to meet people’s basic needs in a much more substantial way. Mental health, food justice, education, line it up and scoot people up that hierarchy of needs, and chances are a need for punishment would drop as well.

But that idea seems to be in direct conflict with the bootstrapped American ethos of doing it all yourself, or else you’re bad and lazy and a burden on the rest of us, a narrative that’s been used to cut social services and fuel capitalistic growth for companies that rely on everyone needing to do it all themselves. Good for capitalism, bad for broke exhausted underinsured families and individuals.

Interestingly, the Mayan moral framework was rooted in nature but also included the concept that laws and morality came from the gods. Crimes like murder, adultery, treason, and religious offenses were seen not only as breaking a civil law but also as sins against the gods. The difference from modern US is that everyone was bought in to the same belief system, it wasn’t one narrative attempting to dominate another. Sure there were people who crossed the line, and perhaps believed it was their right to do so, but it seems there was general consensus about where the line lay.

Of course crimes like murder and treason should be examined and punished — this serves my safety too, and it doesn’t really serve the murderer to let them keep roaming the streets. I agree with striving for general safety, accountability for following laws like traffic rules that prevent harm. Laws that protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Existing life — life of the mother, right and ability to build the life and family she wants. And there it is — my interpretation.

The Christians who interpret fetus as alive would disagree, and their way of enforcing would be punitive because how else would they enforce it? We know best, they say, because god has told us so. We will use punishment as a tool to correct and prevent behavior, and compel the fetus to stay. Even though in up to 20% of pregnancies, the fetus does not stay but leaves in miscarriage—also god’s will, right? To me this brings up a much deeper question of predetermination or fate vs free will, a question of who is really at the wheel. We could talk about that one for a while.

In the reality I currently one I live in, we start with trust and compassion, saying: the pregnant person knows best. They are making the decision that is best for their life, their health, and we trust them to make this decision within their own belief system, without interference, and that the best and most aligned outcome will prevail.

Two weeks ago I read this essay on why abortion matters by friend and movement colleague Jex Blackmore who is a very skilled organizer and an excellent writer, and it felt true in my bones. It spoke directly to why I do this work: not because I’m angry about patriarchy and denial of rights, although some days that’s what fuels me. And not because I identify so deeply with abortion activism, although I’m certainly surrounded by activists who will do this specific work til they’re old. But more because I’m compelled by the complexity of how this issue plays out in our culture and society, how it represents power and who holds it, how it gets wrapped into stories we tell each other about morality in a post-puritanical but currently-confused configuration of a country, and how it touches me and everyone who values body autonomy as we wrestle with the question of who gets to determine the outcomes of our lives.

As time goes on, there is an assumption that we must be evolving. We must be learning and building new tools and systems, improving the ones we have, and this must change our ways of living in the world. But again maybe this is overly-optimistic, and maybe I need to go back to my pendulum theory that we aren’t necessarily evolving forward but are swinging back and forth between ideologies, devising solutions to existing problems and creating ne w messes as we go. What would the evolution of a punitive legal and justice system look like? You can find examples in Nordic countries with more humane approaches to crime, focusing on rehabilitation and prevention-oriented policies and building prisons with a focus on skills training.

What if a punitive approach came as a second step, after a compassionate one? What if crimes were not corrected in a vacuum, but instead correction took a lens toward mental health, socioeconomic pressures, family systems, and included a social workers assessment of what’s needed alongside a risk assessment of the person’s state? Our prison industrial complex is clearly a disaster, and if we invested in more social services, education and other systems of support we’d start to address root causes instead of playing whack-a-mole with people gone awry. But in this moment, with the corporate incentives at play for taxpayer dollars to fund those prisons and fuel the narrative of cleaning up the streets, that train may have left the station. It will require some real careful signal-switching, miles ahead on the tracks, to slow down what’s already in motion.

It’s tempting to think of justice as something concrete and definable, but it’s not. Each side thinks they are doing what’s right. The first definition of justice on the internet is a circular one:

just·ice /ˈjəstəs/, noun: just behavior or treatment.

the second is more specific:

the quality of being fair and reasonable.

but still entirely subjective. Justice is a felt sense. Philosopher and activist Cornell West once said “Justice is what love looks like in public.”

It’s why you need rules and constitutions and writings, to establish what we collectively believe this love looks like. Andy likes the phrase that there are no bad people, just good people operating with bad information. Not everyone would agree with this — maybe overly generous when you see the extent of the grifters and abusers operating on bad faith — but maybe that is the bad information. Maybe somewhere inside, they think what they’re doing is the right thing, even just for them. To feel good, to keep themselves safe. Behavior that’s in utter contradiction to living in a society.

There’s certainly an end-of-the-world-ness to the current moment, and it’s not just from our worries about rights, groceries, and planetary health. One line of reason is that if we punish the sexual deviants and immigrants but let the climate go to hell, then Jesus will come back and save the good ones, and all will be taken care of. This might not be a mainstream belief, but to me it’s worth noting because explains a lot about the avoidance and denial fire and brimstone in this current moment. Problem is, this is not a Christian society — we explicitly wrote in a separation of church and state — and while Christianity may be the the dominant religion by numbers, it has also been declining, with a growing number of “unaffiliateds.” Important side note that the Jewish religion explicitly protects abortion — they see it as an essential part of valuing the life of the mother and her safety and well-being—and state abortion bans directly undermine Jewish practices.

The real wild card, the ultimate cognitive dissonance, will be when the Epstein files come out. Having worked on child sex slavery for years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this extreme and uncomfortable issue: how it happens, why it perpetuates. I thought it was the most complex and nuanced issue I could imagine, until I started working on abortion pill access and trafficking seemed more clear-cut again.

People are calling the Epstein files potentially the biggest presidential scandal in history. It seems it will be a very difficult story to spin in the administration’s favor, if it comes out and it’s as bad as predicted. There is no real way to rewrite it as protecting certain groups, or keeping the public safe, or working to achieve something XYZ in the process of briefly crossing a line. But will the same punitive spirit apply, or will attempts to brush it under the rug succeed in sequestering it off from the process applied to other child-protective issues? At the moment it seems the release of the files is blocked by a government shutdown meets competing news drama headlines about the aforementioned Venezuelan boat bombings and ICE raids.

Using punishment as control is the oldest story in the book. Maybe it is all humans have when they attempt large-scale safety and cooperation. Maybe it’s a natural response to so much uncertainty in the world and so many reasons to fear. Maybe the anger and vitriol behind these punitive processes can be explained by all the pain and suffering humans feel. Maybe it’s a leaky expression of how hard it is sometimes to be alive.

My first grade teacher put my name on the board as a way of maintaining control, not because I was inherently bad for speaking after the bell but because if every six to twelve year old child kept talking and moving, the process of returning to classrooms would be absolute chaos. The frozen montage exercise was a way of calming everyone down, allowing teachers to regain order then redirecting us toward the desired location. They’re experimenting, and we experiment in response.

This weekend more than seven million individuals showed up for No Kings rallies around the world. People are harnessing energy, sharing resources, exchanging plans. There will be a winner of this capture the flag game before the sun goes down, but that winner is yet to be known.

Backing track: Original music, playing around in Logic with loops and synth tones. For the muz-os, this was the first time I used only the Modal Cobalt8 tones and Moog Minitaur analog bass, printing straight to audio instead of using Logic’s midi patches. The Cobalt8 is an incredible and compact synth with hundreds of fun sounds.

A grasshopper jumped into the campfire last night as we watched. It was a shocking and sacrificial move, and we tried to save it but it was too late. Moments earlier, the creature had gently landed on our mesh-covered LED lantern, tip toeing the surface like an astronaut pacing a tiny new planet. Why it chose immolation next, we didn’t know. Later on, I thought maybe it was disoriented by the flames, perceiving the campfire as another brighter and more appealing lantern.

There is so much going on at once. I can’t write about all the dimensions of my current inner sanctum work life because it’s too sensitive. In the past few weeks this has left me feeling stifled, because the most complex situations are often the ones that need processing and I’m finding the writing good for processing. I’m thinking of the ways my team and I make decisions and move forward within a hostile environment, the tricky movement dynamics, the emergent threats. I want to write about all of it because it’s so interesting! But, the priority for the moment is privacy and security. I’ll write it down for myself in the interim, and by the time I’ve fully formed my thoughts maybe it’ll feel okay to hit publish.

In the meantime, a friend reminded me that maybe it’s possible to write about the feelings around the situation itself, without describing the situation: meaning the careful self-editing and the rationalizing of conflict and the moments of frustration and what it’s all for, amidst deep polarization and upheaval. Maybe examining the meta level will help me process, and maybe it will be interesting too.

I can still write about many things, including the wider lens of healthcare and policy as I work on edgy reproductive care within it. I can write about some of the wildest times that have already taken place: from the pandemic panic ushering in telehealth abortion, to the fall of Roe and the undoing of what our mother’s generation thought was a done deal, followed by activist networks springing up, social media filling up with resources, then providers mailing pills over state lines - not just occasionally, but now reaching tens of thousands of people per month. Or the recent chaos at the CDC with RFK Jr. and his clown car of new “experts.” Not to make it all about politics, but in this particular plane of my life everything is.

I can also write about my battle with the rats in our backyard, their love of fruit and newspaper and even lemons, and how it’s testing my values of nonviolence and compassion. Or my current thoughts on gender and especially men and boys, as a person who is not a man but married to one and sister to two. As a person who is a big fan of men and watching with deep concern for how it’s all going for them.

I want to write about a recent a-ha moment on mentorship, how I’m finally feeling ready to be a mentor in some form and pass on some of what I’ve learned and now that I feel that way, opportunities are beginning to present. I can share on being childfree by choice, how long I’ve known this was my path, how spiritually grounded this decision feels and how this experience informs my activism efforts to ensure body autonomy is not just a medical need but a spiritual and moral right. I can continue unpacking my anti-trafficking years and the scandal and chaos surrounding the activist I worked for, taken down in an unbalanced press crisis and a series of headlines and accusations that more than a decade later, freed from the fear of losing my own reputation, I can examine more deeply and critically.

Another grasshopper appeared the next day, after arriving back home. This time it landed on my neck in the backyard. I startled and brushed it off, and I could see down in the grass that I had left it with an injured leg. When you look up the meaning of grasshoppers you will find a few very different answers: good luck, abundance, wealth, transformation (Eastern thought). Judgment, fear, inferiority (these are all Christian bible interpretations). I’ll have to decide what it means to me to receive grasshopper energy, only for it to be ill-fated and temporary. It also doesn’t have to mean anything.

I can, and will, keep writing. Thank you for trusting me with a parking spot in your inbox. I promise I’ll only park if I have somewhere to go.

More soon.

As usual, I’m writing this against a backdrop of contradictions: outside, a beautiful summer’s day. A single crow circles the valley, its wings wobbling like a prop plane. The marine layer crouches in the distance, framing the far ridge. And on the news, fresh horrors roll in from the middle east, DC and everywhere else experiencing crisis points large and small. What is my current reality then? Some blend of it all, but mostly the crow and the valley.

People keep asking, how are you doing? and I haven’t known how to answer. My mind races through some math calculating the body’s felt sense plus the brain’s activity, divided by the weight of the world, and spits out a few words of response. If it’s positive, I feel guilty for not being in solidarity with the extreme chaos and pain happening, guilty for being okay, most days more than ok, as all of *this* (waves hands egg-beater style) is going on. If my response is negative, I feel guilty for not being more grateful for my wide-open, peaceful sun-soaked environment. I feel guilty for my relative safety and well-being. There is no good honest answer unless I let something go.

A few days before the Lions Gate portal opened, and as I was driving home from a family reunion, I listened to Rick Rubin’s interview with Dr. Joe Dispenza on his podcast Tetragrammaton. If I needed a case for a mindset shift, here it was. Dispenza has written multiple books over the past 20 years, and I read Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself about 8 years ago. I remember feeling inspired and also mildly skeptical of his confident applications of quantum physics to some of our more complex conundrums of health and human behavior. It’s that simple, he was saying, but I was not ready to hear it.

For those not familiar, Dispenza is not just an author but has a cult-like following. His ethos is that factors like genes, injuries or circumstances do not determine a person’s fate, and that learning how to be in the unknown is not only important to dreaming big, but also to healing the mind and body.

He has a scientific and medical background, but his approach is rooted in quantum theory: that in the quantum field of particles and waves, everything is possible. By accessing this out-of-time, no-body, no-space dimension (through meditation and visualization, breath, sound, and group experiences) you train your body to live in that possible future free from pain, suffering, or addiction. And by doing this, you actively shift your current reality and become a magnet for the new one. You emanate the energy of already having solved the problem or overcome the disease: and the universe, your physical cells, people around you respond to that new truth. And so it is.

Of course that’s an oversimplification. Not surprisingly, Dispenza is not universally accepted and loved. If you search online you’ll see a whole line of skeptics criticizing him for his research methods, his pay-to-play conferences, and more — and I get it. We’ve been burned by the commercializing of spirituality, and it’s hard to trust something wrapped up and sold to us, especially by a middle-aged chiropractor in a button-up shirt, and especially when it’s something as mystical as this is.

But this also isn’t a new theory. There have been versions of manifestation and communal healing in cultures and religions throughout history. And to me, not only is it “sensical magic,” a term I think I just made up, meaning the logic stacks and it seems correct that our physical realities would be more susceptible to energy than we once thought.

But also the personal stories speak for themselves—stories like MS patients leaving their wheelchairs behind, cancer survivors eliminating all traces of a tumor, depression patients healing by transforming the gut biome without medication or intervention. (Testimonials are here for the curious.) To be clear, I’ve never been to a Dispenza retreat, and I’m surprising myself that today’s writing is a tribute to Dispenza, but his meditations have changed my life. Two years ago, I opened a notebook and an audio track and followed his instructions to write down details of my dream of a future home: not the timeline, but its most important qualities. I spent a month doing the meditations, visualizing the home and feeling into that future state of possibility, with no clear idea of how the pieces would come together and the resources would arrive. And yet within six months the dream came true. Not without a scramble and some drama, and not exactly as I’d envisioned, but in some ways even more miraculous.

Warning, says the voice in my head. This sounds like privilege. Don’t forget, all of *this* is still going on. Genocides, ICE raids, dismantling of social services. It’s all still there. But although the wellness industry has co-opted the word *manifestation* to sell potions and workshops, the concept is not one of privilege. There is effort, and then there is shift. And right now, both are needed on all levels. As Audrey Lorde said, the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. Meaning that to transform inequitable systems, we need different ways of thinking and being.

Last month I shared some thoughts and questions about effective protest. The protest is the recipe; the personal transformation affects the quality of ingredients.

In my own quest to understand, I keep zooming out and allowing many things to be true at once: the peaceful valley and the chaotic other. And I have to believe that right now, change requires tuning in to more than just one level of reality. Assuming there is no new possibility, no unknown potential, will surely keep us all trapped and on the same precarious course.

While we’re talking bout individual and collective systemic breakdowns and divisions, under the surface this chaos is fueled by pain. Reactions to pain include numbing out, harming others, clinging to identity. This is what drives my curiosity toward healing, deeper self understanding and wider self-realization. It’s foundational. Pain and otherness drives our division, our wars. Renee Sills of Embodied Astrology (my go-to) talks about it in this week’s breakdown of the next two weeks between the full moon Lion’s Gate and new moon on the 22nd of August, sharing that emotions like mistrust and hatred also do terrible things to the human body. Stress hormones flood the system and reactions ruin relationships, also tied to health. When we do good by others, when we care for society, we are directly taking care of ourselves. And we can tend to our own repair as an offering with larger collective benefit.

After listening to the entire two-hour Dispenza interview during my drive — with a few necessary breaks for silence and songs, it’s dense — I was back inside that feeling of possibility. A small Covid outbreak had disrupted the reunion, but I knew from my seat in the car that I would stay healthy. I was inspired by the points made about creativity, that it doesn’t happen in moments of processing the past or planning for the future but only in the space of the present, in what he calls the unknown.

Of course there is more going on here on Earth than meets the eye. Of course the energetic field would matter as much as the physical one. It’s how people have near-death experiences, how medical miracles defy science. Cells can rearrange themselves, genes can turn off and on. It helps to remember those diagrams from high school science class that show atoms and molecules constantly vibrating, in motion, quivering and rotating — it’s only from our clumsy human scale that we see solid matter. We are energy, we are responding to and creating larger fields of vibration. We made a video about it once, resetting an Alan Watts passage about the basic pulse of life to new music - watch it here.

Last month a rare interview with Hunter Biden was released on Channel 5, the independent youtube feed of Andrew Callahan. I hadn’t heard of Andrew before, and I think of Hunter with the weary memory of past campaigns, but I listened to all three hours and fifteen minutes of this interview. It captured me with its how humble, honest and matter-of-fact Hunter is when speaking on topics that are deeply personal, sensitive and often PR landmines: his crack addition, the infamous “laptop” (do we even know what it meant?), his years-late tax payments explained as accidental missed filings, along with a forgotten or ignored career in public service, his attempts at being an artist.

We’re used to these types of interviews being a dance, filled with careful pauses and talking points. Instead Hunter is blunt, raw and dropping long strings of f-bombs as he gets fired up. It’s unusual and refreshing. He has the egoless clarity of someone in recovery, one who has seen rock bottom and found his way out the other side. In this case, his reputation was decimated beyond public repair. But the gift the media gave him is that he no longer cares what anyone thinks, and has found his own redemption in a loving family and an art practice. He has nothing left to lose and everything to gain at this point by sharing his story, not because it’s exceptional but rather because it’s not: pain like his is universal. It made me examine my own judgements, what I had absorbed about his addiction and tax evasion, based on news headlines and cultural programming.

Our nervous systems are tired of being deceived, and when I hear an interview that I expected to be propaganda and instead it sounds like someone’s truth, it’s a breath of fresh air. For just a moment, I can feel the old structures dying, their projections flickering and waning from people willing to call their bluff. And the energy inspires us, pulls us toward something new.

Dispenza describes his work to Rubin like this: I give people my greatest understanding of the truth and multiple opportunities to experience it. And the beauty not just with his community but with so many stories of healing and transformation is that the pain is the catalyst for a new reality. People in Dispenza’s workshops say “without my hardship, I wouldn’t have discovered my connection to the unknown.” The rocks in life’s road aren’t in the way; they ARE the road. The obstacles are often the point, they are inevitable and they force us to focus our energy and decide what matters. I first heard this idea in an On Being interview with music producer Joe Henry, and I wrote a song about it called Shit Happens.

From Henry: Well, we’re sort of seduced into thinking that, like, here’s life and then there’s these bad things that can happen that are like obstacles that just fall into your road. As if the obstacle is not the road, you know? We want to think that, all things being equal, we should be content all the time and would be except for these pesky flies that want to ruin every picnic — as if that isn’t what the picnic is.

Renee also shares the idea that breakthroughs often happen after breakdowns. Individuals need to hit rock bottom before they deal with their problem, and so do nations. The horrible part, she says, is how many beings are affected… there is a lot of collateral damage. Unnecessary, outrages. And, maybe, humanity is on a learning path — and whatever we go through next 20 years will shape us in surviving and thriving. Help us remember interconnections, belonging, and what is good for us. I think we are at that turning point.

Kintsugi is a Japanese ceramics technique where cracks of a broken piece of pottery are filled with gold, making the resulting object both stronger and more beautiful. When my dad died we played the tune “Let the Mystery Be” over and over, to try and make sense of it all. Now we’re renovating the backyard barn that made him sick into a music studio. When it came time to seal the cement floor, I pointed out the large crack that ran from North to South — a remnant from the ’89 earthquake, my other greatest trauma. And instead of hiding it under the finish, I picked a grayish brown — the closest to gold we could find — so it would live on as part of the barn, and part of me.

Backing track: Original, playing around in Logic with loops and synth tones.

A few nights ago I had a dream that turned into a nightmare. I was in a posh hotel, with tall plants and black and white checkered tile. But right away I didn’t feel safe, and when I saw the pinched, done-up face of a female hotel staff with a long blown-out, I knew she was out to get me. And because she was staff, I wasn’t sure if I could trust anyone and didn’t know how to ask for help: afraid of impending violence, with no one to tell.

I rounded a corner and spotted a few other staff members congregated in a backroom. I could tell they were more attentive, more customer service oriented from their facial expressions—they seemed like they wanted to do a good job, both in service of the guests, and because keeping their job depended on it. But it still felt inherently unsafe, and I kept moving. Back in my own room, I blockaded the door with a large chair, but I knew it was just an illusion of safety, one hard push away from the door being forced open by someone who held all the keys. Andy was there and he had been approached by a male hotel staff member who leaned in close to his ear and told him more explicitly that we were in danger.

I woke up both distressed and relieved.

As I wrote my morning pages I turned the dream over in my mind, trying to decide what it meant to me, and I landed on a simple metaphor. The hotel was the current-day United States, and I was trapped in it, surrounded by hotel staff with all-access keycards, including to my room. One or two staff members have it out for me, the rest either aren’t paying attention or are bumbling around trying to do the right thing — politicians. People who we thought worked for us but somehow run the place. People with good access and bad intentions. What to do?

Many people know me first and foremost as an activist. I’ve had a long-ish career in various nonprofits, and everything since my very first post-college job in a litigation firm in San Francisco has been cause-oriented (thank goodness for that job, it showed me corporate America early on and I knew it wasn’t for me!). But I consider myself mostly a “quiet activist” and am more compelled by creative pushes of useful information on websites and platforms, information that changes people’s reality and empowers them with paths to autonomy and well-being and connection, instead of picking up a megaphone to yell about how angry I am at the opposition and getting people to yell demands with me. The past few years of astrology and palm readings have confirmed this: that I have information to share, and it needs to be me who shares it, but it also needs to come from an honest and authentic place when I do. Both quiet and loud activism play a role, but not every activist has to be both, and there’s a spectrum of activism in between.

This is why, when my mom invited me to join her at the local No Kings rally in June, I had to take a beat and sit with the request. At first, no part of my body wanted to go. I heard the phrase “No Kings” as indignant and childlike, a futile statement of protest with bottom lip out and arms crossed. It didn’t feel effective, I couldn’t tell what was the point. The new administration is pointing a pressure-washer at old structures, with experimental policies and unprecedented executive orders that even the smartest experts are finding very few levers to point to, levers that can be collectively pulled in order to rebalance power the way we have so far generally agreed democracy is meant to work.

“I have no one else to go with,” my mother told me. I thought some more and decided two things: 1. I’d like to see what this local community looks like when they show up for protest, and 2. I will wear an abortion access shirt and hand out stickers to make it feel actionable. What does “no kings” mean under impending authoritarianism? It means building alternate pathways to care, safety, community that don’t rely on old systems of government. It means recognizing where we still have control, zooming in on local needs and mastering information architectures off and online while we learn more about where to apply pressure, and also see which of the lawyers and politicians can get it together to hold those in power accountable.

The protest was fine. Signage, solidarity, horns honking 6 feet from my ears. Mine was the only abortion sign, and I realized in a predominantly Latine area maybe it wasn’t welcomed by all the progressives there, but I was okay with holding it down anyway. To each their own, and my role is educator. Most of the signage was understandably about immigration, as were the speeches, and I was grateful to hear their messages: reminders of our shared migration history, of who does paid labor, of how undocumented folks and immigrants are more than just laborers. Touching in on our larger sense of humanity. I could see the value of the protest for people who were newer to showing up to things like this, or trying not to feel alone in their existential dread.

In the days that followed I was glad to have gone — no kings, and no regrets — but I was still experiencing some cognitive dissonance about how that particular type of action was a solution to any of the large-scale shenanigans we were witnessing. This type of tidy protest felt like a small showing of disagreement, not right-sized to a regime based on removing rights, oppressing dissent, and actively unfollowing the rules of engagement.

As my mind crunched in the background on this dissonance, I came across a social media post that gave me some answers. It was a thoughtful critique of 50501, the decentralized entity that called for this protest, made by weighing the action against tenets of historically successful protest. These are the notes I took as I processed the post.

According to @theconsciouscitizens debrief, every successful protest movement has six core pillars:

1. Clear, non-negotiable demands. Abolish ICE. Dismantle mass surveillance. Not vague meaningless statements like ‘protect democracy’ or ‘end corruption.’

2. Escalating pressure. Boycotts, sit-ins, strikes, road blockages. Not marches and demonstrations that allow for business as usual.

3. Non-cooperations. Planning the protest without necessarily gaining police approval. Not policing behavior of others during a protest, requiring permits or prioritizing working with cops to keep the peace.

4. Narrative control. Humanize the issues, communicate demands. NOT being overly concerned with how something will “look” in the media.

5. Safety & security. Encouraging masks and coverings, having PPE and first aid on site. Not discouraging masks, asking for RSVPs, telling protesters to sit down in front of cops.

6. Long-term support infrastructure. Power-building with mutual aid groups, skills share, next steps. Not leaving protesters hanging, leading them back to the same old Dems party.

They closed with a few points. Don’t be fooled by organizations that care more about civility than liberation was one of them. Again not an accusation, but a measuring stick, which feels historically correct. I also read recently that marches during the civil rights era were an act of publicizing a cause or rallying support while traveling TO DO an action, like a sit-in. Marches were not an end in themselves.

I try not to consume too much media that revolves around psychoanalyzing DT. Tired of it, can be salacious but usually not a great use of time. However, I have been struck by a few recent pieces that go into cult psychology and compare what’s happening today on the extreme right with what happens under a cult leader. Maybe you’ve seen these articles too. By contrast, what I find notable is that my own area of the politics & values spectrum does not have a singular leader to speak of. And because of this, I am required to draw my own conclusions and analyze what I think needs to happen next from a variety of viewpoints, hopefully becoming more thoughtful and discerning as a result. No single character is feeding me what I’m supposed to believe. This is also what is starting to fracture the right: because if that single character is changing their mind, shifting their stance, giving up on their conspiracy theory, it leaves audiences feeling duped and taken for a ride, and they lose trust (see: the recent Epstein twist). My theory is that because those of us who are trying to achieve a more liberatory world according to what would be considered more progressive values do not have a leader, we must be more analytical, require more substantiation, draw conclusions from multiple sources which is inherently a more solid way to land on the truth.

This is a theory. It’s also one that conveniently reaffirms my position on the more thoughtful, analytical side of the spectrum. How nice! All of us are still prone to hearing what we want to hear, sliding in to the same old news sources over and over telling us the version of the story that aligns with our existing worldview. Me stumbling upon the analysis of the protest feeds my justification for questioning it. I don’t think protests are bad, maybe they’re what this stage of the situation requires before we move on to more organization. It’s important for people to be able to plug in to learning, solidarity and action in ways that feel comfortable, energized, empowered. I don’t want to shame or talk anyone out of showing up: protests demonstrate numbers, volume, and these hundreds of thousands or millions are made up of individuals. Protests share messages. But protests without follow-up actions require a closer look. I want to see strategy, or else we will march and meme-sign our way into the most unfortunate next chapter of the history books.

In the absence of leadership, I’m gravitating toward the people in my immediate reality who seem to be processing deeply, feeling as well as thinking and re-thinking, questioning not only the other side but their own, and sharing what can be done about it to move us forward. I am listening for those clear non-negotiable demands and wondering who else needs to hear them besides a person’s social media followers. I am seeking to understand where and when people might escalate pressure. I am interested in better narrative control, because of how successful it’s been on the other side.

Imagination, visioning and storytelling is part of the reason I was so drawn to our sci-fi concept band: at that point after doing 15+ years of nonprofit work I had so rarely been in spaces where people were ideating about the world we wanted to see: it was always a game of whack-a-mole, putting out fires and solving problems directly in front of us. Sure we had mission and vision statements: a world free from slavery. A near future where every musician can make a living with dignity. A country where body autonomy is inherent and people’s reproductive needs are met.

But we didn’t often paint this in color: what would this truly look like? Who would build it? How would it sustain? And this takes real leadership—sometimes a group, but more often a visionary needs to pick up the brush, and give that world dimension. But also infuse it with energy, excitement, sell us on it. Get us so fired up we can’t think about anything else. And THAT has to come from a well of deep belief. At least if we want to follow a leader who is in integrity.

I took my first self-defense classes this week. It’s for women and femme folks, based on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu technique. It begins with de-escalation, demonstrating boundaries, then moving through all sorts of tactics based on body leverage and technique and not relying on sheer strength. The goal is not to fight, but to diffuse the conflict and find your way back to safety. It’s a decent metaphor for where we’re at. I hear some people are checking out of this USA Hotel, but I’m determined to figure out how I can extend my stay as long as possible.

Backing/music track: original, Modal Cobalt8 Synth + moog bass. Playing around on our new rig in the living room this weekend.

Brian Wilson died last week. He was 82 years old and nothing short of a musical genius, founding member of the Beach Boys and composer of incomparable tunes like “God Only Knows.” When I saw the news I remembered something about him struggling with mental illness, and I looked it up: his condition included schizoaffective disorder which apparently can cause auditory hallucinations. I didn’t investigate whether these hallucinations led to some of his songwriting, but instinctually it seems related. Slipping between what is “real” and hallucinated sounds like conditions for producing the type of music he once self-described as a “teenage symphony to god.” This was about his album in progress, Smile. It must have been so challenging to be so famous, and inevitably under pressure to present only a certain side of himself to the public.

Weeks before this news, I had downloaded the chart for “God Only Knows” and printed it out. I’d felt drawn to re-learning the tune at the piano, nerding out yet again at chord choices that circle around and drop you in unexpected yet familiar places, not quite in the same key but without enough friction for you to pinpoint exactly what changed. This bouncy, dreamy tapestry holds a classic Beach Boys sound, with choral oohs and aahs and harpichord and accordion and strings: it’s a vibe, and in some ways an entire world.

Andy and I talked about the first verse of that song over dinner the other night:

I may not always love you…

What an opening line for a love song! Introducing uncertainty and doubt in moment 1. But it goes on to proclaim the most romantic guarantee:

I may not always love you

But long as there are stars above you

You’ll never need to doubt it

I’ll make you so sure about it

God only knows what I’d be without you.

I made the argument that the first line was a trick: that he in fact had signed up for forever-love, and the “may not always love you” part was contextualized by the end of the verse to refer to afterlife or spirit realm or something beyond this earthly existence, where romantic love has no shape—only then maybe I will fall out of love, because we won’t exist in the traditional sense when there are not stars above you. But Andy wasn’t so sure, he’s more committed to the idea that songs can hold contradiction like few other things can, and that the uncertainty is an honest part of romantic love. No one knows what’s going to happen, because there’s no way to know the future. Why not start there?

Last week the White House sent the Marines and the National Guard to respond to protests in LA caused by the White House’s own ICE agents. Each of us saw a filtered version of the story on social media and news headlines, seemed like mostly peaceful assemblies intermixed with the occasional flaming waymo or flying rocks. I didn’t check the conservative news outlets to see what headlines they were displaying, but I would guess the weighted order would be reversed: flames first, assemblies second, if at all. Journalist Mina Kimes wrote, “The disparity between what’s actually happening in Los Angeles and the way it’s being mischaracterized is one of the biggest stress tests of modern media in recent memory” — Eek. Everyone’s version of the truth is a little different these days, depending on the confirmation bias they attract. What’s the answer to finding your way through? My friend Natalie’s voice pops into my head:

Discernment.

My question is, can there be true discernment without judgment, without deciding who is correct? How about without complete information, like in the case of our filtered news streams? How do we practice discernment and also disentangle ourselves from our polarized mindsets? Once you discern, don’t you form an opinion to inform your beliefs?

On Sunday we woke up to horrific news that a Minnesota state representative and her husband had been murdered in their bed, and another couple assaulted not far away. The perpetrator was said to be wearing a cop outfit. The first week of ICE raids, someone posted a screenshot from Amazon.com showing that anyone could buy an ICE vest and “become” an agent for about $20. Like deepfakes committing real life crime, it feels like another aspect of our lives where reality is getting mushy, where AI waves and cheap commerce are diluting our grip on the world and “truthiness” is seeping in. It’s not necessarily a permanent state, it feels transitional, on our way to something else. It’s not a stable foundation to build any kind of functioning society, or anything requiring trust or resilience. But it seems to be the new edge we are pushing, and it is what’s happening. In response, California lawmakers have apparently introduced a bill that would prevent law enforcement from wearing masks or other face coverings while in public, the “No Secret Police” Act.

How do we combat this, and reground ourselves in what is real? Discernment — somehow. Learning how to identify fakes, pressure-testing situations before we trust the people involved. Pausing until more is revealed, before we make a decision. Not always possible when we’re moving fast, and not an ideal way to live — starting from mistrust — but it’s part of a modern survival tactic for sure. How are we supposed to open our hearts to people that don’t see the world the way we do, and also refine our ability to discern what can be considered real and trustworthy, at the same time?

I was at an event last weekend in Detroit where yoga teacher and writer Elena Brower did a talk on death & dying. It was profound, she described her current training to become a Buddhist chaplain — something she never would’ve predicted five years ago — and her volunteer work in prisons and hospice. The imprisoned, and the dying, are her most frequent relationships these days. She introduced the Buddhist 5 Remembrances and asked the audience of 100+ people recite them out loud, repeating after her like the human microphones of Occupy Wall Street:

1. I am of the nature to grow old; I cannot avoid aging.

2. I am of the nature to have ill health; I cannot avoid illness.

3. I am of the nature to die; I cannot avoid death.

4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love will eventually be separated from me.

5. I am the owner of my actions, and the heir to my actions; they are my only true belongings.

At #4 my eyes rimmed with tears, and I softened thinking about that depth of loss. I was also tired, on day three of travel and social overload, perfect conditions for my heart cracking open. She then asked us to turn to our neighbor and make these statements again while making eye contact. I had come in late and had taken an empty aisle seat toward the back. I turned to my right, and was surprised to be met with the sweet smile of my old friend Leon. We hadn’t seen each other in probably a decade, since we were campmates at Burning Man, or maybe some gathering in the year that followed. But since then we’d only experienced each others’ lives on Instagram, taking in brief stories and snapshots of who the other had become.

His eyes were bright and clear, and I intentionally relaxed my wide smile to focus on his left eye, as instructed. He stated the remembrances to me, slowly and with care. I received each one fully, seeing him. Then it was my turn.

I am of the nature to grow old; I cannot avoid aging.

He looks the same to me. Do I look older to him? I don’t care really, but I’m curious how the 10 years has worn on my face. I feel so different than the person he briefly knew.

I am of the nature to have ill health; I cannot avoid illness.

That recent two-week virus, the way my father died, oof. I am so grateful for my working body and my ability to run around and do what I want.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love will eventually be separated from me.

I said these words to Leon, and the tears came again. All that is dear to me, every bit of it, will go away. Every person I love, every creature, every comfort and pleasure and joy. Some of it will outlast me, and I’ll go away—less heartbreaking, still poignant. Then I felt a larger ripple of loss, the world’s pain, a collective ache. A nostalgia for something before it’s gone, informed by all we’ve lost.

I am the owner of my actions, and the heir to my actions; they are my only true belongings.

This is it. This is really all that matters. How do I show up? What do I say, what do I do? What will be the lasting effect, how do I impact others? How can I show up in more and more integrity, peace, compassion, soft power—the qualities I want to see in the world?

He held my gaze and smiled, held me through the ebb and flow of those tears. Then we hugged and said thank you. We didn’t even try to catch up on life, we just acknowledged how special that presence and vulnerability was. I felt relief at having emptied out. When you’re empty there’s less to lose, in a good way. The next moment can be a fresh start.

Every couple of months during pandemic lockdown my mom, in her early ‘70s and sheltering in place alone, would have an understandable bout of frustration and claustrophobia and boredom and would exclaim in reaction to not being able to travel, “I feel like I’ve been cheated. I don’t have all that many years left.” At that point I’d usually reassure her that I was certain she had many many years left, and remind her that the whole world was in some version of the same boat. She would travel again, she would have a life again. But in that moment it felt unbelievable to her, and all she felt was wronged.

For whatever reason, I don’t share that sense of being owed a certain life other than this one. It’s not that I don’t wish a million things were different. But I attempt, over and over, to draw that clear line around what I can control. I’m both optimistic for a better future, and accepting of the cards I’ve been dealt: I can’t seem to imagine an alternate life for myself where this stuff is sorted out or nonexistent. This is the wave I paddled out to catch. It’s chaotic but maybe it’ll have a great crest, a barrel, maybe it’ll pummel me in whitewash, who knows but we make our meaning in the mess.

We find certainty where we can — as long as there are stars above…

We accept what we can’t know — I may not always….

And we keep going, as much time as we’re given.

We keep going.

Backing track: my own version of “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys, on acoustic piano + harmonium.

After a solid 2 1/2 weeks of illness and recovery, I’m finally back in the land of the living.

I’ve been going to acupuncture for some chronic back and neck pain (it’s helping!). After sick leave I was back on the table last Friday, supporting my recovery with cupping and needles in places my body had felt the most distressed: head, legs, lower back. It felt good to visualize moving stuck energy, old blood, pinpointing attention with a prick and then a subtle swell, maintaining the slowed-down pace of the weeks prior.

Face down, head in a table cradle, I immediately started hearing a song. It had a deep low rocking bass, a pulsing beat and a vocal clear as day:

slowing down
you’re in my arms now

An entire verse + melody spilled out, and I repeated it over and over, trying to land on the best rhyme and commit it to memory. But ultimately I had no way to capture it. Phone was across the room, back was full of needles, practitioner across the hall. I had a button in my hand but I considered it for Emergencies Only. A mistake bound to repeat until the lesson is finally learned, I told myself this song is good, it’s catchy — I’ll remember it. As any musician in the room can confirm: chances are high I will not remember it. Despite its fully-formed composition, by the time the lights come back on and the door slides open, the song was gone.

I held that clicker in my hand the entire time. I could’ve asked for my phone, with a completely justifiable reason — not to check my texts, but to not lose that song. Kind a cool reason, actually. But the risk of losing the song was apparently lower than the risk of inconveniencing someone, or feeling potential shame and embarrassment of suddenly NEEDING my phone. So I let it play out, tried to convince myself this time would be different, and lost the song. Later I thought, wouldn’t it have been no big deal to just… ask?

How often do we accept our realities as they are, floating on the river of life, and how often do we pick up a paddle and steer? How do we know what’s required of any moment?

I accepted the loss, imprinted the lesson that creative ideas can be fleeting and are never guaranteed to stay, and promised myself I’d write it down next time. The crazy thing about making music, or my way of making music, is that sometimes I hear the entire sound in my head before ever picking up an instrument. I’ll hear it like it’s playing on the radio, and if I’m near a laptop or piano, then begins the frantic but… playful? journey to reconstruct it in the real world. Which, Rick Rubin and many others will say, is never going to match how it sounds in your imagination. At some point you have to compromise, adjust expectations, and decide it’s as good as it’s going to get. Sometimes happy accidents take a song or a sound in a new direction, a keyboard glitch that fills the space perfectly or a lyric that sounds like something else and works even better. So, it’s not that the process of making music is always unsatisfactory, it’s just indirect.

Formerly Alien is at an interesting crossroads. In some ways, the post-apocalyptic world of our concept band has never been more relevant; look at the world around us! Jokes about societal collapse, despot rulers, needing to find a new home never hit so easy. In other ways, parts of the show feel tired to us and in need of refresh — it came together more than 7 years ago, that apocalypse feels like another lifetime! We’ve got fresh horrors that need a fresh response.

In January, Andy and I sat down with our band over deep-dish pizza and made the bold proclamation that it was time to write some new music. We’d done the show four times in 2024, and I will contradict my previous statement by saying we really did achieve the show we envisioned when we set out in 2017: by the end of last year, we had found just about as close to that version in our minds eye as we could hope to embody: with interstitial video bits, audience interaction, music dialed in, a rockin’ Tears for Fears cover at the end, and an ease with our transitions and lines that for non-actors wanting the characters to land somewhere in between our real and show selves, was a new level, unlocked.

After that October show (which you can watch on YouTube here ), we knew it was time for either a change or a break. Andy was back out on the road with America, which meant his weeks include two full days of travel and multiple show days, not to mention our work projects which require hours in front of the computer, zoom calls and emails, an then the blessing of going outdoors which comes with the maintenance of 50 fruit trees, 6 vegetable beds a dozen rose bushes and whatever else is going on out there. We are renovating my family’s barn so we can one day have a dedicated space to make music — which some days feels like exactly what needs to happen, and other days we question whether it’s a distraction from just sitting down and doing the thing, in whatever space is available. Floating in the river vs picking up a paddle.

Musically, it is not an exaggeration to say the two of us have performed these songs thousands of times in the past 7 years, in a myriad of arrangements and tempos and instrumentations. Andy wrote most of the tunes from a very specific place in 2016, as a single man in a studio apartment channeling the political and emotional tenor of the moment: DT taking office and the world shifting in new ways, Andy was also on the road with America the first time around and witnessed the power of rock and roll time travel to transport audiences and give them brief moments of unity and belonging, and a nostalgia that seemed to transform their bodies into teenagers again. Andy birthed a set of songs that captured a revolutionary and healing energy that felt exactly right. When we play our songs now, we can access that emotional space, but it’s not where we are living from: we have evolved as people, the world has evolved (in some ways, into an even more extreme and high-stakes place), and it’s not that that the old music feels irrelevant as much as we feel like at this point, we wonder if there’s something more to say.

So, we announced to the band that we would be attempting to write new music, and we hoped to expand or change the show later in the year. See earlier story about creative endeavors, this was easier said than done. The Formerly Alien music has a very specific sound, lots of clustery 4ths and 5ths and 9ths circling around certain chord progressions, it’s washy yet precise — these things are not rules but they are recognizable patterns and they form a boundary. It’s a world of sound and lyric and aesthetic, a self-contained palette that’s actually quite challenging to plug new songs in and out of. It’s more like an opera, or a song set, than your typical band.

In the story of Formerly Alien, we are the house band on a cruise ship turned refugee vessel searching for a new home, and we have been literally playing the same songs for our passengers every week, for all the years we’ve been adrift in space. That’s the joke — it’s the same music, over and over again, and passengers revisit the lounge for this familiar and comforting and inspiring soundtrack of home and what’s next. Every week, every month more disheveled, more disconnected from what was — and yet perhaps more clear on what we want and where we hope to head next? The music serves as a a canvas for softening and imagination.

So, while it’s theoretically exciting to write a new set of songs for the band, it’s also daunting. Paralyzing, even. Weeks passed, months of 2025 went by, and we hadn’t made a dent. Life is full, it is asking a lot of all of us every day. Andy is traveling constantly with his touring gig. Web work is busy and high-stakes in ways I can’t even write about here, which takes up a lot of mental space. Thing is, the music came to Andy the first time around in a space of wide-open possibility: he was living alone, working sporadically with a lot of free time, and his recording setup was 15 feet from his bed. The month he remembers “downloading” a lot of these songs from whoever it is music comes from, he was also incredibly sick, on heavy cold medication and experimenting with smoking weed at low temperatures. When we got together I was in the process of closing my travel startup, I had minimal work and we lived together in his 300sf studio. It was comically small and intense but also simple, and allowed us to live in the world of the band, all the time. These are not the conditions of our partnered life today.

Recently we started to entertain a different question: what if new music is not meant to be written for and contained within the format of the old band? This question is scary but necessary. Don’t fresh creative ideas require freedom, unbounded by expectation or limitation? Wouldn’t it make sense to sit down and write from that wide-open place?

You sure can’t force art. But you can decide to be disciplined — War of Art style, sitting down at your desk every day and making time and space for it — Andy wrote about this extensively in his blog when he gave himself songwriting accountability deadlines during the pandemic. You create the environment, make time for it, make sure you’re spiritually grounded and creatively fed when you start. But you can’t force the muse, the timeline or the product of what comes next. This is what leads so many artists to worry that every great piece of art might be their last great idea. How do you trust the source of inspiration, if you don’t technically know what it is? This is what faith is all about, right?

As I wrote here early on, in some ways this strange chapter of history feels like it requires artists maybe even more than it requires scientists, analysts, organizational leaders: before we can rebuild our reality, we need to be able to reimagine what it could look like, feel like, and be like. We need to process our past more, get back in touch with what matters to us, and practice operating from our heart sometimes instead of only our heads. What better way to free ourselves from our immediate realities and play in these alternate versions of the future than through songwriting, a format that can hold many truths and communicate through poetry and emotive sound? Again, theoretically perfect.

My recent musical ideas have flowed most easily in a new duo project, a synth pop band called Technicolor Mastodon that I started with old friend and world-class jazz pianist Jon Dryden. I have some other song ideas in motion, a few are big and anthemic and a few are tender and sweet. None of them sounds like Formerly Alien.

I love the band so much it makes my heart ache to think about it — the beautiful tragic concept of floating in space and starting over, the futuristic costumes, the way it is part of Andy and my love story, the fact that I get to touch so many parts of myself: musician, designer, facilitator, camp counselor, through my character A. My songwriting contributions to the band did not come in that same furious download, but they ended up fitting in because they were not disharmonious, and because they reflected some part of me.

This strange chapter. Everything in the news feels like part of a giant domino run that’s already set in motion, covering the surfaces of all of the rooms of the house with tiles that have either fallen or are precariously in line to fall, and every time you think you know where the run is headed, another new arm gets ticked into motion from another room. Like the “big beautiful bill’ that the House just passed and is now moving to the Senate, called the most destructive legislation in US history if it passes. Or the runaway plastics problem, with 10% of our recycling actually handled and “donated” clothing is piling up on the previously picturesque shores of countries like Ghana (I watched Buy Now last night, recommend but be prepared for that queasy exhaustion of really wrapping your head around a runaway human problem). People getting disappeared from their universities, shaken down on the streets for their paperwork.

What to even comment on, where to begin? Andy would say to focus on the universal feelings, those ever-present ones: music doesn’t have to be thematically descriptive or topical, it works better when you zoom out and touch the most elemental human themes, ones that do seep in to all of these intensifying layers of politics and society. It’s all the same stuff, it comes back to pain and loss and beauty and otherness and conflict and belonging and hope and sometimes holding a few of these things at the same time. Old themes, new world.

But how will I know if anything I make matters? How will we know if working on music is a better use of our time than direct activism, prepping for post-apocalyptic outcomes, something else? We won’t. But if music comes, and if our hearts and minds are open and the sound arrives on that inexplicable radio-frequency, our job is to hit record on the boom box and start the cassette tape rolling, as fast as possible (who remembers doing this in the ‘90s?). Even if the opening line feels like it doesn’t means anything deep:

slowing down
you’re in my arms now

…the opportunity is to follow the thread, to sit at the desk long enough to turn that into a complete thought — not a perfect one. I say this all out loud, to recommit to myself and to you. Starting with picking up my phone and making a voice note of the idea, even if it’s not an appropriate time to pull out a phone. Will I do it anyway?

Backing/music track: a reconstruction of “Different” by Formerly Alien, the chords I consider quintessential to the sound of this band, followed by a version of “Different” from our 2021 album, Somewhere.

I got very sick this past week. With the help of two doctors, two nurses and Google, I’ve deduced it down to some kind of unnamed virus, most likely passed along at a work event in San Francisco last Tuesday night. Here dozens of people, straight off a massive conference where they interacted with hundreds of other people, crammed into a living room with loud music, yelling to be heard. I was not at the conference, but I was five inches from many of these people’s faces on Tuesday night.

I’ve had chaotic fevers, body aches and chills for six days now. Every time I lay down to nap or sleep with a light blanket on, I slip back into the chill — core temp starts to heat, body thinks it needs to catch the limbs up and kicks chills back into action, and it sets off another fever and starts the cycle over again.

When my body shakes, I can’t help but be reminded of seeing my dad in the hospital, treated for what we thought was pneumonia, and walking into his room to the sound of his metal bedframe rattling loudly. It was shocking. I burst out crying and he said to me from across the room, I’m not going to die, Amy — I’m just sick. (Spoiler: he did die. Story for another day.) I remember the nurse pulling me into the hallway to tell me in a raised whisper that I should stay strong for him. But that “second mom” I mentioned last time was also a nurse, also in the hallway, and she clasped my upper arm and told the attendant, she can feel what she needs to feel. I was 22.

Lying here now, my senses feel heightened. My head lightly aches, like the end of a day wearing a too-tight headband or cap. I can hear a jet plane flying above at the same volume as the sound of my hand moving under my pillow. It’s so beautiful outside, not a single cloud in the sky. A mockingbird is singing, showing off. The dissonance is stark, the world outside the window reminds me of a Willy Wonka set that’s not real because how could it be when I feel like this? Somehow it doesn’t even help to stare out the window at the long valley; it just makes my headache worse. I can’t help but think of our limited number of days, and this is how I am spending an entire week. Make something, at least! Read a book. Write something down. Have this not be an utter waste of time. But also, don’t I say I believe in rest? And what is rest for if not times like this? And in the grand scheme of things, it will just be a week. Or maybe 10 days. Hopefully not more.

The roses in the garden are in full force. Smaller bushes have a few perfect papery bundles of color, while the bigger ones explode with 40 to 50 fragrant blooms. They are scattered throughout the fruit trees, vegetable beds and herbs — the functional and the beautiful as perfect complements, interchangeable. The grasses from winter rains are still tall, because I can’t bring myself to weed whack them; they’re too green and vibrant. I’d rather have weeds than bare ground. I like the ethos of weeding, making space for the right things to grow, but I struggle with the act of it because I love the look of wild. This is my inner conflict. I’ll probably become a more ruthless gardener over time; my mom is an expert weeder. The grasses fill the orchard, the trees burst with new leaves and citrus, everything is thriving and I can’t believe a yard can look like this. Earlier I spent about 15 minutes outside before it was time to lie down again.

I always feel the need to try and figure out where an illness came from. This could be covid-era programming, when we were all tracking our family networks and pods and neighbors and then reading that now it apparently it can come through the ventilation system of an apartment building and wondering if that moment you took your mask down in the supermarket to smell the bottle of dish soap, maybe in that single moment did you breathe in the virus and you’d spend the next few weeks regretting that unconscious mistake?

Or maybe my attention to source is an imprint from that 20-year old “gotcha” of losing my dad. Maybe it’s the same reason why some part of me can’t help but catastrophize illness — not always, but sometimes I convince myself that even though people get sick for weeks, all the time, with really heavy symptoms that put them flat on their backs and then they recover, mine might be different. What if the doctors are missing something important? I’m probably not alone in thinking this way. I did hear there’s a nasty virus going around right now, I’m sure I’ll be fine.

Parts of the experience are also reminiscent of how it must feel to get old: creaky knees, sensitive skin, moving slow. I walk through the house at a snails pace. When I’m sick, I have immediate depths of empathy for people who are sick with chronic illness, disability, and elders. Isn’t it interesting how hard it is to truly relate and live inside of someone else’s situation, until we *are* living in it or at least interconnected with it as a caretaker or housemate? It makes me feel guilty for not spending more time asking my friends about their chronic pain or illness. Or do they even want to talk about it? I hope I remember to feel grateful for my health for a long time after this ends, and to tune in to the people around me who are not well in case I can help.

For 35 years my mom was a teacher for infants with special needs, and I remember that gave her an uncommon calibration for baseline health. She was always impressed by developmentally on-track babies, because of how much time she spent with the ones behind schedule: Look at the way he crawls! she’d say. He’s doing so great! She explained once how sometimes her job looked like teaching the parents how to love their new baby in the same way they love their other kids. Teaching someone to love sounds like pretty much the best use of time I can think of.

When you’re sick, your priorities change, your world temporarily changes. Everything slows down. But maybe that’s what’s most important right now. I’ll see how it goes.

“Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.”

― Rumi

In my senior high school yearbook, I was voted most likely to change the world. That shit can either bless your journey or screw you up.

I genuinely wonder what led my classmates to this vote. Sure I got good grades, did some volunteer work voluntarily, and cared about things when many high schoolers pride themselves on cool passivity. Maybe I was louder than I remember, shortest in the class but standing on my soapbox about vegetarianism and the rainforest? But I was such a rule-abider, extremely conflict avoidant and always wanting to do things by the book. And the thing we all learn as we get older is that the rule-abiders are not likely to be world-changers.

A few years ago I reconnected with a high school friend who had become a lawyer; we were having ongoing conversations about reproductive rights and legal defense strategies. A few hangs in, she reminded me that in English class we did a mock debate in which the issue was abortion. I have no memory of this. And because of her Catholic upbringing, she said she automatically took the anti-abortion side, or pro-life as they call it, and I apparently took the side of the pro-abortion, and in some teenage framework I argued the case for body autonomy and choice. She told me this moment made a huge impression on her: it led her to reconsider the ideas imparted by her family’s faith in exchange for her own more fully-formed values. When she told me all this I was stunned. My family was progressive but my parents didn’t talk about sex, except maybe a side-comment to remind us that it was a bad idea. Where had this fully-formed argument of mine come from?

As a teen, I found the entire realm of sex uncomfortable. I was scared of having it, scared of waiting too long to have it. Allured by it, ashamed of being allured by it, mildly judgy of the kids who had it. Confused about whether it was okay to explore my own body, confused about when and where and how sex was actually something to be celebrated. It was so confusing: how could something be so desired, considered the end goal of hooking up aka “Home Base” and also so scandalous, sinful, hidden and off-limits? I could tell it was a powerful thing, but this was pre-internet and I also wasn’t allowed to watch R-rated movies, so my exposure to sex as anything more than pg-13 carnal was quite limited. I still can’t watch a makeout scene in a movie without hearing my dad’s voice hollering “mush alert!” from the other side of the couch, which I realized later was almost certainly a tactic to deal with his own discomfort. I knew hiding couldn’t only be about trying to protect me, but it felt like something I wasn’t supposed to understand quite yet.

About a year ago, another person from my past — the mother of my childhood best friend, who I used to call my “second mom” — told me her lifelong political issue is, and always will be, abortion. This stunned me too: I had no idea (or at least no memory of it) but it must’ve imprinted on me directly or indirectly. I do have a sharp memory of a certain conversation where she leaned in with such seriousness that it read like anger: “You can ALWAYS say no. You never have to do something your body tells you is not right. Even if you’re walking down the aisle, it’s never too late to say no.”

Consent! Agency! This is what I needed to hear, growing up around a certain surf-bro, beer-drinking high school scene where it didn’t always feel clear who was in charge of what ground rules. I knew my family was trying to keep me safe, but sometimes they did it by hiding their hand instead of spreading out the cards on the table. At the same time that I was learning how to be sexy, in my ass-tight stovepipe jeans and baby tees, I was also terrified of being shamed for doing it wrong or going too far. And so, to keep myself safe in the “good girl” zone I decided early on that sex in high school probably wasn’t for me. I had grown up more or less in a protestant church, but the summer I turned 15 I went to a sleepaway Christian camp with a rock band that played during worship services, and was smitten for the first time by the mystery and promise of a godly and spiritual life, nodding reverently to the sacrifices I was told it required. I came home from camp baptized and wearing a promise ring to symbolize saving myself for marriage (decision made! all set), and my parents were surprised and a little concerned. The ring only lasted a few months, but over the years that followed I found healthy relationships with good guys, ones that respected my boundaries and let me grow at my own pace. I must’ve held that value of abortion rights clumsily but firmly alongside the rest.

Right now, a phrase like “change the world” feels earnest and hopeful in an old-fashioned way: like talking about early-days climate concerns, or building schools and distributing water filters. The change that’s needed today feels more like a hail-mary, and most days I can’t quite wrap my arms around it. Gender equity was a thing then, but in the 90s third-wave feminism’s slow steady build of riot grrl / girl power hadn’t yet cracked open the rawness that followed, the surfacing and mainlining stories of violence and injustice, sexual exploitation and workplace mess. I was aware of the problems of patriarchy, things that didn’t feel right and didn’t seem fair. In college I once walked into an intro to computer science class to find a sea of male heads, and walked right back out. I didn’t know if I was correct to feel like something was off, or I was just encountering the way the world worked and needed to figure out where I belonged? It would take years for me to get clear on what I believed was out of whack, what could be done about it.

My own fundamental fears around sex were pretty simple. Getting pregnant, getting hurt or abused, getting an STD (the STD marketing of the 90s, wow! Not to downplay the very real impact they can have, but dear lord it made it seem if you had sex once, more than likely your skin would fall off and you’d never walk again). Getting shamed by my peers for having sex too soon, or too often, or shamed by my partner for doing something wrong in bed. It was not a freeing experience. Throughout my 20s, I failed to understand what my body wanted or to have much fun with it. Whether in a relationship or after a few dates, I found a way to get twisted in knots, just about every time.

I grew from it, sure. But I wish I knew sooner that in a world of structure and obligation, sex could be freeing. There are so few spaces where we are invited to turn off our logical brains and play. There’s creativity in how bodies move and dance and respond. It can be a deeply connected act, and these days moments of real connection can be hard to come by. It can be meaningful, exciting and unpredictable, spiritual. But if fear and shame rules the narrative, sex as a healthy and integral aspect of human existence becomes lost. So why is it still all tied up in knots, I wondered, and especially for women? What is the big deal? Who’s invested in keeping us scared, keeping us in limbo between wanting sex and being ashamed of it and being afraid to get hurt by it?

I found many ways to answer that question, and many ways to get free. Friends of mine became tantra teachers and sex therapists. Others went poly and found play parties. Still others did therapy, found their groove, carried on with their life. Everyone’s path is different. Mine was my own. I continued to be in relationships, but that job with the anti sex trafficking organization sure didn’t help with my feelings of safety and freedom. How many stories can one psyche hold, how many basements and cuffs — and not the playful kind…! (Sung to the tune of “part of your world” - yikes.) But I found my way — a story for another day — and found my body’s likes and dislikes, found ways to listen to a partner’s body and be in flow, and found those psychedelic moments of sex that to me are like being inside an oil painting while it creates itself.

The bigger idea, the real dimensional part that back then some part of me knew I wasn’t supposed to understand yet, was that this aspect of life isn’t just about pleasure, or bodies, or connection.

In the traditional seven-chakra system, the root chakra is the first. Located at the base of the spine, it’s all about connecting to the physical world, grounding down and feeling safe. The root chakra holds raw life force energy. The second chakra or sacral is all about moving that energy into creative expression and intimate connection. So once you feel safe, you can create, and sexual expression is one of many modes of creation — artistic, embodied, even making new life (if you can and choose to). By the way, I agree with the antis that this is a miracle. I just disagree that it’s meant to be carried out every time, that god’s will looks only one way. I think of god’s will moving through a person in every decision, every step they make.

Scare tactics of controlling someone’s sexuality — tricking people into thinking these qualities are not inherent but can be granted or taken away, condemned or condoned — get in the way of how free a person feels to connect and express, of how safe or unsafe they feel in doing so, and can change whether creative energy can flow. Again, this journey is personal: everyone’s needs are different, everyone’s history is unique. Maybe that’s why it feels like a final frontier of empathy, a test of the human race on whether we can let each other be in this way. Actually, maybe it’s test #2 after test #1 — whether we can come together to turn climate catastrophe around. Either way, if we allow culture, society, politicians to shut down this dimension of our lives we risk stymying our most creative, connected and powerful selves. Societies that want to control and suppress are often invested in shutting down pathways to new thinking and other intelligences. See: psychedelics movement and theories of government suppression there.

Of course I’m not saying that sex is all we need to be free: tactical political change-making strategies are not directly emerging from the hottest bedrooms. And not everyone is looking for, or open to sex in the same way. I’m talking about making sure we are not blocked from more subtle levels of knowing and being which might help us become more fully expressed, reclaiming our bodies and our personal power, knowing how to tap into these energetics and unlock creative ideas and visions, whether in meditation or sex or some other embodied activity.

These are not new ideas. They are ancient in practices like Tantra. Over history civilizations fall away then come back to the sensual aspects of life. Recently I saw aspects of ancient tantric wisdom repackaged as “the O method” (standing for orgasmic manifestation, not to be confused with O Meditation), a recent tiktok trend, in which you hold an intention as sexual energy builds and shout your big dream out loud at the moment of climax. This feels a bit… disruptive to the moment, if it’s with another person, but I like the exploration.

Here we see again that progress is not linear: we are muddling our way back to the sexual freedoms our tantric predecessors discovered and enjoyed thousands of years ago. Bumping up against resurgences of puritanicalism despite our parents’ generation’s sexual revolution. Fighting for access to reproductive health despite having safe modern technologies widely available. All of these layers are reasons I work day to day on the issue of body freedom, in the form of abortion access, to spread useful information and help people feel less scared and more liberated in these intimate, thrilling, transcendent and mysterious and sometimes painful and confusing and also fundamentally essential moments of life. To get at least one road block out of the way. Life has enough human-made challenges as it is, would you agree?

Sometimes changing the world means not inventing something new but initiating a return, back to a way something used to be done before the practice or idea was lost. Lost out of fear, out a need to control, out of a desire to stay safe in a chaotic and unpredictable world. But in moments of safety, maybe unpredictability is just the practice we need. Maybe creative flow is just the thing to get us out of this mess. And of course, changing the world doesn’t happen at the hands of a single person. It’s something we do together.

A final note: The root chakra (and also its corresponding color red) map to sound, in the form of a low slow vibration between 228Hz and 456Hz. I like to put on this hang drum root chakra track in the background when I’m starting my day.

Backing/music track: “See You Shining,” a jam from my time with the Buckminster Fuller Design Science Studio in 2020. I recently added it to my modest archive of works in progress at amybatara.com.

I like to go to a gym class on Saturdays at 9am, but this Saturday morning I was in the backyard spraying enzyme spray on the contents of Andy’s shirt drawer at 830 and didn’t know if I would make it.

She didn’t used to be like this. In fact, I don’t think she ever once defaced our Koreatown studio in LA. She peed a few times in our next apartment in Los Feliz, but it was clearly territorial — Catniss the neighborhood boss-lady was marking our doormat, and mo was defending her turf. Still frustrating, but more understandable.

Now we live in a rural spot with a handful of free-roaming cats that pass through the yard, and it’s flipping her out. “Don’t touch our stuff” still seems to be the throughline, stuff which recently includes our shirts, a chair, two of my purses (!) left overnight on the floor of my office, and my keyboard sustain pedal. She’ll spray, and we’ll find it 12 to 36 hours later and we’ll treat it with enzyme, vinegar, and a triple machine washing if possible. We talk to her about it, we point and stomp, we sigh deeply, we clean things and move on.

Luckily the smell seems to come out entirely in the wash. But I’ve realized the situation touches on some deep shame about being a gross person, and fear that our home will start smelling like cat pee to visitors. Which of course I could therapize to mean being rejected by my peers, kicked out of the village and left to starve in a cave in the woods. The core of most shame cycles, right?

Andy gets frustrated too, and grossed out, but he’s better about tapping into compassion. She is an animal, after all. She doesn’t understand our rules or why they matter. She probably thinks the more our house smells like her, the more safe we’ll be from predators and stealers of stuff. Cats are especially bad at discipline because apparently their attention shifts so quickly that scolding them mere seconds later doesn’t connect in their cat-brains as punishment to the thing that preceded the scolding. They’ve already moved on. It’s hard to learn lessons when you’re that present, I suppose.

It’s a particular relationship to get frustrated, angry even, while still loving someone or something so deeply and consistently that there is no doubt of forgiveness. I don’t have kids, but I imagine it must be similar: you are *so mad* at them for what they did, you don’t understand and will never fully understand why they did it, and yet somehow the love remains like a cool undercurrent below the surging hot surface.

And since everything is relationship, and relationship is a two-way street, I have to own my part in it. We’re doing this to each other, in a way. She is an animal yet I keep her captive, my pampered prisoner. She’s also a certifiable housecat with minimal street smarts, and long ago decided to keep her indoors and out of reach from coyotes and hawks. Should I be completely surprised that she occasionally pees on our wood floor, not that different than the backyard where we let her pee freely to us by peeing on our floor?

I’ve read that cats adapt to living with humans by deciding they’re part of the same tribe, which is why some cats take night duty, watching intently out the windows while their humans sleep. In this scenario, if she senses danger or excitement, our tiny sentry defends our stuff. By peeing on it, making it smell like her, like us, so no one will take it.

We bought refills of the cat-calming diffusers and more powder supplements, and treated the areas with essential oils said to deter spraying. I hope it works this time.

Saturday morning we were also on chicken duty, watching our Lavender Maran closely. For what seemed like an entire 24 hours she had been standing very still on the floor of the hen house with a listless look in her eye. She wasn’t coming down to eat or drink water, and didn’t seem to be laying.

Chickens can slow down for many reasons: becoming “broody” or wanting to sit on their non-fertilized eggs, or parasites or stress. But we were paying close attention because just a few days earlier, out of the blue, her sister died. The other Lavender Maran was still lived at my mom’s house, and she was a real specimen. Early on we named her Cloud because she floated around the coop, her pristine white-grey coat fluffed up around her like a cumulus, unbothered by her cohort and their silly attempts at a pecking-order.

But in a matter of days, she had started to seem weak and appear scraggly. And on Tuesday, my mom found her in the run, keeled over next to the water dispenser. We buried her that afternoon.

So not surprisingly, when Patricia began acting strange in different ways, we kept close watch. We asked chatgpt what might be going on, and a detailed response suggested egg binding: an egg might be stuck in her abdomen, which would lead to exactly the symptoms we were seeing. We filled a tub with warm water and Andy held her half-underwater while gently massaging her belly to encourage any stuck egg. He didn’t feel anything, but she seemed to relax. We pulled her out after 20mins and she pooped, which was a good sign of no blockage. We put her in a box with a hea ting pad, food and water, so she could rest.

I called two vets, then a friend who works on a chicken ranch. Answers were unsatisfying: it could be many things, impossible to diagnose from afar. And probably not a big deal. But also, chickens can go downhill fast. Neither local vet worked on chickens, the closest was an avian specialist an hour away.

And here, the inevitable question presents itself: what is a chicken life worth? We love our chickens: they are pets, they give us eggs, they have personalities. We take our cat to the vet, is a chicken any different? Farmers might say yes; chickens are more functional and disposable. But I had to decide what I believed in that moment. And, if I decided to drive the chicken an hour away and spend hundreds of dollars, I still might not get any answers. In the meantime, we’d wait a few more hours to see if the bath helped. I checked on her 20 minutes later, and then again 20 minutes after that. The third time I uncovered the box, Patricia had died.

We still have no idea what turned. It’s uncanny, spooky that she died just days after her sister, who lived miles away. Maybe it was something with the breed, some vulnerability or immune dysfunction? Even writing this to you feels vulnerable, like I’ll be judged as a bad pet-parent. But it’s now five days later and the other two chickens (Oogie and Dancer) seem fine, unaffected. I told chatgpt what happened, and it snapped into therapist-mode. I’m so, so sorry, it said. Do you want to talk about it? What happens when chatgpt becomes intertwined with a death? I wondered but didn’t type. I’m sure there’s a disclaimer in the terms & conditions.

Cloud & Patricia, March 2025

Despite mo the cat’s bad behavior, we cuddled her extra hard that night, spooning our cheeks against her belly as she purred loudly. We buried Patricia on Easter morning down by the vegetable beds.

Any lifeless body is confronting, and forces me to think about my own mortality. The body becomes a shell, the spirit is gone. It’s hard to believe that it’s irreversible, and that being is never again coming back alive. It’s scary to think about that happening to people that I love, to people that I’m close with. But I also deeply believe that the more comfortable we are with death, the more we can understand this life and make the most of it.

And now I’m in the backyard, watching two chickens roam and peck instead of three. Mo is harassing a lizard that she caught at the edge of the patio. She’s batting it with her paws then snatching it up in her mouth over and over, to dangle it above the ground before dropping it somewhere new. Then she chases it until she gets distracted or loses sight. Again, the value of life becomes unclear. My buddhist-loving heart wants to intervene, to save the poor lizard, but she’s an animal. We keep her indoors most of the day, her predator-instincts suppressed by napping on folded blankets.

There’s no perfect answer. But what I decide to do is allow her to chase a lizard for a few minutes, let nature do its thing, and watch her be happy and free.

Backing/music track: “plucked,” an unfinished song from 2020

The older I get, the more I see that progress isn’t linear. And that it makes sense for any perception of “progress” to look more like a pendulum than a staircase, pushing in a new direction only to fail, reveal unintended consequences or create new problems, or face pushback and rejection.

And it makes sense. Trying to substantially change something usually means disrupting the status quo, challenging how things were done before, and encountering friction along the way.

Culture is the garden bed in which these new ideas are planted, and culture is also usually the last thing to change. It’s foundational, norms and beliefs inform how people act and what they care about. Pushing up against the status quo can be risky business.

When I landed on this pendulum-swing idea, it became hard to verbalize exactly what was the end goal of all this progress anymore. Was it a utopian society? Is that vision humanly possible or remotely realistic? Maybe we’re not moving toward utopia as much as we’re swinging in new directions, in messy iteration, with fresh attempts to stay safe and get free. One thing’s for sure, we have no idea how it will end.

In spring of 2010 I was unemployed in New York City with little idea of what I would do next. A job had ended that was also completely wrong for me (it entailed sitting in a cubicle and researching all the performing arts venues and practice spaces in a particular city in the US, then entering this data into big spreadsheets for consulting projects. oof.) and I had recently fallen into new love. I was renting a room in Williamsburg at the bottom of McCarren Park and playing in an indie rock band, very much enjoying the funemployed life while it lasted.

An old friend from my summer camp gig in college (my favorite job, the BEST job) had a production company, and they were in charge of putting on the TONYs that summer. He asked if I wanted to manage celebrity travel for the honorees and special guests, and I said yes — back in front of a computer and a database, but at least it had a hard end date.

June 2010: my workstation at the TONYs

In my first week, I met his co-producer who told me about her husband’s nonprofit: an anti-human trafficking organization, founded on the work of a visionary Cambodian sex slavery survivor named Somaly Mam. I was struck by the stark black and whiteness of this issue and its crystal-clear moral compass: saving the arts was one thing, but ending modern slavery? Was another level.

I came on as office manager, and jumped right in to cleaning up their startup-esque systems — they had just experienced big growth, Somaly had earned Glamour’s Woman of the Year award and Sheryl Sandberg and Susan Sarandon had joined the advisory board, and they were drowning in bad email systems and broken website links. This newly-minted nonprofit manager / daughter of an IT guy quickly found her way to relevance.

I also found myself swirling in the murky gray of nuanced and often horrific stories of exploitation and abuse and of understanding how the activist community balanced the definition of trafficking against voluntary sex work, attempting complex international aid programs to try and improve the situation.

The spell is breaking. The center can’t hold.

Stories of that grey-area complexity are for another day, but ideas of risk, power and control are on my mind as we navigate what seems to be an unprecedented moment of financial, legal and environmental turmoil in the US. We’re faced with new questions every day: what do we believe in, who’s actually in charge, and is there a new emergent moral compass that our current culture will support? How risky is it to try to question the norm or change the rules?

Two years had passed at the nonprofit, and I was in deep. My role had grown and I was directing communications and partnerships for the New York foundation. I was regularly working til 11pm, sending my last emails in time to reach the Cambodian office as they came online, and I had become your favorite dinner party guest: the one who won’t stop talking over their marg about the crisis of child sex trafficking and its root cultural issues of trauma, gender inequity and sexual stigma. Fun!

That new love had also progressed, and we got married in the summer of 2012. The next week, instead of taking a proper honeymoon, I flew to Cambodia for work. In hindsight, this may have been a sign: but at the time it just seemed like passion flowing in many directions.

And this is how I found myself, one muggy night in June, on a ride-along to the brothels of Phnom Penh.

The outreach program was run by survivors of trafficking, trained as advocates to revisit the types of establishments that used to ensnare them and talk to the women and girls who were still there. No rescues, no coercion — just conversation and care. We approached the porch of the first brothel, a worn-down house by the side of the road, holding a plastic bag filled with cold coke cans. We offered small waves of our hands, and my colleague Sora* acted as my translator.

June 16, 2012: a different brothel in Phnom Penh.

We asked the women how they were doing. Fine, they responded. Asked if they needed anything. Want a coke? (One did, the other didn’t.) Need condoms? (Responsibility and cost of condoms usually landed on the side of the sex worker.) How are they treating you here? Shrugs. Hard to get straight answers, hard to build trust, who knows what’s actually going on, but we persisted.

The sound of two motorcycles grew from down the road until they had pulled up and parked in front of the house. Two men swung themselves off, clearly drunk. Sora began to narrate: these are clients. they are going to decide which of these women they want to pay for. I nodded.

One of them stepped onto the porch toward the women. The other turned toward me.

He overtly looked me up and down. Then he squatted to get a better look at my body. He said something in Khmer to his friend.

Get in the truck, Sora said. Walk away quickly and get in the truck.

I did as I was told. I turned around and walked to the truck, glancing back to make sure he wasn’t following. I got in the passenger seat and locked the door. I waited to see if he would come, but he chose one of the women on the porch and all four disappeared inside.

My heart raced in a dozen different directions. I felt a wave of actual fear ripple through my body, realizing that the only thing protecting me from rape was the color of my skin. But even then, if he had really wanted to, would we have been able to prevent it? Or would it have become a horrible twist in my own story, an attempt to learn up close about the thing I had been working on for years, only to become a victim myself?

I also thought about the women on the porch. The two guys would pay a couple of dollars each, which may or may not end up in their pockets. Violence was common, brothels being a place for confused and traumatized men to unleash their dominance or escape their own pain, either from their immediate reality or from the generational residue of the 1970s genocide. Soon we’d drive away and sleep in our own beds, while the women took more clients. Were they there by choice? We couldn’t tell but my colleague guessed no. Did the visit plant a seed of an idea that they had agency, that they could leave and build a new life? Maybe; maybe not. Sora would come back in a week and try to talk to them about the shelters and training programs we ran. The men, the Johns would continue to generate demand until something changed, possibly by these same survivor advocates speaking up. This was the work, in the grey.

The spell is breaking. The center can’t hold.

To be clear, this isn’t a judgement of the men or Cambodian culture, nor is it a “poor me” story of my scary close call. It was one of many awakenings where I saw that the rules are relative, and that norms run deep. So deep that I don’t get a pass (but I did get lucky).

In hindsight, our idea of a ride-along where I would observe but somehow with protective shield around me was cute. In this swirl of unresolved gender and power play, why would we think we had any real control? Of course there was risk. We were the radicals, attempting to overturn a longstanding economy, engrained roles for some women, a Friday night out for some men, a coping mechanism to deal with a tradition of sexually suppressed marriages. It had layers upon layers. And with any clash of new ideas comes the chance of chaos.

This job was where I learned that nothing is black or white, and no solution is linear. In order to understand this in my bones, I apparently had to see and feel it up close. In the years that followed, and as I continued to work on complex social issues, I came to understand something: if our most pressing challenges were that straightforward to correct or solve, we would’ve done it a long time ago. And the answer will never look like flying in from afar to save the day (see: white savior complex) — in a globalized world, the only way to make meaningful, lasting change is to learn from locals and take their lead.

I ended up leaving international work in 2014 (also a story for another time) because we have no shortage of complex problems here in the US — too many, in fact, for one person to think about. Some moments require us to protect ourselves, and others are for getting in the ring, and somehow we must decide how and when to go against the grain by reading the room and following our gut and ultimately not knowing how it will turn out. We are wired for safety — but if we play it too safe we risk missing the chance to show up and participate, to enact those new ways of being, to ride the pendulum to the end of its swing just to see how it feels out there.

Right now what seems to be required of us is to recalibrate our understanding of progress, to redefine our own moral compass. It’s not going to be handed down from our leaders; it will be found within, from what we’ve seen and know to be true, and by tapping into longstanding wisdom.

Systems are crumbling, revealing their weaknesses and dark corners, and this is painfully but necessarily forcing us to see the world for what it is: created by people, for people, hungry for that same safety and freedom and spinning tales that their way is the best way. We have no choice now but to deal with the situation head-on. The spell is breaking, and we have little reason to believe that those in control inherently know best, that our leaders are on our side, or that history will inevitably bend toward the long arc of justice. We’re being asked to get clear on what we want and what we’re willing to risk, connect with others who share the same vision, and find the courage to push forward.

Progress is not inevitable, and it surely will not be linear. But if we tune in and follow that new compass, we can start to paint ourselves out of the grey.

*name changed

soundtrack: original music, home studio early pandemic with gong and synth.

A note: this post has an audio track with voiceover and music. Feel free to give it a spin (feedback welcome!).

How’s your brain feeling these days? If you spend a long day on the internet, does it feel like you’re emerging from a ping pong match in a modern art gallery under a strobe light next to a loud round of Trivial Pursuit? Speaking for myself, when the most thoughtful part of my day looks like methodically closing 32 browser tabs then lying on the couch to zone out in instagram stories and cat videos, it’s time to zoom out and reflect.

I do start the day with a morning journaling practice, based on what Julia Cameron presents in her book The Artist’s Way as “morning pages,” where I attempt to write a few pages, stream of consciousness style, after coffee but before I do anything else. I end up dumping out my dreams from the night before, my thoughts, worries and fears, affirmations and plans. As you might expect, recurring themes appear over and over, and one of the requests I’m often making to myself is to slow down, get quiet, and listen.

It’s becoming increasingly rare for any of us to have the time or surroundings to do that: to just listen. To sit in the in-between, letting our mind gently unfold and curl around a question, a musing, a connection of one thing to another. And it’s different from meditation. Some of my best ideas have come out of quiet space, but still I rarely make it happen: instead I’m constantly grabbing for my phone, my inbox, my feed, to give me inspiration or the answer to the question, ‘what do I do next?’— or to distract me from however that last online interaction made me feel. I know I’m not alone in this.

At some point I had the thought that the internet is like the oceanic field of cosmic intelligence or infinite wisdom, and at this stage we are like newbie intuitives or psychics, trying to take it all in at once like drinking out of a firehose instead of dipping in and out and using it as a tool to obtain we want and need.

Years ago, when I was in Guatemala on a scouting trip for my impact travel startup, Journey, I stayed with an old family friend of my cofounder — an expat from the midwest who had been living in Lake Atitlan for over a decade. In her small living room, we sipped cold beer (gluten allergy be damned, I wanted the full experience) and talked about her time in Guatemala. She told me she led candle ceremonies with the local shamans — a very rare thing to be accepted into the community as an outsider. But it had all happened very naturally, because she had always known she was “different,” She told me that when she was a kid, she would sit alone in the schoolyard and birds would land on her and she’d talk to them. The other kids thought she was nuts, but over the years she realized she had the gift of intuition. When she finally founder her way to Guatemala the spiritual community essentially said “We see you, we know you. Come in.”

I was fascinated by the intuitive part. Then I became self-conscious. I asked her, can you always read people? Like, right now are you reading me?

She looked at me intently and said, I’ve learned to turn it on and off. Otherwise it’s too much, if I’m always receptive I can’t walk through the market without picking up energy right and left. But if something is strong it will come through anyway — like if someone’s in the wrong relationship, for example.

I blushed. I was married, but at that point the marriage was precarious. We loved each other but been growing apart in unexpected ways— I was hungry for new experiences, new people, couldn’t settle down (travel company as case in point). He couldn’t understand why I couldn’t be happy with what we had and frankly, I couldn’t understand either.

This idea of turning intuition on and off stuck with me. I imagined the listening practice of an intuitive as tapping into a vast energetic field, a frequency that enveloped the earth like the TV waves in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, invisible to the naked eye but thick in that other dimension, where all wisdom is available, all the time, if only you know how to tune in.

Back to the modern internet: with the advent of AI search tools, it feels like everything is there — or at least has potential to materialize there. The amount of information on the internet grows exponentially, with estimates of 2.5 quintillion bytes of data (1 with 18 zeros) created daily. 90% of the data on the internet was created in the last two years alone.

And for our novice untrained squirrel-brains, this is irresistible. Tell me everything — tell me my neighbor’s profession. Does Keanu Reeves have a spouse? What time of year is best to plant wildflowers? How about pinach? What time does the cafe down the street open? Like candy for our dopamine-seeking systems, we can’t help but chase the reward over and over, learning answers to questions we didn’t know we had, or losing ourselves in rabbit-holes of stories and facts. It tricks us into thinking, I need this knowledge — knowledge is good, right? The more I know, the more powerful I can be. Let me just finish this enewsletter about how nuclear power works, then I’ll be available to my present reality again.

But that’s just it—it’s destroying our ability to have original thought, it’s disrupting our inner voice. How can we listen when there is so much outer noise? When we insist on swimming in the internet most of the time, we risk drowning drinking from the firehose long after we’re thirsty.

To be clear, I am not a technology pessimist. I grew up next to Silicon Valley during the first internet boom, when there was a lot of excitement for what was possible and almost no fear of things going off the rails.

Even if technology feels like the most unnatural part of our lives, I still somehow see it as a natural part of what’s next. Biomimicry is the practice of learning from nature when designing for human society, and we can see this in how the internet’s structure reflects the brain’s neural networks. Zipping around, looking for information is not dissimilar to our brain’s synapses firing, mysteriously accessing the exact detail we need at the moment we need it. But we are young in technology terms, and we must learn how to harness it instead of get used by it. We are not there yet, and many worry we never will be.

Returning to the idea of intuitives, the parallels become clear. You can’t leave the switch on all the time — otherwise you take in too much energy that’s not yours, too much information that’s not relevant. There is no space to synthesize or process, and learnings lose their meaning in the chaos of too much. The system floods into overwhelm and without original thought it becomes more susceptible to coercion and brainwashing.

But if we found more quiet space in the day, and trained ourselves to tap in on a genuine quest for information, we might rediscover that inner voice. The one that has answers of its own.

The internet has some real darkness these days, but I still believe it’s neither good or evil, it’s all of it. It’s a messy contradiction just like us, but digitized. It’s an unfathomably large mapping of our public consciousness, with our fellow humans’ ideas, curiosities, writings, computations, an unprecedented hive mind of at least what we’ve concocted so far. I recently saw a video of someone asking AI whether humans created it or it already existed, and it made the case for the latter — that humans devised the tech tools, but AI was here all along waiting to be discovered. Creepy, but also profound. Isn’t that similar to theories about consciousness, that it has always existed as a fundamental aspect of the universe?

I don’t claim to know what will happen next. It would be logical to end with a recommendation, a 4-step mindfulness practice to use the internet in a more limited way so we can become more intentional, more focused, more attuned to the wisdom we seek. But we’re deep in it at this moment, right in the messy middle, and I can’t tell how realistic these practices would be when so many of us live so much of our working and creative lives online.

For now, I’ll stop at having explored the dimensionality of it all: the fields of consciousness and intelligence, the ever-expanding networks of the internet, the unknowable vastness of time and space. And one thing’s for sure, it’s more fun to ponder while looking at the stars than looking at your phone.

I’ll end with a tune I put out last year with my friend Jon Dryden, a world-class jazz pianist and composer — he delivered the song idea, and the lyrics came to me in one fell swoop (unusual!). It’s about the multiverse. Enjoy~

One of the most powerful lessons from working on abortion access is deciding how public to be with the work at hand. When we started Plan C in 2015, people told us it should be an “underground” organization, i.e. quietly seeding information across the US while making it impossible to determine who was behind it or how it was structured. We did the opposite, getting loud and being visible, out of a firm belief that this was public health information and people deserved to know it. We weren’t even making scientific discoveries or launching new services: we were finding things that already existed on the internet, researching and testing them, and publishing the results.

Politicians and the public have been tied up about abortion for decades, suspended in a tangled web between different anchor points of belief: some resting on the moral conviction of how they interpret Christianity’s sanctity of new life, protected at any cost; others on pro-natalist ideas of how high birth rates benefit society; and still others having recognized the power they can yield by controlling abortion, to keep people in fear/confusion/pregnancy and corral voters who think that’s the way.

And if there was something that could sidestep all of this other-peoples-entanglement, wouldn’t that be powerful? There was — you could get abortion pills in the mail — and this is what we shared loudly, under a right to free speech as well as the right to bodily autonomy and self-care in the form of the rights to privacy, liberty, the pursuit of happiness…. promises of this country, not always fulfilled but still the agreement. Since part of the charge was to de-stigmatize the act of abortion and bring it into the light after it had been shamed, criminalized and pushed under the rug by people on all sides, getting loud also meant calling the bully’s bluff: there was another way forward, and it didn’t require all these doctors and politicians to grant permission — permission was now largely up to the individual.

Side note, this isn’t a blog all about abortion — but it’s helpful to write about it, and I hope it can be a microcosm of some of the contradiction and complexity each of us is holding. Right now abortion access is my issue of choice because it’s a largely unresolved one, affecting vast swaths of the population and, in some ways, ultimately un-solveable. Meaning, no one’s ever going to come from on high and tell us it’s one way or another — we have to decide for ourselves and make our own meaning. For me, being childless by choice was a clear and deeply spiritual decision, directly connected to my purpose and my path and reflective of how I might be in right relation with myself, my communities and the planet. Everyone’s path is different, and on this matter I prefer to trust individuals to know it better than some priest or politician.

But, times have changed: the christian republican extremists are in charge, and even our free speech rights are being challenged. The question is, how loud will activists get? Will it depend on their issue, their identity, their level of exhaustion? Will our free speech right to question the government change in relation to how many people exercise it, with safety in numbers: the less people who speak up, the bigger the threat? I think that’s a reason to keep verbalizing the more beautiful world we’re trying to build — at odds more than ever with the administration that’s in place to govern us.

This morning in the gym, as I pushed through rounds of sit-ups with a burning satisfaction, I was hit with a thought: Everything is Prayer. This next sit-up is a prayer: for a stronger back, a flatter tum, better posture, not now but soon. My activist work has always been a prayer: a message, a series of actions toward a vision of a world that could be, a world with better outcomes for people stuck in that web of political consequences, people with their own prayers and intuitions and spiritual guides, people who know what’s best for them. My prayer is for those individuals to have more agency in determining what comes next.

My work is a prayer of protection for the ritual of abortion, not just a health matter but an ancient practice, one that is just as spiritually-led as the ritual of pregnancy or childbirth. My words and my actions are prayers for a more liberated future where a limited religious worldview doesn’t . Each act of sharing resources online, making art, starting a conversation with a stranger is a prayer. This means every email, every text is also a tiny prayer, all whisperings of the more liberated, more beautiful future I know in my heart is possible.

When I ground myself here, this feeling of knowing that my life IS its own ritual, my actions and words are prayers, my movement and my evolution are the unfolding of those prayers—then any decisions I have to make about how I show up in the world become pretty clear. Am I becoming more radicalized in my own corner of the tangled web, in my own extreme beliefs? Maybe. But how else are we meant to live except by making our own meaning?

I trust these words were meant to be shared here and now, and I hope they inspire recognition of your own prayers. Here’s a pair of tunes I wrote and released in 2020, calling them Prayer for a New World.

The news cycles over the past month have felt like nothing less than watching a fresh horror movie or tense drama every 24-72 hours. To be clear, I’m watching through a device made for such horrors, a device that I could put down at any time and walk outside, breathe fresh air and listen to birds in the valley to regroup in my immediate more peaceful reality… but the movies are so compelling! I need to know what happens next. I need to see the twist, and envision our impending victory or demise.

And sometimes, I can cling to perspective: are these all horrors, or is some of it just old systems breaking necessarily and inelegantly, to reveal new opportunities for radical, messy but ultimately beautiful change? What will emerge in place of the fractured husks of old agencies? It’s hard to be optimistic in light of how much power is consolidated at the hands of billionaires, ones who are seemingly set to destroy us. But, we will see.

In this binge-watch cycle, it also feels hard to hang on to any sense of priority as the focus keeps shifting, new plots emerging. The thing that felt like it mattered so much yesterday feels distant and admittedly less dramatic today. At one point a few weeks ago I started to write about the Comstock Act, because that week it had hit the “repro movement” Signal chats as a very real impending threat, and I had probably clocked 10-12 hours scenario-planning around what it would mean for abortion access. I was holding layers of complicated thoughts and feelings about the potential mis-application of this law, one that originally came to be in 1873 via a white man and his masturbation addiction.

Practical layers: it would likely cause chaos for the mailing of pills in the US. It would create heightened legal risk for individuals receiving mailed pills, which right now is largely not a criminal act (but still comes with some risk). Emotional/spiritual layers: I can’t believe this is where we are at. Resurrecting a 150-year old dead law that weaponizes the USPS to scare and control people who are just trying to get what they need to be ok, family-plan, and survive in this crazy world. Analytical layer: this is our inherent confusion at its finest. We are still tied up in knots about sexuality and the body, old puritanical programming flows through us, we’re not talking about it and we’re letting other people decide for us what is good and right. The fact that we even still consider this a real law shows how far we are from normalizing sex and sexuality in culture and in life.

But Anthony was a classic struggling human, in his time, trying to get a grip. And sometimes when a person can’t control what’s happening inside, they attempt to control what’s happening outside — which is why he pursued a federal law banning the mailing of porn, birth control and abortifacents instead of dealing with his sh*t. And today, politicians are still able to weaponize his choices, relying on the fact that swaths of this country still believe in sexual shame and suppression, and using this belief to wield control and build their base. We had 150 years to figure this out, but instead of collectively finding a healing path, fostering more human experiences free of shame, where systems are put to work for the good of people who pay for them, instead we are here. Life coaches, where are you? Brene Brown? Glennon? Tony? When are we going to help the masses unpack this shame and confusion?

Anyway. Then I when woke up a day later, and I was tired of thinking about it and didn’t feel like writing about it anymore. Besides, other work news had taken its place, with state officials in Louisiana and Texas suing Dr. Maggie Carpenter for providing virtual abortion care over their restrictive borders. The state of New York was refusing to play ball, and in fact they upped protections soon afterward by eliminating the requirement for shield law providers to include their name on the prescription bottle.

This, while likely stressful for Maggie and many in the movement, is also history in the making. Shield laws are an innovation, a three-year old legal strategy to leverage the tech of telehealth and mailed meds in service of people harmed by bans, and it’s fair to say they were designed, passed and utilized knowing that some point they would be tested. Seeing how indescribably contentious the issue of abortion access has become, there is no timeline in which conservative US politicians would not seek to challenge a shield law, their egos bruised by activists finding ways around their cruel and dangerous restrictions on care. How dare they innovate, just like Uber used to start driving in cities where rideshare was illegal and take it from there. The Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said in 2012, "If you put yourself in the position to ask for something that is already legal, you'll find you'll never be able to roll out." How about for abortion, do we feel the same about innovation? I think I know. For now, we will see whose rules win.

Then RFK Jr. was confirmed, along with a fresh wave of horrors: fears that he will enable an era of surfing dangerous anti-and pseudoscience on waves of disease and harm. It’s tempting to get swept up, but again, in some of these emergent new realities the only way to know what it means is to wait and see what actually happens, then take action. Days after public health websites were dismantled and the CDC was instructed not to disseminate their regular updates, experts and activists reconstructed these resource sites from historical snapshots (like archive.org) and redirected people to other independent public health news services - internet FTW. But more recently, RFK recommended the measles vaccine for the Texas outbreak, which surprised a lot of people (and is backed by science). Over time we’ll find out whose rules win, or we’ll find something else altogether.

So, who’s in charge here? We thought we knew, but instead the ball keeps being tossed back in the air for someone else to swat and grab. History is repetitive but not static, and the answer to this question is ever-changing: right now we are being invited to witness firsthand how power builds in the modern age, how long fabricated realities (like those that weaponize certain religious beliefs) can last, and how incredibly challenging it can be to hold on to what’s real when everyone really does think they’re right.

For now, I think the moment calls for us to practice holding contradiction, which requires both effort and patience. Yes, act — but also, wait. Yes, vaccines — but also deeper research on vaccine harms. I heard on a pod how calls to Congress and protests at public meetings are having a real effect: politicians are listening, town halls are being rescheduled, etc. There’s something remarkable about the instant visibility and accountability offered by the internet, and as much as it feels like an endless and dizzying onslaught, filtered by our own choice of media outlets, it also leaves us more in a position of knowing what is happening in the halls of power, in the moment it happens.

With all this witnessing and processing and taking action, I can’t help but remember the infamous Mark Twain quote:

“I had a good many worries… and most of them never happened.”

Meaning alongside all the real harms, there is much we don’t know. We can use logic, reason and this Project 2025 tracker to predict, but so much of it will be revealed and will evolve. And we will respond accordingly, as both audiences and participants. And whether we chose it or not, this is the film festival our generation is slated to attend.

THat’s where our philosophies parted ways. Later I cooled down and realized what he meant, but at the time I thought: I don’t believe there is any kind of right-mind plan unfolding: I think it’s chaos for the sake of, a smash-and-grab approach to power and money from all the places politics and business collide. I watch the news updates with rapt attention because these people will have control over many aspects of my life for the next 4 years. And yet, there is almost nothing I can do about it. And here we arrive at his point. Why engage in the moment to moment drama?

I took myself into town this afternoon, hitting a few thrift shops to zone out and look for tshirts I could give to my nephew for him to screenprint. I want a few different versions of YOUALWAYSHAVEOPTIONS.COM, the campaign some abortion friends and I launched on election day last year. My 13-year old nephew recently started his own screenprinting business by pooling his savings to buy legitimate printing gear, including something called a speed dryer, and by designing a custom surf skate brand and logo himself. When it comes to starting businesses, SF teens are not fucking around.

Thrift is my gift, and I found a few perfect tees, a few athleisure layers for the cold mornings working from home, and a ridiculous sparkly fringe shirt for some other time. My brain de-frags while I paw through racks of secondhand items, and the real gems leap out off the rack as if moved by the holy ghost into my hands. Thrifting is therapeutic and easy, unlike many aspects of life right now.

From there I headed toward my third ever pole class, stopping at whole foods for a snack so I wouldn’t be hungry while gyrating on the pole like a clumsy baby giraffe. At the hot bar a Black man in what looked like a Black Panther beret made contact, first with a hello and then by asking how my year was going. I said something like oh, chaotic and he responded “mine is GREAT” with a confident and knowing closed-lipped smile. He mentioned kids and grandkids and holidays and that was great but now he was on the other side and everything was truly wonderful. I was still in my stew of national catastrophe and I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something about him being a Black man living in America that led him to chuckle at this moment in time, a moment where suddenly the government seems to be against almost everybody not just Black people, everybody feels persecuted threatened and under attack, and maybe he thinks to himself: this is nothing new, it’s just the way the world works. Now you feel it too. Or, maybe he really was just having a great start to his year.

He went on to compliment my bleached platinum hair, and while physical praise from an older man can’t help but make me feel hit on, I didn’t mind it. Turned out he was promoting his art show that would happen at some point in the year, and I was supposed to watch the local paper for the announcement to show up. Old systems, old chances that I’d find it. But he did tell me me his name and from the vitamin aisle I dictated it into my phone, sure that my swiss-cheese brain would never retain it. At least I know enough these days to capture the detail in my device before it slips out between pondering magnesium vs magnesium glyinate and touching my hair thinking about how long I can go before re-upping the bleach job and by then his name would have skittered away across the smooth linoleum floor, gone forever. I did need that compliment about my hair just then. I’ve spent weeks at home in work-pajamas and garden slippers, and it helped me feel a little bit more in my skin to have someone to see me as a woman, not just a body-less zoom zombie.

As I got in the car I saw that a helicopter had collided with a plane in Washington D.C. An incident with one in a million chances and yet, it happened just now. It seemed emblematic of our current reality: communications breakdowns, private and public interests, relying on technology almost smarter than us but not quite, and it ended in devastating breakdown and destruction. Even our nation’s capital can’t keep the airwaves straight anymore, and people almost certainly died as a result.

I ended the day with an outdoor shower, looking up to see Orion’s belt peeking around the roofline. Don’t forget, I told myself, we’re spinning on a rock in a vast and unknowable universe. The Congressional hearings, the ICE raids, the revoked passports - it all matters so much, and yet staring up at the stars through billows of steam it’s hard to say what matters at all.

It’s day 3 of the New Normal.

I’m trying not to spend too much time with the news, catching headlines but recognizing the click-bait cycles furiously in motion. I remind myself that this is a show, and it’s opening week: it’s theater just as much as it is harmful and dystopian and all the other takes. If we can remember this, we can take it less personal (even though it is personal) and let the tidal wave roll through until we’re grounded enough to do something about it, to build again.

I also find myself continually trying to make sense of how we got here. Now that we “got here” my brain wants to find logic in how it is that so many people want this version of reality. I think about all the people who abstained from the election, all the people who voted for him for reasons of wellness or crypto or rejection of the Dems. Are they happy with these executive orders? Or do they also recognize the theater, and simply ignore it or justify it as something that comes with the territory? How can you ignore it if you have trans friends or live near an immigrant community? How do you justify you own needs against the needs of others, are they acceptable collateral damage for you to pursue your wellness startup?

I don’t mean to get cynical on here. I want this space to be one where I can write about spirituality and liberatory ideas, philosophy and politics and social issues, personal stories and recognitions. To release my mind from figuring this moment out, I need to remind myself that the name of the game will be: how well can you hold contradiction? It will never all make sense, multiple things are true at the same time. The better I can hold contradiction, the less painful this will be.

Change is hard, living your values sometimes harder. Yesterday I watched some half-hearted lamentations come through a chat thread from owners of Teslas, a reaction to the behavior of Elon. Oh gosh, I might have to get rid of my Tesla… but I love my Tesla… what to do. The Tesla sticker is pretty much the most American solution, a viral meme phrase dismissing the driver from moral/ethical responsibility:

I Bought This Before…. We Knew Elon Was Crazy. Before He Was a Supervillain. Before We Knew.

Oops, I thought it was good and it’s bad.. but I’m comfortable.. so why change? This bumper sticker should fix it and excuse me out in public. This feels like the heart of our problem, a perfect example of how near-impossible it feels to extract ourselves from the systems that we have let own us. Oops is right.

But, change is also often slow, and this morning I acknowledged in my body that it’s going to feel this way for a while. This is the New Normal, the given reality, and if we fight it in every moment we will self-destruct. Coping mechanisms will get stronger, habits will flare, disassociation will become the preferred state.

So here I am: ready to try a few things differently, including writing here in a slightly more protected space than social platforms. Let’s see what comes.

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