A Pandemic Anniversary

...s and emotions and that trick has been extraordinarily useful. Most of the time I noticed low level anxiety and fatigue caused by the constant risk management we all had to do. Sometimes I had COVID dreams and outburst of hypochondria. Observing these feelings helped to not get attached to them and kept them from spiraling out of control. I also came to the conclusion that it’s perfectly okay not to be productive all the time and recognize that th...

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Seaweed Foraging

...drator or in an oven at the lowest setting. As it was dark and cold by the time we got home we used Kelly’s step mom’s oven. Our very small Kombu haul dried and ready to use. You should only harvest what you have space and time to dry within 24 hours after harvesting–the sooner the better. It’s legal in California to harvest up to 10 pounds of seaweed for personal use without a permit but you’ll probably want to harvest considerably less than this...

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Sorting the Digital Photos of a Digital Pandemic

...ome it was a a world of anxiety, literal blood and guts and for others the time to kick back on the couch and watch every episode of Tiger King. But this is, of course, too much of a dualistic view. Many who were stuck at home also had to deal with the reality of panic over finances and taking care of family members. And most of us, including a lot of Useful People, ended up spending a lot of time looking at screens and this is where the paradox o...

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My Morning Routine: Tarrying With the Negative

...I had great difficulty with this book and had to read chapters twice, sometimes three times and I’m still unable to summarize large sections. Žižek assumes familiarity with Hegel and Lacan, two notoriously difficult thinkers. Lacan’s thought evolved over his life and you’d have to read a lot of material to get a handle on his ideas, not to mention also being familiar with Freud. That said, Žižek helped me better understand Hegel’s dialectics whil...

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A Shadow Manifesto

...ontiguous with ours but without any connection or access to it. Then, from time to time, like a diseased eyeball in which disturbing flashes of light are perceived or like those baroque sunbursts in which rays from another world suddenly break into this one, we are reminded that Utopia exists and that other systems, other spaces, are still possible. A sacred darkness awaits us. We have nothing to lose but our ceiling cans! Thanks to Amy our friend...

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