Coordinate: Kitchen table in San Felipe, Oaxaca, with stolen frangipani blossoms floating in a pink bowl
I walked myself and the empty paint bucket needed to raise all 5-feet-2 of me high enough to accomplish my crime two doors down and cut these fragrant flowers off my neighbor’s abundant tree. It’s good to be home. I don’t know how long it will take the newness to wear off, but I hope the gratitude never does.
I’m adding a new section, Maiden Voyages, to the end of the Friday missives which will give a snippet of wisdom about entheogens.
look
[art] “I love being alive, and art is the evidence of that” Jim Carrey started as a funny many and turned into an intricate and fascinating human. I learned of his painting only this week. His rainbow Jesus is not to be missed.
[love] The Japanese culture around relationships — as an outsider, I struggle for words to describe it. Their birthrate has been declining for decades, but the ancient desire to hold and be held persists. Vice gives a quick look at what modern Japanese women are doing instead of dating. The full-length feature The Great Happiness Space, goes into even more depth needed to even glimpse the complexities of this world. I don’t know if I’ve ever watched a film that folded reality so many times in just over an hour.
[craft] If it’s possible to breathe pure love, I’m pretty sure this qualifies. Traditional craftsmen train for five years to be able to steam distill the smell of rain and roses and put it into a tiny bottle.
[altered] Some Most all of the accounts of drug use from Tales from the Trip are absurdly horrible. Funny? Yes. Instructional? Perhaps only as a cautionary tale. This one is pretty sweet though. Comedian Shane Mauss meets his intercosmic purple dream woman.
maiden voyages : dose
Most everyone familiar with psychedelics knows about set and setting, but the biggest whoopsie-do that beginners and advanced make is dose. Listen to more videos from Tales from the Trip of the shenanigans, near car crash stories, and general I’ll-never-do-that-agains and you’ll hear one common theme – they took wayyyyyyyyy too much.
With the exception of MDMA, most substances can be enjoyed in light to moderate doses. For the love of your own grounded sanity and those of the motorists around you, please start there and proceed with caution.
Remember – you can always take more drugs, but you can’t take less. Take a dose you are confident won’t be too much and set a timer for 1.5 hours. Then adjust upwards if needed. This doesn’t work for everything, such as LSD, but it’s the go-to for most medicines.
See you on the flip side of the weekend,
Cris and Team Dragon