Brimstone Lark

I entered the backyard of a studio that I had never been to. It brambeled like a meadow who married a garden and let it grow wild. Figures surrounded a fire pit in the distance tucked behind sage and rosemary. I expected a jovial bonfire, but the quiet with which each attendee honored the situation…

I’ve been stuck on a conversation that I had with a friend about intelligence for a long time. Is intelligence based on your genetics or is it based off of your environment? I think the reason I’m so stuck on this is because I don’t want to be a eugenicist nor do I want to…

A note to self that I found in my room, written over a year ago, forgotten but kept. “You can be happy, satisfied, and at peace in the moment. You just need to let go of your sense of self. This is a key part of being still enough to hear the muse. This is…

It is very important to cultivate a sense of friendship with yourself in that the way you respond to your First Order Reactions. This is something that my friend Nikhil helped me to understand. One day while I was staying with him, I vocalized some negative self talk to which he replied, “Hey man, you’re…

Relationships can be plotted on two axes, Vibe Resonance and Developmental Dynamics. This framework can be used to understand what you value in other people. I’ll talk a bit about what these axes mean and then how the framework can be used to understand intimacy, parenting, and what you can do to improve your relationships.…

The bus I booked was about to leave from San Jose, not San Jose Airport, where I landed. These two places are about 17 km apart which was a problem since the departure time was in 10 minutes. After multiple desperate encounters with strangers, involving me pointing at my phone like a fumbling fool, “donde…

I want to write about this more over time, and I can see a pattern emerging. A lot of my ideas are about First vs Higher order reactions. I think First Order Reactions are probably a lot more similar from person to person than we acknowledge (see: First Order Reactions). Differences might come from physical…

The Mantis Shrimp has 12 cone photoreceptors in their eyes, compared to the 3 that we have. These cones allow them to see colors in the physical world which we will never understand. We are blind in their eyes. The human experience is colored by the thoughts and feelings we have each day. But some…

A place becomes home without you knowing it. Home means normalcy; normalcy means taking things for granted. Bit by bit appreciation fades into familiarity and, without noticing, you fall in love with a new home. You have to really appreciate moments of true gratitude because they are so rare. The drumbeat of routine makes it…

What is all this stuff that you’re perceiving? You see. You hear. You taste. You have a body, arms and legs, clothes and a heartbeat. You have a heartbeat in your feet and in your hands. It’s in your tongue and your eyes. You’ve got a never ending rush of thoughts and feeling, perceptions and…

You consist of a never ending rush of perceptions and reactions. Whether you know it or not, you develop a relationship with your own thoughts and feelings. If you’re like most people, most of your internal subjective experience goes unnoticed – reinforcing a relationship to your own mind which emerges rather than is cultivated. This…