vol 10. monthly recs & rabbit holes
re-enchantment, murmurations, cosmic consciousness
a snippet from issue no. 53 of Rabbit Holes:
every week, Patricia Mou hand-picks the most psychoactive internet rabbit holes that explore this question: What does it mean to live a life of meaning and beauty?
good afternoon! 🌱
i’ve been wrapping up the school semester the last few weeks. the theme has been digestion, de-complexifying, making more continual contact with reality, the here and now - a very simple thing that’s constantly being overlaid with fervent meaning-making. the theoretical bloat built up in the last 3 months has rendered me feeling quite pregnant with nonsensical pulsations. my sole telos is to simply let what’s within froth and bubble out of my system like a gusher.
in that spirit, i curated todays issue in a frame of metabolization as opposed to consumption. a primal sort of filtering that magnified the disco ball of inclinations dancing inside of me. i hope you find your streams of light in the unfolding :)
yours,
Patricia
💌 p.s. a couple weeks ago I sent a once-in-a-blue-moon e-mail asking for feedback on how to improve RH for you! thank you to those who have responded 🫶
without further ado.
Here are the visuals, words, poetry, and art so far that stirred my soul for the month of October:
1. 💻 open this issue in your web browser (not phone) at a time where you have at least 30 mins to read.
2. ☕ grab hot tea or coffee
3. 👚 change into something comfortable and ideally sit against some fluffy pillows, with your computer on your lap at a 45 degree angle
4. light a candle 🕯️
5. 💨 take 5 breaths and listen to this meditation
6. meditate on a question you have and run it by this iching reader
7. 🎵 press play for music. Listen while you read this issue.
hit play for vibes.
nostalgia for a distant lover
poetics & art.
[photography] Layered Photos Capture Murmurations
Flocks of starlings share risk as hundreds—even thousands—of eyes are on the lookout for predators. “Remarkably, the group achieves this without any leadership structure, the simple interactions between individuals creating outcomes greater than the sum of their parts,” says scientist and photographer Dr. Kathryn Cooper.
[architecture] Hong Kong's Artifact Bar
"The ideology of the paradoxical presence of sunlight in an underground space, juxtaposed with the dimly lit surroundings, imparts a sense of surrealism," suggested LightOrigin Studio.
Guests enter Artifact Bar through a hidden door tucked away within the food court. Circular windows resembling industrial pipes provide glimpses of a digital light artwork, which sets the scene for the rest of the interior.
words.
[essay] on Narnia
As in Tolkien, where it is precisely the goodness and smallness and sweetness and vulnerability of the hobbits’ Shire that demands protection, in Lewis, what matters in life and national epic alike is not the grand sweeping narrative but the little stories of the little people (and animals) who just want to make their way comfortably in the world, and with one another. Those few characters—The Magician’s Nephew’s Jadis or Uncle Andrew, say, or the wicked scientist Weston in Out of the Silent Planet—who claim a higher power, a deeper privilege, or a wider panorama, are not merely wicked but demonic, corrupting not just themselves but the worlds into which they enter; inevitably, it is precisely their refusal to see themselves as ordinary, embedded in the communal ordinariness of their world, that reveals to the reader that they are not to be trusted.
In his “Four Loves,” Lewis writes of this parochialism—and of all our parochialisms—as a kind of love of the familiar. He writes of “love of home, of the place we grew up in or the places, perhaps many, which have been our homes; and of all places fairly near these and fairly like them; love of old acquaintances, of familiar sights, sounds and smells … With this love for the place there goes a love for the way of life; for beer and tea and open fires, trains with compartments in them and an unarmed police force and all the rest of it; for the local dialect and (a shade less) for our native language.”
To love Narnia properly, I think, is to love ordinary people, and ordinary lives, and ordinary pubs, and to see in them a glimpse of God’s glory. It is to recognize magic in this ordinariness—a magic that does not require or ever call for bloodshed or apocalyptic war. And it is to recognize that, only when we see this magic, do we get a true glimpse of the home we truly belong to.
[essay] Loving Your Inner Hobbit
We all want to be daring and bold. Letting yourself be a stubborn hermit a lot of the time might bring you more adventures in the long run.
I think the real irony here is that the more you accept exactly who you are, the more room you have to grow into new shapes. The more you embrace your core self, hairy toes and all, the more freedom you have to discover new selves, bright and brilliant and strange and sometimes unnerving. But why not let yourself be big and odd and surprising, even when it gets a little messy? Why not enjoy exploring the infinite worlds inside you, and the infinite possibilities out in the world?
[tweet video] James Balwin
“love you has never been a popular movement and no-one’s ever wanted really to be free.”
[essay] More on Unlearning
We are facing uncertain and exhilarating times, a convergence of crises and a blossoming of new possibilities, disintegration and renaissance, a collapse of sense and meaning that clears the ground for a new story to grow.
Illness on every level—physical, social, political—will intensify in coming years, drawing to it unimagined modes and technologies of healing. Such is civilization’s birth process into a new era.
Part of this will likely be a series of revelations, discoveries, and events that shake the foundations of our governing belief systems. Much of what the vast majority of people in the world thought they knew will bear one shattering assault after another, and I doubt any of us, including me, will emerge through the next four years with their existing beliefs intact.
[Project] Human Library
love this project from Denmark: The Human Library
As a "library of people" readers can borrow human beings serving as open books and have convos they would not normally have access to. Every human book from the bookshelf, represents a group in society that is often subjected to prejudice, stigmatization or discrimination because of their lifestyle, diagnosis, belief, disability, social status, ethnic origin etc. The goal is to create a safe space for dialogue and create the potential to "unjudge" someone~
[video] David Lynch on wth is going on
