#30. Open Your bodybrainheart To Chill Out This 8/8 For National CBD Day
“The cha-cha is no more ridiculous than life itself!”
This is The Weed Witch. Feeling stuck somewhere between the real world and the spiritual world? Where truth is stranger than fiction? This is a newsletter dedicated to lifestyles of the credit poor and un-famous. For the healers and dealers, saints and sinners. The friendly guide to cosmic survival in the Age of Psychic Death. Stream-of-consciousness tales, scrappy DIY craft ideas, and divine wisdom from free-thinking societal outliers, a.k.a. the weed witches. An idea sampler platter and content wildcard for your inbox.
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Vol. 30
Analog August: brainbodyheart
Astromotional Update: From the bodybrainheart
COVIDIAN UPDATE: Jabs for Joints
National CBD Day and Other Nouveau Holidays
TO INFINITY AND BEYOND: 8/8 Steals and Deals
WEIRD WEED WEB: READS
WEED WITCH WATCH: The Land of Owls
Dance Film Festival Prague
ASTROWITCHCAST: For Leo Babes
Hey everyone,
Where are you on your psychological journey this Year of Our COVID? Have we reset the clock from Gregorian to COVIDian? What exactly does world peace look like and are we there yet? Open up your Psychic Pisces bodybrainheart to the possibility of both chilling the fuck out and, also, freaking the fuck out! The world burns, and yet we are here: the lucky ones?
It’s fair to say that everyone wants some end date to lay this terrible thing to rest, but many are still contracting the virus even with the vaccine. So, the short of it is: no, there’s no end date. We can just celebrate the beauty of modern medicine, working to regenerate nature and humanity.
Louisiana is finally heeding the warnings from New York and lining up to get vaccinated. I can’t help but think about how this whole newsletter started as 30,000 people died and that wasn’t sufficient enough to scare the rest of the country into demanding this modern miracle of medicine.
Instinctively, my eyes fixate to the side, looking at those campaigns to get the party started again during a global health crisis that put a damper on plans to go have a good time because “Well, I’ve been traveling and behaving recklessly the whole time. So clearly everyone else is paranoid.” OK. Mainly just thinking our nurses are too underpaid. Our hospitality workers are exhausted. They’re smoking weed and watching Jeopardy or going camping and dancing in the moonlight, while reminding themselves we all play our roles to find meaning in the mundane. That said, we’re all complicit as the West Coast still burns. I’m not going to mince words over that. And yet, that doesn’t mean it’s all bad.
In fact, there’s a lot of progress. Last night, I went out with my friend Genea Barnes of Elevate where we spoke about how this past year has really demonstrated humanity’s “wounded child” syndrome—when individuals are denied something, they become reactive. Thich Nhat Hanh has often come up in conversation over the past year, so I’m putting that on my Weed Witch Reads to-do list after Alia Volz’s book. I always find Genea incredibly insightful, and appreciate her energy—I recommend checking out her channel. She said the funniest thing about imagining the people you are surrounded by as beavers. It’s kind of ridiculous. “The cha-cha is no more ridiculous than life itself!” Facts.
There are those who speak of vibrational patterns and others who deny this reality because it is not concrete. I appreciate the fluidity of nature, as well having grounded friends between the sky and the earth. Sometimes it’s so profound, I feel like Wes Bently in American Beauty and have to laugh at myself. The oscillation between sincerity, seriousness, and silliness is challenging, but a reminder that we contain multitudes. Suffering is one way of finding yourself, I guess. I’m just living.
-C
COVIDIAN UPDATE: JABS FOR JOINTS
To encourage everyone who wants to enjoy indoor activities, New York State is mandating a proof of vaccination. Which means, if you want to see Wavves at Warsaw, SPELLING at Le Poisson Rouge, or a burlesque show, you’re going to have to get jabbed for these joints! Assuming the hope is that it cuts down on incidents so we aren’t existing in some lonely planet where it’s just me, myself, I, the hot barista trying to make sense of this mess until we fry or drown.
Good news: it’s National CBD Day. First time hearing about it? No worries. It is very new. Not even as old as Dying To Know Day, Happiness Happens Day, International Cat Day or National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor's Porch Day. Leafly has a thing on how this became a thing, that has nothing to do with infinity divided by infinity 8/8—the most stoner meta bullshit if I’ve ever heard of it.
In 2017 a North Carolina-based cannabidiol (CBD) manufacturer known as cbdMD applied to have “National CBD Day” added to the calendar. How do you do that? You state your case to National Day Calendar, a North Dakota-based firm that promotes old and new national holidays via old and new media sources.
“We have a process where companies or individuals can suggest a new national day,” Marlo Anderson, the founder and CEO of National Day Calendar, told Leafly.
The company has a form on its website where individuals or companies can apply for the creation of a new national day, week or month.
Fake news! Just kidding.
Here are some historic days in weed worth putting on your calendar beyond 4/20:
April 7: Charlotte Figi Day. Celebrating a young Colorado girl with Dravet syndrome who helped legitimize medical marijuana by taking CBD to help reduce seizures, inspiring the strain Charlotte’s Web.
July 20: 710 Dab Day. Celebrating 710 thread carts for live roisin (it’s OIL upside down!) and an homage to the “Dab Queens.” This is also a great day to have some awareness about untested/shittily tested oil and why you shouldn’t just buy from anyone—even if that’s just a necessity of life in places where access is limited, such as the UK and Ireland.
August 8: CBD Day. See above!
OK. But let’s get to the good stuff.
First, the Julie Mehretu retrospective at the Whitney that I mentioned in Vol. 29, which closes August 8—National CBD Day—is incredible. Being in the gallery space felt like a tremendous privilege, but it was necessary to really experience her work. I love how she plays tricks on the eyes with the dual perspective of so many layers. She addresses very heavy topics that manifest in the complexity of her technique that really forces the viewer to “read between the lines.”
Writing you from a sunny afternoon in Brooklyn where the crowd is 40-and-up, making me somewhat of a Sugar Baby age for the “I drink craft beer in Gowanus in my Jerry Garcia shirt” crowd. There’s a guy who is channeling Roy Orbison and Elvis Costello in the same body. His friend is, too, just in different eras. They are both wearing Ray Bans. Everyone is chill.
Approximately 50 feet away is a group of 30-something dudes with skateboards filming themselves. Too old to kick it with the youths in the Village, but too cool to hang with Old Record Store Men. Real chip on his shoulder he’s gotta ride out while shaking his head at the dudes who didn’t land their kick flips. That’s why they’re in Gowanus: it’s the kind of place that looks like a dead body would show up behind a dumpster, but also the kind of place Law & Order would probably be filming that scene.
The Banger Sisters are here. It’s our tribe of women who can’t give up their bangs no matter how many times we try. Everyone has accepted Love and Death. Not everyone has accepted the Woody Allen version of that, making that reference an exception not an acception, or rather an expectation of acceptance, aside from accepting that movie was so good and I feel so torn about watching it again. This is why we don’t have heroes. You have to kill those darlings.
Fortunately, Diane Keaton is in a movie about cheerleaders in a retirement community with Pam Grier and Rhea Perlman—the latter I haven’t seen since getting word of her divorce from Danny Devito and BREAKING MY HEART in 2017. Fun fact: the best divorce story I’ve ever heard was a couple waiting until they were at the end of their lives, barely holding on at 98, to break it off. Divorce before death! Screw you, vows. Death will not do us part—this courthouse and piece of paper will!
(If you’re my ex-boyfriend, I still love to hate you and I’m not legally attached to you; if you’re my ex-best friend, you’re a jealous tormented artist and that’s why I love your solipsism because we share it as twin flames).
The music is great. It sounds like a Tarantino soundtrack. I’m having a beer because I’m pouring one out and about to hit the peace pipe for this beautiful moment in Oregon. It’s a late homecoming celebration for the Nez-Perce Tribe reclaiming land in Joseph. Where is Alice Cooper to share the history with Wayne, Garth and me? Where is David Lynch with his coffee and transcendental meditation?
While looking up whether not Alice Cooper had a weed habit in addition to his coke habit, I found that Jimi Hendrix apparently smoked Alice up the first time (the type of fact that always comes out conveniently close to 4/20), and also, he has a pretty good sense of humor of looking like an After School Special version of Steve Carrell. The internet archives really do deliver sometimes.
Alice, by the way, is an Aquarius, which explains why he’s both a tormented genius and so weird. Hendrix is a double Sagittarius with a moon in Cancer (that’s his secretly aggressive sensitive side as a ghost).
TO INFINITY AND BEYOND: 8/8 Steals and Deals
And now a word from our sponsors
STEAL: Korean-American owned luxe vape brand, Vessel, just released their new Coral Vista vape battery ($59). I genuinely never thought I’d be super crazy about having a dope vape, but these have such a beautiful pull. Plus, Coral!
DEAL: The babes at Miwak Junior are having their fifth anniversary! Mazel tov! Enter CINCO DE MIWAK for 10% off through Thursday. I love how lightweight these are, but more so, they have a great pull.
STEAL: Flower by Edie ParkerTime-Out CBD Pack ($35). Partnering with Sahalie Herbals, a family run business and a regenerative focused farm, based in Sisters, Oregon, this premium broad spectrum CBD pre-roll is packed with CBG for a good night’s sleep.
DEAL: Unleash your most glowing skin and bring glam to your CBD routine with 25% off the for women-by-women Her Highness brand for CBD Day from 8/6 through 8/8/2021 @ 11:59pm ET with code CBDDAY2021. Also: HH has a collaboration single pre-roll and lighter combo to benefit the Last Prisoner Project for only $15.
STEAL: Treat yourself to a sumptuous CBD bath with Michigan brand Lume CBD CBD Bath Bomb ($10), featuring 500mg of full spectrum CBD from the state that looks like a cozy mitten.
WEIRD WEED WEB: READS
A few chill reads of the outlier life
The Fascinating History of Durban Poison (Goldleaf)
Mila Kunis Sold $8 Million in NFTs for Stoner Cats Animated Comedy in Seconds (Merry Jane)
WEED WITCH WATCH: The Land of Owls
What happens when a couple runs away from Brooklyn to go work out their shit at an upstate retreat in the Catskills? No, it’s not the sequel to my book, “Easy Weekend Getaways in the Hudson Valley & Catskills” (IndieBound | Amazon)—it’s the new flick, The Land of Owls written and directed by Patrick Letteri.
The Land of Owls follows a pair of Brooklyn couples working through their relationship issues at an upstate retreat. In the isolation of the Catskill Mountains, the retreat leader pushes the couples through a weekend of exercises that force them out of their calcified comfort zones.
Removed from the routine distractions of city life and engaging in honest communication for the first time, they have a chance to rebuild their partnerships – or to leave them behind.
Streaming begins August 17 on Apple TV, iTunes & Amazon.
Dance Film Festival Prague
Dance for Camera Films presents “a new dimension of dance and cinematic poetry.” Swoon! The Czech Center presents a showcase of Czech dance short films made during and despite the pandemic, presented in partnership with Dance Film Festival Prague featuring films from Denisa Musilova (CZE) and Tami Stronach (USA) at the Bohemian National Hall on Thursday, August 26 as a rooftop screening ($10). More info.
ASTROWITCHCAST: For Leo Babes
ROAR. A love letter to all those fierce, bold, and courageous ride-or-die B.F.F. Leos. Decided to keep it hot, even though it is a decidedly BALMY August. WTF climate change. Let’s get it together, guys!
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