#22. Decolonize Mars! Calling On The Planet Of Love To Go Back To The Future To Save Mother Earth
It's the end of The Weed Witch as we know it, and I feel fine!
“Stay in the light—don’t go to the dark side! Keep your face towards the sun.”
“Is the dark side so dark? What is light and dark, where is lightness and darkness touch both sides of the moon? They share the same terrain and we are down below by the water, where we all exist under the same stars, moon, and sun—and yet we see them so differently.”
Hello/goodbye galactic space fleet and coven,
It is I, your time-traveling mystic reporting from the light and dark side of the moon.
No, scratch that—Planet Venus. Actually, New York City, a place that was never normal and never tried to be, which is why so many misfits end up here.
Though, is anything normal anywhere? According to my friends across the country and around the world, “No.” But on the upside, I believe enough people have snapped back into reality to understand that something is quite wrong.
As soon as I sent out this newsletter, I checked into Twitter and noticed Rose McGowan took the purple pill, Madonna has a biopic coming out, and Kamala's boring Vaclav Havel moment is wearing sneakers and a shitty suit on the cover of Vogue and all I can think is “Well, could have had better editorial treatment.” Anyway.
Oh man. I didn't see that coming. I don't know her edge, but she's got some good mood lighting, a bad attitude and crazy bitch energy.
Mainly because she's right about big tech censorship being garbage, even against Donald Trump. As if they didn't profit off of all of this and then just shut it down because it wasn't good for business.
But that’s OK. Do you feel manipulated? I do. Which is unsurprising considering the overall issues with technology and communication and where we are now, for better or worse. Where did things go wrong?
Looking back at this year, I certainly feel sickened by my own energy that I helped cycle back into the world and inability to let go of shit. Some people won’t even go get therapy when they have jobs and insurance to do so. We've got work to do.
I kept rewriting this entry over and over again since before the holidays, where every day just slipped by as the world became such a confusing mess. Ultimately, I was ready to scrap this project or re-do it—mainly because it started under such precarious circumstances. Just like all of 2020. Throw it in the fire!
Then I re-read everything I wrote last year—a considerable amount, by the way—and decided that it should probably stick around. After all, how else can we learn from our mistakes if not to have some humility about them or allow ourselves the room to grow? How can we possibly forgive each other if we can't forgive ourselves? Onward and upward! Ctrl + Alt + Delete, etc.
If I could turn back time to the future, which words should be taken back? Unfortunately we have to live on this planet together so either COVID kills us, or we kill each other, or we figure out how to work together to collectively survive. Option C sounds OK to me. How about you?
Mainly I’m tired of writing about myself and want to check-in with what everyone else is doing. You know, real people who are doing things in the real world or virtual world to connect with the real world.
To connect unexpected walks of life and look at how culture is adapting in unconventional places. The Weed Witch really started to document what was happening as a placeholder. A lot of this happened while in isolation among the chaos—so I suppose it became a little biographical and navel-gazy in nature. How appropriately New York of me! It’s like The Real World—where people stop being polite...and start getting real. (But preferably would like to be polite and hug it out).
Through this impromptu project, I mainly just evolved as society did. Or some of us did? Vulnerably demonstrating that even in my own judgment, I still embodied certain mutable traits that are a widespread problem in society and took a lot of ownership over those flaws. If not to my readers, then at least to myself. Oh man, I did become Stoner Bradshaw? How hateful!
Out of context, even simple words “weed” and “witch” can be interpreted in infinite ways. A cheerful gardening service or an evil goddess of destruction. It’s a perception value. Two or three words, a misplaced comma, or WRITING IN ALL CAPS can make a difference about how you are seen, heard and interpreted. Words matter, clearly.
Weed witch—as it is—is not simply about weed or witches anymore. But rather encouraging new way of thinking or sharing useful perspectives from unexpectedly different walks of life. And yeah…most of those people probably smoke weed or don’t have a huge problem with it.
I’m not particularly interested in regurgitating heavy hitters, news cycles or selfie culture, but rather amplifying new ideas from other walks of life as we hold sweaty, mangled hands dragging one another towards the finish line of the human race (which hopefully won’t be finished, if we’re good about it).
Some people are willfully ignorant, some people just don’t know, and people just don’t care. Some have ideas that challenge us in uncomfortable ways like the Jedi and Siths. Some people feel neglected or entitled, and that’s why they act out like children—something we’ve all been guilty of. No one is perfect and it doesn’t mean you stop trying.
Many of us are ready to get back to work. I am somewhat optimistic—albeit realistic—about the ways that complete strangers demonstrate moments of beautiful empathy in every day interactions for a city that feels like a shell of itself. Everything will move very quickly, so I’m assuming it is smart to stay adaptable to whatever comes our way.
If not the virus itself—which leaves all of us in a chronic state of dread and fear—then waiting for Jesus, aliens, Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Esther, Judith, a miracle, or some adult in the room to bring everyone together. I’ve got this little newsletter going at least?
If we all are to take a knee to the alien gods, the big question is: whose God is it anyway? Do we become aliens and colonize Mars? What do we do about our Venusian princesses? Did we decide Mother Earth is a bitch and we should leave her? Do all of these space cadets have Freudian complexes? Do you have to take a red pill to go to the red planet? Or a chill pill in the form of CBD? Or maybe a pill isn’t the solution to this very large problem.
Listen, Millennials are Gen X now, and Gen X are Boomers. So, I’m just going to leave you a little Limp Bizkit because I did it all for the Nookie. I came into this world as a reject, look into these eyes and then you’ll see the size of the flames. Or whatever. The youth can’t just go around wearing these tattoo necklaces and not understand Fred Durst and Wes Borland, Korn and Slipknot. That’s American history Gen X!
Among my favorite unintentional positive 2020 finds that I discovered while digging up my nostalgia for “whatever happened to so-and-so”: Durst, R. Crumb (who I am so on board about making the Bible a feminist text!), and many other men have been doing a lot of introspection this year. I am so proud of them trying to articulate their feelings!
See? Smart people admit they are ignorant. No one knows everything, and it would be disingenuous to assume otherwise or expect tremendous eloquence. It’s the ego everyone needs to sever, and trust that is a very brave act. Many people will never say they’re sorry—side eye to Taurus and Leos. Durst is a Leo, but the way, so maybe that’s why it took him like 25 years to say sorry. Better late than never?
Speaking of, if that sounds like you, please pay for my newsletter now as retribution for your observant voyeuristic schadenfreude. And go get therapy. Throwing your garbage armchair activist energy on Twitter doesn’t count for your sins.
Many people are struggling with that, trying to find closure to uncertain ends where they may never receive the absolution they seek. At the same time, there were a lot of cool things that happened that we didn’t look at because we were too busy following the clown car.
Immediately after the White House was stormed, I snapped back to reality. So many friends connected after months and months and months of no one having the emotional bandwidth to get on the phone. None of us being able to get together, or being unable to collaborate with others in the way I normally appreciate. And where my own neighbors in New York are basically strangers.
It was truly a “Chicken Soup For The Soul” moment where I felt emotionally dead, but intellectually alive. No one knew exactly what they wanted to say, just that something wasn't right and they needed the room to say it and express some hope for humanity. More importantly: we reached out for each other and that meant everything. I highly recommend you try that with old friends you may not have contacted recently. I love hearing from friends on the phone, calling just to say, “I love you.” Just because.
Among the things I somewhat regret is telling all of my friends to write their own happy endings. Because that’s a nice way of looking at the world, but you’re never actually required to stay connected to anyone you don’t want to, and sometimes you’ll never get closure. You have to find your own forgiveness.
Additionally, this is explains how you can’t lump astrology as being responsible for your choices—just like confessing to a priest doesn’t absolve you of your duty to apologize directly to another person or make amends.
New York City is a very social place that feels so empty and creepy most days. Interactions with your baristas, booksellers, or anyone else is so valuable because your neighbors are fleeing in droves. Somehow, the city’s most beautiful neighborhood is cheaper than Brooklyn.
Where do you go when you’re not sure where you belong? When you lose everything in a fire? Leave a bad situation? Want to restart your life and feel like you can’t? When you’ve through a divorce, a fire, a move, a loss of a job, a painful severance of a friendship, a lost lover or family member, a perceived betrayal, or the relentless trauma of 2020?
Here’s what my friend, a social worker in Chicago, had to say:
“Ambiguous loss or unresolved grief—when you’re not sure fully sure if it’s a loss so you haven’t been able to grieve like you would in a typical loss or any sort of loss where you didn’t have a clear ending where you never got that final confirmation—just makes you feel like you’re not sure if you can grieve or could it come back. It’s the most painful period.
Some people will say, ‘Oh, fuck that person and move on,’ in a negative way. It’s hard to not want to have revenge, but also feeling like you can’t free yourself. With Hollywood films, everyone feels like they need some kind of resolution. In real life and relationships, you feel like you need that resolution, but you have to create that for yourself and say, ‘This has taken up a lot of energy and attention. It feels like we haven’t been able to have this conversation, but I’m moving on to redirect my energy towards my best self.’”
Amen sister.
We want to see everything as black and white—either literally as racism, or in terms of concrete duality—but these are just ways we other one another out of fear and hatred. There always exists a spectrum of possibilities where not everyone will be happy 100% of the time.
There is always this narrative that the secret to world peace is a Chosen hero that always dies. That self-sacrifice is noble, but it always comes with unpredictable costs that can harm others by amplifying the ego.
Meanwhile, the mystics, messengers and anti-heroes are always taken down for predicting the future, punished by always walking their heads behind them, like in Dante’s “Inferno.” Hindsight is 2020, after all.
When you’re faced with a plague of biblical proportions, you can’t help but have a mortality crisis that forces you to consider injecting some meaning into wherever you operate under whatever spiritual center applies to you.
Most of us should know better about whether we’d feel we had done enough in this lifetime to outweigh our negatives. Like Anubis and Bastet, preparing everyone to get their shit together for the life in front of us and the after life. (Or The Simple Life?!)
Do we only live once? If so, I had the best life ever and I am so grateful for it. I love my body so much that I really hope if I leave this planet, it’s on a good note. Everyone should hope for that. To leave the planet a little better than how they found it.
Even now, I am glad to be living at this very moment exactly where I am. I look back at these miserable moments I sometimes have, and realize it’s just a waste of your own precious time. Still, I am focusing on getting back to work with tangible areas where I can help build bridges in places that have burned.
I hope if you are doing this or want to be part of it, that you will leave a comment telling me what you’re excited about. Or what you’d like to see—either in this project or the world.
By the way, congratulations to everyone who discovered they hate their parents through therapy, realizing they are slowly becoming them while specifically trying not to become them. “I am better than this! I love and hate myself! I am every woman and man.” I think the body positivity movement means all lives matter? Which is very confusing to me mainly because every single hashtag, movement and sense of justice can be inverted and twisted like double-edged swords where everyone just falls on them until we’re all dead. And if the power goes out and you can no longer your validation online, well, at least you knew it was coming.
Still, the world isn’t destroyed quite yet—and there were some people who never stopped trying. I want to help amplify those individuals who are still taking chances to do something good for the planet, culture and communities locally and afar.
The idea of Neo Enlightenment appeals to me in sense where we can reinvent new ways of looking at the world—maybe not with rose colored glasses, but blue light lenses because the future’s so bright you have to wear them to prevent retina damage. Rather: renewed interest in science, humanities, and enlightened ways of thinking that can help shine on the world.
I’d like to connect the online and offline worlds of progressive urban development and sustainable terroir, permaculture and regenerative farming.
If your brain is hungry for new ideas here are a few resources:
Even in this horrible and strange moment, I feel like I’m right where I’m supposed to be. Yesterday was David Bowie’s and Elvis’s birthdays—The Star Man and The King—both with their own alien conspiracy theories!
By the way, I am obsessed with the Emma Lazarus-Bowie-aliens-mariachi band story from Michael Cunningham. I spent the Grand Conjunction on a dystopian ferry to Staten Island with my best friend, passing the Statue of Liberty studded with her iconic words, then we looked at the moon through a telescope that a nice family had in Battery Park. I rattled off random facts about New York City’s history and we walked around the snow-covered park to sit along the dark edge of the water.
Going back to Chicago was on my mind, not only because I have a very solid community there, but also wanted to build a bridge to upstate New York. Maybe the new Catskills Borscht Belt queen?! Another river mystic?
Well, this Jewess Venus Zine seltzer queen alum is actually helping out kids with their galactic dystopian poetry and fiction through 826NYC and Life on Marz CBD: a Chicago-based all-natural seltzer company with zero calories or additives using cannabis and thoughtful botanicals from local farms as part of the overall Marz Community Brewing/Lumpen/Buddy Chicago universe. It’s among the best tasting seltzers I’ve ever had—as I love my water like my personality: sparkling and flavorful.
Also, with 30mg of CBD, it is quite chill without getting you high. I’ve noticed it genuinely tempered my anxiety without having to reach for the bottle—though, if you want a cocktail, it’s a healthier thing to use as a mixer that supports local agriculture and arts—a value I appreciate between the Midwest and upstate New York.
There are actually a number of folks I’d like to showcase here and afar that rarely get coverage and that’s my bent.
(By the way, did you get my book yet?! My book Easy Weekend Getaways in the Hudson Valley & Catskills is now available internationally. IndieBound | W.W. Norton | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Target)
Living in the West Village puts considerable pressure on you as a writer being around such iconic company. These days, there’s just too much pressure when so many people fled and you wonder if they’re even real or alive because there’s so much A.I. now that New Year’s felt downright creepy. I was hoping to go full Fran Lebowitz, but even she’s bored.
Give me two years so I can be a curmudgeon. I can’t exactly hate on everyone if we’re all dead. I just had to make sure everyone knew I partied as hard as she did with everyone so now I can wear the same outfit the rest of my life until I die sometime in the next four months to forty years.
“I’ve been an audience to Lebowitz’s vinegar many times over the past several years--she’s intensely private, but impossible to stop talking. She’s often likened to Dorothy Parker—which we discussed when we talked this week—but I’ve always felt the comparison wasn’t quite right. In Scorsese’s pitch-perfect documentary, Fran’s true nature comes through as I haven’t seen it portrayed elsewhere: as a privacy obsessive with a sacred respect for shared metropolitan spaces. She believes certain things should be a certain way, and everything else is none of your business.”
Still, I can’t help but be grateful that even in my worst moments, I can say for certain that I truly “lived.” From there, it leaves a little bit of an open-ended question about what to do next. Clearly, you need to start an advice column like Dear Abby because she doesn’t mince her words and no one questions it.
Did I live like an asshole? Yes. So do all of your favorite writers. That’s why you love us and love to hate us! I’m a stripper with a heart of gold, I just prefer not to rub it in all the time because it’s what you’re supposed to do. If everyone engaged in a little altruism, it would make the world a much better place.
The Village Voice isn’t coming back, so you just build your own. I have so many amazing friends from the East Coast, Mid-Coast, South Coast and the around the world. (The West Coast is killing my vibe with the amount of times I keep hearing The Doors blasting around here. Get outta here! But yes, you too).
Admittedly, I do want to eventually dip my toe into comedy to help with mental health destigmatization. You know, preferably if we can ever get a minute to breathe collectively. If anything, for my own sanity and everyone else’s. While I find many of these astrological, ritualistic, and unconventional practices interesting, they are pretty sacred in nature. Used recklessly, they can be incredibly destructive and doesn’t absolve the necessity of professional therapy and coping mechanisms.
Ultimately, I just want to keep expression alive and have to laugh at something—even it’s just life being so relentlessly tense and awkward. Otherwise, you just get into really intense questions like: “Is pre-determinism real or is this the American Inquisition? Are Jews in space the final frontier or…solution?” YIKES.
Through my own cobbled together understanding of my Jewish faith, I found universal intersectionality in the stars of astrology. It didn’t make me have to sacrifice my sense of understanding of spirituality, but rather repositioned it so that it didn’t put man or woman at the top of the food chain, but rather all of us firmly beneath the earth and the sky. Co-existing with nature as complements rather than seeking to dominate it or one another. Collaboration towards a greater good.
It doesn’t require anyone to have to subscribe to it, but can provide a spiritual outlook that feels cosmically connected to science, nature and spirituality. Allowing us to fall in love with ourselves or each other. To look at inherent traits, accept them as our positives and mutables, and accept these things about each other beyond the color of our skin or where we were born.
All other choices do not make you “good” or “bad” or make any guarantees, but rather helpful for self-development in a more intellectual way that makes you accountable to yourself and your fellow person. Which means you can keep your culture, but also feel unified with other people who might have been your enemy without forcing your ideology or agenda on anyone. Everyone is chosen in this case, they just get to choose back—just like all spiritual centers. This one just made the most sense to me.
That said, there are definitely better choices to be made and overall understandings of basic ethics that society should operate on, and clearly needs some intelligent ideas towards repairing humanity and this planet.
Is that too idealistic? Probably. It sounds nice though. Worth a shot.
Mysticism is actually inherent in all religions. It’s magical and it changed my life for the better, so that I don’t even really need alcohol or cannabis, but my relationship is much better with both or neither. I now stretch more often, try to take care of my body and try to leave the door open to rethinking how our society plays follow-the-leader. Some of my ideas are far “too out there,” so I get it. Not trying to burn everything down, just trying to explore more useful ways of doing things.
It actually felt right at home with my cultural, ethnic and spiritual identity of how I was raised, overall interest in sustainable regenerative farming, and questioning the unknown. Cannabis just neatly fit in there, in which a more esoteric approach to journalistic storytelling that is par for the course.
After all, who could have predicted the ‘rona? Or even this past week? Though, definitely warned about major energy issues from all six of the apps I use. (My feeling is that they’re all aligned, so technically, even if they’re at odds, you’re still making your own choices—and probably being manipulated for data. But whatever, we’re all hacked and based on the reactions from everyone I tried to talk to about this, pretty much no one cares).
Being connected to a community in this way allowed me retain a sense of individualism as part of the collective consciousness, leaving choices open in a peaceful and thoughtful way. Some of these practices, like tarot, were Jungian and helpful for introspective self-analysis that made me want to become a better person. Then again, overanalyzing the shit out of everything to your own detriment is inevitable when you’re trained investigative journalism and truth doesn’t always have neat answers or Hollywood resolutions.
More so, the perception value had changed somehow in the past couple of years and I didn’t understand why. Was it the world or me? Or both? When you can’t change your world, you have to be open to changing your mind, body and spirit. To be adaptable to the harsh truths that nothing is guaranteed or forever, and feel committed to preserving the good things where you can and trying to encourage better decision-making.
“Do as I say, not as I do. I already got lost for you. Eat your own mistakes. Also, life is a difficult process.” -me. Should I make a meme with that? Or is quoting yourself on an image considered gauche now? I do have plenty of great one-liners now!
Anyway, so this newsletter, which was supposed to be about cannabis accessories and lifestyle, became quite challenging given the overall state of the country/world and sense of community in New York.
After spending three years devoted to this beat anticipating this year was going to happen, the overall attitude has changed. I still have a piece on mushroom coffee that was never published that I’d like to reshape, and also noticeable amount of recently resurfaced fear, which is wild considering we had Bong Appetit, Hamilton’s Pharmacopia, GOOP and a variety of shows with really interesting perspectives on culture, wellness, and other areas where Eastern and Western alternative medicine is converging. It literally graced the cover of TIME magazine this year.
New Age rational mysticism from John Horgan, Linda Goodman, Pema Chodron, and the rise of star gazers and naturalists—including myself—continue to offer a unique way of looking at at the world that I can’t really change. It’s not a bad thing considering how many self-help books there are now, such as my own—a self-help guide to choosing your own adventure among mystics, artists, farmers, naturalists, historians, and more in magical upstate New York.
After teaching myself these crafts while abroad in Ireland during a very strange time of looking back at the U.S. from the outside and being disconnected overseas, I needed time and perspective to consider what that experience meant in relation to our current period of time. Traveling started to feel like Dante’s Inferno as Kavanaugh went into office during the Blasey-Ford trial as we received relentless cataclysmic warnings that the earth was in trouble with climate change, water crises, and excess consumption right before this virus was unearthed, just as my normally epicurean lifestyle turned downright hedonistic. All things considered, I’m grateful I had the opportunity to stop some of those habits, which is somewhat minimalist and curatorial as a Party of One.
Anyway, this isn’t a typical newsletter or issue for that matter. Just a statement of intent. I don't know what the future holds, but the younger generation wants to move forward. I wanted to rid myself of bad habits, negative people, and burdens. Because we’re all adapting and I want to start fresh.
Yours,
The Weed Witch