A sweet treat, a celebratory drink, an occasional indulgence with loved ones can lower cortisol, raise progesterone, and regulate the nervous system if you choose to view these experiences as medicine (because they are). Be human, live, be merry. This is the whole point.

A nation of 10 million people is standing up for the whole globe. Be proud of them, be grateful to them, pray for them.

I got hit with a wave of grief so hard I felt dizzy, but I refused to attach language to the feeling—so as not to reinforce it. I took a walk. I noticed myself noticing (one thing at a time) and then I sat down to write (one word at a time). And the grief gradually passed.

“To achieve perfection in writing while retaining naturalness it was important to write a great deal, to write fluently, as the pianist practices the piano.” -Anaïs Nin.

I love the architecture of real food. There's a beauty to it that ultra processed garbage just cannot capture. The aroma & buttery foam when you baste a steak in fresh rosemary. The way raw honey glistens as you drizzle it on your eggs. The sweet, textured crunch of a pineapple.

CS Lewis wrote that we write not to be understood, but to understand—we write to work through our confusion, untie spiritual knots, and resolve existential dilemmas. This is one of the main reasons AI prose feels so empty: AI has no existential dilemmas to work through

"To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that others might prefer not to notice." Wonderful read on the power of a thin skin mailchi.mp/themarginalian…

Newborns born in the sheltered delivery rooms at Shaare Zedek hospital in Israel during Operation Rising Lion were given onesies that say: “My mother is a lioness” A good start for these little ones, may they grow up to know peace 😍

David Whyte on the relationship between anxiety and intimacy mailchi.mp/themarginalian…

4 Must-Read Books this Month:

we need to start treating fragrances like second hand smoke i'd rather smell someone's cigarettes than their toxic dior cologne or air freshener. they're filled with 500+ novel synthetic chemicals that ruin hormones.

“I quickly see the limitations of whatever I say or whatever judgment I make about anything.” —Susan Sontag buff.ly/FFkMMn0

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” -Joan Didion

We've been told emojis are "needed" to convey emotion. That's only because you don't see handwritten letters anymore. A lost Art!

Claire Hermann Göring, Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, levied a collective fine of 1 billion Reichsmarks on the Jews of Greater Germany for the pogrom on Reichpogromnacht (Kristalnacht).

How to recover your "human-heartedness" – Alan Watts on the Confucian concept of "jen" themarginalian.org/2023/09/24/ala…

I'd like to set the record straight. Children in Gaza aren't going hungry because of Israel. They're suffering because Hamas uses food and aid as a weapon to stay in power.