Books made of human skin, Da Vinci’s Codex Leicester selling for US$30,802,500, and Fran Lebowitz being outraged at someone putting a cup down on a book …
… The Booksellers, a charming documentary about the endearingly whacko people who trade in rare and iconic books.
We watched it the other night and it was lovely to just wander through these people’s lives, through their enthusiasm for hunting and protecting these books for posterity.
If you’re looking for a light documentary about the simple cultural pleasure of physical books, check out The Booksellers by D W Young.*
*That’s an affiliate link, so if you buy something through that link I’ll get some money for a coffee, at no extra cost to you.
I’ve started a page on Kokoro 心 Heart called The Book Vouch, a list of books I can vouch for. Imagine a TV show where people sit on a couch and talk about their favourite books, except there’s no couch, no video, and no talking.
This is part of my first crack at affiliate marketing, so you can buy books through this page and I’ll get some money for a coffee, at no extra cost to you.
I’ve restarted my formal meditation practice today. It was nice to sit still on the cushion and give some time to just enjoying the breath and allowing thought to fall away before it takes hold.
I’ve been taking a break from maintaining all such habits since I quit my job a while back. I let myself go a bit because I just wanted to relax and go easy on myself with the routine and discipline. I’d been planning to get back to a more regular practice a few weeks ago, but then things blew up with our housemate and that destabilised us for a while.
That’s okay.
It’s all okay.
It has to be, or else despair sets in and there’s nothing more paralysing for me than despair. It’s worse than fear for me, which at least has a kind of energising power.
The work I’m doing now, since I quit my complicity in traditional exploitative employment, is here on this blog and internal, intrapersonal, work. I’m fortunate to live in a country that has welfare benefits, and I’m choosing to redirect that benefit to the investigation of our culture and the internal environment that creates that culture. I consider it a form of tithing.
What better service can I offer the community than investigating the true nature of reality? By sharing any insights I come across I hope to contribute to the work of changing the narrative around what we consider valuable at the heart of our culture: the acquisition and hoarding of material wealth, which divides us into haves and havenots, creates discord and harms the habitat of our planet; or the realisation of wisdom that unites us in the common journey toward equality, harmony and sustainability.
Of course we all need a degree of material wealth to survive long enough to conduct these investigations, and we can’t all depend on the welfare system forever. To that end, I am beginning to monetise this blog a bit, with affiliate links to things like books I can wholeheartedly recommend. Here’s one, in the spirit of trying this on for size — a fiction-ish memoir account of the ancient search for what the author calls Quality: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.
I’ve always felt a bit suss about marketing and advertising, but I’ll try to make sure the way I do it here is not grubby. All recommendations will be as much on theme as possible, and nothing I wouldn’t buy myself. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a classic of philosophical ficto-memoir that has inspired my own metaphysical adventures endlessly, and is one of the few books I’ve read more than once.
I’ve got other income streams in mind, such as meme-coasters and other “merch”, as well as social enterprise ideas that will take a bit more time to materialise. I also want to produce a little chapbook of my published and unpublished writing, so stay tuned.
If this sounds like something you’d like to follow and get involved with and support, there are some links below.
Meanwhile, may your psychospiritual wellness be complete and your contribution valued. I’m looking forward to a bright future, and I’m excited and happy to be stepping into my purpose of compassionate communication about metaphysical adventure.
Nikki put this on the stereo as I was finishing the draft of this post (it’s Ben Harper’s “With My Own Two Hands”, in case the embed doesn’t work):
Very appropriate, and from an album I can highly recommend: Diamonds on the Inside by Ben Harper [link].
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