“Can you lift me up to a higher place?”

Finished reading: The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday 📚

A mediocre book, to be sure. The writing is not good; the book is littered with clichés; and he expects the reader to be another Lincoln or Churchill. And yet, it was still the right book for me in this season. Embracing obstacles and setbacks—that message struck a chord with me.

Happy Saturday!

I painted this back in 2018; I’m a one-trick pony when it comes to painting.

A fascinating 2018 documentary on Paul Kingsnorth’s changed relationship to the environmentalist movement he once passionately identified with. This is Kingsnorth prior to his conversion to Orthodoxy and relative popularity for his online writing at The Abbey of Misrule, though it is interesting to see certain spiritual ideas and trajectories already percolating in his mind by this point.

A “nekyia” scene (i.e., an ancient Greek rite in which ghosts were called up and questioned about the future) from the Tomb of Orcus II, depicting the ghosts of Agamemnon and Tiresias.

My wife and I are finally watching Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds for the first time. (I say “watching” because we’re at the stage of life where we split a viewing over two nights; I might’ve been embarrassed by that earlier in life, but I’ve come to a place of self-acceptance.) It is not what I expected, and I mean that in a rather positive sense. I’m certainly curious to see how things wrap up.

If at all feasible in your situation, don’t use Amazon. That is all.