”In dreams, as in daily life, the same laws operate: the more one is detached, the more one can enjoy perceiving all of existence as a vast playground. The less one is detached, the more life turns into a dead end. Dreaming thus taught me, paradoxically, to wake up and maintain a lucid current as a thread of existence, even if this requires a major effort.”

- Alejandro Jodorowsky, Psychomagic

Howdy you lovely people,

Summer is here. May we recognize and relish and make it a grand one.

There’s something about summer — long days, flourishing green life, the years of months off from school we had as kids, clothing as an afterthought, the mountains thaw and we get to climb them, the waters warm and everybody swims — it’s always-without-question been my favorite season of the year.

So, a reminder to get out and breathe summer in deep. It’s easy to put our heads down and trudge in life sometimes (I’ve honestly been doing this a bit lately, carrying quite a workload this spring). If there’s a time to break pattern and take in the great bounty of the Earth, a planet coated in the miraculousness of flourishing life, here it comes folks.

I’d like to use this letter to introduce you to a newly reimagined section of my website: Favorites. Favorites is a collection of links to what I personally consider the best pages on the entire web. It is a remix of what I originally called my Needlestack, playing the metaphor that finding the best among billions of pages on the internet is like finding a needle in a haystack.

I eventually realized that, at first glance, nobody knows what Needlestack means. And that it kind of sounds like a pile of devices used for the administration of hard drugs. These shortcomings spent a lot of time simmering on the backburner of my mind. When Favorites popped into my head, it made much more immediate sense.

In addition to the name change, I’ve also cleaved my Favorites into a submenu of seven categories: Books, Talks, Podcast Episodes, Blogs & Articles, Travel Tools, ETC, and More Favorites.

I’d like to really reiterate that this is not just an announcement about changing the structure of my website. This is a meticulously collected list of links to seventy-five or so things that have blown my mind, induced life-changing cascades of insight, and subconsciously conspire to create the worldview and words of the human composing this letter (whom you appear to have some overlapping interests with as you are reading it right now).

In short: Favorites is a list of links to many of the best things I have ever heard, watched, read, used, and done. I strongly encourage you to dig them.

My Favorites might connect you with a book like Turn Your Life Into Art: Lessons in Psychomagic from the San Francisco Underground spurring an interest in creating transformative experiences for fellow humans. You might watch Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy and fall in love with the life-long art of backing others. Stumbling upon The Short and Sweet Guide to Being Fucking Awesome might realign you with your personal true north. I say “might” as each did exactly that for me.

Finally, if you dig the idea of Favorites and have a presence on the web, make your own list, let me know, and I’ll add it to the More Favorites page. Together we can — in grassroots fashion — weave a web of what’s best across the web.

With love & stoke,

Ethan

P.S. WONDER WANDER 2023 is happening September 15th-20th in a hilltop hacienda among the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico. Six days and five nights of a dozen curious humans sharing the best of what they know, directly engaging the wonder of nature, and existing with a sense of community largely unknown to the modern western world. If you feel it, I beckon: take the leap!

Introducing Favorites: A Reimagining of the Needlestack

In 2021, I created the “Needlestack”, a simple grassroots solution to making the browse the web by best.

Playing on the metaphor of “finding a needle in a haystack,” the Needlestack was a list of links to what I personally felt were the best pages on the entire internet. The idea was to make my Needlestack, encourage others to make their own, and to link them together — weaving a navigable web of links to the best pages on the web.

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WONDER WANDER 2023

September 15th to 20th 2023, I'm hosting WONDER WANDER 2023 — a gathering of curious, creative, and adventurous humans for a surreal communal experience at a hilltop hacienda among New Mexico’s Southern Rockies.

The aim is to bring a dozen diverse interested-interesting people together to examine life, share perspective, and bask in the glory of the natural world together.

We'll be staying at Golden Hawk Retreat, a funky, art-and-wellness-inspired hacienda with unobstructed 360-degree panoramic views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The space includes a living room with floor to ceiling windows, a purple kitchen, a dining room, four bedrooms with twelve twin beds, three bathrooms, a yoga studio, and ten acres atop a foothill of New Mexico’s Southern Rockies.

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