Hey friends,

A new Ramble! At last. So much has been sloshing around my brain that I've struggled to know when to cap this and try to make something coherent of it, but this is a start. Lots of citations in this one. Don't feel any obligation to click on all these links, I just like leaving a paper trail so you can follow up if anything I talk about strikes a chord.

So, in Ramble #18, we touch on:

• My friend Aaron (who is a developer, but almost exclusively tweets insights from therapy and I love it)
• Sam Anderson on caterpillars and soup 
• John McPhee's story diagrams 
• adrienne maree brown’s  Pleasure Activism
• My friend Wendell, whose excellent Parts Integration class around Allyship is coming back for a second session later this year (I'll be sure to post about it when it's live)
• My friend Ním's Theory of Conceptual Labor 
• Letters from Max 
• Milton Glaser (RIP) on the fear of failure 
• Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey 
• My friend Josh and his stunning ability to play difficult video games while discussing current events with insight and ease
• e bond’s 100 Questions Worth Asking 
• Christina Tran and the Goblin Town Microplays 

More broadly, this is a conversation about attachment, pleasure, the death of the ego, reminders, permission, and play. 

Thank you for letting this evolve, and for sticking with me.

<3

L

P.S. I'm noticing that I'm scared to write about current events in Portland because it feels stressful and disjointed when put next to this update, and I worry I'll get something wrong, but I'm trying to practice speaking up more often, so here's some stuff:

Portland is hitting the national news right now, making it easy for local context to get lost in translation. Mostly I want to reinforce that our city is not being overrun with violent anarchists. The majority of the protesting is happening within a ten-block radius downtown, with many additional solidarity sign wavings, neighborhood marches for kids, and distanced car-based protests around the city.

The foundational issue at hand is police violence against Black Portlanders. While federal agents in our city are of grave concern, our Mayor (Ted Wheeler, who's also in charge of the police department) allowed the Portland Police Bureau to go on gassing protestors for months before the feds showed up. The ongoing escalation of violence by the police is what's leading to continued protesting.

If you want to support our city from afar (or anear!) you can make a tax-deductible donation to Don't Shoot Portland, a Black-led organization doing vital work in the community, at this link.

P.P.S. I removed the qualifier "peaceful" before "protestors" after listening to my friend Anis, because drawing a line implies that there ARE protestors who should be tear gassed, which simply isn't true. Our government shouldn't be violently targeting citizens who are exercising their rights to assembly and free speech, period.