🌜 📜 🌊 Scrolls and Streams: The Science of Awe, the Luxury of Bathtubs, and Queer Family Farms
Also: last week to sign up for Five and Nine's Tarot for Writers, a four-part class for writers and creatives! Includes some great Five and Nine swag.
This is Five and Nine, a podcast and newsletter at the crossroads of magic, work and economic justice. We are currently in Season 3, which is all about rest. You can catch up on Apple, Spotify, Google and Instagram.
Scrolls and Streams 📜 🌊 is Five and Nine’s monthly selection of insights and commentary that have caught our eyes and ears. All links are shared in the spirit of “this was interesting” and not necessarily “we fully endorse this.”
Published every 🌜 waning gibbous moon, also known as the disseminating moon.
Top Five
In fact, close personal connections are significant enough that if we had to take all 85 years of the Harvard Study and boil it down to a single principle for living, one life investment that is supported by similar findings across a variety of other studies, it would be this: Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period. If you want to make one decision to ensure your own health and happiness, it should be to cultivate warm relationships of all kinds.
In their past work experiences, Adalja and their colleagues have each faced discrimination – either as queer farmers or people of color. Sometimes, that came in the form of being demeaned by owners who didn’t respect their skills or who took their photo for promotional purposes; other times it came in the shape of co-workers using racial slurs. At Ashokra, they’re trying to challenge the structures that permitted those abuses: by caring as deeply for the land as they do for one another, implementing a zero-tolerance policy for abusive language and adopting a nonhierarchical structure.
Who Do You Want To Be? (Hidden Brain)
Here was a set of ideas to explain why people found it hard to figure out what to do with their life. By the time a person is in their early 20s and is making important decisions about careers and relationships, they've had a good two decades of indoctrination. Indoctrination from the culture, which tells them what's worth striving for and what is not. Indoctrination from parents and well wishers who have told them what is high status and what is not. And indoctrination from schools that often take passion and enthusiasm for a subject and turn it into a race for grades, certificates and academic honors. The irony is the better one does at each stage the harder it becomes to ask if you're actually doing what it is you want to do. Soon the system of carrots and sticks that guides us through adolescence and youth is now driving us through our careers.
The Diverse Luxury of Baths (Thao Thai)
The bathtub has become many things to me: an office, a bar, a parlor, a church. There, I consume and create; I think and I relax and I connect. Once, I saw a photo of a writer in the tub and I thought: How precious! And kind of pretentious? But now, I think: How inevitable! It makes sense that the most freeing space in my home should also become a site for contemplation. Oprah’s bathtub, carved to the exact specifications of her body, has always fascinated me. Instead of browsing million-dollar real estate listings, I’ve taken to goggling over sumptuous bath tubs, speculating on the soakability of each. When my neighbor tells me about her bathroom renovation, I nod attentively, but in my mind, I’m wondering, “But how large is the tub?” The bath has morphed from a dubious necessity to a luxury I regularly daydream about.
The Thrilling New Science of Awe (On Being with Krista Tippett)
And the neurophysiology [of awe] is amazing. It is truly amazing. And it gets back to this old indigenous idea of — we are part of an ecosystem, our bodies are part of them. So there’s a review of how nature benefits us, and there are 21 pathways by which that’s true, including awe. But what really struck me is the neurophysiology, which is, you know — sound waves coming off of streams, and moving bodies of water, activate the vagus nerve. They calm us down. There are chemical compounds in nature. You might smell a flower or tree bark, or the resin on a tree, that activate parts of the brain and the immune system, right? So our bodies are wired to respond in an open, empowering, strengthening way to nature. That work is largely done in Japan and South Korea.
More Scrolls and Streams 📜 🌊
Burned out by COVID, Chinese professionals take up nomadic life: ‘I wasted so much time’
People who perform at high levels without burning out, have an ‘opposite world’ outside of work.
Sleeping late isn’t a sign of laziness. Stop the circadian-rhythm shaming
More data supporting the Four Day Work Week
Managers Have Major Impact On Mental Health: How To Lead For Wellbeing
Last week to sign up! Tarot for Writers: Unlocking Creative Pathways Through Intuitive Tools
A new Five and Nine class series starting at $100.00. Listeners can use code TAROT for a 10% discount on the full course.
Did you know that the Rider Waite Smith deck, one of the most popular tarot decks in the world, was designed by a struggling artist, editor and writer, Pamela Colman Smith? Tarot has been a guide and tool for creatives for hundreds of years to help unlock new pathways of thinking and making.
In this 4-part class, we'll look at the history of tarot; workshop how to use tarot for creative production, from exploring the history of characters to identifying the best way forward in one's writing career; and do a few practice readings with each other.
This course is meant to be practical, and participants should bring a chapter- or article-length work that they can hone in on for the course. Participants will come out of the course with a beginner’s writing practice and finessed piece, along with a tarot writing toolkit that includes a series of monthly and daily spreads they can use, a short overview of tarot, and readings for future self-guided study.
Join An Xiao (Ana) Mina, Xiaowei R. Wang and Dorothy R. Santos of Five and Nine, a podcast and media production collective operating at the intersection of magic, work and economic justice for this class designed to help you unlock creative pathways. We’re proud to be working with The Shipman Agency, a full service literary agency for writers.
If you are unable to attend the course live, a recording will be made available to you afterward. All participants who sign up for the full four-course class (including those who are only able to view the recordings) get:
A sticker for Five and Nine, a podcast about magic, work and economic justice produced by the course teachers
A printed Five and Nine moon calendar for 2023
PSST Quaranzine, artist Helen Shewolfe Tseng's participatory workbook zine of prompts, rituals and tarot exercises
A complimentary subscription to Five and Nine
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Five and Nine is a podcast and newsletter at the crossroads of magic, work and economic justice. We publish “moonthly” — every new moon 🌚 and full moon 🌝 — , and we provide an ongoing critical discussion through readings, reflections and debate.
In this new world, we’re all rethinking the meaning of work and justice in our lives. Our lives and livelihoods are more essential than ever in identifying ways forward for society that can be grounded in care, compassion and sustainability.
Directors of Magic. Dorothy R. Santos and Xiaowei R. Wang
Creative Director. Xiaowei R. Wang
Lead Producer. AX Mina (Ana)