Seth Nim

“I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feeling save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

“It kills me to think I didn't spot her headed for the rocks. Friends are supposed to act like harbor boats-let you know if you're off course.”
― Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“Robin Carhart-Harris’ theory of the entropic brain represents a promising elaboration on this general idea and a first stab at a unified theory of mental illness that helps explain all three of the disorders we’ve examined in these pages. A happy brain is a supple and flexible brain, he believes. Depression, anxiety, obsession and the cravings of addiction are how it feels to have a brain that has become excessively rigid or fixed in its pathways and linkages—a brain with more order than is good for it. On the spectrum he lays out in his entropic brain article, ranging from excessive order to excessive entropy, depression, addiction and disorders of obsession all fall on the too much order end. Psychosis is on the entropy end of the spectrum which is why it probably doesn’t respond to psychedelic therapy. The therapeutic value of psychedelics, in Carhart-Harris’ view, lies in their ability to temporarily elevate entropy in the inflexible brain, jolting the system out of its default patterns. Carhart-Harris uses the metaphor of annealing from metallurgy: psychedelics introduce energy into the system, giving it the flexibility necessary for it to bend and so change.”
― Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics

“Hope you’re not prone to nose bleeds. The course sits at the highest elevation in Texas. It’s flat as a pancake, but one day a guy in the group ahead of us had his superglued toupee ripped right off his head. Rumor was it rode the Rio Grande River all the way into Mexico,” Patrick said with a wink and a nod.”
― JoDee Neathery, A Kind of Hush