something remarkable happened last week: i took push offline and got to sit IRL with some of the wonderful people i know. saa hosted push for an evening of botanical bounty that included red roses, a reading by Karen Azoulay, a sensual feast by habibi and a live set by none other than the classically trained viola player ucc harlo. i'm always so humbled in the greatness of a collective we- so much stronger than a singular me. i hope to do more of these incredible cultural gatherings in the months to come. if you're interested in hosting or attending drop me a line.
i'm reading great things, i'm having so many great conversations, and i'm settling into my attic home studio, which means i will save my writing for next week. the only thing i must share this week is you can now buy tickets for summertime's puppet show in november. i'll be there first night: meet there?
in the meantime i am sharing someone very precious with you: the inimitable carolyn barron. she would be reason alone to move to LA. i truly have never met a healer with her level or prowess. aside from that she's also a delight to be around and a poet in every way possible. don't clog her schedule in august when i'm usually in california. without further ado...
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Carolyn Barron is an acupuncturist, herbalist, and ecological storyteller who brings the mysteries of the body alive and roots them into the wisdom of the earth. She practices holistic primary care medicine guided by the poetry of nature, using the five elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water to explore nature’s intelligence as it manifests within you. Her work is for those who long to end the corporate co-optation of the body, know and embrace their unique inner ecosystem, and re-wild medicine for full aliveness. After a lifetime of worshiping at the altar of plants, she applied their ethos of authenticity, adaptability, resilience, and renewal to a healthcare model built on ecological principles. She named her practice Botanarchy, because she believes that medicine is a pathway to liberation, a form of resistance and reclamation that supports the full flowering of your potential. Her online world is a repository of wisdom traditions for connecting to the elements and the sacred wild within & throughout. Her practice resides within Botanarchy Herbs + Acupuncture in Hollywood, CA.
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what kind of life do you want to live?
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My highest ambition is to behold the world with reverence and awe, lead a life that is guided by (and in service to) the gentle cadence of nature. This ethos is encapsulated by a Chan Buddhist prayer that I recite each morning before I begin work with patients:
May the Sun & Moon illumine me
The Five Radiances assist me
Yin & Yang care for me
The Four Seasons nurture me
The Five Elements guide me
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carolyn's current project
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The Botanarchy Times is my seasonal online zine, a celebration of eco-sensual healthcare guided by the poetry of nature. Its pages are a verdant garden bed to sow the seeds of botanarchy, a repository of wisdom traditions for reconnecting to the sacred wild within and throughout. You’ll find earth honoring skills, alchemical practices, plant magic & medicine, advice for rewilding your healthcare, tips for seasonal living, and rituals, recipes, and lore to let the outside in and bring nature into your life.
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carolyn's social impact project
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SPUN is a scientific research organization founded to map, protect, and harness the mycorrhizal networks that regulate the Earth’s climate and ecosystems.
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carolyn's film of the week
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Juliette of the Herbs is my patron saint and a true empress of Botanarchy. This documentary about her life is the most sumptuous visual hymn to her work, a perfectly pastoral rumination on her remarkable contributions to medicine and beyond. Like Hildegard of Bingen before her, Juliette is a true polymath… herbalist, healer, breeder of afghan hounds, THEE pioneer of holistic veterinary medicine, epic sojourner, makeshift anthropologist, general goddess. If you love watching glorious vignettes of a remarkable woman snipping nasturtiums whilst waxing poetic on how she cured gangrene, well this film is for you!
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carolyn's song of the week
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Beautiful Rivers and Mountains — Shin Joong Hyun & The Men
Bawdy psychedelic love letters to Nature is my love language!
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carolyn's article of the week
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carolyn's food of the week
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Baked Asians Pears for Nourishing Dryness
In the alchemical chamber of our bodies, the lungs sit at the seat of our inner heaven, and like a surly Zeus, control water to condense, rise, and descend like rain clouds. Healthy moisture in our respiratory organs forms a fluid interface between the internal and external world, a velvety mist that lubes the tubes and makes breathing a as smooth as Sade crooning ‘Smooth Operator.’ The refined yin nectar nestled within the crystalline matrix of our lungs forms a protective sheath and barrier between us and the harshness inflicted by our environment. Autumn’s mixture of winds, shifting temperatures, and wildfires can dry out our fluid sanctums, leaving us parched and withered, and making us more susceptible to colds, flus, and allergies.
Asian pears - sweet emissaries of yin, banishers of dryness - repose coyly in a fishnet stocking on the shelves of my favorite Asian markets but are also available in most well-stocked produce sections (and lucky for us, in season). Pears balance the inner ecosystem from the damage of dry weather, and though they have an affinity for soothing a parched respiratory tract, they are great for dry constipation as well. This recipe for Baked Asian Pears is adapted from the supreme Chinese kitchen witch tome Ancient Wisdom, Modern Kitchen, which, if you are my patient, I have probably demanded that you get at some point.
Wash - but don't peel - your pear.
Cut off the top 1/3 of the pear like a pear hat and reserve.
Core your pear, making a hole but leaving the bottom intact (will become a chalice for accoutrements).
Place in an oven-safe vessel with a lid and a little liquid.
Stuff the pear with a dab of coconut oil, a drizzle of honey, a sprinkle of cinnamon, and if you like:
Chuan Bei Mu Bulb - Clears Fire, drains mucus, and is especially helpful for blood-streaked phlegm and a hot, sore throat.
Replace the top of the pear, cover, and cook in a 350° oven for about 1-1.5 hours until the pear is soft and yielding.
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The titan arum, also known as the Stinking Corpse Flower, is an endangered plant that grows on Indonesia’s island of Sumatra, with fewer than 1,000 plants remaining in the wild. Technically, the bloom is a cluster of miniscule flowers huddled together in a putrid cuddle puddle, but it is generally regarded as the largest flower in the world. It imitates a dead animal to attract pollinators like dung beetles and flesh flies, with a fragrance that resembles rotting flesh and a core temperature that warms up to a sultry 98 degrees. Long story, but my uncle smuggled one of these back from the South Pacific in the 1980s and planted it as a prank under our bedroom window.
The Corpse Flower is - by the standards of a classically elitist Eurocentric botanical hegemony - repugnant and useless. It can’t be plopped in a vase, has no known medicinal value, and its fruits are poisonous to humans. What if a flower's primary allure is that its sporadic florescence smells like a rotting corpse?
For every rose that is adored for its grace and elegance, there is a Corpse Flower glamouring us to the fringes of ecstasy with necromantic revulsion. The Corpse Flower’s magical allure makes me think of Julia Kristeva, my favorite Bulgarian-French philosopher, semiotician, and feminist psychoanalyst. Our obsession with beholding its grotesque potpourri illustrates with inimitable funk & flash Kristeva’s concept of the abject. In her Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Kristeva tells us the abject is everything that is radically rejected by the self. It is “what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules.”
When I think of embracing the abject as an act of wellness, my mind travels next to Lao Tzu, the philosophical magus of Chinese medicine who believed that by thwarting cultural mandates of acceptable behavior, we return to the purity of origin, the feral grace of Tao. The moral, if there is one:
Be the uncouth gutter trash you long to see in the world.
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and a few picks from push...
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a round of applause for these clappers on view at the Met.
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williamsburg landmark Kellogg's Diner is back and revamped with a new Tex-Mex inspired menu from the team of Yellow Rose. I can't wait to try it out.
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atlas obscura takes us on a field trip to yale peabody to see the worlds oldest cookbook!
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this shirt from MOLD is currently in my cart- support and look great while doing it
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we hope you are loving the transitional weather and that you enjoyed another installment of push picks. as always, if you like what you read, forward it to someone or encourage them to sign up. it would mean the world to us 🌎
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