To Read & To Write

  While perhaps lacking the political urgency of the present in connecting the dots between economic instability, racial injustice, and climate change on a local and global scale, The Way of Coyote: Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds by Gavin Van Horn (2018) nevertheless brings an overarching, holistic point of view to the contradictory landscape of Chicago, Illinois. Chicago, one of the most well known cities around the globe, albeit notorious, is spared its grimier history and violent present in a sweeping narrative about the interconnections, oppositions, and magnetism between the biological and the industrial, the natural and the technological. Van Horn presents less of an attempt to merge the two oppositions and instead gives more of a push towards a revelation of a greener, lusher, wilder, woodier, more Arcadian world that seeps through Chicago's crevices, cracks, potholes, and crumbled houses, buildings, and towers, reminding the audience that despite the city's push fo

"The Crystal Workshop: A Journey Into the Healing Power of Crystals" by Azalea Lee (2020) is a deeply informative and gorgeously curated book for those curious - and those who have just begun - to learn how to connect with the mineral world at the level of metaphysical healing. Lee admirably and honestly lays bare the essential structural components that must be harnessed within the practitioner (such as a keen and developed intuition) in order to skillfully work with crystals in a beneficial way. Not only does Lee present her philosophies on the art of crystal healing, she provides straightforward yet lab-like workshop exercises for the reader to determine, on his or her own, if they are ready to continue into a genuine relationship with the crystals in order to, ultimately, reach a pure metaphysical level of understanding them.   Not all will resonate with Lee's approach, but I believe many will (as I did). Because Lee masterfully writes about the crystals holistically