I haven’t been in a creative blogging mood for a month, thanks to oven-like conditions in Los Angeles these past few weeks, and of course the general Augustiness of August, the Armpit of the year. August gets Augustier every year thanks to climate change. Even the less demanding kind of writing I now reserve for my newsletter (periodic reminder — I have a paid substack called Ribbonfarm Studio that is stylistically downstream of the R&D mode of this blog) has been hard to do.
Anyhow, the funk seems to be lifting a bit now. I just landed in India for a long-overdue visit with my parents, and in what feels like a sign of the times, it’s actually much cooler and pleasanter here. California is enduring mega droughts on a millennial scale, while South Asia is experiencing extreme rain and flooding. In case you hadn’t noticed, the Anthropocene is here in earnest now. If I had to pick a poison, I’d definitely pick too much rain over too little.
Though the trip here was not exactly fun (post-Covid international travel has its burdens), I’m already feeling productively knocked out of the claustrophobic uncreative rut I’d gotten myself into over the last few years. For starters, the view from my parents’ balcony (the one on the left) is a refreshing change from the view from my own back in LA.
Anyhow, just dropping this quick note here to keep the lights on here at ribbonfarm while I proceed to Seek Inspiration and get at least one of several experimental drafts across the finish line.
About Venkatesh Rao
Try the wet, cold rains of the subarctic! We’d like a little heat. Which we never get.
About 30-minutes South of Atlanta, August was more like late September this year.