• Examining the topography of tears

    My friend Michael Langevin sent me this URL in an email that said, simply, “I know you suspected this.” He didn’t explain what he meant in any detail, but i think he meant that I believe the following: * everything is alive and everything is a product of consciousness. * reality seems to be more…

  • New insights into synesthesia

      Scientists studying the bizarre phenomenon of synasthesia – best described as a “union of the senses” whereby two or more of the five senses that are normally experienced separately are involuntarily and automatically joined together – have made a new breakthrough in their attempts to understand the condition. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140509074122.htm  

  • Michael Ventura — Sentences without a home

    MICHAEL VENTURA LETTERS AT 3AM – THE NAMELESS MOON, etc. Austin Chronicle – May 16, 2014   Lots of scrawled or printed-out scraps in three bulging manilas: sentences without a home, sketched notions, occasional quotes, and bits cut from columns because I was short of space or because they distracted. Once in a while I…

  • How We Got Here

    For the past few months, I have been writing a series of mini-essays, say a thousand words per topic, on American history beginning at the year 2000 and working my way back. This, in response to my friend Charles Sides, who used to say he didn’t like history, but found that he liked hearing stories…

  • Lucid Dreaming Intensive at The Monroe Institute

    This account is the shadow of a shadow of the experience, of course, but perhaps it will give an idea of how it was. These programs are always a blend of the techniques and exercises, the interaction with the trainers and other participants, and the group energy that builds when people spend time in a…

  • The longer-term toll

    Bruce Kallsen posted this on Facebook, and I took the liberty of re-posting, and I share it here. All these damn wars keep taking their toll, years — decades — after they are officially won or lost or abandoned. Bruce Kallsen’s brief moving story of one man’s re-awakening gives us the slightest glimpse of the awful…

  • MICHAEL VENTURA — Screenworld

    For some reason this remembered column has been on my mind, so I thought I’d share it once again. Letters at 3AM Screenworld By Michael Ventura Friday, February 27, 2009 Screens, screens, screens – everywhere, screens. Right in front of me, in arm’s reach, are three: the three computers accessible from this chair (often I…

  • Michael Ventura – Hitting the Street

    MICHAEL VENTURA LETTERS AT 3AM – HITTING THE STREET Austin Chronicle – May 30, 2014 A street kid – I was a street kid. (No. There is no “was” to the street. Still a street kid, down deep.) If “street kid” conjures in your mind a tough, svelte, hip urchin – well, street kids like…

  • MICHAEL VENTURA – VULNERABILITY/CONNECTIVITY – Pt. 1

    There is a Will Smith movie called “I, Robot” in which the cop says to the computer guru, in exasperation, “you’re the dumbest smart person I know.” That’s us. Michael Ventura’s latest “LETTERS AT 3AM” column: VULNERABILITY/CONNECTIVITY – Pt. 1 Austin Chronicle – August 8, 2014  Dark Angel premiered October 3, 2000. Created by James…

  • MICHAEL VENTURA — CONNECTIVITY/VULNERABITY: Pt. 2

    A pleasant surprise to find myself quoted within a column written by someone for whom i have had the highest respect for the 30 years since i first discovered his work. LETTERS AT 3AM – Austin Chronicle – August 22, 2014   A 19-year-old shot an archduke. That happened on June 28, 1914, in a…