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Saturday May 26th at The Golden Notebook!

Ed Rosenfeld, "The Book of Highs"

Call it altering consciousness, call it getting high, or call it mindfulness. Humans are hardwired to seek ways to transcend the limits of everyday awareness, whether it’s the little kid spinning in circles to get dizzy or a runner experiencing the day’s first rush of dopamine. And you don’t need drugs—as Edward Rosenfeld shows, the “high” is inside, and there are literally hundreds of perfectly natural ways that we can use to find it.
An encyclopedic survey of all the ways humans try to achieve altered states of consciousness, The Book of Highs is a complete update of a book published in 1973, after the government outlawed psychedelics. Here are recent developments—Virtual Reality and Brainwave Machines—and positive techniques such as Self-Hypnosis, Alterations of Breathing, Fervent Prayer. And “negative” techniques—Self-Flagellation, Sleep Deprivation. Methods derived from religious and mystic traditions—Transcendental Meditation, Tantric Sex. Techniques that involve devices, whether nonelectric like Mandalas, Metronome Watching, Body Confinement—or electric and electronic—Bio-Feedback, Stroboscopes, the Psychedelic Bathtub, Moire Patterns, Brain Music.
Whether you’re out for a life-changing adventure—Skydiving, Fire-Walking, or Kayak Disease (which occurs when you spend three days in a kayak off the shore of Greenland)—or just want to have a break in your everyday routine with a Zen Morning Laugh or by Jumping Up and Down, this book is guaranteed to blow your mindfulness.

Ed Rosenfeld is a writer, editor, and consultant based in New York. A founding editor of Omni magazine, he has edited three volumes on neural networks, as well as Talking Nets:AnOral History of Gestalt Therapy, and co-written the libretto to the opera Huxley's Last Trip. As many drugs became illegal, he wrote The Book of Highs, first published in 1973, to focus on ways to alter consciousness without drugs.

Event Date: Saturday, May 26, 2018 - 6:00pm

 

Maureen Brady, "Getaway"

After years of living in an abusive marriage, one day Cookie Wagner snaps. She stabs her drunken husband and leaves him dying on the kitchen floor. She flees to remote Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where she takes on a new name and starts a new life. For a moment, she seems to have gotten away with murder. But is her husband really dead or will he come looking for her and once again ruin her life?

Maureen Brady’s novels include Folly, Ginger’s Fire, and Give Me Your Good Ear. She is also the author of Daybreak: Meditations for Women Survivors of Sexual Abuse, Beyond Survival, and Midlife. She teaches creative writing at New York University, New York Writers Workshop and The Peripatetic Writing Workshop and has long served as president of the board of the Money for Women Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She has received grants from NYSCA, Ludwig/Vogelstein Foundation, Money for Women Fund and Briarcombe and was winner of the Saints and Sinners 2015 Fiction Contest. She lives in New York City and Woodstock, NY.

Event Date: Saturday, May 26, 2018 - 4:00pm