Jeffji’s Big World

For the past 27 months, I’ve posted faithfully in Jeffji’s Big World every other weekend. But the other day I was listening to a podcast of the Ezra Klein show, and he was replaying one of his favorite interviews – a conversation with music visionary Brian Eno. And I thought to myself, “if Ezra can take a break, so can I.” So this weekend I’m giving myself a little break, and republishing one of my favorite Substacks from almost two years ago. But I did add something new.

A longer post than usual, but stick with it… A small fraction of Richard and Judith’s beach plastic collection / © Jeff Greenwald Almost exactly 15 years ago, I published a story in Smithsonian about a remarkable artist couple I’d encountered at an event in Berkeley, California. Richard Lang and Judith Selby had their first date on Kehoe Beach, at the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Last week, four friends and I went to see Toy Story 5 at the beautiful Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (with which I share a birthday). It was six dollar Tuesday, and we couldn’t resist the bargain. It’s hard to believe that the first Toy Story came out in 1995, more than 30 years ago! I’ve loved almost all of the films in the franchise (especially the harrowing Toy Story 3), and all of us were eager and excited to see what the Disney/Pixar cabal had come up with for this latest installment.

Last week’s psychedelic therapy journey was both more and less than I’d hoped for. Less in the sense that I had hoped to enter that well-documented realm of universal love, a place where I could plainly see that everything — including you, God, myself, even my Parkinson’s — is nothing more or less than the pure vibration of love. That didn’t happen. There was something missing.

"A heroic plunge" / Somadelic Journey As many of you know, I’ve long been a subscriber to the “Making Sense” podcast with Sam Harris. Whether you agree with his politics or not, Sam’s always been an articulate prodigy. I was first introduced to his work in the late-1980s at a poetry gathering at the home of my late friend Wes Nisker, at which Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield read a short but deeply insightful piece that Sam (then in his early 20s) had sent him, imagining a guru/disciple dialogue.

Desktop screenshot, May 2026 - West Marin photo © Steven Brock At approximately 8:30 on the morning of May 4, 2026, I ceased to exist. The morning had begun with a simulacrum of normalcy. I threw off the bed covers, moved into the living room for my 15 minutes of meditation, checked my email, and sat down at my keyboard. I thought I might start the day with a journal entry.

It has been two years and one day since I launched this Substack — with the now odd-sounding name of “Jeffji’s Big World” — and I thought I’d celebrate by doing something that I have not yet done: give myself a week off! But then my beloved friend Iris sent me this wonderful diversion and I thought I would share it with you, just to remind everybody that whether or not we’re aware of it, the Earth has our names written all over it. “Jeff” as rendered by NASA’s Earthly Alphabet You can do it, too.

In his seminal book Impro: Improvisation and the Theater, performer and teacher Keith Johnstone makes this observation: “There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes’, and there are people who prefer to say ‘No.’ Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.” All my life, I’ve considered myself somebody who says ‘Yes.’ Yes to pretty much everything: editing a weekly paper; following a love interest to Kathmandu;...

from a Yayoi Kasuma exhibit in Los Angeles - Photo by Mike Von / Unsplash Before I distract you with the perils and pratfalls of Parkinson’s, I want to make you aware of a wonderful video interview that was recently conducted with me by Sabine Bergmann and Sivani Babu, the marvelous cofounders and driving forces behind Hidden Compass, a women-run online travel magazine with thematic issues featuring some of the best contemporary travel writing being published today.

Note: how do you illustrate a piece like this? I asked Anthropic’s Claude to try, but after innumerable prompts I was not even remotely satisfied. But Substack posts beg for visuals, so I’m using a series of random images that my friend Elliot and I created in 2024 using DALL-E. The captions were the prompts.