On June 1, 2021, at 9:21 pm-pdt in Santa Monica, California, my dear friends Linnea Miron and Ricky Williams had a little boy. They named him Sol Forrest Miron – and I bet that middle name caught your eye almost as quickly as it caught mine. Actually he’s named after me only in the sense of synchronicity. Linnea’s mom picked out the name from a list of possibilities. I’ve never met her nor at any time did I slip her a twenty dollar bill. But Sol and I do have a connection. I’m grandpa. Sometimes, with babies, you just know there’s karma there, just like with the adults you meet.

While pregnant with Sol, Linnea asked me one of those simple-sounding questions that sends you spiraling into questioning your basic understanding of the universe. Little Sol is a Gemini. Linnea wondered if he was a Gemini because he was born on June 1st, or the other way around? Was he born on June 1st because “he was already a Gemini in his soul” even though he hadn’t gotten around to being born yet?

I love questions like this one. They are so subversive, and what they subvert is my favorite target of them all: the dominant paradigm. Like it or not, we live in perhaps the most materialistic age humanity has ever experienced. That doesn’t only mean that everybody is out looking for money – avarice is definitely part of it, but materialism runs far deeper than that. Ultimately it is the core belief that we are nothing more than these bodies of flesh and bone, living in a push-and-shove, cause-and-effect universe, awaiting our expiration dates. Delete magic. Delete meaning. Delete miracles.