This Erotic Timeline

What if the corporations farming our attention accidentally gave us the most radical favor in the history of collective awakening?

In this episode, I trace a 600-year arc, from Gutenberg's printing press to the iPhone, to ask what actually happened to human attention, and why so many of us are collapsing under the weight of our own feelings right now. The answers I explore involve deep time, the colonization of the body and imagination, the rise of authoritarian movements, the difference between wellness and manageability, and why somatic reckoning might be one of the most quietly revolutionary forces of our era.

We move through the astrology of the week of May 4–10, 2025 — a week of intense squares giving way to gentle visionary flow — and I share a time-bending story about a typewriter, a Friday ritual, ancestral wisdom, and finding my way back to my body and a different scale of time.

Topics include: the attention economy, the precuneus and what the scroll literally does to your sense of time, Gutenberg and the printing press, the worship of the written word as a pillar of white supremacy culture, academic institutional complicity in the Palestinian genocide, authoritarianism and the outsourcing of feeling, somatic therapy and decolonization, ancestral healing and listening darkly, and what it means to come home to the body's long memory.

CHAPTER MARKERS

00:00 — The premise: your attention was never lost, just redirected

01:49 — Opening & grounding practice

03:19 — Astrology of the week: overview

03:31 — Monday May 4: Mars square Jupiter — care, desire, and the rigged game

08:03 — Tuesday May 5: Mercury square Pluto — owning your wants, colonial shadows

10:08 — Wednesday May 6: Pluto retrograde — presence over force

11:06 — Thursday–Saturday: the simmer

12:28 — Sunday May 10: Sun sextile Jupiter — visionary flow and identity work

14:00 — The Descent: what the scroll does to your brain and sense of time

17:01 — Deep time and the 600-year arc of human attention

18:15 — Gutenberg, the Bible, and the colonization of imagination

21:58 — The most accidental favor in collective history

23:09 — Authoritarianism, madness, and what gets called sane

25:46 — Somatics, decolonization, and the body's reckoning

30:56 — Personal story: my dad, a typewriter, and time travel with ancestors

37:46 — Summary, questions for the week & close

CITATIONS & RESOURCES

Primary Sources

Alexis Pauline Gumbs — Dub: Finding Ceremony (2020)

Alexis Pauline Gumbs + Barbara Holmes — On Listening Darkly (transcript)

Alexis Pauline Gumbs — You Are Loved (podcast episode)

Prentis Hemphill & The Embodiment Institute — embodimentinstitute.org

Khara Scott-Bey, somatic therapist — kharascottbey.com

White Supremacy Culture — whitesupremacyculture.info

Aneeza Pervez — Witnessing Silence: The Palestinian Genocide, Institutional Complicity, and the Politics of Knowledge (2025) — Globalisation, Societies and Education

On Attention, Social Media & the Brain

Large meta-analysis links TikTok and Instagram Reels to poorer cognitive and mental health — PsyPost

Study on social media and attentional capacity — PubMed

Social media use and cognitive function — PMC

Social media, not gaming, tied to rising attention problems in teens — The Conversation

On Madness, Empire, and Social Control

Mab Segrest — Administrations of Lunacy: Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum (2020) — on how the American asylum system was built to contain bodies that couldn't be made productive under capitalism and Jim Crow

Frantz Fanon — The Wretched of the Earth (1961) — on colonialism, madness, and the psychopathology of the colonized

Frantz Fanon — Black Skin, White Masks (1952) — on race, identity, and the psychological violence of colonialism

On Print, Media & Cognitive Change

Walter Ong — Orality and Literacy (1982) — on how writing restructures consciousness

Neil Postman — Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) — on media and public discourse

Marshall McLuhan — The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) — on print culture and cognitive change

An old argument against writing — on Socrates and the critique of the written word

What if desire isn't something you feel but something that happens to you? Something bigger than a preference, older than a craving, that doesn't ask permission before it starts rearranging your life?

In Episode 2 of This Erotic Timeline, we move through the astrology of the week (April 27 to May 3, 2025) including a grand air trine that lets collective freedom actually be felt, a potent Scorpio Full Moon, and Mercury entering Taurus, wherein the universe asks you to channel the wisdom of your inner three-year-old.

Then we descend into desire.

We get into Lacan and Freud's theory of desire-as-lack and why it's basically the philosophical backbone of capitalist consumerism. We talk about the difference between preference and desire and why desire might be less about what you want and more about an ecological force calling you toward the good trouble. We explore how the colonial gender binary weaponized desire to make us legible and controllable. And we visit the 5th house, Audre Lorde, and Toni Cade Bambara to ask: what if following desire is actually your political responsibility?

This is just the opening of a much longer conversation.

0:00 — Opening: What If Desire Happens to You?

1:10 — Welcome & Grounding

2:45 — Astrology of the Week Ahead (April 27–May 3)

3:10 — Monday April 27: Ritual vs. Routine & The Sun Trine South Node

6:00 — Tuesday April 28: Grand Air Trine & Feeling Collective Freedom

8:00 — Wednesday April 29: Venus Squares the Nodes — The Tension That Builds

10:15 — Thursday & Friday: Scorpio Full Moon + Mercury Conjunct Chiron

13:00 — Saturday & Sunday: Mercury Enters Taurus

15:30 — The Descent Begins: What Did You Do With That Wanting?

17:30 — Desire Misunderstood: Lacan, Freud & Capitalist Lack

21:30 — Preference vs. Desire: The Ecological Force (ft. Deleuze & Guattari)

25:00 — Desire & Identity: The Colonial Gender Binary

29:30 — The 5th House, The Ego as a Little Boat & Ripping the Sweater Off

33:30 — Values, Play & Your Questions for the Week

Sweet Talkin' Guy (referenced in this episode): https://www.nowness.com/series/nowness-shorts/sweet-talkin-guy-miss-dylan-spencer-wardwell

References & Citations:

Get in touch, request topics, or just come say hi: [email protected]

Book an astrological or coaching session: amaliathecoach.com

Join me for an intimate group space on the 2nd and 4th Mondays of every month: htthttps://www.amaliathecoach.com/groupwork

Why does urgency make it so hard to actually move?

In this episode of This Erotic Timeline, we explore time scarcity — that creeping, collective sense that time is running out — and what it does to our bodies, our relationships, and our ability to show up for what we actually care about.

Through the lens of this week's astrology (Mars–Saturn in Aries, Mercury joining the stellium, Venus–Uranus shaking up desire, and Uranus entering Gemini for a new era), we track the astrological signatures driving this feeling of pressure, urgency, and transformation — and ask what it means to stay present inside all of it.

We explore:

From there, we move into a reframe through an Indigenous Latin American story of the hummingbird and the forest fire — an invitation to release the pressure of fixing everything and return to small, devoted, consistent action.

If you've been feeling frozen, overwhelmed, or unsure what to do in a world that won't slow down — this episode offers a grounded, embodied way forward.

Even now. Especially now. We are still co-creating time.

References: Prentice Hemphill (Becoming the People); Mariame Kaba; Bayo Akomolafe

0:00 Cold Open: Does Time Feel Like It's Running Out?

1:10 Welcome & Grounding. Arrive in This Moment

2:30 Astrology of the Week Ahead

3:00 Sunday: Mars-Saturn Conjunction & Sun Enters Taurus

7:30 Monday: Mercury in Aries. Devotional Focus

10:00 Tue–Wed: Big Feelings (Moon in Cancer)

10:50 Thursday: Venus-Uranus & Venus into Gemini

14:00 Saturday: Sun Square Pluto & Uranus Enters Gemini

17:15 Sunday Close: Hope as Revolutionary Discipline

18:00 The Descent. Topic: Time Scarcity

22:30 Scrolling, the News Cycle & the Nervous System

24:30 Personal Time Scarcity & Relational Reactivity

27:00 The Hummingbird & the Forest Fire: Finding Your Part

30:30 Closing Reflections & Questions for the Week

33:45 Outro

Welcome to the first episode of The Erotic Timeline.

In this prelude, I introduce the central question behind this podcast: What if we are living through not just political and cultural upheaval, but a deeper shift in the timeline itself?

Blending reflections on astrology, Mayan timekeeping, trauma, capitalism, colonialism, and embodied healing, I explore the growing sense that the systems organizing modern life are breaking down—and that many of us are being called to experience time, survival, and relationship differently.

In this episode, I introduce two frameworks I’ll be returning to throughout the podcast: the linear timeline and the erotic timeline—two fundamentally different ways of moving through the world.

Part personal story, part philosophical inquiry, and part manifesto, this episode lays the groundwork for the questions we’ll keep exploring together: How do we recognize the timelines we’re living inside? And how do we choose the ones that make us more alive?

Episode Chapters:

1:07 – Welcome + why this podcast exists

Thank you for being here at the beginning.