Hello again. 

Allow me to reintroduce myself. I’m Ash. 

Years ago I was grieving the death of my mother and I made this site as a digital altar and pathway to express and externalize my grieving process through the language of Werner Herzog’s films. I wanted to feel connected to others in the universality of grief – everyone who has ever lived has lost their mother. 

I also wanted a project, something with low commitment, with the separation of the computer screen, somewhere to be raw and anonymous, somewhere decidedly less vulnerable than a grief meet-up (which I also did plenty of). 

While I honor my mother at the altar in my home now, spending time intentionally with grief is typically saved for special days. Getting triggered into sudden grief happens less and less. 

Still – events around my mother’s death was a major pivot point in my life. The lessons learned then propel me: lessons of going deeper into embodied empathy and devoted cooperation. 

I think often of scaling up empathy and cooperation in ways that foster collective flourishing, but I’m a communist in a capitalist hellscape. Sometimes efforts of my day job or volunteer projects inch towards realizing that dream in my little corner of the world. At a larger scale, that dream feels utopian and naive as the world as we know it rapidly churns toward increased inequality and war, inattention and reactivity, exploitation of many because of wealth hoarding by the few. 

With work spanning nearly 60 years, Werner Herzog has been an artist at a unique time in human history. Whether towards a penguin or a person, Herzog has created a body of work that supports a deeply empathic worldview. I believe that Werner Herzog is one of modern humanity’s doulas – whether that hospicing is towards a birth into the modern age or toward some death – I’m unsure. 

I am not a nihilist, I do not believe the world is going to end with a sudden stop – roll end credits. But 2025 has been tough so far, and the coming years will offer increased challenges for the majority of us. We will grieve plants, animals, and people; while we marvel at scale and human achievements. We will need to meet collective challenges with empathy and cooperation if we are to survive and many will not – for most it is a matter of privilege, access, luck, and time. Some of us will reckon in the land of silence and darkness, some of us will be pulling ships over mountains. Whatever we collectively have before us, not only will we face a Herculean effort – we must reckon with the unknown, we must allow our drive to understand to guide us. Navigating our grim future will require a Herzogian effort.  

In the past few months, in some of life’s quieter moments, I have been re-engaging some of Herzog’s material, and writing again. So here I am, I think every few weeks I might put something here on this decidedly slow-paced corner of the Internet. It’s been 4 years since I’ve written on this site. I’ve paid $100 to maintain this domain annually. The site surprisingly gains a few subscribers every month or so, which is pleasant to see. Maybe some interesting conversations can happen here. 

So if you’re here, thank you for reading. Here, your attention is a precious gift, not a product feeding an algorithm. What brought you here? How are you navigating where we are all going from here? Whether you add your thoughts to the comments or keep them internal or put them somewhere else, I appreciate the chance to share with you in this way.