When I look out my window, so many sights to see...

The concept of intersubjectivity has something to say about the whole "magic secret law of attraction" philosophy...
While you are responsible for your behavior, and it is extended to encompass the consequences of that behavior, does that mean you are responsible for the behavior of others around you?
Now there is something to be said for that, there is a pattern matching force out there, if you're gloomy, it will alter how people react to you, and if you're beamingly happy it will as well.
On the other hand if you extend it too far, you're attempting to reduce the people around you to mere objects, reacting to you. Everyone else is just as much of a nihilating consciousness as you are.
At the level of the world, what we find then is a multiple coefficient of adversity as the wills of many people coalesce, this "resolves" itself into the world around us. You can't escape that. This is the cause of interpersonal anxiety, in fact. Walking down the street, a person passes you. Nothing you do internally can really prevent that person from picking up the nearby trashcan and smashing you over the head with it.
That's an exaggerated example for effect, but there's a similar ambiguity of other people's actions in all moments.

You can reframe the actions of others to some extent, and you can impose your will (pull the trashcan away, in our example), but it's like pushing your hand into putty, while everyone else is at the same time. The resulting shape of things is not entirely up to you. The best you can do is keep your own freedom in mind and not react automatically to what other people do, giving you as much control over your situation as possible. This takes a bit of practice mind you.

Donovan's "Season of the Witch" as Existential Psychedelia

Donovan was clearly aware of some stuff...

When I look out my window, many sights to see
and when I look in my window, so many people to be,
that it's strange... so strange

This is clearly the basic pre-reflective cogito in the first line. Consciousness is the window. We objectify our "window" and so become aware of our own awareness...
The second line captures the narrator aware of all of his possibilities, in the midst of existential anguish.
It's strange, because the familiarity of non-reflective consciousness is stripped away, he is now aware of the absurdity of his situation.
One of the features of mature psychedelia is that it works by subtleties. If one fell through a tunnel into a world of absolutely bizarre shit, eventually this would normalize for you because you have an explanation for it, it's clearly "a world of absolutely bizarre shit".
But to re-experience the familiar as new and strange, is the actual experience of real people on psychedelics, or just people who have a momentary awakening even.

You've got to pick up every stitch (x3)
must be the season of the witch

The chorus reminds us that we and we alone are responsible for reconstituting ourselves... the season of the witch recalling the fact that once one is aware of the fact of being a self-creating being, the world becomes a terrible, magical place. There's a sort of sense of existential nausea here, of the awareness of the terrible contingency of our reality, the fact that everything really is changing constantly. (if we have to pick up every stitch, they must be falling...)

When I look over my shoulder,
what do you think I see?
Some old cat looking over,
his shoulder at me...
and he's strange... sure is strange.

This is the appearance of intersubjectivity. The interpersonal anxiety of knowing that "some old cat" out there is looking over his shoulder at you too, also a consciousness, but a "strange" one... possibly in the sense Camus meant it in The Stranger. There are Others, and they know too. And they probably know that you know... There is definitely a paranoid air lent to the song at this point.

He does a reprise of the first verse, but in the chorus adds
the rabbit's running in the ditch
I'm not really sure about what he's getting at with that one, possibly the works of John Updike? By the attempt to flee, one ends up in the ditch?

beatniks are out to make it rich
The beatniks line shows again the possibilities of human consciousness... one is never at once and forever a "beatnik", anything is possible, and this creates existential anguish, a state of questioning your own being, of knowing that you have to make the decision, over and over, forever. You can't hold on to the comfortable fake other "oh, he's just a beatnik". There is also a tinge of the nausea here again, that things break down and change and nothing really is what it "is".

After the chorus, he trails off with "Where'd I go?"
Human consciousness realizes in the end, that it is literally Nothing. In fact, it is Nothingness. The being of consciousness is non-being. At the same time, the world into which we are thrown is constantly in question, it is annhilated by this non-being at all times. Nothing is stable. It's the only thing that is. And it's always the season of the Witch. Guess who the Witch is?

(no subject)

some words I like:
mote
entrails
innards
victuals
repast

what are some of your favorites?