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Blink.
I continue to be surprised by the writings of Abraham Maslow. No more, perhaps, than by the depth of his interest in the intricacies of human sexuality. (Who knew?) In masculinity and femininity and their relationships to human motivation, creativity, growth, and self-knowledge. It was, in fact, from a brief analysis of male-female courtship or…
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My Quest for Beauty
It is true that I borrowed the title of this post from Rollo May’s narrative of the same name. A move I initially had misgivings about, provided my sometimes too-serious penchant for originality. Chill, I told myself. And, just do it your way (the single most valuable piece of advice I have yet to give…
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Morning Chill
I’ve recently taken up the practice of journaling every morning. Inspired, perhaps, by my concurrent readings of the journals of Anaïs Nin and Abraham Maslow, two incredibly insightful, creative, and remarkably self-aware influences on my own self-development. It is for that reason that I decided to play around with the form of this post and…
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In Creative Combination
There are moments in which I believe I exist within tightly defined limits. Moments in which I am conscious that I must expand my conception of myself, of my capabilities, and the bounds of my personality. In these moments, I experience a heightened awareness of self–of the woman I am and am in the process…
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Authenticity is Creative.
It’s taken me the greater part of the last year to resolve what I falsely perceived as a dichotomy between creative interpretations of my inner experiences and the actuality of those states. The schism between how I represented myself in word and image and the reality of my consciousness. Indeed, when I first started The…
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Pendulum
I arrived at yoga class this morning with the hopes of losing myself in the pause. Of immersing myself in the kind of restorative quiet that is often necessary for the achievement of insight. For the mental clarity required to imbue this post, with which I’d been struggling for the past few days, with meaning,…
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On Wisdom
It’s an ashen sky and lo-fi Sunday. Bone dreary and mellow with intermittent sunlight. The air is pregnant with repose. Heavy. Lingering with moisture, the kind that clings to your hair and drips off the edges of your windowsills. The temperature in a slow and steady climb, typical of spring afternoons in the American South.…
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In Terms of Life and Death
I’m not sure when exactly I began thinking of creativity, generally, and of the dynamics of creative living, in particular, in terms of life force, or energy. Those activities and attitudes that are life-giving versus those that take it away. Indeed, I was, you might say, “smacked over the head” with an aha moment recently…
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On Play
I was fascinated to learn that Carl Jung discovered the therapeutic benefits of creativity by, himself, re-enacting a form of childhood play. An attempt to uncover the roots of an early psychological conflict. To be sure, such a desire to experiment on oneself, to delve into one’s unconscious so rigorously and imaginatively, requires a playfulness…
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On Being an Original
I view the striving for originality as, first, a struggle for life. To preserve, expand, and affirm oneself. To actualize one’s inherent, energetic potential. About a year ago, I published a post titled, When You Have Too Much Life…, in which I discuss what it feels like to have one’s creativity, attempts at expressing the…
The Used Life 