-
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, […]
-
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. […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
Barefoot
Half of my soul is a hippie A Fleetwood Mac loving, Allman Brothers singing, pretty gypsy tattoo slinging, I can’t remember if I cried when I left on that midnight train to Georgia kind of girl All free verse Living fast out of a suitcase (One of the best times of my life) I went […]
-
On Erotic Self-Awareness
I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me—the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, like a country, […]
-
On Sensual Living II
We want to be the poets of our life—first of all, in the smallest, most everyday matters. – Friedrich Nietzsche I imagine that, of all the creative games we play, some of the most purposeful and functional are those designed to transform otherwise painstaking components of our reality into more tolerable—even pleasurable—experiences. Work. Errands. Personal […]
-
On Wanting to Be Submissive
The deeper I immerse myself in the writings of psychologist, Otto Rank, the greater an affinity I develop for both the thinker and the man. Although, to be sure, the most interesting portrait of the doctor I’ve found comes not from his own writings, but from the diary of Anaïs Nin, with whom he had […]
-
On Introspection
Beyond myself, somewhere, I wait for my arrival. —Ocativo Paz I’ve always been an introspective sort. My mother occasionally likes to remind me of the time I spent as a child perched on the edge of my bed, reading whatever material I could get my hands on and subsequently reflecting on those readings for hours. […]
The Used Life 