Poetry: "A Late Night Lamentation"

A man can try to do his best.
In life he'll rise to pass its tests
despite the eyes upon him.
The lies of those who shun him
will serve to grow his callousness.

For those who ballast palaces
will rue the day.
Come due, they'll pay in like
what malice fills of chalices;
a redress of past grievances
will serve to sieve their needlessness.
In darkness shine a light!

Their wanton greed, a rotten fruit.
Their doomsday apparatuses.
Their lavishness and peppered pews,
a coup d'stew with poisonous yew
and toothsome civil "savages"
warrant cerebral lavages.

"Taster #1 - "Walking Through Time""

Falling back in love with the Earth one meter at a time walking 4.6 kilometers. There are one thousand meters in a kilometer. The Earth is about 4,600,000,000 years old. In this video one meter equals one million years.

"Our filming day at Schumacher College in Devon started very unpromisingly with torrential rain. The plan, now under threat, was to film from a drone as part of our coverage of Dr Stephan Harding’s unique Deep Time Walk. Stephan wants to help us “fall in love with Gaia, our living planet”, and has developed an ingenious way for us to physically feel our way into her extraordinary life story. Fortunately, just in time, Gaia decided to take a kind view of our efforts, the rain cleared, and everything came together. Particularly, as you’ll see, with the extraordinarily powerful – and surprising – final step of the journey:

There is a way to experience the walk yourself – using an app developed with Dr.Stephan Harding. It enables anyone to participate in a 4.6km Deep Time Walk anywhere in the world with your smartphone.. You can find out more at deeptimewalk.org

"Selva Oscura: The How & Why Beneath a Who"

Have you ever told someone, who has endured some form of trauma (e.g., sexual molestation, emotional or physical abuse, childhood abandonment, a significant loss, PTSD, et cetera), "Stop evaluating your issues. No good can come of that. You are simply "recommitting" to (i.e., "justifying") the pain that is associated with said issues. What's the point? The past is the past. Quit crying over spilled milk. Don't dwell. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps," and so forth? I find such an approach about as patent an oversimplification of trauma as I've ever witnessed.

You see, on the contrary, the internet (and history in general) is awash in personal accounts of painstakingly reflective people who move forward and re-imagine their world and place within it while delving into both overt and repressed memories, despite the accompanying distress. That, to me, is as courageous an endeavor as any. That is confrontation, forgiveness, and self-reconciliation - an on-going process (i.e., The Great Work, magnum opus). What the former seems to encourage, or disclose in its advocacy, however, is avoidance.

On Real Talk: Marriage, Misery and Mending

Animals, insects, microbes and humans all exemplify environments while they themselves exist within environments (i.e. biomes, meso ecosystems, micro ecosystems). All of these so-called environments exist in a rather routine state (with varying rates of evolutionary change). All of the things which exist within those environments can become "decrepit," "crippled," or "unhealthy" - "sick" as it's put. They will remain so, more often than not, if certain conditions within themselves do not change despite the environment being what it is. Sometimes things are driven by adaptation. Other times they are what's driving it.

In reflecting on this meme, I easily see how the environment can be mistakenly characterized as what needs changing. If what we mean is the environment we ourselves personify than yes, we need evolving or maturation. But if what is implied is simply translocation (e.g changing our habitat) this will in no way serve to address the psychological baggage we schlep around—awares or unawares—from one environment or relationship to the next. If we are what pollutes the water it won't much matter which well we occupy. Whomsoever draws from us to quench their thirst does so at their peril.

"Chile Adds 10 Million Acres of Parkland in Historic First"

Read more here: National Geographic

On Men and Masks

In Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology there are believed to be "two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind" - the Anima and Animus. That is to say that the psyche (i.e. soul, mind, spirit, ego, person, subconscious, or whatever else one prefers to call it) is understood to be androgynous (i.e. "partly female and partly male; of indeterminate sex") despite one's sex or "default orientation". Said psyche is thought to create a contra sexuality in the inner life of a person (i.e. a female's masculine contra sexuality - the Animus - is expressed in her "rational thinking" function and a male's feminine contra sexuality - the Anima - is expressed in his "irrational feeling" function. Note: Neither rational nor irrational are better than the other).

The Anima and Animus are understood to serve many roles. They allow us to relate more fully to the world and those in it with an equal measure of head and heart despite our predisposition of personality as governed by our genetically assigned sex and the psychosocial pressures that govern the way people behave according to said sex. Within this particular purview, neuroses (i.e. anxiety, depression, obsessive behavior and so forth - the precursor to psychosis) may arise due to an imbalance of the aforementioned.

One could argue that the imbalance has been cultivated by an enduring & biased patriarchal dogma (i.e. set of principles or tenets) which has strongly influenced how we have historically thought and behaved as a species. One need only look to our religious or profane institutions to see how profoundly masculinized we are. This prevailing masculine perspective has shaped our folkways and mores in disproportionate measure to the influence of the feminine perspective. Keep in mind that the prevailing masculine perspective dates as far back as the Neolithic era (i.e. 10,200 BCE to between 4,500 and 2,000 BCE), to when - it is theorized (Gerda Lerner) - that paternity was arrived at due to the practice of private ownership, a then burgeoning desire to bequeath property and an accompanying need for certainty that a male’s descendants were in fact their own (see “virgin”).