Go Ask Alice

psychotherapy: Currently reading, and highly recommended...

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:01:37 -0400

Currently reading, and highly recommended (especially for any artists/writers out there).

Takes on, and triumphs over, the long-standing cultural myth that therapy and/or psych medications somehow hinder the creative process in individuals. It does so with essay after intelligent essay from working poets who have been in treatment of one form or another, talking about how psychiatric treatment (for everything from depression to schizophrenia) has actually helped their writing rather than hindered or lessened it in any way.

beingblog: Grace Lee Boggs on the Challenge and Responsibility...

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 13:19:49 -0400

beingblog:

Grace Lee Boggs on the Challenge and Responsibility of the Occupy Wall Street Participants

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

“This enemy of ours is not just Wall Street; it’s a whole culture.”

Who better to turn to about Occupy Wall Street and all its other offshoots than Grace Lee Boggs. Born to Chinese immigrants in 1915, the philosopher has seen and thought deeply about issues of social justice, racial and gender equality, and the resurrection of community for more than 70 years now — not from within the halls of academia but from the pedestrian malls and streets of the United States.

“You’re going to have to be thinking about values and not just abuses.”

She offers a historical, sideways approach to OWS and provides a long view of constant questioning. Not only does she think on the grand, larger scale of social values, but she also is embedded, rooted and dedicated to a place — the city of Detroit.

In the video above, she addresses all the people participating in Occupy Wall Street with a note of encouragement and a call for contemplation and reflection. She embraces the movement but also challenges the protestors too, asking them to examine their own minds and hearts about whether they’d happily be part of the culture their against, if they were given the opportunity. She also calls for deep introspection and intellectual rigor as part of the effort.

For a good introduction to Grace Lee Boggs life, check out this two-minute introduction from the documentary film tracing her life, American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs. It’s definitely worth watching.

Photo of Grace Lee Boggs by Photo by David Schalliol/Flickr)

Being Blog: Strange Is American Religion, Stranger Is American Secularity

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 10:12:15 -0400

Being Blog: Strange Is American Religion, Stranger Is American Secularity:

beingblog:

by Tom Moore, guest contributor

photo: Helen Sotiriadis/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

“Where did you read the Bible?” she asked. My friend Karin used to teach religion in a Swedish public elementary school, which is why her question made so much sense to her but so little sense to me.

sometimesagreatnotion: pulpfictions: “We do not grow...

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:53:32 -0400

sometimesagreatnotion:

pulpfictions:

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”

- Anais Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin Vol. 4

sometimesagreatnotion: “Here’s what we’re not taught [about the...

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 10:32:50 -0400

sometimesagreatnotion:

“Here’s what we’re not taught [about the Declaration and Constitution]: Those words at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. You are not taught - and it is a disgrace that you aren’t - that these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were willing to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see.”

- Naomi Wolf

Think for a moment

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 20:22:19 -0400

Young man

What do you feel when you look at my daughter?

“Oh My God, how/why do I have HER in my life?”

“She’s utterly beautiful…she’s intelligent, kind, cynical, naive, independent, supportive, fragile, steely, unforgiving, receptive, loyal, compassionate, naïve, devoted, lighthearted, sarcastic, considerate, , ,”

This is what I think when I look at her

—minus the lust

I don’t regard my daughter as an extension of myself

She is a whole woman

I don’t get to claim her as a part of me

I don’t get to take credit for the creature that she IS.

And I am astoundingly LUCKY to have her in my life

This I know

Please do not pass judgment regarding my concern for her

I am swallowed whole by WHO she is

Just like you

No less

Our Childish Ways: An Emperor with No Clothes

Tue, 24 May 2011 21:39:39 -0400

Our Childish Ways: An Emperor with No Clothes:

childishways:

Responsibility. Now there’s a word. A blast from the past. A word our grandparents used and lived by and raised children by. It’s not a particularly popular word in our culture today. We like words like because, or reason, or explanation. Because or reason or explanation make the…

structures: (by soleterranean)

Tue, 24 May 2011 17:46:45 -0400

structures:

(by soleterranean)