Laura’s Mom Learns

Today I would like to share with you the life of Ruth Smith. Ruth was a coworker of mine—she worked in public relations for our program at Kent State University. A wonderful woman with a great sense of humor, Ruth often wrote for local papers. Often times her editorials detailed her experiences as the mother [...]

A flight, a memento, a question

Are people inherently good, bad, or something else? Exploring the film Memento, a flight I just purchased, and the interactions between people, this post asks this question and seeks to have you ask it of yourself.

The Big Dick Hypothesis

America is a nation beleaguered by cultural problems. Homicide, criminal sociopathic behavior, drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, abortion, greed, selfishness, apathy, ego-mania… other countries just don’t seem to have these problems; other 1st world countries anyways. The United States boasts the strongest economy and military in the whole entire world, yet we still struggle [...]

On Creative Inspiration

There’s a peculiar sort of feeling I sometimes have in which an uncommon mood akin to an altered state of mind slides over me. A friend of mine calls this a “transcendent experience,” and he, a writer, experiences it as well, primarily when exploring nature. Talking with my boyfriend, who is very artistic (presently expressing himself through pottery and songwriting), I found that he, too relates to this type of experience, and feels it when in a setting that seems especially powerful or poignant to the senses. In talking with the various people I know, I realized that this seems to be a trait possessed by those with artistic personalities or an otherwise imaginative, creative nature. These people not only perceive the world very deeply and strongly, but also allow their perceptions to influence them emotionally, creating strong moods in which one can become utterly lost…These moments are absolute bliss, an ecstasy of the “soul”, as anyone who has shared them would agree…This week, my boyfriend surprised me by taking me to a salvage shop. This may seem like a bizarre sort of surprise, but it was wondrous to me. I’d never been in one before, and in walking through the dusty, dimly lit warehouse, I found myself in the throes of one of the greatest transcendent experiences I’ve had in a long while. To either side of me stood the contents of gutted homes and buildings: porcelain sink tops, rows of doors and a large bin of doorknobs, personal items (encyclopedias, children’s toys, crutches), dishes and decorative items, dated and dilapidated furniture, and an abundance of hardware items. I found my imagination spinning in furious circles, utterly fascinated by the sight of seeing all of these items strewn about, many of them things which you would never expect to find up for sale: public drinking fountains, exit signs, and such. The sadness and eeriness of this place was inescapable, it was everywhere, a palpable feeling of strangeness which seemed to emanate from these piles of society’s flotsam, the cast- off refuse of our modern age. Standing in the salvage shop and reveling in the experience, I felt the idea for a story beginning to germinate in my mind. It is this sort of experience that I live for…It is at these moments, and few others, that I perceive “the meaning of life,” or at least, the meaning I choose to grant it: the experience of ecstatic transcendence and true, complete perception of a moment in time, as much as the senses will allow.

Where does your paradigm come from?

I’m hoping that this post can be an interactive one.  I know the whole premise of blogging implies the opportunity for interaction, but this one in particular needs it.  The purpose of this post is not for me to share what follows, but to induce others to share, creating a collective conversation that is greater [...]

Michael Jackson is Dead

I was halfway through another article today when I got word of the big news.
Ladies and gentleman the ‘King of Pop’ is now dead as a doornail.
That’s right; at 2:26 pm today Michael Jackson kicked the bucket at a mere fifty years of age. There’s no doubt that he was popping far too many happy [...]

Art, Blood, Catharsis

Admittedly, I am not the most “productive” member of society. I say productive in the most capitalist, meaningless sense of the term, but on rare occasions I do in fact get down on myself for this perceived lack of responsibility. And, during these bouts of turmoil, I console myself by remembering that I [...]

What is Your Favorite?

There are those among us who develop life long passions, “favorites,” or interests. I am not one of those individuals. One of the most annoying aspects of social networking sites in my opinion is generating lists of “favorites.” Why would this task seem so daunting? Its simple really, my opinions and change rather rapidly. It [...]

Social Media #1: The Basic Three

In an effort to help those who struggle with social media, its value, and how to approach it, I’ve decided to discuss some of the topics pertaining to social media. This post starts with the basics of the big three social media tools. There are lots of places to access social media, and more tools than you can shake a stick at. But right now LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are the favored children of the social media family though.

Who Has The Right?

Never before had I seen such a diverse array of people traipsing about naked, or partially clad (generally topless). Prior to this experience, I’d primarily known only two types of female bodies: the bony, sinuous forms offered up by Hollywood, and my own (which was therefore always a source of shame and concern). At this gathering, I was able to view a plethora of different shapes and sizes of human forms, and I was amazed. There are things I learned about the tendencies of the human form which would take me pages of writing to explain. In short, it truly was an awakening. And very few of these people were striding about in the buff to elicit sexual interest. They were merely doing it because it was comfortable, because they wanted to, and because they felt that there was nothing wrong with showing their skin and in seeing the skins of others. Many of the women were possessed of tremendous bulk, being “Goddess sized”, as they are called in that community. And no one thought to say to them, “you know, you REALLY shouldn’t be walking around like that.” In this setting, they absolutely had the right, which is what made the experience so liberating for them and for all of us.

Having been divorced from the Neopagan community for some time now, it seems the judgmental nature of our society has crept into my consciousness yet again, influencing my perceptions of the human body. I feel disturbed by how quickly this attitude has asserted itself over the awareness I’d developed to the contrary. In my opinion, judging others on the basis of their appearance and behaving as though the “ugly” have no right to bare themselves as they choose is a negative attitude in general, as well as harmful to one’s own self. For most of us are, of course, our worst critics.