UNUSUAL PONDERINGS

Remember

2011-10-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
~Saul Bellow

To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.
~Thomas Campbell, Hallowed Ground

Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories.
~From the movie An Affair to Remember

Not a Mermaid

2011-10-04T20:54:00.000-07:00

A while back, at the entrance of a gym, there was a picture of a very thin and beautiful woman. The caption was "This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?"

The story goes, a woman (of clothing size unknown) answered the following way:

French model Tara Lynn

"Dear people, whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, seals, curious humans), they are sexually active and raise their children with great tenderness.

They entertain like crazy with dolphins and eat lots of prawns. They swim all day and travel to fantastic places like Patagonia, the Barents Sea or the coral reefs of Polynesia.

They sing incredibly well and sometimes even are on cds. They are impressive and dearly loved animals, which everyone defend and admires.

Mermaids do not exist.

But if they existed, they would line up to see a psychologist because of a problem of split personality: woman or fish?

They would have no sex life and could not bear children.
Yes, they would be lovely, but lonely and sad.
And, who wants a girl that smells like fish by his side?

Without a doubt, I'd rather be a whale.

At a time when the media tells us that only thin is beautiful, I prefer to eat ice cream with my kids, to have dinner with my husband, to eat and drink and have fun with my friends.

We women, we gain weight because we accumulate so much wisdom and knowledge that there isn't enough space in our heads, and it spreads all over our bodies.

We are not fat, we are greatly cultivated.

Every time I see my curves in the mirror, I tell myself: "How amazing am I ?! "

Welcome to Bhram!!

2011-10-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

My friend AJ from India is a photographer and has just opened his new website. He is just updating now, but it will be full very soon! Check it out for some great work. I've had the pleasure of seeing his photography via Facebook for a while now. I'm glad he's opened up his world!

Congratulations, AJ! May the world now see what a bright star you are!

Welcome to Bhram!!

If you could

2011-10-03T18:08:00.000-07:00

Apart

2011-10-03T17:59:00.001-07:00

APART

YOU FOUND MY KEYS
ON AN ANGLE'S HIP
MOVED HALF THE FALLEN TREES
FROM THE FROZEN ROAD.

THIS TRIP IS
ALL I THOUGHT
IT WOULD BE
AND WE'RE NOT
EVEN 1/2 WAY YET.

IF I CAN'T TOUCH YOU
WITH SNOW-HUNG FIRS
OUR ONLY WITNESSES
CAN'T HAVE YOUR EYES
WHEN EVERYONE'S ASLEEP
THEN THE FIRE'S ALMOST OUT.

YOU ASK THE UN-NAMED
ATTRACTIONS TO LEAVE TOWN
BUT KEEP CHECKING
IF I'M STILL AROUND.

SHOULD WE SIDESTEP
PUTTING FINGERS TO
WORDS TRACING LIPS THAT
WOULD INFORM US?

ONCE SAID I'D MISSED
YOU EVERY INSTANT
BEFORE WE'D MET.
NOW BELIEVE WE KNEW
HOW SAD WE'D BE
APART.

- Viggo Mortensen

A Miworth Ghost

2011-10-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

Went back to the park today. It's been a long time.

I was there several years ago and sat and cried close to where I said, "because you are going to leave." I thought we wanted different things from life. I used to go there alone after you left, looking out at the river to try to find some peace with the choices we made.

Today it felt like I'd invaded the scene of some holy crime. I quickly paced about, snapping shots, nervous. There was a devil hiding in the bush, some hole I was going to sink into so it could then catch me and cast me into Hell for even going back.

One of us has to remember, or it's all lost.

The field was deserted, and I was more than a little worried about bears. I made a lot of noise, coughing on purpose, whistling. You'd have driven me crazy with your teasing. I was only there about a half hour, finding no reason to linger. It's not like I had your hand to hold, or any more tears to shed over the matter. Appropriately, it was raining. Someone had been listening this morning.

Before I left, I decided to find the exact spot where we sat. I couldn't tell you how many times I've tried to paint that spot with a red smudge in the grass and haven't been able to get it just right. My vision, like many things between us, goes unfulfilled.

I sat down in the wet leaves and let the rain soak my jeans. Like some crazed medicine woman I laid my hands down on your spot on the slight rise, and said your name out loud, eyes closed. Trying to conjure ghosts. Praying for some unseen earth connection.

The next time you take your shoes off maybe you'll think of me.

It's strange what we do and think when we are alone. Surely I'd not have done it if anyone else had been present. Only the trees saw me, and I don't have to worry about them. They get it.

That day was a different kind of day. There were families in the park playing in the sun, the trees were green, and the kids by the river waded with their parents close by. We were smoking cigarettes and talking. I wish you'd had more guts that day. I wish you'd argued with me, argued for yourself. You always kept too much inside. I never knew that about you then. I do now.

Age does that to a person: we get wrinkly and wiser.

Neither of us had any forsight, did we. You just accepted it and I gulped back my tears, turned my eyes away from you. I wanted to be yours. I just had no confidence. I didn't think you wanted me. I did that at the bus station, too. I bet you never saw me crying. You just disappeared into the night, the man of my dreams -- still.

We held hands after we talked, just staring out into and across the river. It never dawned on us to cross it.

I never wanted to leave that place. I wanted to lock that moment in forever. If my soul was endless, it would already have happened. As it is, I am trying to leave some physical proof of the matter.

Something tangible. Touchable. Real.

- Nichole Olson

More pictures of Wilkins Regional Park, Miworth, BC

Skin

2011-10-03T09:44:00.001-07:00

A burr stuck to fur
and the dog just leaves it there,
licks, tugs.

Greyed algae on the soft
round stone baked in the sun
goes green the week
after we throw it in the river,
never dying.

I paint over the picture
again and again,
add thicker detail
until I want a new canvass,
put the other aside
where it sits and haunts me.

Nothing ever really leaves,
it just grows skin
until not even a pin
can dig it.

- Nichole Olson

Detail vs Simplicity - Western Art - Oils By Lesley

2011-10-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

Detail vs Simplicity - Western Art - Oils By Lesley

BEV DAVIES

2011-10-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

BEV DAVIES
words by Jules Moore

In the late 70s, Bev Davies began photographing Vancouver’s punk rock panorama – the venues, the musicians and every maniac in attendance. Her photos conjure a mindscape of freakish green rooms, back alleys and basement riots — a sonic skid row that defines a reality of Vancouver that many don’t know existed.

From DOA and The Modernettes to The Clash and Iggy Pop – if it falls under “punk rock,” and then falls again into Vancouver, Bev Davies was, and still is, right there.

CONTINUE

The Mad Pianist

2011-10-02T20:05:00.000-07:00

The Mad Pianist

The weathered kitchen chair pulled at the stickiness of her summer legs, her thin skirt sticking to the inside of a heated thigh, secreting a burst of shimmering curled shadows as she sucked deeply on her cigarette, her tongue playing softly with the smoke as it lingered with wishes from her glossed, watermelon lips. Closing her eyes to the sun, her hair fell backwards, arms and breasts erupting in ripples at the caress of a cascading tickle that eased her eyes open to a catlike glare. She prayed for some movement: the day seemed endless and droning in the hazy waving pavement air that listlessly trudged along her fence line.

Just over the horizon of cumulous leafy trees in her front yard, the sight of high, thick clouds promised some release from the sick heat of the day, the sunlight teasing them into a menace of charcoal grey and the promise of a shadowed and electric afternoon. She would sit in the storm and allow the rain to shock her skin, ease her slick hair, and maybe – just maybe – she’d lift her skirts and feel the relief of cool waters over the stifling heat growing between her folds.

He watched from the moist dirt in the garden where he pulled incessant weeds, glancing up from his promise to finally get that damn bed in shape, his shorts getting a little tighter all the time, the heat causing every fold to pinch and pull. He found himself taking off his garden gloves and straightening up, attempting to reach into his heat sealed pocket, fingers desperate to fish out his lighter, brushing against his groin, making things that much harder.

Feeling a slight, welcoming breeze between his legs, the air easing him from the prison of his cutoffs, he saw her cat eyes fixed above the tree line and followed hers, noticing the coming storm. He looked at her then, his brutal smile tugging at her shoulder, which peeked out from the neckline of her wispy cotton shirt. She felt eyes upon her, lazily turning to catch his infectious grin.

As he gathered his tools and stuffed the carnage of suffocating vegetation into the garbage bag, the storm blew on them softly, spitting as it spoke, the little bursts of cool drops searing as they bounced off pan-hot skin. She hadn’t moved an inch, but had closed her eyes, resting her feet on the porch rail, her skirt flirting with the breeze, exposing her – and him.

She watched through a veil of eyelashes as he worked his way over to the dented garbage cans just beside the porch where she sat, her ass slipping on the wood made wet by her sweat and the rain, which was coming down in fat, fast drops. She noticed the way the wet glistened and dribbled from the inside of his arm, creating curlicues in the dirt on the tops of his hands, his shirt now sticky, the little folds of cotton creating a landscape on his back, a dewed and moss covered rock. She ashed her smoke into the half empty Corona bottle on the floor at her side just in time to receive his hot, drunk kisses.

The rain suddenly turned to sheets as the atmosphere darkened, a curtain of lightning in his eyes. In the brief second she looked into them, the throbbing in her thighs heightened to a yearning as his hands began to paint passionate dreams on the white cotton of her blouse, catching her nipples, coating them in earth and water. The wind rushed them on, kissing her with his lips, kissing him with hers.

As the neighbours ran for their houses, slamming doors drumming, the whirling air ripped at her skirt, his fingers touching the wet slickness of her lips, entering her in upward thrusts and swirls. His tongue became the rush of the river as she swam naked, her palms and fingers easing him out as she worked him like a thirsty straggler in the middle of a desert.

As he entered her, the lightning flashed, immediately followed by the crack of thunder. All the lights blinked, immersing them in the darkness of their natural theatre, the wind raging the leaves from the trees into a whip upon his back. She became the electric energy of the storm, her nails on his ass, the storm pounding as he pounded, each moan and sigh like the rain on their tin roof and the cracking of the trees.

The whoosh of the percussions in the air became his body as he held the chair behind her, bottles and ashes flying, the poetry books chattering their appreciation, the blinds in the window dancing and waving like worshippers at a great Olympian Parthenon listening in on the Vaporous Oracles.

The garbage cans began to clatter, rolling on the ground, laughing at the frightened neighbours as the wind howled with them, peaking and peaking, her head back, mouth panting, nipples as erect as the grass receiving nourishment from the sky, his mouth on her neck, teeth biting and catching her skin as the whipping sticks rapped on the porch deck with great applause. With each roll of thunder, he felt himself growing, like some Titan as thick as the trees that only bend to the wind as she was bending into and away from him, the storm his engine, feeding him, enclosing them, throwing them in the air.

They became a funnel cloud, crying and shuttering like the windows of their light houses, spinning and twisting, sucking and fluttering, shaking and tumbling into one another, passing lightning from one another like the clouds and the earth. Their neighbours hid in their basements, crying, shouting to one another to stay safe and hide, cover their ears and eyes in case a piece of tree shrapnel or stinging rain caught them.

But the storm eased as suddenly as it had entered, releasing its wet load onto the lawns and rooftops, washing birds nests from the trees and the sand from the top of the ant hills, which now dripped with exhaustion.

He fell into the cushion of her breasts as her legs wrapped around him like her skirt caught in the spindles of the chair as his fingers were. They caught their breath, gasping like divers after the long deep, gazing at the stars in their eyes like revolving, gaseous planets, the storm moving on to other streets, new lawns, different porches on which it would play like a mad pianist caught in the lusty heat of an August day.

- Nichole Olson

Second Cup and Michael C

2011-10-02T20:04:00.000-07:00

I will remember

2011-10-02T02:35:00.000-07:00

Miworth, Prince George

2011-10-02T02:33:00.000-07:00

Lior - I'll Forget You (feat. Sia)

2011-10-02T02:24:00.000-07:00

Forget

2011-10-02T02:23:00.000-07:00

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
- Pablo Neruda

The crime of loving is forgetting.
- Maurice Chevalier

Lior ~ This Old Love

2011-10-02T02:15:00.000-07:00

Dearest Old Love

2011-09-30T12:01:00.000-07:00

Why do you have to mean trees to me? Rain? The moss and grass, and the dirt by the river? The crying in the car when you came out to see? Remember? Saving grace, the one who loved me away from my abuser?

There's an empty field where you should be. I fill it with new loves. It seems then all is okay, my heart is full. I forget. I always did that to you. I am sorry.

But, love flees. Only then I see you surround, my love, the wilderness, the crows, moose, and softly laid down fawns. You are the Foothills around the valley, and the Nechako River in spring.

Why do you have to mean getting lost on the trail and traversing rotting logs over the ravine? We could hear them building UNBC. Why do you have to smell like the earth, and cool fresh of autumn? Why do you have to remind me of a hug and a starlit dashboard wet with our delayed kisses? Floating to Fort George? Sitting in the old ice rink covered with pine cones, watching the trees whisper? Why?

Why do you have to taste like coffee and cigarettes and smell like that leather in my car seats? Boston Pizza. Why do your eyes have to look at me that way over the counter where I worked (I felt you loved me then), haunting, leaving me at the end of that summer to go back to school saying you'd never have a family, that riches were all you were meant for and not this armpit of a city? Why do you mean wisdom?

You have moved on. You won't talk to me. Probably a good thing? I loved you more than you'll ever know, and spent the years preceding your Greyhound bus south trying to bury you under new love, pregnancy, family. It didn't work. Still, despite all my trying, you come up. You come up when I am married. You come when I am alone, when I am down, when I am walking paths of gold, when I am void of thinking. You come.

I can't seem to forget. I can't seem to leave you the way you've left me.

You have always been the first, the best. None will ever have your eyes, your laugh, or your hands. None will be able to whisper my name back to me in the dim light of your bedroom in Victoria. (We met in front of the Parliament. Do you remember how you circled Queen Victoria out front, while I was on the back side at the smaller statue waiting? How I watched you go round and round for an hour, not realizing that handsome short haired man was you? -- I got married there). None will be able to hug me as we stood at the top of the castle overlooking the dark and stormy Pacific. We took the long winding road to get there, cutbacks and traffic. You took me to the naval academy, and we drank beer. Had a salmon pizza. We drove the rich parts and sang "Candle in the Wind" by Elton, dreamed a future.

Irreplaceable love, none of them will ask me, at the end of the summer, why aren't we together?

Why are we parting?

None of them will look back at me today, smiling and happy, from your sister's picture of you and your new and beautiful family.

- Nichole Olson

Lior - Bedouin

2011-09-29T22:04:00.000-07:00

rage

2011-09-28T11:21:00.000-07:00

For all my friends who have bottled up their anger, and are apologetic when they get negative and angry at others who have disenfranchised, abused, belittled, and invalidated them... FEEL YOUR ANGER! It's okay to do so!

Dick Cheney Protest - Vancouver, Canada-YouTube.mov

2011-09-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

Dick Cheney 'unwelcomed' in Vancouver | rabble.ca

2011-09-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

Dick Cheney 'unwelcomed' in Vancouver | rabble.ca

"We're going to keep protesting until we get a government that respects international law, takes a stand against torture," says StopWar.ca organizer Derrick O'Keefe, September 26, 2011, at a rally to protest Dick Cheney's book tour stop in Vancouver. continue

Inspiration friends shared this morning

2011-09-28T09:49:00.000-07:00

There is no wrong way to have a body.
- Glenn Marla
All human beings are real.
- Hanne Blank

Mother Teresa was Depressed

2011-09-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

The Torment of Teresa

by Michael Green, Washington Post

Other noble religious traditions promise serenity, detachment from striving and release from the suffering of the world. Christianity, in contrast, teaches that grace is found in the worst of that suffering, and through a figure who despairs of God's presence in his parting words. This anguish is not convenient -- "Why hast Thou forsaken me?" is hardly the best religious marketing slogan. But for millennia this abandonment has offered hope that God might somehow be present even in shame, loneliness and betrayal, even on the descending path of depression, even in the soul's hardness and doubt, even in the silence of God himself -- and that all these things may be the preface to glory. continue

Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith
By DAVID VAN BIEMA, Time Magazine

The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are extravagantly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew. The second sounds as though it had wandered in from some 1950s existentialist drama. Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction — that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared. continue

Rich or Poor?

2011-09-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

Today someone said:

I think if I were rich, I would be happy. I would:

become a free person - I wouldn't have to work as a slave in a corporation, I wouldn't work to pay off my debt, so I wouldn't be a slave to bank too; I wouldn't have to suffer.
I would travel a lot - every time I travel somewhere, I'm happy and I don't have depression.
I could support animal shelters and spend a lot of time helping animals; I would follow my purpose in life.
I could afford the best therapists in the world, who would help me correct the way my brain works, and I could lead a normal, depression-free life.

I don't understand how people say that money can't make you happy.

It made me think: does money solve all problems? Does it alleviate all stress and cure depression, make you happy?

I'd say no. This is what I responded:

In today's society, money can ease your way. But, you have to work really hard for that money, unless you win a lottery (and realistically what are the chances of that). Everyone works really hard for their money, whether they are in a minimum wage job or a high paying career.

With the stresses of life, people prone to depression have a much harder time, whether they are rich or poor. Each has a different set of stresses. I think more poor people are depressed, though. It comes with the territory. You rarely see a homeless person who doesn't have mental illness of some kind. It's pretty hard to find someone living on skid row who says they are really happy.

It's sort of like a vicious circle. If you are poor, you are stressed about finances, food on the table, clothes, just surviving. If you are rich you are stressed about how much you have to do to keep the income rolling in, usually you are very busy, have a lot of responsibility, just that it's a different set of responsibilities with a different scope. But, being prone to depression is being prone to depression, it's not a picky disease.

Money doesn't solve problems, it just makes it easier to survive. It may ease some of the tensions, but maybe it brings new problems into play that are also stressful in their own way.

Imagine you are rich and famous and suffering depression. Suddenly you can't work, you have no money rolling in, you can't pay your $5000/month mortgage, you are letting your fans down because you can't do appearances, you also are letting professional movie producers or music producers down because you aren't able to do the films or the tv shows, or make the album. You are a public failure and everyone knows what is going on with you, there is no privacy, the paparazzi are always following you.

You take a vacation, but there are pictures of you in your bathing suit all over every celeb site out there. They catch you drinking at the local bar because you're drowning your sorrows and then publish your drunk photos in the magazines. You can't have any type of anxiety attack in public, or there will be a photo of it and everyone will judge you... millions, if not billions, of people.

Every good action, like supporting an animal shelter, is looked at as a mere publicity stunt. People viciously attack your reputation. Your marriage is failing because you are mentally ill, and their is a media feeding frenzy and its in all the tabloids, your life is under a microscope, you are trying to protect your family and yourself from the invasion... everything from your choice of clothes to how skinny or fat you are is food for the ravenous public.

Imagine how stressful that would be.

The more money you make, the higher your bills are, and you don't get to take fabulous vacations because you are always working. You don't have enough time to spend with your pets, because you're always at work. The same goes for your family. Is this any better or worse than a poor person struggling to survive? Does that mean you don't have any right to be depressed, or that you should be happy?

I think it'd be great to not have to work and be rich, too. I have spent time fantasizing about that in the past. It never helped me. Dealing with the reality of my situation helped more. Unfortunately life isn't like that for almost all the people on this planet. It's all relative, anyways. I know very rich people with depression. It's no different for them as it is for lower-middle class me.

If only we could all be free and rich, hey? But, what would happen to our way of life, then? How would that change things?

Juanes::PARA TU AMOR

2011-09-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

Tito el Bambino- "EL AMOR" HD

2011-09-26T12:42:00.000-07:00

One Semester of Spanish - Love Song

2011-09-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

2nd Semester of Spanish, Spanish Love Song

2011-09-26T12:30:00.000-07:00

Stanford's Sapolsky On Depression in U.S. (Full Lecture)

2011-09-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

Worth a revisit:

Don't Fade Away / Dead Can Dance

2011-09-24T17:06:00.000-07:00

Fall

2011-09-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

If the orange and red leaves of fall
dance, a reminder, is it given
that this must change
the grey and silver
of your skies?

Must you stubbornly argue
with the brisk wind that blows
them tumbling through
the neighbour's yard,
carefully handled
with the pink softness
of fingers, placing the pointed
breaths of life
inside pages meant
for tracing, filled
with paint later
when the white chill of winter
gives no remembrance of
bright yellow summer?

- Nichole Olson

Synchronicities

2011-09-24T16:31:00.000-07:00

Coincidences are spiritual puns.
- G.K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

Synchronicity reveals the meaningful connections between the subjective and objective world.
- Carl G. Jung (1875 – 1961)

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination?
- C. G. Jung

Synchronicity…means a ‘meaningful coincidence’ of outer and inner events that are not themselves causally connected. The emphasis lies on the word ‘meaningful’.
- Marie Louise vonFranz, The Process of Individuation, Man and His Symbols, Carl G. Jung

The First Insight: Mysterious coincidences cause the reconsideration of the inherent mystery that surrounds our individual lives on this planet.
- James Redfield

Be careful what you ask for....

2011-09-24T15:33:00.001-07:00

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
- Karl Von Clausewitz

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
- Vincent Van Gogh

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
- Will Durant

Religion and Depression

2011-09-24T15:32:00.000-07:00

A reason to believe
Religion may fill the human need for finding meaning, sparing us from existential angst while also supporting social organization, researchers say.
By Beth Azar
December 2010, Vol 41, No. 11
Published by the American Psychological Association

“Adaptive spiritual practices can be a foil to anxiety and depression,” Plante says.

Having spiritual beliefs might also lead to enjoying a longer, healthier life. A large body of research finds that religious people live longer, are less prone to depression, are less likely to abuse alcohol and drugs, and even go to the dentist more often. continue

Steel Toed Slippers, Lay Step, Pomona College

2011-09-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

Awesome youtube friends who sought me out... enjoy!! California band. Really great.

How pro-Israel is Stephen Harper's government? | rabble.ca

2011-09-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

How pro-Israel is Stephen Harper's government? | rabble.ca

The Moment

The moment when, after many years

of hard work and a long voyage

you stand in the centre of your room,

house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,

knowing at last how you got there,

and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose

their soft arms from around you,

the birds take back their language,

the cliffs fissure and collapse,

the air moves back from you like a wave

and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.

You were a visitor, time after time

climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.

We never belonged to you.

You never found us.

It was always the other way round.

- Margaret Atwood

Michael

2011-09-22T14:07:00.000-07:00

Wednesdays at 9 pm on CBC

Michael and David have been seeing each other, professionally, twice a week for 15 years. They're making progress.

Dr. David Storper (Bob Martin) is a psychiatrist specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy. Translation: David and Michael (Matt Watts) venture out of the office to engage in real-life exercises designed to conquer specific fears.

Michael is David's most challenging patient. He is wracked by a litany of anxieties centered round the most mundane things - cats, buses, strangers, bridges, girls. He's 30. No one knows Michael better than David.

Like most patients, Michael knows nothing about David. The doctor is a workaholic and, arguably, his controlling nature and secret drinking contributed to the break-up of his marriage. But, he's working on these things.

Michael believes David is his key to happiness. David believes Michael is his key to a lucrative book deal. They live in Ottawa, a city rife with misunderstandings.

Without his knowing, Michael (renamed 'Miguel') has become the central figure in a self-help book David is writing for the tough-as-nails publisher Jasmina Hart (Martha Burns) with the help of flamboyant editor Samantha 'Sammy' Dunbar (Jennifer Irwin). Although they appear to be complete opposites, Sammy and David are wildly attracted to each other - everywhere.

Michael is also wildly attracted to someone: David's sensitive but slightly misguided receptionist Claire (Tommie-Amber Pirie). The young single mom has transcribed every word David has whispered into his recorder about Michael.

David is predictably perturbed by this budding romance. But this crisis is nothing compared to the firestorm that erupts when David finally tells Michael about the book. Can this very personal, professional relationship survive such a betrayal?

A fantastic new Canadian program, "Michael" aired on CBC. I highly suggest it! The first two episodes are online at the following website:

http://www.cbc.ca/michael/index.html

ALL-AMERICAN BRAIN P.S.A. (:60) NKM2.org - Stomping the Stigma & Discrim...

2011-09-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

All ~~American~~ Canadian Brain

"Why is mental disease the only illness you can get yelled at for having?"

- Harrison Ford

Grief

2011-09-20T11:46:00.000-07:00

Grief is the flip-side of love, or the cost of being able to love somebody else.
- DepressionCenter.net

Brene Brown: The power of vulnerability | Video on TED.com

2011-09-19T21:02:00.000-07:00

Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson seeks Dick Cheney's arrest

2011-09-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson seeks Dick Cheney's arrest

By Carlito Pablo, September 8, 2011, straight.com

Dick Cheney is coming to town on September 26 to promote his book In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir. But Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson has other plans for one of the most controversial figures of the modern era, a powerful man who publicly admitted having allowed torture.

continue

Play!

2011-09-19T15:10:00.001-07:00

Yulunga - Dead Can Dance

2011-09-19T00:25:00.000-07:00

Dead Can Dance Tribute - Yulunga (Spirit Dance)

2011-09-19T00:21:00.000-07:00

Dead Can Dance - Song of the Stars

2011-09-19T00:11:00.000-07:00

Spelling

2011-09-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

Spelling

My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
there is no either/or.
However.

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.

- Margaret Atwood

I wonder, who was his Muse?

2011-09-16T22:46:00.000-07:00

Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
- William S. Burroughs, "The Western Lands" (1987)

William S. Burroughs

The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity

2011-09-16T14:12:00.000-07:00

Courage, Tragedy, Depression

2011-09-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

This article was shared with me by a dear friend, fellow poet, and depression sufferer. We both wept, as it is truly touching. Oh so human.

Thank you to Michael Landsberg for your courage, and for your humility. You are not to blame for your buddy's death, although I know in your grief that is so hard to see. May we all work together to lift the veil of ignorance that covers mental illness and depression. May we bring light to those of us who suffer, so that acceptance can be given, friends and family made aware so that they know what red flags look like, and may be able to help before it's too late. That's all we can do.

HIS DEPRESSION AND HIS FRIEND, WADE BELAK

Michael Landsberg, September 13, 2011, TSN

Excerpt:

I felt that I knew Wade in a different way than almost anyone else. I knew that his perma-smile was at least partially manufactured. I knew that his constant cheeriness was at least partially faked. It felt good to know this because I too, have done the same things. In that way Wade was the guy I related to perhaps better than anyone in my life. We were both good at fooling people. Like most depression sufferers we are counterfeiters in human emotion. We create fake happiness and for that reason sometimes people can't spot what's truly happening inside.

Obviously.

Tragically.

When I close my eyes and think of Wade the only memories I have are of him smiling. I can't remember anything else. Even knowing that he wasn't always smiling inwardly, doesn't change how I see him.

B.C. Mental Health Funding Frustrates Advocates

2011-09-15T00:30:00.001-07:00

It's always about the Lower Mainland when it comes to healthcare funding in this province. I agree that the state of mental health funding in B.C. is dismal, as are the available facilities. However, Vancouver and surrounding communities get many more of those rare dollars than does Northern B.C. How about sending some of those mental health dollars north? We have a great University Hospital now. We could start pumping out psychiatrists. Trust me, there is a great need for them. A 2 - 4 month wait to see a psychiatrist is not good for the one suffering the mental illness. Unless they are rich. Then they can see a private psychiatrist.

B.C. mental health funding frustrates advocates
Provincial government blamed for years of neglect

Excerpt:

Hardin said a few new facilities have been built, but not nearly enough to catch up with a quarter-century of neglect.

"For us, it's an eternal battle to bring the system up to speed and to get sufficient dollars into the system," he said.

Psychiatrist Dr. Bill MacEwen says mental illnesses are considerably widespread, but they are often not talked about enough — or acted on soon enough.

"These are illnesses that can be treated. This is stuff we could do for these individuals and you don't have to be ashamed of this," he said.

Untitled as of yet

2011-09-15T00:00:00.001-07:00

My newest painting, untitled, but it was a superb endeavour... took me away from all my troubles. I do so enjoy painting!

One friend said, "Interesting colour pallet", and "it is like an inner world, the sun like a tunnel leading outward."

Neato!

"The war of all against all"

2011-09-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

*Shudder*

Tea Partiers... Yep.

Doesn't anyone in the United States find this alarming? Is this really a sign of what is to come? I think at least part of America has officially gone insane. Where are the white coats? If I'm mentally ill, I'm the sanest person on the planet in comparison to these folks (if you even feel comfortable calling them that). If this were happening in Canada, and Canadians were actually taking the 'party' seriously, I would be the first one picketing their rallies and meetings. I must urge my American friends to speak out against this madness! This is incredibly disturbing. So much so that I think I just puked in my mouth a little:

The Cult of Death

Tuesday 13 September 2011

by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

Excerpts:

During the GOP debate last week, Rick Perry burnished his law-and-order credentials by bragging about the 234 executions - at least one of which took the life of an innocent man - he has presided over while governor of Texas. The GOP crowd at the debate went absolutely wild, cheering and hooting their approval of the taking of so much life.

On Monday night, candidate Ron Paul was given a hypothetical about providing health care to a dying man who lacked health insurance. Wolf Blitzer, who moderated the debate, asked Paul, "Are you saying society should just let him die?" Before Paul could cobble together an answer, the "Tea Party" audience again erupted, this time yelling "Yes!" in answer to Blitzer's question.

Hm.

...

"What you saw tonight," said Grayson, "is something much more sinister than not having a healthcare plan. It's sadism, pure and simple. It's the same impulse that led people in the Coliseum to cheer when the lions ate the Christians. And that seems to be where we are heading - bread and circuses, without the bread. The world that Hobbes wrote about - 'the war of all against all.'"

Jesus Loves You Guys. Yep.

Synchronicity

2011-09-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

"When coincidences pile up in this way, one cannot help being impressed by them—for the greater the number of terms in such a series, or the more unusual its character, the more improbable it becomes."
- Carl Jung

The Police introduce their large international audience to a concept, which was developed by the Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung (1875- 1961) — a concept which has remained, even to a great number of those familiar with Jung's intricate psychology - esoteric knowledge.

Jung, who was the founder of Analytical Psychology, first introduced the term synchronicity in 1930. His principal essay on this subject "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle"

The concept of synchronicity is based on the idea that the individual, through the unconscious, has access to an "absolute knowledge" which is not bound by the limitations of space or time. Jung's primary source of material for this hypothesis was to be found in his study of dreams especially those which were of a parapsychological nature.

The synchronicity phenomena indicate that the unconscious is able to transcend the space and time factors as they are known to us. With respect to the former, it would seem that space has been transcended when, for instance, one has an accurate inner knowledge, possibly in the form of a dream or fantasy, that a friend, who is living hundreds of miles away, has suddenly taken ill. This type of synchronistic experience is not at all uncommon. With respect to the time factor, it would seem that it too can be transcended. The synchronistic experiences which are of a precognitive character demonstrate this quite well.

Jung's concept of synchronicity provides, therefore, an image of a psyche which, not being restricted by the limitations of space and time, participates in the events of nature as a whole.

With the hypothesis of synchronicity, Jung felt he had achieved, from the point of view of psychology, an understanding of the nature of the phenomenal world that was analogous to that of modern physics. Both had achieved an understanding of reality that went beyond our everyday notions of solid bodies, empty space, cause and effect, space and time. Physics understanding of this new frontier was for the most part quantitative in that it was expressed mathematically. Jung's understanding was, in contrast to this, principally qualitative in that it addressed the problem of "meaningful parallels."

Both views, Jung had hoped, would eventually come together creating a new unified scientific model — a new world view linking the psychic and the physical. It is a scientific goal which, given the limited knowledge of psychology and physics, is at present unattainable.

Effect without a cause
Sub-atomic laws, scientific pause
Synchronicity

Live my life

2011-09-14T16:06:00.000-07:00

"How I live my life everyday is an act of worship."
- the late Jack Layton, Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

Censorship in Canadian Literature

2011-09-13T14:43:00.000-07:00

Google Book entry for this title

Write up from McGill-Queen's University Press:

Censorship has been amply studied in the context of European and American literatures but largely ignored in Canadian literary studies. In Censorship in Canadian Literature Mark Cohen provides the first analysis of censorship of and in English Canadian literature. He examines the views of five Canadian writers who, having been subjected to censorship attacks, grappled with the philosophical implications of censorship.

Cohen critiques Timothy Findley's broad anti-censorship position; he traces Margaret Atwood's evolution from implicit support for the censorship of pornography in Bodily Harm to the rejection of censorship in The Handmaid's Tale; and he provides the first detailed study of the draft of Margaret Laurence's unfinished novel, showing the degree to which her final silence was a result of her censorship ordeal. Finally, an analysis of the writing of Beatrice Culleton and Marlene Nourbese Philip shows how different kinds of socio-cultural censorship - from gate-keepers to self-censorship - silence Native and black Canadian voices.

Cohen's re-definition of censorship as essentially a practice of judgment takes us beyond the traditional Enlightenment delineation of censorship as an oppressive government practice and the consequent neutralist liberal condemnation of censorship on principle. Since judgment is enmeshed in the fabric of human endeavour, censorship is inevitable; since censorship is inevitable, Cohen concludes, debate over whether censorship itself is desirable should give way to a search for censorship practices that are more just.

Censorship in Canadian Literature is an essential text for scholars of Canadian literature as well as for anyone concerned with contemporary debates about censorship and civil rights.

________________________________________________________________________________

None of us are so mad as to suppose that all books are really good things. Mein Kampf was a book. So we are constantly enmeshed in a choice-of-evils struggle: Which is worse, to allow free access, or to start censoring? And once the censoring begins, who shall be in control of it, and where will it stop? Nor is such blue-penciling a habit of ruthless dictators only. Well-meaning people acting in what they feel is the public good have censored or bowdlerized everything from the Bible to The Wizard of Oz.

- Margaret Atwood

Jung

2011-09-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

"Jung" by Nichole Olson

Acrylic on Canvass, mixed media

Has yet to be glazed, but wanted to share it with anyone interested. Just took the photos in different light, as it shows differently from all angles. I really wish I had a better camera (had my good one stolen). These photos don't do it any justice.

Paint

2011-09-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

No 9/11 myths for me

2011-09-12T21:56:00.000-07:00

I didn't watch one pre-canned version of 9/11 events that was broadcast yesterday (on repeat) on every major cable and network channel, including 'news' channels. I avoided the whole slot of them. On purpose. It was all propaganda. Myth. Legend.

I painted, read alternative news sources, listened to world music, and spent time with my daughter. Isn't that what we should be doing, instead of hating?

Isn't that what we should have done to begin with? Shouldn't we be living our lives, being politically active and making positive changes right here in our own countries, instead of reliving the 'event that changed the world' over and over again every year? It must serve a purpose to continuously re-traumatize people with the memory of that day. Some would say it's for healing. Some would say for understanding. I say that seeking understanding from the major media is just drinking the cool aid. If you really want to know what happened, read some Chomsky on the subject. Read some free, independent news sources, where their payroll doesn't depend on business contribution, but on reader donation.

9/11 only changed the world because the USA and friends decided it would -- hoped it would? Canada isn't exempt. We sent soldiers to Afghanistan. The only reason it's worth looking at 10 years later is to soberly acknowledge that the real purveyors of mass destruction are the USA Administration and it's allies, to call for international war crimes tribunals; to look at the real world terrors. And I'm not even from the US! I am a neighbour. I am a world citizen. My country went to war, and has upped security. Surveillance isn't as bad as in the USA or the UK -- or maybe it is. Going through customs and across borders ain't like it used to be. I live under the all elusive thumb, too.

The article below from Chris Hedges on truthdig.com explains much better than I can why I didn't watch any of the major networks or cable channels on Sunday, the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001.

A Decade After 9/11: We Are What We Loathe
Chris Hedges, truthdig.com

Excerpt:

What was played out in the weeks after the attacks was the old, familiar battle between force and human imagination, between the crude instruments of violence and the capacity for empathy and understanding. Human imagination lost. Coldblooded reason, which does not speak the language of the imagination, won. We began to speak and think in the empty, mindless nationalist clichés about terror that the state handed to us. We became what we abhorred.

The Children of Aftermath - Truthout.org

2011-09-11T16:44:00.000-07:00

3,000-some poems
Disguised as people
On an almost too-perfect day
Must be more than poems
In some asshole's
Passion play
So now it's your job
And it's my job
To make it that way
To make sure
They didn't die in vain
Shhhh...
Baby listen
Hear the train?

- Ani DiFranco, "Self Evident"

All across America, there are classrooms filled with fifth graders who only know the World Trade Center from pictures. They have achieved the final perfection of George Orwell's vision - we have always been at war with Eurasia - because they have never known a world where their country has not been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. As with the Towers, some of these children only know a parent from pictures, because that parent was killed in those wars. They know what anthrax is, what an IED is, what WMD stands for. They know about fear, for it was fed to them, literally, with mother's milk. For them, it has always been this way.

- Williams River Pitt, Truthout, September 11, 2011

Continue to Truthout for the rest of this poignant, effecting, and disturbingly truthful article:
The Children of Aftermath - William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

Fiddle and the drum

2011-09-11T16:26:00.000-07:00

Lyrics:

Artist: A Perfect Circle

Album: eMOTIVE

Track 12: Fiddle and the drum

________________________________________

And so once again,

My dear Johnny, my dear friend,

And so once again you are fighting us all,

And when I ask you why,

You raise your sticks and cry, and I fall,

Oh, my friend,

How did you come?,

To trade the fiddle for the drum,

You say I have turned,

Like the enemies you´ve earned,

But I can remember,

All the good things you are,

And so I ask you please,

Can I help you find the peace and the star?,

Oh, my friend,

What time is this?,

To trade the handshake for the fist

And so once again,

Oh, America my friend,

And so once again,

You are fighting us all,

And when we ask you why,

You raise your sticks and cry and we fall,

Oh, my friend,

How did you come,

To trade the fiddle for the drum

You say we have turned,

Like the enemies you´ve earned,

But we can remember,

All the good things you are,

And so we ask you please,

Can we help you find the peace and the star?,

Oh my friend,

We have all come,

To fear the beating of your drum

127 Hours - Aron Ralston

2011-09-11T01:19:00.000-07:00

Brutal. Riveting. Superb acting.

Brutal.

The will to ~~live~~ love.

127 Hours, a film based on the true story of Aron Ralston, a mountain climber who becomes trapped under a boulder while canyoneering alone near Moab, Utah and resorts to desperate measures in order to survive (source).

Trailer for 127 Hours:

Playlist: The Real Story: Desperate Days in Blue John Canyon - 48 Hours, plus interviews and real footage

"A Dangerous Method" Eerie Indeed

2011-09-10T16:32:00.000-07:00

Thanks (again) Cronenberg!

There's a new movie coming making it's Canadian debut at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) that I'm so excited to see! It's called A Dangerous Method, directed by David Cronenberg and starring Viggo Mortensen, Keira Knightley, Vincent Cassel, and Michael Fassbender ("Hello!" is all I can say of this new to me actor). "Set on the eve of World War I, A Dangerous Method is based on the turbulent relationships between fledgling psychiatrist Carl Jung, his mentor Sigmund Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, the troubled but beautiful young woman who comes between them" (source). Here is a link to TIFF's press conference covering A Dangerous Method.

First, I am a huge follower of Jungian Psychoanalysis. In my journey to health and recovery from Depression and Anxiety, Jung's work has greatly impacted me, and helped me find my staggeringly blinded way. I respect his work highly, and have learned so much through reading what works of his I could find online and locally.

I've also studied Freud in university, although I admit that I have some gender biases against Freud. In Gender Studies I learned that he was sexist in his approach to psychoanalysis. If you do any study online, you will find many feminists do not like Freud. I'm leery of him, but admit he started the ball rolling for psychoanalysis, a very important field of health and science of the mind, the evolution of which has been a boon to me personally on therapeutic and medication levels.

That aside, Jung's archetypes and methods have always been more valid for me, as Jung deals with symbolism in relation to one's own concepts of self and the world, and the collective unconscious. His is a more spiritual and mythical approach, which suits my artistic and creative sensibilities. In particular, I have found his Anima/Animus work, and that of the Shadow, to be particularly important. I have posted before in my blog about Jung, and now that there is a film about his relationships with Freud and the up till now stranger to me, Spielrein, I am super eager to see it!

Second, I'm also a fan of both Keira Knightley (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement) and Viggo Mortensen (Lord of the Rings, A History of Violence, The Road, Eastern Promises). (Admittedly, I am a huge fan of Mortensen's. If anyone took any time to get to know his art, films, and writings, they too would be sucked into Viggodom... you wouldn't understand unless it happens to you. Be vewy, vewy careful)!

Knightley's performances in historical films have impressed me, as well as her beauty, and acting in films such as King Arthur and Love Actually. The bringing to life of Elizabeth from Jane Austen's beautiful (and well studied by me) novel Pride & Prejudice impacted me deeply. Knightley did a wonderful job, and Elizabeth and Darcy will live forever within me, embraced. Knightley did nothing to tarnish my vision of Austen's book, and I am grateful for that.

Viggo Mortensen has impressed me not just in his choice of film and his acting ability (which has continually improved as the years have passed), but as a courageous, bold writer and artist. Through his publishing house Perceval Press, he has published books which I have purchased such as I Forget You Forever and Linger, and CDs Intelligence Failure, 3 Fools 4 April, and Time Waits for Everyone. He is experimental, free flowing, and seems totally open to explore through all mediums of expression available to him. That is truly inspirational for a fledgling artist such as myself, and I admit to learning a lot about form, symbolism, philosophy, politics, and freedom of expression, for example, from his works. He's a bit of a hero of art to me, someone to learn from.

I've also purchased other books from artists in the Perceval Press warehouse, including Magical Meteorite Songwriting Device by Exene Cervenka (of LA punk band "X" fame), and Just Another War also by Exene Cervenka. I found Cervenka's artwork to be extremely organic, environmental, inspirational and beautiful. Also, there is Twighlight of Empire (Mortensen has a poem within its pages), which I found fabulous and inspirational to me politically and on a humanitarian level, as well as artistically. Finally, Perceval Press has a website, and on its front page there is a slideshow of photos from the art books that are published, as well as a blog by Mortensen which has pretty consistent upkeep, and which I enjoy following. I've linked to it on the side bar under Places I Follow, if you are interested.

Everything about A Dangerous Method calls to me, including that it is directed by David Cronenberg, an iconic Canadian director! As a Canadian, there is some pride in the fact that we have such a great filmmaker here in our country. He breaks barriers fearlessly. I recommend googling him and his interviews. He's also very inspirational to me. I've enjoyed several of his films in the past, and find it interesting that this is the third collaboration between Cronenberg and Mortensen. Those two must have bonded like brothers during their first film together.

I find it poignant, amusing, and not just a little psychologically eerie that I can tie together my love of Jungian Psychoanalysis, my education on Freud, my interest in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and Viggo Mortensen who played Aragorn in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy (and the raging fan-grrrrl in me) into one film! Yikes! What is going on here? Co-inky-dink? Probably. Either that, or the universe is conspiring to enchant me once again! Bastard!

In the past few years I found and linked my page to a very interesting article from the Jung Page regarding the Jungian archetypes in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Please check out Tolkein: Archetype and Word, an essay which analyzes Jungian archetypes in relation to the Faery found within Tolkein's epic literary work. It was a great read for me this afternoon. I've read it before, but found it twice as interesting considering all the meaning I am finding in the merging of interests going on regarding A Dangerous Method.

Here is a link to the film trailer: A Dangerous Method - the Movie

This film looks compelling, and, being a Cronenberg film, you know it's going to be an evocative and meaningful experience. I really hope this film is released in Prince George. Sometimes our theatre is too blockbuster focused. We are a smaller city (trust me, it seems like everyone knows everything about everyone else of any import around here), and unfortunately our Cultural base is small; The pocket books of the movie-going public have different demands than do the likes of mine (insert lint floating out here). If they don't bring it here, I'm going to have to catch it on DVD. I hate waiting for those things to come out. It's too much delayed gratification for me, and I'm always catching up. Very frustrating to live off the descriptions of a film from more culturally forward places until you've had a chance to watch it yourself, trust me.

Go see this film if you can! And, please... pray that the film comes to Prince George, where it definitely is going to have a grand reception from at least one ardent fan!

Oooh, I can hardly wait!

Journal Cover

2011-09-10T13:24:00.000-07:00

Back Cover Description:

Persian Splendor Journal by Peter Pauper Press
Tile decoration of south iwan, Masjid-I Jameh, Persia 11th century.

I am a sky where spirits live.

Stare into this deepening blue,

While the breeze says a secret.
- Rumi

192 lined pages
acid-free/archival paper
binding lies flat for ease of use

ISBN: 978-1-59359-439-8
Books & Company, $14.99

The front is all raised, each line has a texture. It feels good in the hand, is light, and I can't wait to write in it!

PG Night's

2011-09-10T00:29:00.000-07:00

Karl Standeven 2

Photo Album

Karl Standeven 1

Michael

Karl Standeven 3

Karl Standeven 4

Karl Standeven 5

Karl Standeven 6

more: Karl Standeven

Voltaire 1

Voltaire 2

Voltaire 3

Voltaire 4

Voltaire 5

Voltaire 6

Voltaire 7

Voltaire 8

Voltaire 9

Voltaire 10

Road 1

Road 2

Road 3

Road 4

Tank 1

Tank 2

Groop Gallery

Favourites of the night:

Milan Basic

Bruce Baycroft

M Desjardines

Cat 1

All images © Nichole Olson

Lead

2011-09-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

Lead

You are in
each choice
you make,
I make.
That's where
you are.

That's where
my heart goes.
Where life springs.
Drawn in-between,
naturally.

There's no stopping it.

- Nichole Olson

Candle

2011-09-09T15:41:00.000-07:00

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.
- Buddha

Views

2011-09-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

Views

Paint falls out in air flow
through my eyes,
a tender heartful migration,
fly! Fly!

Now swollen, my life
zips down through the artery
in my shoulder, bicep, forearm,
Boom! Through my steady fingers
and out, overflow of
an insatiable sharing.

Catch it, catch it
if you can,
open your mouth
let the rain drops fall in,
swallow, dance merry,
kick the water off
the grass as you spin,
rejoice to the sky
whether cloudy or blue,
and scream a thanks
to all that is for
you!

New, never
felt waterfalling,
I have joy not just for me
but for you, a heavy
admiration for treasure maps,
platinum hidden in old brown
dingy bottles, each share full
of a world, each thing
a universe alive.

I teach me, you do,
life teaches the pink
of a yellow petal flower
and dark grey of the circles
under eyes, the supple scent
of red lips on nipple skin and
the white death of family,
friends.

An invisible link maybe you
can see, most likely
not. Should I reveal? Don't
want to leave the banana
out on the counter.

Does it even matter?
Experience. Feel.
I ask you see through
my eyes at least a few times
as I might take liberty to see
through yours on a needful
occasion.

Inspired to paint the sky,
create coral and azure stars,
arrays and clouds of iridescence
streamed and blending,
I sob, laughing, mad
with the beauty
of these things.

Look at all the paths
the eye can take
where the heart follows!

I bend down and place my head
upon the aqua ocher earth
and kiss the golden wheat,
the purple prairie,
say thanks to you
for your being.

- Nichole Olson

Botticelli - Birth of Venus

2011-09-09T13:34:00.000-07:00

I love this feeling

Buddhism is Psychological

2011-09-09T12:26:00.000-07:00

Right now I am very focused on allowing my emotions and thoughts free reign. I no longer want to stifle them, bottle them up, or avoid them. I am healing, and each thing I do is geared toward acceptance of myself, compassion towards myself, and therefore others.

I was discussing the benefits of mindfulness and meditation with friends today, and was pointed to a Buddhist Nun by the name of Pema Chödrön. If the internet is a great invention, it is because it is helpful when you are looking to learn something new! I found her online, and feel some of her writing to be very poignant and helpful.

I've always believed that Buddhism isn't only about spirit, it's psychological. It deals with the facets of thinking and mind, in our perceptions of the world, in our struggle to overcome suffering. In that, it is not necessarily a religious movement as it is a very human and psychological one. Many writings I read, art and films I see touch so eloquently and subtly on the psychology of spirit, of mind, of our inner world, of finding peace and meaning. In that, Buddhism is helpful to me, allowing me to see these subtleties, experience them, take more meaning from life, and create my own.

What I see and experience, I own. It is mine and is forever part of me. I can chose what I do with that, as long as I'm aware of how they effect me! Meditation and mindfulness allow me to be aware. The meaning inherent in each moment is sustaining, creative, and healing. There is always something to learn, and I am a life long student of everyone and everything I see and experience. I am inherently curious, and sponge-like.

From Pema Chödrön:

By trying to get rid of "negativity," by trying to eradicate it, by putting it into a column labelled "bad," we are throwing away our wisdom as well, because everything in us is creative energy—particularly our strong emotions. They are filled with life-force.

There is nothing wrong with negativity per se; the problem is that we never see it, we never honor it, we never look into its heart. We don't taste our negativity, smell it, get to know it. Instead, we are always trying to get rid of it by punching someone in the face, by slandering someone, by punishing ourselves, or by repressing our feelings. In between repression and acting out, however, there is something wise and profound and timeless.

- Pema Chödrön: To Know Yourself is to Forget Yourself

Sometimes we see exactly what we need. Creating your life is not about changing other people or things. It's about seeking what would matter to you most, and creating something beautiful out of that, ugliness and all. It's about accepting the bad with the good, as the two are intertwined. Maybe the colours of things are varied and so startling, so stunning, so very moving in part because they contain a little of the dark and the light both.

JoJo Love

JoJo play

Children of Men: Analysis

2011-09-08T16:02:00.000-07:00

I was talking about this film, Children of Men, today, as well as the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. We were discussing how the world is slowly leaning towards fascism and corporatism -- actually, how the world is really this way already underneath the surface. We are in a Spectator Democracy.

These are troubling times. This film, which I watched a few years ago, is still very relevant. There is a warning within the film, as well as in the Handmaid's Tale, about what humanity can become when things go too far.
It is troubling that we can see fascism and corporatism in the here and now. I don't want to live in a fascist world.

The video below is an analysis of Children of Men. Worth a watch, and the creator of the analysis hopefully did very well on their marks for the project.

Surveillance society: Watch Article 12 video trailer | rabble.ca

2011-09-08T15:37:00.000-07:00

From rabble.ca:

Article 12 presents a sharp look at the current state of privacy and debates around the rights and desires of individuals, governments, terrorism and the increasing accessibility and use of surveillance.

The film is a thought-provoking exposé of our current obsession with voyeurism, surveillance technologies, power and control.
Starting from our own private spying habits, Article 12 examines how vulnerable and exposed we have become in our relationship to each other and as a society and talks about those who are gaining from this condition.

The film uses the twelfth article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to chart the current state of privacy around the world, arguing that without the right to privacy no other human right can truly be exercised.

The film brings together the world's leading academics, philosophers, cultural figures and technologists to highlight the devastating potency of surveillance and the dangers of public and individual complicity, and presents a growing movement fighting for the upkeep of our right to privacy. Article 12 confronts these issues head-on to provide a powerful wake-up call as we sleepwalk into a worldwide surveillance society.

Surveillance society: Watch Article 12 video trailer | rabble.ca

Why Bush & Cheney are still free

2011-09-08T10:16:00.000-07:00

Wow, this makes my head spin! It boggles my mind. It makes me feel sick.

Truthout published an article today by David Swanson about why Bush & Cheney are still walking free, never charged with war crimes. I don't know. The reasons come as no surprise to me. What does come as a surprise is that people in power willingly, knowingly, and openly allow it to happen.

I guess even I'm surprised by the corruption inherent in the American system. No wonder it's on the outs, in decline. Let it be a warning to Canadians, and to the rest of the citizens of the world about what can come of a country if we let politics rule over justice. It seems politics trumps law. It's a sad statement of fact about the Machine. And it makes me even more sure that I'm not going to be one of those people who blindly participates through basic ignorance of what is going on. Check it out:

Obama Transition Team Member Explains Why Administration Chose Not to Prosecute Torture

Excerpt:

"Afterwards I told him that CIA friends confirmed that Obama would have been in danger, but I added that he bent over backwards to protect the criminals, and gave as an example the DoJ's defense (state secrets) of Jeppesen (the rendition arm of Boeing) a few days after his inauguration.

"He shrugged and said they will never be prosecuted, and that sometimes politics trumps rule of law.

"It must not, I said.

"It shouldn't, he said, and walked off.

John Wayne and the Steam Brain Machine

2011-09-07T16:29:00.000-07:00

John Wayne and the Steam Brain Machine

They hate civility. Despise freedom.
Con-clusion.
My thoughts have run dog wild circles round
this as sanity flowed in out of strange books,
indepth poetic articles, greyed out
dollar bills and creeping pictures where
nothing was usual grey concrete,
all had a double blind meaning,
and I'd laugh and shake my head
at news, because it wouldn't
shut up.

What's crazy anyway, if it
teaches you something?
I bet the Duke knows.
That's why he did it. Do you think
his body would work better
in the future if he'd fallen
in the arctic ocean and froze
alive, positioned just so, legs
bowed ready to ride?

Country is supposed to be all that
is good calling to the world, but
propaganda no longer befits us.
A majority government in minority.
We forget, bombarded.

Naomi was right about shock and awe.
Harper's xenophobia rules. Other
stays other, there are no
curious exchanges, no eager sponges
left at heap top.

My country, my country,
within me I carry
good gifts imparted,
imbued, essential.

My body, my body
has a different Prime Minister.
He died, but memorably
resides. Here I clothe
my hobos, soup them up,
provide free medicare and extended
long term health, employment insurance
cheques as long as needed,
bosses given psychological
evaluations if they fire a patient.

The starved are given food,
and I tax the rich. They hate
me. I have a law degree, everyone
has shelter.
And heat.

My military protects within
borders only, sometimes goes
on peace missions overseas, or
to bodyguard an envoy.
My martial art's primary mission is
to help with disasters, floods,
and snow removal.
I send fire fighters
if requested,
or if nobody is at attention
and I want to save
those beautiful houses.

Sometimes I light fires
if it seems necessary
for growth and diversification.
I want to protect biospheres,
promote evolution.
Environmentalist. Tribal. I mean,
it's the only home I have.
Migration requires some steam
brain machine that hasn't been
invented yet.

I wonder if John Wayne would wanna use
that invention? Would his frozen body, once
raw, be okay to live in?
Would he want to move?

My lovely PM is not a night owl,
gives a shit, wants to protect
all from fears. Would rather
teach things, too. Modern
migration. The word birds go wild
on the wind, North, South,
stop, breed, again. Change.

Body bright,
my country.

It's all the reality that will be
left soon.

- Nichole Olson

Spectator democracy

2011-09-06T14:11:00.000-07:00

I was reading on Huffington Post, and found this great article about America's current situation in the world. A quote from the article is below. It's discussing 'spectator democracy'. I was excited when I read it, as I'd not heard the term before! It makes so much sense, really nutshells what I've been thinking for a while, just didn't know how to exactly put it into a short couple paragraphs. Marty Kaplan's done that for me! Thanks Marty!

Framed approvingly by Walter Lippmann in the early 20th century, "spectator democracy" is the idea that the U.S. public is a "bewildered herd" that needs to be benevolently directed, manipulated and controlled by elites with the tools of propaganda and disinformation. As they consume content about politics, people gain the (false) impression that they're actively participating in democracy -- that they're empowered, not bludgeoned, by the media.
What Chomsky adds is that spectator democracy is now on steroids not because of technology, or because the media industry has figured out how to make a tidy profit from political spectacle. It's because more than ever before, the functioning of the American economy requires distracting the herd from the immensity of corporate power.

- Marty Kaplan from Huffington Post, What Happened to America?

Here's a little more information on spectator democracy:

EARLY HISTORY OF PROPAGANDA. SPECTATOR DEMOCRACY. ENGINEERING OPINION. PUBLIC RELATIONS by NOAM CHOMSKY

Some new creations

2011-09-06T00:21:00.000-07:00

Romancing the poem

She said romance in every moment.

There are little babies starved

dead on the savanna in

deep black Africa and

war doesn't care like poem

does.

Poem says romance the stone,

or the bone, or the chance

at a dance, but utter lack?

War says hack a sack and

send back what they give or

just give it to 'em, oh, the

pick up line of a hot shot.

Give me bread for free as

my honey needs something

to stick to, gooey sweet one.

I'll avoid the thorn when

I pluck your rose but leave

it for you, so when your thumb

bleeds you'll know it's just

the power of love.

Did I tell you how

beautiful you are, Poem?

- Nichole Olson

Why Punk?

2011-09-05T00:56:00.000-07:00

In my healing process, I have been letting out and exploring my most beloved inner tendencies, and my least understood leanings. Part of this is to explore that punk side of me, which has always been apparent in my short spiked hairstyles (starting with a buzz cut at age 12), but which I have suppressed throughout my life. I just wanted to fit in. Growing up in small town, or cow town, the chance for me to let my real self and personality loose was stifled by fear of judgment and the lack of a scene in which to partake.

I've always been different, yet also feminine. I got along with boys, not because I was so girly and they liked me, but because I was so down to earth, unassuming, and I didn't look at myself any differently than them. I figured we are all people. I just have different parts.

I felt different than other girls in that I didn't want any barriers. At 12, all I wanted was freedom. I was insulted when I went to join in an arm wrestling competition, stood in the girls line, and was told by the lady taking names that the boys line was 'over there'. Just because I didn't look like a girl didn't mean I wasn't a girl! That made me angry. At the naive and tender age of 12, I was already noticing that culture and society has a bias about what it is to be a female. I was to get very hard lessons about exactly what place a girl, then a woman, holds in society. Over the years I fell into a protective mechanism of self repression, keeping quiet about my inner thoughts and experiences, forgetting about my rebellious and radical nature. But there it lurks underneath it all, subtly influencing all I did and still do.

Today I find myself at the ripening age of 39, recovering from Major Depressive Disorder, and doing the good inner work that I should have done all these years. I am taking care of myself -- finally! I have a lot of anger over things that have happened to me, and I have not allowed myself to be truly pissed off for years. The last time I got really angry I was told I was crazy. I felt ashamed. So, I did my usual thing: supression. I haven't been able to get truly pissed off in 10 years.

Yes. Really.

I actually did get pissed off at some little jackass who was being a complete ignoramus to me the other day, and instead of being politely terse, or not saying anything (my usual route) I just let it fly. I surprised myself. I didn't plan it, it just happened. Maybe all the punk music I've been listening to this past few weeks has influenced me without knowing it, but I was angry and I wasn't gonna take it anymore, goddammit!

It was awesome! I haven't felt that good in a long while, and not because I raged against some guy. I felt good, because I raged against the right person at the right time, and it was totally justified.

Can a woman be angry and not be considered a bitch, a banshee, a militant feminist, an all out cow, suffering from a mental disease or be deemed hysterical? I don't know. And, quite frankly, I no longer care. Call me what you like, think what you want. I will be angry if I feel angry. That doesn't mean I'm going to destroy things, beat anybody up, or use violence. But the emotion of anger deserves an outlet. I deserve to feel angry, I deserve to say I am angry, I deserve to show that I am, yes, fucking pissed off! I can use creativity and physical activity, as well as sharing that I am angry with others, and telling them why. I won't swallow the jiz of other people's bullshit anymore.

This letting go is, for me, the final culmination of 10 years of self exploration done in a bloody haze. Trust me, I've been through a psychosis and managed to look sane to everyone else (save a select few). I've dug, dug, dug! I had a shovel and made it straight through to China. Uh huh.

No, not really! But, you get my drift. The time has come to put together all the treasures I've gathered over the years. I want to see the final product (as final as an artist can ever get, that is -- we're always working, always adding. Growing).

Now, punk is not a fucking horror movie come to life, okay. Just because I'm coming out of the closet as punk doesn't mean that I'm some horrible person. I'm still me, the same person you've always known -- just a little more willing to express my true self these days. I am honestly tired of being who others expect me to be. That has caused me to be totally mentally confused and messed up! I'm going to just be me. And, why, thank you! I will decide who that is. I defy anyone to label me as any one thing, anyway. I will be who I am, even if someone tries to put me in a box, seal it up with invisible scotch tape, write out a pink frilly lace sticker in glitter pen, and pin it with a thumbtack to my forehead. It's all just wrapping: easy to tear through, and hiding the good stuff.

This is all good! It is part of my healing. Self repression is a bad thing for anyone. I've been doing it a hell of a long time. Time to open those doors and let things scab over.

Punk is a very political, rebellious, and tactile movement. You don't just think punk. You speak it, sing it, live it, paint it, write it -- kiss and lick it. Punk is a way of dealing with the world. Punk is not unromantic, either. There's plenty of love and compassion in punk. There's plenty of solidarity with the little guy, the under dog, the working class and the repressed people of society. It fits me. I've always had a wing for those in need. I've always had shelter. I have a huge heart. Punk doesn't demean that.

Punk has evolved and changed since the 1970's and 80's. Grunge (can we say Nirvana?) out of Seattle was an offshoot, as is Greenday, but it seems it's all still considered punk (if the articles I've been reading mean anything). I think women have made an impact in punk, although there are not as many of them out there as there are punk men. Punk has a string of influence through the 90's and into the new millennium that runs throughout pop, rock, and alternative. Even folk music, hip hop, and country-rock or rockabilly have punk nuances. You can see punk influences throughout, and I for one find it fascinating, especially the women.

Learning about punk, I've noticed a lot of the music and aesthetic is masculine. I was looking around for women in punk and came up with some great stuff. It's good to see women challenging typical gender roles and societal feminine expectations. Punk women seem to break the mold, and as a woman I admire their energy, their craft, their ugliness, their refusal, and their anger. Here are a few links about women in punk (I'll give more in a future post):

Women in Punk, an Essay. Punk Aesthetic: Uses to Question and Reclaim the Female Gender

Inside Was Us: Women and Punk

Women in Punk from punk77.uk.com

VIDEOS:

The Women of Punk, Parts 1 - 5 from Network Awesome

link source: la dimension de trastos

The Women of Punk, Part 1 - Suzi Quatro, The Runaways, Joan Jett, X Ray Spex, Bush Tetras, B-Girls, The Cranos, Shonen Knife, Pink Section, The Au Pairs, Bikini Kill

The Women of Punk, Part 2 - Souixie & the Banshees, The Slits, Penetration, Sexsick, Kleenex, Kas Product, Suburban Reptiles, Kleenex, Neo Boys, Castration Squad

The Women of Punk, Part 3 - Mo-Dettes, Model Citizens, Blondie, Delta 5, Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill, Pandoras, Knetics, Patti Smith Group, Nina Hagen, X

The Women of Punk, Part 4 - Plasmatics, The Rezillos, 45 Grave, Vice Squad, Auróra Cirkáló, The Bags, UXA, The Raincoats, Avengers, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Spitboy, The Gossip

The Women of Punk, Part 5 - Slant 6, Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill, Chalk Circle, Huggy Bear, Tiger Trap, The Gits, Bratmobile, Heavens To Betsy, Excuse 17, Babes In Toyland, L7

Vivienne Westwood interview, from the Guardian UK

PS: You may also want to check out my PUNK YouTube playlist on the right hand sidebar. There are a few female punk rockers mixed in there. I'm always adding new one's as I find them!

Is it Enough to "Be the Change You Want to See in the World?" | WeAreMany.org

2011-09-04T16:06:00.000-07:00

Live in a way that is equal to your morals and values, but also be involved in your politics:

Is it Enough to "Be the Change You Want to See in the World?" WeAreMany.org

A Riot of My Own: The Clash | WeAreMany.org

2011-09-04T15:23:00.000-07:00

Thouroughly enjoyed, and recommend for good political/cultural commentary:

A Riot of My Own: The Clash | WeAreMany.org

Sports and Culture

2011-09-04T15:01:00.001-07:00

A great talk about Sports and Culture in the Obama Age:

Dave Zirin, Sports and Culture in the Obama Age; Socialism 2009 from International Socialist on Vimeo.

Love meds

2011-09-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

Little girl

2011-09-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

THE LITTLE GIRL FOUND

All the night in woe

Lyca's parents go

Over valleys deep,

While the deserts weep.

Tired and woe-begone,

Hoarse with making moan,

Arm in arm, seven days

They traced the desert ways.

Seven nights they sleep

Among shadows deep,

And dream they see their child

Starved in desert wild.

Pale through pathless ways

The fancied image strays,

Famished, weeping, weak,

With hollow piteous shriek.

Rising from unrest,

The trembling woman pressed

With feet of weary woe;

She could no further go.

In his arms he bore

Her, armed with sorrow sore;

Till before their way
A couching lion lay.

Turning back was vain:

Soon his heavy mane
Bore them to the ground,
Then he stalked around,

Smelling to his prey;

But their fears allay

When he licks their hands,

And silent by them stands.

They look upon his eyes,

Filled with deep surprise;

And wondering behold

A spirit armed in gold.

On his head a crown,

On his shoulders down

Flowed his golden hair.

Gone was all their care.

'Follow me,' he said;

'Weep not for the maid;

In my palace deep,

Lyca lies asleep.'

Then they followed

Where the vision led,

And saw their sleeping child

Among tigers wild.

To this day they dwell

In a lonely dell,

Nor fear the wolvish howl

Nor the lion's growl.

- William Blake

punk

2011-09-01T19:30:00.000-07:00

that Door

2011-09-01T19:22:00.000-07:00

Go short

2011-09-01T18:13:00.000-07:00

Blue 2

Go Short

Blue 3

Blue 1

Hot Foots

Or Go Home

Blurker

Tree light

A Crazed Girl

2011-09-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

A Crazed Girl

That crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

- William Butler Yeats

Parents' stress alters children's genes

2011-09-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

I always suspected that environment after we are born has an affect on us at a fundamental level. We aren't 'hard wired'. Things can change dependant upon our circumstances. Little did I know the extent of those changes reaches genetic levels. See the Vancouver Sun article below for the story.

Parents' stress alters children's genes

Hurricane

2011-08-28T10:03:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Irene, source: The Weather Network
Do you know why hurricanes have names instead of numbers? To keep the killing personal. No one cares about a bunch of people killed by a number. '200 Dead as Number Three Slams Ashore' is not nearly as interesting a headline as 'Charlie kills 200.' Death is much more satisfying and entertaining if you personalize it.

- George Carlin

You do not have to be a hurricane, to turn things around.

- Marleen Loesje quotes (Dutch Fictional character "Active and International girl", b.1983)

Love is all around you like the air and is the very breath of your being. But you cannot know it, feel its unfeeling touch, until you pause in your busy-ness, are still and poised and empty of your wanting and desiring. When at rest the air is easily offended and will flee even from the fanning of a leaf, as love flees from the first thought. But when the air or love moves of its own accord it is a hurricane that drives all before it.

- Barry Long

Rediscovery of my old paintings from 2006

2011-08-27T22:24:00.000-07:00

Capitalist Aurora

by Nichole Regan (Olson)

Happy Moon

by Nichole Regan (Olson)

Iraq

by Nichole Regan (Olson)

Son of Fire

by Nichole Regan (Olson)

Teacher

by Nichole Regan (Olson)

Me

2011-08-27T20:09:00.000-07:00

Punk Attitude Documentary Part 1

2011-08-27T13:24:00.000-07:00

You will have to find the following parts on your own!

Worth a watch if you're interested in the history of punk!

Rumi

2011-08-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

The Self We Share

Thirst is angry with water. Hunger bitter
with bread.The cave wants nothing to do

with the sun. This is dumb, the self-
defeating way we've been. A gold mine is

calling us into its temple. Instead, we
bend and keep picking up rocks from the

ground. Every thing has a shine like gold,
but we should turn to the source! The

origin is what we truly are. I add a little
vinegar to the honey I give. The bite of

scolding makes ecstasy more familiar. But
look, fish, you're already in the ocean

just swimming there makes you friends with
glory. What are these grudges about? You

are Benjamin. Joseph has put a gold cup
in your grain sack and accused you of being

a thief. Now he draws you aside and says,
"You are my brother. I am a prayer. You're

the amen." We move in eternal regions, yet
worry about property here. This is the

prayer of each: You are the source of my
life. You separate essence from mud. You

honor my soul. You bring rivers from the
mountain springs. You brighten my eyes. The

wine you offer takes me out of myself into
the self we share. Doing that is religion.

Rumi
From The Glance
translated by Coleman Barks

Colton Harris-Moore - Barefoot Bandit

2011-08-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia article

Mary

2011-08-26T12:15:00.000-07:00

Introduction to ASIST

2011-08-25T20:53:00.000-07:00

Army Reserve Applied Suicide Intervention Prevention Skills Training Helping Soldiers Take Care of Soldiers

Bethlehem, Penn., Aug. 22 -- The U.S. Army issued the following news release:

"You're a late night operator on a suicide hotline. The phone rings and when you answer it, you hear the sound of a gun going off,"

says Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Steve Langehough, the deputy command chaplain for the 200th Military Police Command as he slams a hardbound book onto the concrete floor of the drill hall. The report echoes and visibly startles his trainee audience.

"A voice on the other end of the line says to you: That was the first barrel of a double barrel shotgun. You have five minutes to convince me to not use the other barrel on myself." Langehough regards the trainees levelly, then looks at his watch.

"Go."

Indecision grips the would-be caregivers.

for the rest click here

Stanford's Sapolsky On Depression in U.S. (Full Lecture)

2011-08-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

Talent

2011-08-24T17:11:00.000-07:00

Archangel Michael

2011-08-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

Archangel Michael is thought to be Earth’s representative of the all-encompassing strength of the Divine. In many religions, Michael is thought to lend support, courage, and confidence. Michael is believed to boost our resolve to make healthy changes, as well as guide us to new opportunities and help us heal from past experiences.

Mother Earth

2011-08-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

- Khalil Gibran

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

- Frank Lloyd Wright

Depression

2011-08-22T19:33:00.000-07:00

Depression can seem worse than terminal cancer, because most cancer patients feel loved and they have hope and self-esteem.
-David D. Burns

I didn't know my mother had it. I think a lot of women don't know their mothers had it; that's the sad thing about depression. You know, you don't function anymore. You shut down. You feel like you are in a void.
- Marie Osmond

I use the music to vent, and a lot of the stuff that I am writing about or was writing about contained a lot of anger and anxiety, stress and depression, so that's how the album came out so dark.
- Vanilla Ice

Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.
- James Hillman

Art saved me; it got me through my depression and self-loathing, back to a place of innocence.
- Jeanette Winterson

Queen - 'Under Pressure'

2011-08-22T15:05:00.000-07:00