mirages
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Post by mirages on Feb 19, 2015 15:40:28 GMT -5
toramenor, a friend sent me a link to this article last night, and I thought it might interest you -- see what you think: www.brainpickings.org/2012/10/30/yoko-ono-grapefruit/I found the second-last paragraph striking and (as a former journalist and life-long information-hound) challenging: Finally, at the next-to-last show, I realized that asking others about their experience, their perceptions, was how I protect myself from immersion (and fear of drowning) in my own. Journalism had provided me with the sensation of being in control of the situation; if I was feeding on and exploiting information, that meant I must not be filling the only other role I’d known: that of the exploited.
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mirages
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Post by mirages on Feb 19, 2015 15:32:25 GMT -5
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Post by mirages on Feb 19, 2015 12:56:04 GMT -5
So, I know that the world won't change within my lifetime to the extent where I can live in a society of equality, but I'll do my best to strive towards that. That's my point of view. Good point of view! I practiced tai chi for more than 20 years, so I'm familiar with what you wrote about the different styles of martial arts, and it's a good analogy. Tai chi is an internal form, of course, but even within that single form you have both forms of power/movement expressed, and my teacher characterized them as male/female ... in the middle of the short Yang form, you do a series of moves based on the Chinese pictographs for "male" and "female," which I was told* are: male = three straight parallel horizontal lines; female = three straight parallel lines, broken in the middle so there's a gap in the middle of each line. I was not at all pleased to be told that the male symbol was three intact, strong/whole-seeming lines and the female equivalent was "broken". However, when you do the movements, what you actually see/experience is exactly what you described -- the male movements are linear, forceful, forward-thrusting, aggressive. The "female" movements are curved, receptive, deflecting. There's a time and a place for both. Human consciousness seems necessarily dualistic, but growth and peace seems to lead us in the direction of nondualism. Intelligence is good, but it goes only so far and at a certain point only enables you to run in the same circles faster. We undervalue intuition (which perhaps is akin to or a means of passage to, magic, now that I think about it). The more I did those particular moves in tai chi over the years, the more I realized how complementary they are, and especially, how much we need the "broken" lines with the gaps in them, the receptive places in ourselves. As Saint Leonard says (you had to know this was coming, right?), "There's a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." As GFG Adam points out, sometimes strength/power/wisdom is in allowing oneself to be broken open. *Note: I just googled it and see nothing like this, so not sure if I was misled/taught or if my query isn't specific enough.
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mirages
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Post by mirages on Feb 18, 2015 12:40:34 GMT -5
I really appreciated Emma Watson's (recent-ish) speech* at the United Nations precisely because she talks not only about how gender inequality still affects women across the globe, but also how it affects men. The battle against inequality is not just for women, it is for men as well. It is for everyone, so that we can all have equal rights and freedoms. No one is free as long as there is just one person in the world who isn't. If you are still reading this post, first of all thanks , and then, I'll tie this off by going back to my thoughts on freedom to be yourself and freedom of self-expression, which I think are somewhere in my previous posts in this thread. This is what I believe: it may not be easy to figure out who you are; it may not be easy to express yourself fully and completely - but this is your life and nobody else can live it for you. If you don't do it, who will? Nobody can tell you who you are, because you are the only one who can discover that. Nobody can tell you what you're feeling, because they can't live inside your mind. And nobody can express your true self, because nobody can know you better than you. Now, all of this may sound kinda lonely, or even isolating, as if we were all islands, alone in the middle of a vast ocean. And it's true that being unique implies being alone, but that's why it's important to have the freedom not just to be yourself but also to express yourself without fear of reprisals/rejection/judgement - because by expressing yourself you connect with other unique people who are then able to see you for who you truly are. Through self-expression you are connected with others and therefore you are not alone. toramenor, good to see you, and my apologies for such a slow response. We usually do have a time-lapse conversation, but a recent trip out of town rendered this one more extended than usual! Gender fluidity is one of the things Adam has made me think about a lot -- it's something I find very attractive in him, the way he feels free to be both Killer Queen and Stone Cold Crazy, often moving from alpha male to femme fatale from one breath to the next and with a self-aware but not at all self-deprecating laugh in between. And yet, one of the few statements he's made that disappointed me was years ago when he was asked if he didn't think that the criticism and violence men attract when they dress or behave in feminine ways was evidence that society still undervalues the feminine. I definitely think it does. I'm a feminist, too, and I agree with Emma Watson that it's a hard label to own because it's not popular. Feminists did ourselves no favours once upon a time by having very little sense of humour (or, sometimes, proportion). I remember a joke along the lines of, "How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One. And it's NOT funny.") I once took a film studies class led by a Marxist feminist and the combination of ghastly academic verbiage and no sense of ha-ha in that course nearly drove me to drink. I think most of that is long gone, thankfully, and Emma Watson is speaking with the voice of a new feminism that can be and is embraced by both genders ... I suppose, really, it is more rightly humanism. But ... I'm a mother of a son and a daughter, both teens. When they were little, I let my son wear the purple princess dress because he liked it, and when my daughter squealed, "I'm a pwincess, wescue me!" I quickly shot back, "Wescue yourself, pwincess!" But still ... there are different rules. My daughter did a teenage slouch in the back of the car the other day, legs akimbo, and I found myself telling her that in public she'd need to to "sit like a lady" -- EEP! Good posture is good for both genders, but I'm quicker to correct hers than her brothers, thinking I'm protecting her. But she gets the message that she has more restrictions on her behaviour. However, there also are restrictions on men's behaviour when it comes to showing emotion. I love a man who can cry. On the other hand, though, my daughter has grown up into a pretty fierce little person who can and will whup her older brother, and he sometimes whines and whinges and I EEP just as much when "Man up!" almost leaps from my lips. I don't think whining is attractive in either gender, but there's more tolerance for a woman to show weakness than for a man. I remember, years ago, my very sensitive boy was grieving over a friendship that was coming apart and I tried to help him let go, saying he and the other boy were just growing apart. Then, next time he saw his friend, I watched my son totally squick him out by saying that aloud, "I think we're growing apart, Isaac." The other boy practically turned inside out, mutely shireking, "DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS!!! Can't you just roar like a dinosaur and let it go?" So the lines of gender are fluid, but there is still something to celebrate and learn from in the archetypally feminine and archetypally masculine ... have you read Gloria Steinem's Revolution from Within? She talks a lot about what men and women can both learn from the other's archetypes and ways of seeking and manifesting power. She talks about the "male" form of power often being hierarchical, the male trajectory a straight line forward. On the other hand, she says, the "female" idea of power is more relational and our trajectory is curved into a circle, a cycle. Seen this way, the highest form of power is not mastery over another, but self-completion. In terms of this worldview, western civilization is extremely "male" in outlook and orientation, aboriginal cultures more often "female" and cyclical and circular. Both are good and there's a time for all things as Ecclesiastes said. I especially like Emma Watson's challenge to herself and others. "If not me, who? If not now, when?" My city recently lost a 58-year-old man who revolutionized the local theatre scene, introducing avant-garde productions and, eventually, our own fringe festival. Nobody could have seen that this city needed or would support that kind of theatre, but it has, and we're so much richer and more diverse for it. And I think he accomplished it by creating what he wanted to see on the stage, much as many writers say that they write the books they would like to read but can't find. If Adam is "about" anything other than living his own life to the full, he's about encouraging and inspiring his fans to bring forth whatever it is that's in them. It's not up to us to judge it as good, bad or indifferent, but just to get out of the way and let it flow. Easier said than done, though!
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mirages
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Post by mirages on Feb 18, 2015 12:03:09 GMT -5
MIRAGES, Moon Mistress - look at your beautiful home! Silver star you!
I know we have a lot of Mary Oliver fans. I don't know why I like her so much - I don't usually appreciate poets who focus on nature as theme (probably because I like to stay inside and sleep) - I think it's because you can hear her soul so clearly. I've been carrying her recentish book - Blue Horses - around and don't want to violate her copyright so I'll leave just an excerpt from a poem I liked "Angels" (I like angel poems - it's a thing)
"...I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty. For myself, but not for other people. That's a place you just can't get into, not entirely anyway, other people's heads.
I'll just leave you with this. I don't care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's enough to know that for some people they exist, and that they dance."
MIKA!!!! You shimmery-lithe, slippery-coy koi, you! How we've missed you in general, and now I see I've missed you specifically by more than a week here in After Hours -- shoot! And my apologies! Discussion in daily threads of late has been quite diverse, so it made sense to leave it there, and I hadn't checked in here for too long.
I gratefully wore your moon avi for many, many moons, and only recently switched it out for the current one -- I seem to gravitate to the fringes . Not surprisingly, then, I adore the line you quoted, "I have a lot of edges called Perhaps." Yes. Have you listened to Leonard Cohen's last couple of albums? His Zen training has given him a ruthlessly sharp knife to whittle his verse down to bare bone. I love Old Ideas and the newer Popular Problems has some great moments. I really like this one:
I know the burden's heavy As you wheel it through the night Some people say it's empty But that don't mean it's light
I hadn't realized Mary Oliver had a new collection out, so thanks for that -- I'll go seek it out!
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Post by mirages on Feb 17, 2015 16:25:23 GMT -5
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Post by mirages on Feb 17, 2015 15:53:30 GMT -5
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Post by mirages on Feb 17, 2015 15:47:20 GMT -5
shimoli deserves a streamer medal for the way she keeps trying!
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Post by mirages on Feb 17, 2015 15:33:26 GMT -5
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Post by mirages on Feb 17, 2015 15:31:03 GMT -5
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