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Just A Few

Thoughts for today

Poetic Outlaws · 7 hrs · I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company. - Nietzsche

Posted by Poetic Outlaws

“I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.” – Spoken by our old pal Nietzsche. Don’t you think he would have been quite handsome had he shaved his beard? OK, done off with all of the facial hair? I find it interesting that it’s his words which carry such significance and insight, such heroic thoughts come to life—and yet he hides his mouth—would he have then mumbled when he spoke? He doesn’t when he writes.

Psyche's Call with Donna May Page Liked · 6 hrs · Carl Jung

Posted by Donna May Story Tender

Spirit of Old Page Liked · 14 hrs · Solstice Blessings. We honour the returning of the light!

And here we are, having turned the corner into Summer. Summer of 2020. What witches’ works have brought us here? Does the world hold its breath in expectation of the next great plague? (I hear that dust storms are on the way.) Do not the artists continue to work, trying to capture those things that growl up from within? Do we not seek to hide away in our books, movies, dreams? When will it be safe for us to surface in this sea? We dance on, crawl on, weighted by our own thoughts, our own fears. Yet here we are. Again. Another Summer. We always make it through, say those who make it through.

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The Double Standard

Ravenous Butterflies
“Women have another option. They can aspire to be wise, not merely nice; to be competent, not merely helpful; to be strong, not merely graceful; to be ambitious for themselves, not merely for themselves in relation to men and children. They can let themselves age naturally and without embarrassment, actively protesting and disobeying the conventions that stem from this society’s double standard about aging. Instead of being girls, girls as long as possible, who then age humiliatingly into middle-aged women, they can become women much earlier – and remain active adults, enjoying the long, erotic career of which women are capable, far longer. Women should allow their faces to show the lives they have lived. Women should tell the truth.” Susan Sontag – The Double Standard of Aging (1972)
Annie Leibovitz – portrait of Susan Sontag.

It seems to me that the double standard of aging is yet worse today than days gone by, with women being the biggest perpetrators of deception themselves. Well, women and marketing. Marketing and products. It’s not easy to find original and simple of anything anymore, much less “beauty” products. Buying face lotion is a lesson in patience getting past the rejuvenating and replenishing and restoring with vitamins and retinol A thru z. Removing wrinkles and spots and age itself is easily bought over the counter—surgery in a bottle. And then the surgery itself—beyond Botox in a needle—is available to everyone, not just models and movie stars. Oi! So it appears as if women have to have the courage to just be themselves, not as a member of a group. The group itself (of aging women) is splintered the same as so much in our world today. Put this in the corner of “Self Matters.”
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Happy Birthdays

Posted by Psyche’s Call With Donna May

William Butler Yeats was born on June 13, 1865, and died on January 28, 1939. Another of our favorites has a June birthday: Egon Schiele, born June 12, 1890, and died October 31, 1918. Egon died from the flu pandemic just two days after his wife and baby. Willy died in a small attic room with both his wife and mistress at his side. Could there be more of a contrast in life and times?

And then of course one an artist (Schiele) and the other a poet and writer. Yet who knows what heights Schiele might have reached had he lived. He too wrote a bit of poetry and letters. Both consider what it is that makes an artist, and what it is that is in the special makings of things that make some reach for the Heavens (whatever that means) and others content to be earthbound.

egonschiele_self-portrait1912

Egon Schiele: Self Portrait with Physalis, 1912

Both saw Beauty and Terror in everything in the world. The gift to us is that they tried so valiantly to share it with us, sometimes succeeding, if we but eyes to see. Imagine.

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What’s Goin’ On?

Walt Whitman was born on this date in 1819.

Donna May, Story TenderWalt Whitman was BTD in 1819:

Posted by Donna May, Story Tender

After Walt Whitman there’s not much left to say. I remember reading Song of Myself in college and thinking there was nothing else. Filled to bursting with those words. Saying them over and over in my mind, memorizing without intending to. The words…the words…the words…became live inside of me, took form, became the thing they represented.

And today, the country in torment, exploding with the crazy that is our lives, our minds crazed with doubts and fears and anger and sadness and pain…today is for whatever it takes to get us through.

Today I’m listening to Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On” and reading me some Whitman, Song of Myself, “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” 

Sometimes you have to return to the old familiars when you don’t know what else to do. Sometimes you have to take comfort in old wounds, in old grief. Sometimes you just run out of words. Sometimes despair doesn’t have a name.

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And For Today…

…All is lighter: the cat has come out of a week’s worth of hiding, my anxiety level has eased considerably, and the muse comes to bump heads of lightness.

So, a word from one of our sponsors, those who have gone before: those who enlighten, guide, and inspire.

Psyche's Call with Donna May · 38 mins · “So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.” ~T. S. Eliot

posted by Psyche’s Call with Donna May

“So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.” ~T. S. Eliot