Channel: Features

Medb is a novel that draws the reader incrementally toward the mysteries of the human psyche, on its way touching on gender roles, the power of the occult, and the pathologization of difference. It’s a winding, inward journey that begins, fittingly, at …

but i often underestimate my husband / for he pointed out that i actually said schizophrigid / i had a kitchen dresser which contained crockery i never used / over- solicitude is display mothering /

Now is when you are alone, when you have nowhere to be, when promises to the world no longer apply. Nobody knows what happens now except you. This is your own personal history.

I walk casually through the kitchen, preparing a cup of tea, as my gaze is drawn to two photographs placed side by side. I am struck by the resemblance between my young son and deceased father…

What happened, Miss Hooker asked–she meant my shock–so I said, Well, please turn around and take a look at Jesus there and tell me what you see.

Forms point upward or sideways from a centrifugal base, hunting and seeking. Tides of observation and transmission approach and recede, leaving visual patterns in their wake. Ancient symbols make their way across pathways of energy, co-existing with forms of nature; earth, sky and all types of elemental forms are born of essential vibration.

The shrunken fighters, cheeks sunken and eyes Gibbous as praying mantis, like a god kept captive By some sick forest cult That provides sacrifice seasonally…

The Spiritual Barber had opened his salon a year earlier and it had been an instant success. Open Mondays to Saturdays, it attracted an ever-growing number of customers, who thought nothing of waiting several hours until it was their turn to be served. …

“Lucy the nun with the green socks / saw me hugging the oak tree / that summer I / hibernated in Spartanburg.”

“St Barbara, a poor white gloved icy ingénue, / Has long been a dusty piece of Black Forest wood // That grew out of the ashes of Sibylline books”

“Sex and God or sex and death.” I repeated his phrase, feeling a slight slur in my speech brought on by the beer on an empty stomach. “Is that all there is?”

​I was jealous of Pedro’s imaginary lovers and of his vaster sexual experience. Short poems, long poems, quirky poems, I read them in secret when he was out. I didn’t understand them. Poem after poem, sounding much alike, revealed the charms of some new image of his desire, even as he prayed for some kind of deliverance from his too, too solid flesh…

I felt that many kinds of patterns, of ancient origins, had been stamped onto our writhing, wrestling, male flesh, and that we had entered this forbidden zone many times before…

they call it soul retrieval | when your essence | core | beingness | the skeletal|hole|body|brain that lives in your gut|liver|kidney|body| self|shatters | breaks its own skull|heart|body in its crumpled raisin|brain as the result of small t | BIG T | sOmE TyPe of tRaUmA

Whether I chose to feel my emotions fully, or experience the depth of them — that wasn’t up to me. That was up to God, or Satan, or whatever it was that controlled me.

Has the Shadow become more user-friendly? No. Whether now or 2,000 or 10,000 years ago, the shared identity of the Shadow and the Guide has always presented itself in the form of an ultimatum, which we must torture our minds and bodies to interpret.

That our world has already ended, of this we may be certain. But is it the end of “a world” or of “the world”? It is reassuring that the prophets of world destruction have proven almost 100% wrong—and yet…

So, what does it mean for the Apocalypse to take place in the present moment, and, somewhat paradoxically, to be always just about to occur?

“I’ve found a techno relationship cuts right into the core, the soul, brings out an almost more real version of yourself, makes you see yourself differently, your own potential to be better. It can achieve a level of emotional perfection. That’s also the problem…”

That room is gone. Or rather, the room is still there, but what’s in it now is so different from what was in it before that the room itself seems transformed. It holds a vast model of the world we live in, built to scale and rendered in exquisite detail…

Following him into the darkest places taught me to never be afraid of the dark. / It’s full of unimaginable euphoric surprises…

The movie proves to be, rather than glitchy and fragmentary, a deliberate and careful unfolding of the more perplexing and realistic struggle ensnaring us in the contemporary world.

What was Harold Bloom? I don’t know, but here is my answer for now.

“I must return love and life to those who offered me death / Gestating with hundreds and thousands of babies in me: / Progeny of my intercourse with the rock.”

An introduction to Brigid’s new podcast CHTHONIA with a discussion of the relevance of dark feminine mythology for modern times.

Jeremy Johnson, current president of the International Jean Gebser Society, long-time Gebser student, and accomplished expositor, presents a thoughtful look at a key – and difficult – idea, the nature of the integral structure of consciousness.

Note: The following takes place between October 2018 and January 2019. I’m not in control. I’m trusting the currents to guide my ship to safe ports, trusting the process, letting go. I’m learning along the way. The biggest lesson so far has been how to …

I look for my White Lily, but it’s gone. When I look up again, the girl, too, is gone. I’m on my own again. I wonder if I imagined her. Or maybe she imagined me, and I’m the one who’s gone.

Jordan-based author Dona Abbadi guides us through a reading of one of the most beloved poems in 20th-century Arabic literature, helping us translate between languages and across cultural, historical, and religious contexts, to better understand and appreciate the meaning of Al-Sayyab’s work.

It is about the trials and tribulations of lovers who are set in a dismal, bleak universe—much like our current reality in NYC one could even argue. They are challenged to come to terms with each other and deal with various issues such as ego, conflicting decisions, and insecurities.