... Sometimes your crazy impulses, your irrational impulses, are the right ones. To have the courage to follow them can lead to a sort of bigger understanding of what life is like....
No matter what form the dragon may take, it is the mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will be concerned to tell.
- Flannery O'Connor
I am in the jaws of the dragon as Flannery would say. As the movie rolls forward on the screen, this is where the obstacles, tests, ogres, and the ordeal begins. Mr. Campbell's trial and initiation. (Aside: That's good news my teacher says last night. Yep, being in the lion's mouth is how Ramana Maharshi put it. There's no way out. The lion will take care of the rest. It's inevitable.) This is a phase of doubt. And oft times miracles. The knight is now firmly committed to quest for the Holy Grail. The unknown lays between the them. Of Journals, Journeys, Julie and Julia
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Secrets of the Fathers
I dreamed and fantasised about what my biological father would be like... You look at people’s faces, you always wonder...
Their quest constantly ran up against a wall of secrecy that has surrounded sperm donation for decades. But gradually, they discovered clues: his education, his field of work, even a description of his teeth...
The right to know versus the right to privacy... as donor-conceived children battle a secret system in the search for their biological fathers
• Gift of Life: Good Night, and Good Luck [The Los Angeles Times, columnist Meghan Daum has an op-ed that begins, For pro-choicers like myself, Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s position regarding spousal consent for abortion seems like one more loose rock in the ongoing erosion of Roe vs. Wade Shouldn't men have 'choice' too? ; ‘Soft pawn’ row as chess world discovers sex]
• · Telling tales against the tide ; George Clooney doesn't mind swimming against the political tide Rebel with a cause
• · · If we think poets and painters have better sex lives, it may be that they are good at persuading us - Sex and art ... It’s a great chat-up line. But why would Pablo Picasso think anything else?... Sex and art are really the same thing ; Man is a social animal – utterly dependent on forming and maintaining relationships with other people FREEDOM: The Ties That Do Not Bind: The Decline of Marriage and Loyalty
Beauty is the battlefield where God and the devil war for the soul of man Art in Crisis
• · · · Journeys involve both highs and lows ; “Puritan roots run deep,” says Hugh Hefner, whose parents would not show affection: “no hugging and kissing.” He is making up for it The oldest swinger in town
• · · · · Procrastination cure: you put on workshops for sufferers. Trouble is, some who sign up miss the first session, or don’t show at all... Procrastination cure; Mary McCarthy mistook snobbery for morality, just as Edmund Wilson mistook life for literature. Theirs was the union of a true bitch with a genuine bully... Forgetting Edmund Wilson
• · · · · · Chinese Etiquette Lessons for Germany ; Rebels Without a Clue - Communism tried to transform capitalism. It ended in tragedy. The counterculture tried the same. It ended in farce