There are few books in the world as lovely as this. According to the blurb, reading it is ‘like opening Pandora’s box’, or delving into ‘Darwin’s cabinet of curiosities’. Both of these claims are true – Etcetera is the biblio equivalent of pottering around a junk shop you’ve stumbled across in a back alley of Paris – there’s so much to see, and so much to inspire. Court is a creative curator with a magpie eye – her home and styled shots reflect her passion for colour, texture and fascinating ‘objets’. She’s like a magical chef, throwing together unexpected and wonderful ingredients from the past and the present to create beautiful interiors where every object tells a story. And her penchant for all things Natural-History-related is oh-so-NOW…

I could wax lyrical about the typography and design – the old typewriter-style fonts, the gorgeous transparent vellum paper pages that are utterly decadent – but this is the kind of book you have to see for yourself and hold in your hands to fully appreciate.

Postcards, letters, tickets – Court refers to herself as a ‘keeper of collections, or a bowerbird’ (a quick Google-search reveals this is a black crow-like bird, probably the Aussie equivalent of a Magpie!) – and her extensive stash of ephemera is evidence of her hoarding nature. It’s all so beautifully presented. But you wouldn’t want to be her cleaner!

Among the interior shots, there are pages of to-die-for paint swatches (Court is a part-time colour consultant for Murobond Paints in Australia) with enticing titles such as ‘Tales of a Sea Gypsy’ and ‘Travellers and Magicians’. One paint colour is called ‘Moustache’. What’s not to love?

Etcetera is out in Australia and the USA already and it’s due to be published in April by Murdoch Books here in the UK, with a £20 price tag. The good news is, the April issue of Living Etc magazine (out in March) will have a cover-mounted extract from the book, so we can all get our hands on a slice of the pie before the publication date. Until then, here are a few more gorgeous pics to whet your appetite…because I just can’t resist! – Ellie

by Marie-France Hirigoyen

From the inside book cover:

In this groundbreaking account — already an international bestseller — Dr. Marie-France Hirigoyen lays bare the destructive “hidden” phenomenon of emotional abuse. She argues that while emotional abuse is not as visible as physical abuse, it is equally violent — and perhaps even more widespread. It is a crime whose aim is, she says, “a virtual murder of the soul.”

Emotional abuse exists all around us — in couples, in families, and in the workplace. But in an age where moral and behavioral standards are not absolute, society turns a blind eye to this insidious form of violence, tacitly condoning conduct that is both dangerous and perverse.

Illustrating her points with gripping case histories from her own therapeutic practice, plus popular examples ranging from the films of Hitchcock to the personal life of Einstein and the works of Ovid, Kafka, and Freud, Hirigoyen analyzes the psychology of abusers and their victims as well as the dynamic between them. She breaks down the stages of emotional abuse, a process that begins with seduction and brainwashing and culminates in an open violence that sweeps the victim into a vortex of destruction. Finally, she offers practical advice on how to break free of abuse’s vicious hold.

Stalking the Soul is a call to recognize and understand emotional abuse and, most importantly, to overcome it. Sophisticated yet wholly accessible, this landmark account is vital reading for health professionals and victims of abuse, as well as for the concerned public. In 1995 Daniel Goleman showed the world that emotions shape our intelligence. Today Marie-France Hirigoyen shows that emotions shape our entire being — indeed, our very soul.

Click here to read Full page

Taken from Growing Beyond Emotional Abuse website:

comma by uqbar is back

Image credit: uqbar is back

Extract from ‘Eats, shoots & leaves‘:

When the humourist James Thurber was writing for New Yorker editor Harold Ross in the 1930s and 1940s, the two men often had very strong words about commas. It is pleasant to picture the scene: two hard-drinking alpha males in serious trilbies smacking a big desk and barking at each other over the niceties of punctuation. According to Thurber’s account of the matter (in The Years with Ross [1959]), Ross’s “clarification complex” tended to run somewhat to the extreme: he seemed to believe that there was no amount of clarification you could achieve if you just kept adding commas. Thurber, by self-appointed virtuous consent, saw commas as so many upturned office chairs unhelpfully hurled down the wide-open corridor of readability. And so they endlessly disagreed. If Ross were to write “red, white, and blue” with the maximum number of commas, Thurber would definitely state a preference for “red white and blue” with none at all, on the provocative grounds that “all those commas made the flag seemed rained on. They give it a furled look.” …

Thurber was once asked by a correspondent: “Why did you have a comma in the sentence, ‘After dinner, the men went into the living room’?” And his answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. “This particular comma,” Thurber explained, “was Ross’s was of giving the men the time to push back their chairs and stand up.”

(pp 69-70)

Over the weekend, the Guardian printed an excerpt from a book which is about to be published by an author called Nora Vincent titled ‘Voluntary Madness : My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin’.

Apart from squirming at the title for a number of reasons, the premise of the book also  makes me uncomfortable. This is a woman who has made a decision to enter a psychiatric hospital.

tahitianlime at Flickr

It is not a pleasant experience, unsurprisingly. The author had spent time previously as an in-patient and had wanted to come back with a journalist’s eye to present the wrongs that were being practiced in these institutions.  As she says in the extract

In November 2004 I had checked myself into a locked psychiatric ward as a patient. I was in that zombie parlour for four days, and returned home a wreck, swearing that I would never willingly go into such a place again. And yet there was the lure of the spectacle, and what I saw as the outright wrongs of the insanitarium, wrongs I longed to write about and hold up to public scrutiny. Which was how I now came to find myself back in a big city public hospital – this time as a journalist.

It is clear that the hospital in which she was treated was without doubt practising the type of ‘care’ that belies the meaning of the word itself.

She rails against the situation that she is forced into as a patient

There was so much you weren’t allowed to do. There was little exercise – we were taken up to the roof for 15 minutes a day – no smoking and a no-touching rule between patients. A necessary rule, in some ways, in a world where people had few boundaries, but to deprive desperate human beings of the healing comfort of a hand on the shoulder or a kindly hug was, at times, just another reason the place made you feel less than human.

Definitely food for thought but everything has a layered value and risk and hospital is and really should be a place for the people who are most acutely unwell that care cannot possibly be provided by any other means.

I am somewhat sympathetic to Vincent’s view and experiences. It is something I think about a lot when determining the need for someone to be detained on a compulsory section in hospital.

I read a little more about Vincent’s background and the book as I had not come across her.

Her first bestselling book was called The Self-Made Man : My Year Disguised as a Man which pretty much does what it says on the tin, so to speak.

According to US News, the experience of disguising herself as a man for a year, instigated a period of depression and Vincent’s first admission to hospital which she revisited for the purpose of writing this book.

Vincent …  decided to have herself voluntarily committed to three different institutions. (She declined to provide their real names to protect the privacy of doctors and patients she met there.) She first faked her way into a big city public hospital by pretending to have a recurrence of her previous depression. She then intentionally caused a relapse of her depression by going off her antidepressant, which led to her being admitted to a small private hospital. Finally, she tried a recovery facility replete with yoga classes, gym, and facials.

This book hasn’t been published yet so naturally I haven’t read it. I did feel a little uncomfortable about having the luxury of writing about a situation that you have chosen to put yourself in, but on the other hand, I would absolutely not want to condone inhumane treatment on any level and perhaps attention and discomfort are needed to draw attention to poor practice.

Or perhaps it is just the name of the book that makes me feel uncomfortable. I am relatively curious to read it  but probably not curious enough to buy it. I suppose some of my discomfort also comes from the choice to be ill which is not present to the other patients with whom she is living and about whom she is writing.

Meanwhile, Time Magazine print a review of the book (provided by someone who has read it!)

As for a possible alternative, I read Poppy Shakespeare a couple of months ago after missing the TV programme. I was hugely impressed by Clare Allen’s take on the system. I know it’s a difference premise and it’s fiction rather than non-fiction but to  me it had an absolutely genuine ring to it. Unsurprisingly, as Clare Allen is a very engaging writer with personal experiences which include admission to hospital.

I am definitely intrigued as to what the reception will be to Vincent’s book here and will try and chase some more reviews when they emerge.

If the attention does garner an introspective into the running of some hospitals that engage poor practice and care then that will, indeed, be a fine achievement but I am not entirely convinced by the motivation (possibly again relating to the title).

20,000 years before present in the Arabian Desert near the Red Sea. The previous day, Oqmar and his dog, Kur, witnessed a shiny sphere emerge from their cave floor, float up to the ceiling and make a hole then ascend up to the sky.

Shouting instructions to avoid the hole, Oqmar sent the eager Kur back into the cave. No wildcat screeched out of the entrance this time. He too, felt uneasy, last night when Hanra’s mad crone of a mother muttered incomprehensible incantations over a simmering evil-smelling pot while throwing him malevolent glares.

Now he looked above the hill and could just make out the spot of light ever moving upwards. The shiny orb that should have been his, its power – transferred to him – making him leader. He wore a twisted smile while ruefully imagining wild nights with the girls he could’ve had. That Emzeena, who had no sores, and Groch with those deep dark sultry eyes.

Kur barked a come-in call, so Oqmar followed his spear inside. The uneasiness remained, but tinged with expectation. Ah, that was probably it: he was picking up tomorrow. It often happened in advance of a storm; the hairs stood up on his neck. Even the curled black hair on his head made an effort to point up at the sky. Flashes of weird images would enter his head – white monkeys playing with sticks on fire; silver bulls charged around at a terrifying speed, their legs rushing so fast they were a blur.

Sometimes it wasn’t an impossible vision. He’d see the northern savages coming down into the village, so his people would be ready for them. If only he could see the mad schemes of Hanra and her mother.

The cool of the cave welcomed him. But the inner sanctum was all wrong. The ceiling had a circular vent lined up with the bottomless pit beneath. Oqmar’s vision blurred for a second, making him stagger. He held out his arms for balance being acutely aware to keep away from the void.

Kur yelped once, preferring to lie by the wall, watching the hole then up to the ceiling, for any further spherical apparitions.

“There’ll be no more, Kur. That magic orb was our chance and it has flown away.” Rubbing his face to calm himself he sat in his favourite corner, rummaged in his robe, and threw a chunk of cheese to Kur. It was particularly ripe, and with the sour wine, consciousness soon went for a walk for both man and beast.

Oqmar awoke in a cold sweat. Before he opened his eyes he detected a presence other than the ever-faithful Kur, whose snoring he could hear. As could the stranger no doubt. His heart doubled its drumming in spite of silent instructions to be still. Faking sleep he surreptitiously felt for his goat-crook and closed his hand around the comforting olivewood. Slowly he eased his eyelids open. No one there. He felt foolish, yet his instincts rarely disowned him.

His nervous system told him that something else shared the cave. More, he’d felt this presence before, or rather the aura disturbance that accompanied it.

Slowly he stood. “Kur, wake up you useless lump of shit.” A worried canine eye opened, followed by a nose in the air, sniffing for demons, and finding one. With a whine, Kur slunk off.

“That’s it, no more treats for you today. Don’t you know anything about loyalty?”

As Oqmar watched the shamed dog’s tail dragging the floor a tremor blurred his vision. He abruptly sat in the cave’s gritty sand, and held his head while squeezing his eyes shut. This was no ordinary tremor. Outside, he’d seen the sand grains dance waist high while he hung on to the nearest tree. His head hurt, but he heard Kur growl. Opening his eyes Oqmar knew why he’d had a premonition.

A stranger lay asleep on the floor on the other side of the sphere’s hole. He’d not seen a human with padded out flesh, and it was white. The stranger had an odd attachment on his face. His face was pale, like the belly of the snake Oqmar cooked last night. The man’s robes were strangely coloured. An elaborate green garment covered his upper body, not too dissimilar to his own rough shirt. Oqmar’s eyes widened when he noticed the stranger’s legs were wrapped in a blue cloth. His hands were white, and not just his palms. Maybe he’d been in a white clay bath like the hogs by the oasis. Oqmar was too afraid to get close in case this white monster awoke.

Oqmar should run. But by the Gods it was his cave. And hadn’t the sphere chosen his cave? It was the stranger who should leave.

His hair seemed to be made out of fine straw.

Oqmar, quivering, with his stomach yet again in a knot, moved around the hole while pointing his crook at the hair – perhaps it was a strange hat. By the Gods, the stranger had extraordinary coverings on his feet. Were they goatskin? They were whiter than his face.

Kur, behind Oqmar, growled again just as his master made the stick reach the hair on the stranger’s head. He gave it a flick with the intention of seeing if was really hair. The stranger awoke, screaming.

Oqmar fell back, and tripped over Kur, who yelped before running off. “Come back you coward.” Kur refused, but at least the stranger stopped screaming.

Struggling back onto his feet, Oqmar shouted in self-defence, “I was only checking your wrong hair!” He patted his own head and keeping the hole between them, pointed at the stranger’s hair. A thought hit Oqmar like a bolt of lightning. The stranger must be a Jinn! Out of the orb’s hole had arisen an evil spirit. Suppose it was here to stop the orb escaping, but too late, and now he’d be angry. He tore his attention from the Jinn to his only escape route. Fear tightened all his running-away muscles, although a working synapse told him escape would be futile. The fear won and he leapt for the cave’s entrance chamber, but Kur had returned and blocked the gap.

“Damn it, Kur,” he said, then turned when he heard a very human gasp. The stranger clutched at his arm. Only then did Oqmar notice a dark patch in the green cloth. The Jinn was hurt, therefore he was no Jinn.

Even so, Oqmar was reluctant to seek a deep friendship.

Oqmar peered at the stranger’s face. He needed to see into his eyes, to read the person within. But the decoration he had wedged on his nose with what looked like round clear crystals made seeing his eyes difficult. But what he did see was a greater fear than his own. Eyes behind the contraption darted about; and he watched beads of sweat emerging out of terrified skin. Oqmar’s confidence grew in proportion to the stranger’s discomfort.

He pulled himself upright as tall as he could, even then he was much shorter than this giant. Gripping his crook tighter, he strode around the hole to the feet of the weirdly dressed man. He’d not seen anyone with surplus body, nor with such odd robes. He must be from one of the southern tribes. He’d heard the rumour of white peoples in the mountains but hadn’t believed them.

“Are you from the mountains?”

The fleshy man frowned, but looked straight at Oqmar, and opened his mouth, revealing perfect white teeth. He uttered sounds, probably words but beyond Oqmar’s recognition.

Gibberish, thought Oqmar. He knew other far away villages had strange dialects but this one must have banged his head or had chewed too much dream root. The stranger rolled up the sleeve on his left arm. A cut oozed blood, proving his reality. Oqmar dug in his own robe pockets for the healing-plant leaves he always carried. In among the green furry cheese, he unfurled a browned leaf. He sucked up spittle in his mouth, spat on the leaf, and then held it out to the stranger, who shrank back.

“Good leaf. It will stop the bleeding,” said Oqmar. It was then he noticed the stranger’s fingers were not only whiter but also extraordinarily clean, and his fingernails had been bitten neatly. He looked at his own brown fingers – part his skin colour, part dirt. His broken yellow nails hardly compared either. Nevertheless, this clean man was bleeding, and if it weren’t stopped the buzz-flies would be a nuisance.

The stranger shook his head as if in disgust. Oqmar then knew this childlike man would have to be treated like a child, for his own good.

Oqmar called out, “Kur, tell me where you are?”

In the adjoining cave Kur barked making the stranger look over his right shoulder. Oqmar leaned over and pressed the leaf on the bloody cut.

The stranger shouted, making no sense to Oqmar, who’d held the leaf firmly in place, in spite of the ensuing struggle. Oqmar smiled to himself. In spite of his disadvantage in size, his strength was superior.

After a few moments he withdrew his hand, and to the stranger’s obvious disgust, spat again on the leaf and found a home for it in his robe. The young man examined the wound with one of his very clean fingers, but he didn’t seem pleased about it. Perhaps he remained worried about being lost.

Oqmar stood and then coughed for attention. He pointed at his own chest and said, “Oqmar, Oqmar.” Then he pointed at the stranger with one hand and held his other hand to his ear.

The stranger must have played this game before, because he nodded, and said, “Blake.”

Oqmar offered him a lump of his grey bread and a piece of cheese, but it was declined even when Oqmar gnawed off the worst of the fur. He squatted and made ready to nibble some himself.

Blake rummaged in his clothes and produced what looked like a stick wrapped in a leaf, but too neat. He peeled it to reveal a shiny thinner leaf, and offered Oqmar a thin pink stick. Without hesitation Oqmar took it and after seeing Blake do the same with another one, put it in his mouth.

“Gum,” Blake said, pulling it out and back in. Oqmar realised Blake was showing how gum was to be chewed and not swallowed.

Oqmar couldn’t believe how sweet it was. He’d eaten honey and sweet berries but they were sour in comparison. With his fingers he pulled at a corner and stretched it out of his mouth. He’d eaten entrails that he could pull but not like that. He sniffed at it, but didn’t recognise the odour. He chewed again; much of his food wasn’t easy to eat. Snake was chewy; birds often bony, and some insects wouldn’t stop wriggling even after swallowing. He again, took out the gum thinking it reminded him of the entrails of boiled white snake.

He looked at the grinning Blake who had both thumbs stuck in the air. Now the boy had shared food perhaps he’d exchange weapons. Oqmar found his old knife in his corner. The sharp flint had dulled but the boy might not notice. He passed it to him.

Blake looked puzzled, but placed it in his clothing. Then Blake’s face contorted with worry and he clutched at his right hip. His hands clutched at his garments but he snatched them away with the speed of scared bats. Through the blue cloth emerged a small shiny ball – a tiny version of the one that escaped Oqmar from this very cave.

As both Oqmar and Blake stared in shock and fear, the sphere hovered for a moment, and then shot up through the hole in the ceiling. Intuitively, Oqmar knew it was chasing the other sphere. On his back he lay on the floor with his head and shoulders overhanging the hole, and then looked up. Through the dark hole in the cave roof, he could see the sun glinting off both spheres making them look like stars. Then they were one.

It blinked.

Winked.

Gone.

Oqmar rubbed his eyes, but only blue sky remained to mock him. Two magic orbs he’d had within his grasp, and he’d lost both. A low growl from Kur, entering the main cave at last, made Oqmar glance over at Blake. Like the first sphere the man’s edges appeared blurred as if he was moving too rapidly for eyes to see clearly.

“Blake?”

“Aaaaaaarrh!” Blake’s voice came through the air, but also shaky. Oqmar tentatively poked him with his crook proving there remained some substance there. Then after an increase in frenzied blurring, Blake vanished.

Kur barked once.

Oqmar and Kur raised their noses as they detected lingering whiffs of that metallic tang they’ve associated with thunderstorms when lightning strikes rocks.

“He must have been Jinn after all. They come and go, but usually in the Elders’ late night gatherings after a few potions. But he’s not here now, Kur, if he ever was. Come.” He held out his fingers, which Kur sniffed at and curled his lip.

“Ah, you smell Blake’s food on my fingers.” Oqmar snorted a laugh, but Kur didn’t seem pleased. He sniffed the air and then with nose to the sand, snuffled around to where Blake last existed.

Oqmar looked at the image he’d scratched and coloured, with burnt sticks and berries, of the sphere rising through the cave and out. He picked a sharp stone and added a stick figure of Blake. He added a large stomach while he laughed at the memory of the only plump person he’d ever seen. He added big feet and then a tiny circle for the baby sphere.

Another bark.

“What have you found? Ah, his unused sticks of gum. Look, Kur, at the patterned wrappings. I’ve never seen any leaves like this. Do you think Hanra would want it?” Kur snarled.

“Nor me. Should I hide it in Kardinuta’s supper? I suppose not. Let the wild cats find it.” He threw the gum packet onto the sand for the future.

(c) Geoff Nelder, 2008

About the author

Geoff Nelder has worked as a teacher, a freelance writer and a magazine editor. His books include the novels, Escaping Reality (Brambling Books, 2005), Hot Air (WUACADEMIA, ____) and Exit, Pursued by a Bee (Double Dragon Publishing, 2008).

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Kkrishnaa’s konfessions got a great review. Am over the moon…Check this out! For those who wish to read the whole article click here. You’ll have to scroll down to “Confessions of an ambitious mind.”

Here’s an excerpt:

My hard disk crashed, taking a week’s quota of writing with it (You got it, I hadn’t made a back up). That’ll teach me to surf crack sites for free Bollywood songs! Still, I suppose it could have been worse. Instead of losing 5,000 words I could’ve lost 50,000. And then I discovered that my maid, in a fit of pique, had sold my handwritten notes to the local paper recycler!

Everything just made me so…well, I was too far gone to be angry, so I suppose bemused would be more it…. so I decided to Google just why it is that people write. Came up with some interesting quotes. Here are a few of them:

What a writer wants to do is not what he does.
Jorge Luis Borges

If you’re a freelance writer and aren’t used to being ignored, neglected, and generally given short shrift, you must not have been in the business very long.
Poppy Z. Brite

Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman’s name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer – and if so, why?
Bennett Cerf

Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven’t been told a million times already – that writing is harder.  Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.
Harlan Ellison

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.
William Faulkner

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.
Gustave Flaubert

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
Robert A. Heinlein

The quality which makes man want to write and be read is essentially a desire for self-exposure and masochism. Like one of those guys who has a compulsion to take his thing out and show it on the street.
James Jones

It’s tougher than Himalayan yak jerky on january. But, as any creative person will tell you, there are days when there’s absolutely nothing sweeter than creating something from nothing.
Richard Krzemien

Writing is not a genteel profession. It’s quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.
Rosemary Mahoney

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Thomas Mann

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
George Orwell

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.
Sidney Sheldon

People are certainly impressed by the aura of creative power which a writer may wear, but can easily demolish it with a few well-chosen questions. Bob Shaw has observed that the deadliest questions usually come as a pair: “Have you published anything?” – loosely translated as: I’ve never heard of you – and “What name do you write under?” – loosely translatable as: I’ve definitely never heard of you.
Brian Stableford

Writing is the flip side of sex – it’s good only when it’s over.
Hunter S. Thompson

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
Red Smith

Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.
Paul Valery

Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.
Jessamyn West

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Oscar Wilde

If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.
William Zinsser

Easy reading is damned hard writing.
Anonymous

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Well, my pants are down here. Do look and tell me what you think:)

For more such quotes on writing click here.

On a more positive note, after the early morning fiascos, the day got progressively better. I only had to shell out Rs. 60 when I went to receive a friend at Mumbai Airport, not because I had to park but because the airport is being renovated and in the meantime one has to drive through parking to reach arrivals; then my car car got towed away, but only from parking; and three, after I had paid the fine and retrieved my car from impound, I developed a flat tyre…Just another day in the life of a writer. Sometimes I feel God does these things only to give material for my writing.

It’s official. Indians don’t write.

It’s true. I’m a member of Shelfari and have tried to encourage writing amongst Indians. No go. In spite of gentle and not so gentle reminders and encouragemnet, they just wont!

I try to tell them it’s a good thing to write. As you write more, you become more focused and articulate. You don’t need to write much, but you must write, and write often. Writing just fifteen minutes a day, every day, adds up to about book every year! So think about it. 

And if that wasn’t enough motivation, writing, it seems helps also helps you lose weight! Julia Cameron, in her new book, “The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size” talks about this at length. Artists and writers are familiar with Julia Cameron. For those who aren’t she is the creator of the morning pages concept.

So get cracking!

On a separate note, thank you all for reading the first chapter of Kkrishnaa’s Konfessions and giving feedback. Thanks, it means a lot.

For new visitors, I’ve posted the first chapter of Kkrishnaa’s Konfessions. You can read it here.

A poet’s opinion regarding the soul  Nature is not man’s enemy, but it could care less about our demise or survival.Nature is a constant, in spite of our deaths life rolls on un-abated. We are but a universal flash in the pan. The universe is the environment of man and beast. It is where life’s successes and failures play out on the cosmic stage.  To be human means to be mortal. Yes, a simple truth. What then becomes of the soul and, what is the soul? Our thoughts, our intellect are the essence of the soul. Those things that we have learned in life measure our depths.  Our mentalities will not be different from what they are now, save for our transcendence to perfect understanding. Our questions will be answered. Only then will we be able to throw off our preconceived ideas of the after life and glory. That change of state from the physical to the spiritual will reveal to us the true essence of our souls.  What we do in this life; these self-perpetrated chains that we bind ourselves in, have nothing to do with our souls. They have everything to do with our worldliness and the misguided, selfish emotions that we all cleave to and for. The soul is the core of our existence. It is truly what we are and what we will ultimately become.  Physical life blinds us to this simple concept. The dull haze of a chaotic world allows us only to view and be conscious of those happenings below the clouds. It is only when we break free of these chains, that we will truly understand ourselves and understand the motives of God.  Our physical deaths are a given, the inevitable. Our souls are constant, and unmistakable. When that moment arrives, when we shed these coils of skin and bone,We graduate to another stage, a more permanent classroom where the learning and insight will be much more enlightening than that of mere man and his didactic ramblings and theoretical musings.  The acts of the body have nothing to do with the soul. For the soul is pure, the acts; those perpetrated in life are riddled with mistakes and ignorance; and it is those acts that will be thrown away, and forgotten. In addition, it will be the soul forgiven and washed clean. It is that, that will transcend the dark clouds of this earth and rise to a brighter day of insight and forgiveness. However, the physical life in itself is a gift from God. We walk this path for a short time. This physical world is our primer, our preparation for better things to come. We are tested and baptized in the fires of ignorance, and from the ashes, we will rise to a clearer realization of whom and what we are truly meant to be.  This cocoon earth our birthplace of the physical and our transcendence to the spiritual.We who walk the earth have yet to bloom in the light of Gods gifts and grace.However, in time, we shall.