The lang-we-age 2 build

whilst the wow

2012-01-04T16:16:00.000-08:00

wow, its been a while

Blue barrys

2011-04-22T19:03:00.001-07:00

Once a garden is profuse, gnomes move in and plant quietly to ones fall knights for springs gathering.

I'm here

2011-04-22T19:02:00.001-07:00

Fox gloves

2011-04-20T19:55:00.001-07:00

TerrariumSs

2011-04-08T18:35:00.000-07:00

These pictures are at the WanderGarden. another intern ship I sail.

some of the Skyland Trails that have been added to the Wonder.

Stalagtamites

2011-04-05T23:57:00.001-07:00

In spired water, waves

2011-04-05T23:28:00.001-07:00

Mastering

2011-04-05T22:18:00.001-07:00

Fucking Adicktion

2011-03-30T15:35:00.001-07:00

Mobile ity

2011-03-23T14:19:00.001-07:00

My raised bed

six

2011-02-23T17:48:00.001-08:00

http://www.guimohallem.com/

wise owl

2011-02-23T16:53:00.000-08:00

knight's Harp

2011-02-21T19:43:00.000-08:00

coming across this picture makes me realize even my fantasizing of one day giving her up is not a possibility. She is mine to protect

marry-athon

2011-02-21T19:31:00.000-08:00

my
soul
is
worn
on
the
bottom
of
my
shoe

Sorting

2011-02-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

Swording my way to the lion den.

Simple State of Men.ts to describe My Cur-renting

2011-01-30T11:43:00.000-08:00

some of my recent work

2010-12-24T17:01:00.000-08:00

Treevor's creation

Dwarf orchid I collected from ' botanical gardens

a wyoming piece

well come

2010-12-22T22:42:00.000-08:00

to christ mass:

we got it like that

2010-12-12T20:27:00.000-08:00

The Back Pockets - Making Out Is Great from Adam Bruneau on Vimeo.

my creaturations

2010-12-10T16:25:00.000-08:00

bp

2010-11-29T19:36:00.000-08:00

another write up:

http://www.gsusignal.com/entertainment/the-back-pockets-an-acid-trip-without-the-lsd-1.2409237

if you won't let me

2010-11-24T18:54:00.000-08:00

The Recent in Orchidology

2010-11-24T18:49:00.000-08:00

Per-fer-MORE

2010-11-23T18:38:00.000-08:00

A video of ours:

The Back Pockets are an Atlanta based Experimental Pop band with upwards of 15 members (depending on the night you see them). Their live shows are energetic, cult-like experiences - the type of performance that stays in your head for days. If you're in Atlanta, seek them out.

This is their first music video and we were honored to give it our best. The idea was born on Sunday and shot on Friday with zero budget and tiny crew. Thanks to the band and everyone involved. Special thanks to Mint Gallery for letting us take over for a night.

I am the silver surfer man:

Back Pockets - Leave Me Alone from Andy DeLoach on Vimeo.

a video of us at the High Museum:

the local record store:

the second half of that:

Interview:

http://picaflorstudio.com/picatemp/the-back-pockets/

Our last song at an event we did to fly in US Graffiti artist to art Atlanta:

Back Pockets @ Living Walls Fundraiser Carnival from takuya yoshikane on Vimeo.

Alover video:

Two

2010-11-22T18:31:00.001-08:00

She was on the island between 20 and 285.

2010-11-19T21:27:00.000-08:00

its been two long

2010-11-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

the growth of my sculpted

my first time ever, to ain't no mountain high enough

3 paintings and three sculpted, Mint Gallery

the High
garden knome
wandergarden
backyard blends

returning to the scence

mr. fiddlesworth

Fives to Count Changes

2010-08-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

calling all rooted ones to form the ground

2010-08-12T16:58:00.000-07:00

here comes the son

2010-07-30T17:43:00.000-07:00

Throw Shade

2010-07-30T17:37:00.000-07:00

at a far glance

The shady forest of tattooed ferns and rex begonias.

in the (c)oven

2010-07-26T16:20:00.001-07:00

Today before the storm I sit in front of, we filled the raised bed. Creeping fig has found her home there. Hens and Chicks and many a sedum to come.

ah green post grows

2010-07-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

three of another call,ection

2010-06-25T17:43:00.000-07:00

our new quarters

spundle

2010-06-24T18:21:00.000-07:00

My call,ection of orchids gas grown itself together

Summer Solstice

2010-06-21T19:15:00.000-07:00

SUPRISE the last image is of our new house. The white rocks will be the first thing to go.

Glass Land

2010-06-05T16:14:00.000-07:00

compost you harvest

2010-06-05T12:30:00.000-07:00

thisISme

2010-06-05T12:21:00.001-07:00

ring

2010-06-05T12:16:00.001-07:00

I awake feeling a current of connection to the world around me. The thick existence I beg to tear filled candles of the room. Calling forth the ring.

Gestalting

2010-05-03T23:57:00.001-07:00

the unfinished gestalt, a self portrait

holly hock

2010-05-03T23:53:00.000-07:00

carried seed from a witch's wyoming garden into bloom in my own

Good Boy

2010-04-17T07:40:00.000-07:00

A baby coral bark maple I am training

We all, Wheel

2010-04-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

We all are chained to ourselves. These bodies we function in, lock us to our souls conduition. As we grow we grasp around the chains, holding on for dear life.

We all hold up masks. If we take a moment to describe exactly what others see in us, on our good side..we can stop and acknowledge how much of the shadow side of the same words exist with us. Just like a plant grows above in the sun, it digs into the deep dirty ground.

instruments of choice

2010-04-05T18:57:00.000-07:00

I must make things to express myself in Order to handle all that is going on. Beats with my feet, green in this ground, regalia over my shoulder, presentations on expression, and the occasional moment of silent.

the dash

2010-03-29T19:01:00.000-07:00

In the true spirit of this blog. I post a picture and let it describe the state. fight. t,he passion. com-passion

Melson Gardens

2010-03-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

Here are the after shots to the Melson Garden Dig in the Dirt Day. This is the building our psych department inhabits. There are canna lillies going under the office windows. iris, Spider wort, and other hidden little guys who will be popping up in a month or so. It was a great day and the energy still sits in the garden.

The walk way is lined with camellias that will grow into larger flowering hedges for our Spring semesters, one bed with assorted hydrangeas, another with native azaleas/seedum/ iris/spiderwort, and another with coral bells and lentil prince roses. Then, scattered throughout are witch hazels, coral bark maples, ashley marie (my sisters name) azalea, deciduous yellow blooming magnolia tree, and so much more! Over half of what we planted is deciduous..in that it is just starting to green out post winter. I'll update with pictures mid-spring action.

If I could do this every day of my life.. I just might

Through my next year and a half in the program, I will add in some final touches, and work to get as many plants as I can to keep their roots firmly into the ground. Right after the last person left on Sunday, a lady walked up with a camera. She told me every year on the anniversary of Renee's death (one of the three who the garden was donated in memory of back when Melson was an administrative building), she comes and takes pictures. It happened to be the 20th year anniversary of her passing, and we are honored to bring growth to the loss of the Buildings history.

enjoy it

2010-03-14T18:37:00.000-07:00

the more time you spend sculpting a life the less time you have to enjoy it.

Church bells chime

2010-03-12T13:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpLXQorSQe8

go seek an interpretation of what I did for the Mike Arons Scholarship

out of six

2010-03-03T22:06:00.000-08:00

I am rewriting my grant for the Beltline Community Art Project.
I am working on a new blog that will focus solely on my gardening business.
I am close to choosing a practicum internship site.
I am writing a book that I will possibly publish myself.
I am merlin with hawk on shoulder.
I am selling my first terrarium.

I am I am I am

This experiencing of life thing is out of control, this ride is taking me, and I am hands in the air

Death, Alchemy, and the Arch,I-type

2010-02-25T09:57:00.001-08:00

Alchemy and the Death Card
Left with two unresolved art,I-culations to right, I write. One is the tarot card death(XIII) and the other, surrounding the word transmutation.
When Larry asked me what the death card meant, I froze with the word rebirth. In that moment I had a choice to make. I could transmute my knowledge in any way I deemed. Yet, the options seemed thicker than ever. Every way I would re-art,Iculate related differently to my world. I sat for a moment in way of being all potentialities. Free from any form, if I was to release all that was before me. I was the death card.
This was a process of transmuting with out a finish (death). Transmutation is a cycle of rebirth, thus death and the beyond. We were talking in class about the old man client who is facing death, and how to help him. In an alchemical way of theorizing, we think of him as collection of base elements (maybe we could suggest memories, future, and present cyclical patterns with moments of vivid awareness). As the alchemist we are studied in transmutation. The art of taking what is already there and shifting its way of relating to its own elements. In alchemy, there is the law of equivalent exchange that states, “Human kind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return; to obtain, something of equal value must be lost.” The death card is not about loosing or gaining, but about a transmutation of what is already there.
The old man client must be willing to give up a cycled pattern that is himself, in order to transmute it into a new way of relating. He must be willing to give up the glue that hold him together in order to find new meaning in ways of coming together. This is the fool (0) card realizing he has the power and becoming the magician (I). Being willing to give up his old form and transmute into a new. To give death to his old way of being.
Lastly, to spend some energy with archetypes and how/why they are useful in ways I see. When we take a narrative and transmute it into a more abstract and somehow “larger” myth story, we are in the process of transmutation. The narrative's elements become larger and free flowing (less bounded to the concrete lived narrative) in the process of seeing it in archetypes. Then, when we work to bring the elements back together to understand the narrative post archetypal mything, we see the narrative in new ways of connecting together. This is like the clock I explained. It is a broken clock on the ground at first with all its pieces. When we transmute it, all we are really doing is facilitating a way for the clock to come together in a form that related and thus flows (lives) better. In the counseling room, we are able to see a bunch of broken pieces, and using archetypes is one way to start to make sense more abstractly of the narrative in order to realize.. “okay, maybe these parts make up a clock, maybe a tv, maybe even a desk.” Archetypes in the counseling field help us to start to relate the pieces back together with meaning. Abstract at first, and more concrete with time and client. Using archetypes in the counseling field helps us to transmute people narratives into stories that connect and a glued together with meaning.

Thou Faces

2010-02-23T09:07:00.001-08:00

Let Joseph break this down for yah!

) THE HERO IS INTRODUCED IN HIS ORDINARY WORLD.

Most stories take place in a special world, a world that is new and
alien to its hero. If you're going to tell a story about a fish out
of his customary element, you first have to create a contrast by
showing him in his mundane, ordinary world. In WITNESS you see both
the Amish boy and the policeman in their ordinary worlds before they
are thrust into alien worlds -- the farmboy into the city, and the
city cop into the unfamiliar countryside. In STAR WARS you see Luke
Skywalker bored to death as a farmboy before he takes on the
universe.

2) THE CALL TO ADVENTURE.

The hero is presented with a problem, challenge, or adventure.
Maybe the land is dying, as in the Arthur stories about the search
for the Holy Grail. In STAR WARS again, it's Princess Leia's
holographic message to Obi Wan Kenobi, who asks Luke to join in the
quest. In detective stories, it's the hero accepting a new case.
In romantic comedies it could be the first sight of that special --
but annoying someone the hero or heroine will be pursuing/sparring
with the remainder of the story.

3) THE HERO IS RELUCTANT AT FIRST.

Often at this point, the hero balks at the threshold of adventure.
After all, he or she is facing the greatest of all fears -- fear of
the unknown. At this point Luke refuses Obi Wan's call to adventure,
and returns to his aunt and uncle's farmhouse, only to find they
have been barbqued by the Emperor's stormtroopers. Suddenly Luke is
no longer reluctant, and is eager to undertake the adventure. He is
motivated.

4) THE HERO IS ENCOURAGED BY THE WISE OLD MAN OR WOMAN.

By this time many stories will have introduced a Merlin-like
character who is the hero's mentor. In JAWS it's the crusty Robert
Shaw character who knows all about sharks; in the mythology of the
Mary Tyler Moore Show, it's Lou Grant. The mentor gives advice and
sometimes magical weapons. This is Obi Wan Kenobi giving Luke
Skywalker his father's light sabre.

The mentor can only go so far with the hero. Eventually the hero
must face the unknown by himself. Sometimes the wise old man is
required to give the hero a swift kick in the pants to get the
adventure going.

5) THE HERO PASSES THE FIRST THRESHOLD.

He fully enters the special world of his story for the first time.
This is the moment at which the story takes off and the adventure
gets going. The balloon goes up, the romance begins, the plane or
spaceship blasts off, the wagon train gets rolling. Dorothy sets
out on the Yellow Brick Road. The hero is now committed to his
journey... and there's no turning back.

6) THE HERO ENCOUNTERS TESTS AND HELPERS.

The hero is forced to make allies and enemies in the special world,
and to pass certain tests and challenges that are part of his
training. In STAR WARS, the cantina is the setting for the forging
of an important alliance with Han Solo, and the start of an
important enmity with Jabba The Hut. In CASABLANCA, Rick's Cafe is
the setting for the "alliances and enmities" phase, and in many
westersn it's the saloon where these relationships are established.

The tests and challenges phase is represented in STAR WARS by the
scene of Obi Wan teaching Luke about the Force, as Luke is made to
learn by fighting blindfolded. The early laser battles with the
Imperial Fighters are another test which Luke passes successfully.

7) THE HERO REACHES THE INNERMOST CAVE

The hero comes at last to a dangerous place, often deep underground,
where the object of his quest is hidden. In the Arthurian stories
the Chapel Perilous is the dangerous chamber where the seeker finds
the Grail. In many myths the hero has to descend into hell to
retrieve a loved one, or into a cave to fight a dragon and gain a
treasure. It's Theseus going into the Labyrinth to face the
Minotaur. In STAR WARS it's Luke and company being sucked into the
Death Star where they will rescue Princess Leia. Sometimes it's the
hero entering the headquarters of his nemesis; and sometimes it's
just the hero going into his or her own dream world to confront his
or hers worst fears... and overcome them.

8) THE HERO ENDURES THE SUPREME ORDEAL.

This is the moment at which the hero touches bottom. He faces the
possibility of death, brought to the brink in a fight with a
mythical beast. For us, the audience standing outside the cave
waiting for the victor to emerge, it's a black moment. In STAR
WARS, it's the harrowing moment in the bowels of the Death Star,
where Luke, Leia and company are trapped in the giant trash-masher.
Luke is pulled under by the tentacled monster that lives in the
sewage, and is held down so long the audience begins to wonder if
he's dead. E.T. momentarily appears to die on the operating table.

This is a critical moment in any story, an ordeal in which the hero
appears to die and is born again. It's a major source of the magic
of the hero myth. What happens is that the audience has been led to
identify with the hero. We are encouraged to experience the
brink-of- -death feeling with the hero. We are temporarily
depressed, and then we are revived by the hero's return from death.

This is the magic of any well-designed amusement park thrill ride.
Space Mountain or The Great White Knuckler make the passengers feel
like they're going to die, and there's a great thrill that comes
from surviving a moment like that. This is also the trick of rites
of passage and rites of initiation into fraternities and secret
societies. The initiate is forced to taste death and experience
resurrection. You're never more alive than when you think you're
going to die.

9) THE HERO SIEZES THE SWORD.

Having survived death, beaten the dragon, slain the Minotaur, the
hero now takes possession of the treasure he's come seeking.
Sometimes it's a special weapon like a magic sword, or it may be a
token like the Grail or some elixer which can heal the wounded land.

Sometimes the "sword" is knowledge and experience that leads to
greater understanding and a reconciliation with hostile forces.

The hero may settle a conflict with his father or with his shadowy
nemesis. In RETURN OF THE JEDI, Luke is reconciled with both, as he
discovers that the dying Darth Vader is his father, and not such a
bad guy after all.

The hero may also be reconciled with a woman. Often she is the
treasure he's come to win or rescue, and there is often a love scene
or sacred marriage at this point. Women in these stories (or men if
the hero is female) tend to be SHAPE-SHIFTERS. They appear to
change in form or age, reflecting the confusing and constantly
changing aspects of the opposite sex as seen from the hero's point
of view. The hero's supreme ordeal may grant him a better
understanding of women, leading to a reconciliation with the
opposite sex.

10) THE ROAD BACK.

The hero's not out of the woods yet. Some of the best chase scenes
come at this point, as the hero is pursued by the vengeful forces
from whom he has stolen the elixir or the treasure. This is the
chase as Luke and friends escape from the Death Star, with Princess
Leia and the plans that will bring down Darth Vader.

If the hero has not yet managed to reconcile with his father or the
gods, they may come raging after him at this point. This is the
moonlight bicycle flight of Elliott and E.T. as they escape from
"Keys" (Peter Coyote), a force representing governmental authority.
By the end of the movie, Keys and Elliott have been reconciled, and
it even looks like Keys will end up as Elliott's father. (The script
not the final cut, guys).

11) RESURRECTION.

The hero emerges from the special world, transformed by his
experience. There is often a replay here of the mock
death-and-rebirth of stage 8, as the hero once again faces death and
survives. Each ordeal wins him new command over the Force. He is
transformed into a new being by his experience.

12) RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR.

The hero comes back to his ordinary world, but his adventure would
be meaningless unless he brought back the elixir, treasure, or some
lesson from the special world. Sometimes it's just knowledge or
experience, but unless he comes back with the exlixir or some boon
to mankind, he's doomed to repeat the adventure until he does. Many
comedies use this ending, as a foolish character refuses to learn
his lesson and embarks on the same folly that got him in trouble in
the first place.

Sometimes the boon is treasure won on the quest, or love, or just
the knowledge that the special world exists and can be survived.
Sometimes it's just coming home with a good story to tell.

Be, Belt, Line

2010-02-20T18:37:00.000-08:00

T,he recent beltline installation
some of my work
alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440520690906649586" />

I improved a muraling effort or two

We Ape On

2010-02-19T17:10:00.000-08:00

My Weapon of Choice

witch me this spring

2010-02-14T10:00:00.001-08:00

Im Here Im HERE Im HEre I am Here

tall against the rain

2010-02-14T09:54:00.000-08:00

Feeling it coming in the air,
Hear the screams from everywhere,
I'm addicted to thrill,
Its a dangerous love affair,
Can't be scared when nickels down,
Got a problem tell me now,
Only thing thats on my mind is who gon run this town tonight,
Who gon run this town tonite,
We gon run this town!

Life's a game and but its not fair,
I break the rules so I don't care,
So I keep doing my own thing,
Walking tall against the rain,
Victory's within the mile,
Almost there don't give up now,
Only thing thats on my mind is who's gon run this town tonight,
Heeeeey, heeeey, heeeey
Who's gon run this town tonite!

Learning my own rules is the most dangerous love affair.

Pop goes my weasel

2010-02-12T17:44:00.000-08:00

Active Imagination:
I wanted to take some moment to help us enter into imagination as active. In our book we come across the words “meditative imagery”, this “process calls for clearing the mind and concentrating intensely, so that inner images can be activated”. I am at odds with the words “concentrating intensely,” as they may denote only an active searching for images, where I see my role these days with more passivity. However, some recent reading lead me to Parker, Horton, & Shelton (1996) who note “...the vital role that symbolism plays in perception.” The authors even go as far as to offer the “...perspective that the universe is made up of stories rather than atoms” and suggest, “Myth and ritual are the vehicles through which the value-impregnated beliefs and ideas that we live by, and live for, are preserve and transmitted.” Now that gets us a closer to the mythological proportion of active imagination.
During the day I might notice myself needing a breather, caught up in trans like thoughts, or a hint of intuition. I might pause (if I have the time) and slow down into a more broadened awareness. Entering into what we often see described as the meditative space, I position in comfort and close my eyes. Once I have found silence in a blank mind, I ask and allow for images to come to me. This can take a little bit of initial seeing and returning to the blank silence.
After a few cycles, I might have an image that keeps coming to me or one that feels it has something to tell me. Focusing in on the image(s) I take some time describing it. What are its colors, size, its it familiar or abstract, close or far, scary or comforting? Just taking a little bit of time to get into the mode and space of the imaginal.
Sometimes the image starts to change on its own, at other times I ask that it start to move and shift. Asking questions like: Whats surrounding are you in? Whats are props that seem fitting? How would you move? How do you stand in relation to your environment? Burst of energy unfold from within me, and I get to view the few slides of a film.

This started years ago when I came into relation with my's-elf as an elf. It was merely a day dream or some myth I felt a living connection to. I pretended it was a parallel universe I lived alongside, at times even thinking maybe it was just past lives of when I lived in the trees, making my own clothing, and living alongside the forest. In recent discussions with Tobin I have come to see Loravyn as more of a spirit guide. A projection fantasy I tap into in Order to relate to this dimension.
Maybe you could try seeing yourself as a mythological character that you have identified with. Movies, comics, and books are great places to start. Take a few moments, close your eyes, and filter through some of the imagery. Expand to think about props, setting, and journey through the lens of mythological proportions. Work to activate your imagery till it takes on a force of its own, you stop talking and start watching. Here you can hear echos of natures deeper than our own. Floating above water our imagination becomes active, and we open the door into the deeper levels of our icebergs. Possibly into the collective ocean that holds us all.

acitive imagination

2010-02-12T12:47:00.000-08:00

I
have,
to keep.
doing!
T;his breathing

thing

is me of left is that all

2010-02-11T23:01:00.000-08:00

all that is left of me is

Jung I am

2010-02-10T18:42:00.001-08:00

Larry in this past Tuesday class mentioned the idea of bringing our personal into the theory. This was a notion that has been on my mind. I find often when I come to write here on the blackboard, and as I read other post and start to write mine, I drift off into my intra-world. As I have been reading these theories I find myself working in an intrapsychic space, and at times with my interpsychic interactions. The work we do in and around class on one hand effects the way I practice in the world, and on another effects the practice going on inside of me; yet, they're are deeply interwoven. When there is so much to be done, said, and felt in my own complexes, it feels hard to bracket them when I write a post. My mind wants to spend its energy shifting the inner experience of these theories versus coming to know them in a way that is for us all (general). Asking us to thread our personal experience with these strings of theories, to me, seems to be a good step toward letting them into our way of practicing. A practice that cycles between intra and inter realms.
It is on one hand Freud's intrapsychic conflict with holding power that won't fully let him experience interpersonally with Jung in the letters. It can also be said that it is Jung's struggle with the old wise man Freud that for years didn't allow him to find a continual balancing between a paradoxical power Freud had over him. Freud to Jung, seemed often to be held in very high esteem or deemed as a fraud. Jung's theory talks about the role of balance in between an ever flipping paradox (enantiodromia). It seems to me, Jung had a hard time allowing Freud to be a mix of both, and we could have a conversation about the role of Jung's father at the center of this conflict which became a complex.
Hmm, I am noticing I choose to write on theory and somehow skipped over my thoughts on my intra-personal experience with the theories. The more I let you the reader know about my inner-process (both intra and inter psychic), the more I allow it to enter into the conscious world. In this, the more real and “stuck” it feels to become. If I let you in on my struggles than my persona starts to come closer to who I really am (and thats a scary thing). Here, I think it is important to discuss the process of my experience instead of the content as Larry reminded us in class. I think trying to explain my process with the vocabulary of the current theory will be most beneficial.
The only way I can find a practical way to merge the forces my personal struggle and conveying it through Jungian theory is to hone in on one aspect to start with; otherwise the task seems impossible. Persona is defined in our book as, “the public face of and individual in society.” This feels like the projection of my super ego onto the interpsychic world. A mask I try to have others see me in. Regardless of what my face is determined to be in our society, I can sit here and state that my intra-experience of self is very different. I experience myself as wrong, beyond imperfect, and fucked up. While the mask I show people hides most of this. The experience has natural ebb and flows; however, I feel a large difference between persona and lived felt experience. In wondering why this is, I come to the word individuation. A process of reclaiming undeveloped aspects of myself (that which sits between persona and real experienced self). My persona is what I want to be, some spiritually more perfect being, an unattainable mask I wear to hide the undeveloped sides of me. When I meet with my persona, I only realize how unlike it I really am. This at times for me can further the separation in making both sides grow in opposite directions. However, when I stop for a moment in acceptance of the two sides as separate, something else starts to happen. I start to see the two more clearly with a lens that understands the two aren't supposed to be aligned. In this moment of acceptance, I am able to see more clearly the unrealistic “perfect” persona I try to wear and the imperfect real me. When I enter into this relationship acknowledged the opposing nature to the two sided beast, I see them more clearly and interact with them differently.
When I enter into acceptance of opposites alongside Jung's theory I can see the content arenas of myself that are in need of reclaiming. Instead of in fear running away from both sides, and making both further, I slowly walk towards them. As our book describes I come into, “acceptance of the more negative parts of one's personality and adoption of an ethical, though individual, response to them.”
In Jung's theory I see heavily the great original mythology of the paradox. His work was to help us interact with this infinite paradoxical unfolding. Freud helped us to see the original power. Jung helps us to see the other side of the coin.
In finishing this post, I sit here and read it over. My being wants to say I should of done it this way more..no no, this way more. But I stop, I listen, and I hear that it arrived somewhere in between theory and personal experience of theory.

I return to this post hours later; In Order to addjust and add a few more words. Reading over the past paragraphs, I feel a sensing of the known. Something in what I wrote relates to me. The content has shifted since I wrote it last, and the process is a cycle I've patterned before. Freud named these cycles conflict and Jung complexes. Repeating patterns of process with different content.

soul hole

2010-01-30T23:04:00.000-08:00

whole soul

OR,I-ON

2010-01-28T18:51:00.000-08:00

In study two:

one, two , three

2010-01-25T20:32:00.000-08:00

t,He light shines behind me. e man-in ating my wings. I have much to grow, and am learning to love the one I am.

and so much in between

2010-01-25T20:24:00.000-08:00

the beginging

the end
a

Hare

2010-01-22T10:53:00.000-08:00

Bucky did a practice round on my hair for the Back Pockets show.

A winter's tale

2010-01-21T13:35:00.000-08:00

How is grows in winter.

Seedums, Succulents, and Echevarria:

Cabbage and Lavender

Bugged and Bleeding

And Inside:

Lastly, my self portrait for Gestalt, part two will come at the end of the semester

times min,using

2010-01-18T15:25:00.001-08:00

I must honor my hours in life before I can return here for larger posting.

spectrum shapes color

2010-01-10T13:09:00.001-08:00

Not-thing finishes out on one side or the other of the spectrum.
If a thing has a life lived, then arriving at its end was a process on the spectrum.

shapes spectrum color

2010-01-06T16:25:00.000-08:00

The knight has just begun. My body is my ruler. My mind is the creator.

Another night has risen in the same box. The same ruler and creator. Tonight, I will be painting faces. I will call a tribe to gather in colors for the knight's journey. To the sounds of Back Pockets.

Orion

A Spirit is Being-ining

2010-01-04T20:14:00.000-08:00

Each semester, the start of the courses I am training in start to mold a direction I will travel. The current under my wings this Spring sum-ester is heavy. I am taking Theoretical Approaches to Counseling with a man who never gives an answer, only a question. Clinical Assessment with a poet who understands the secret language of objects. and Gestalt with the Guru I took Self-Actualization(ing) with. For the first time, all my classes are in the couch room.

Gestalt:
Gestalt therapy focuses more on process (what is happening) than content (what is being discussed). The emphasis is on what is being done, thought and felt at the moment rather than on what was, might be, could be, or should be.

Gestalt therapy is a method of awareness, by which perceiving, feeling, and acting are understood to be separate from interpreting, explaining and judging using old attitudes. This distinction between direct experience and indirect or secondary interpretation is developed in the process of therapy. The client learns to become aware of what they are doing psychologically and how they can change it. By becoming aware of and transforming their process they develop self acceptance and the ability to experience more in the "now" without so much interference from baggage of the past.

The objective of Gestalt therapy, in addition to helping the client overcome symptoms, is to enable him or her to become more fully and creatively alive and to be free from the blocks and unfinished issues that may diminish optimum satisfaction, fulfillment, and growth. Thus, it falls in the category of humanistic psychotherapies.

paper gansta

2010-01-03T16:45:00.001-08:00

constantly emotions can be so strong you can feel them in your body. At times we pulse, vibrate, and feel pressure in and on our bodies. These are my ques to see what I am thinking. Pausing to just listen for a minute. I am resolute in getting to know better, the thoughts that make my body feel. I have so much more to say

Kale doesn't belong in the garden

2009-12-28T00:23:00.000-08:00

Lights of many a kind

2009-12-23T16:18:00.000-08:00

Terrariums for some merry Faeries.

Mouse

Brit

Atlas

Empress

Caboose

Fire Angel

Puddles

Chilly is soon to come.

A Saturnalia Celebration whos host organism is living in the forest.

The setting

Soon I will post the Fall happenings of Winston Botanical Gardens.

My Ceramics Final,y

2009-12-06T19:13:00.000-08:00

12-1-2009

Imagine my car, backed into the woods. opened, vibrating music off the barks. The notion behind this act was to be in the mode of sculpting. Forming my existence was the space I felt as visceral. The title of the independent study was The Process Between Creation and Expression. Clay is a space for me that builds; the forest grows me. and in 8 (infinty) song experience I brought them into one current..and Lucky to have Chilly, the fairie! flutter around to snap shots through his own eyes. Please play this song as you look through and take your time. Sslow down your life as I did, mine in this final. Final that keeps arriving; a presence that presents.

Finding

the setting.

Opening

Steeping into a try angle of pines to med I tate.

Stepping two

out lining the try angle I tated in meds

the bucket

I have come to understand that my life card is the lovers. I am a dual sided creature.

Elven (2).

and the Alchemist (1),

spinning the wheel of fortune

the bucket.

building the first of three corners,

Arriving back after the first corner is called.

the sixth movement, backing into another corner (1) and building (2).

The bucket.

calling

buttermilk which helps m(y)oss thrive.

a third angle, of the try angle

schizophrenics drown in the same water the mystic swims in.

2009-11-24T18:53:00.000-08:00

Pi*(k)e's massacre nusery. I mean family nusery. Hay at least we represent the pagan part of trophying a tree in a symbol of mother nature in the home. or something

Crook's nursery

and I added a little

Seaing is Be-leaving

2009-11-20T18:00:00.000-08:00

Five of cups reversed:The reversed position shows recovery from regret and an acceptance of the past. Now, the person realizes the full implications of the past and appreciates the lessons he learned from the experience. He may even recognize the value of the painful experience in the broader scheme of things in preparing him for later experiences. He is ready to pick up the remaining two cups that are full of the water of emotional growth and go on.

This card is about learning to be open and starting to take risks again. It is a card of a lingering sense of regret, nostalgia and bittersweet memories, but the card itself speaks of being hopeful for the future, getting over whatever you need to get over,
and of seAing the sun peek through the clouds once again!

yours truly,

HE Art

2009-11-16T16:45:00.000-08:00

Two of the three ceramic piece I have been creating of expression exploded in the heat of the fire.

Two living pieces that represented my inner stuggles crumbled.

Only the arms and legs left. A sign of movement.

The quest has begun to blog out how these limbs can further my movement in my lives struggles.

HE stood for the side of us that can't bare how much there is to do. Wanting to just lay in his own comfort he sluths. The center of his being limp (The emasculated male).

She stood and showed her struggle. Right dead center of her limbs she present her striving. (The maculated female)

Yet, hidden she has an infection.

I have been faced with a challenge. How to now act in ways of clay that are not a building of pieces. But taking the old into new dimensions. I have the arms and legs of what they once represented, a box of wet clay, and time. One idea is to take the clay and head out to the forest in my yard. Meditate in the expression of what I need to create in my life. Stay with my process by the way of creating a ritualistic one time experience with my clay. Begin to throw the wet clay body upon the forest. Sculpting the new. I have dedicated to do this soon.

Until then please post and idea or two for me to consider. Either with the wet clay or the arms and legs of struggles past.

AAP.lication

2009-11-16T15:44:00.000-08:00

This past week I spent in Sarasota at the international institute and conference of The Academy of Psychotherapists. My second year volunteering, and my first year presenting a workshop. The themes of the conference this year were Compassion, Authenticity, and Connection. Our presentation was over three hours, opened with a Curt's meditation on accepting a radically formed compassion towards us. Followed by Lauren's request for us to journal in the authentic from a space of free association. After the bathroom break I lead 3 rounds of guided twilight imagery meditation with 6 round of muraling. The process of what we created in that room was then taken in upon a dock. I felt the universe surround me on the edge of this wood. The stars were a foot step away, a simple splash.

i was metallic green

our room was double glass up up stairs

Connection, Authenticity, and Compassion

The group of us.

After the Dance.

S(even)

2009-11-07T19:10:00.000-08:00

I've pulled the Chariot. There is a fool to be found.

I am getting closer

2009-11-03T19:30:00.000-08:00

clips of a mid term,
3. “Okay I hear your point but, I think what you call ‘suffering’ is just another way of being human,” she continues. So I went on to inform her, “again I agree, it is one way of being among the many, but I hear you saying it is just another way of being. I hear you saying it as if it isn’t any more important or worth taking a deeper look at. If we are as a human race to just say.."Oh suffering, yeah we all do it, so let’s just say that is the way it is and be happy with it." I would have to point out a few fundamental things we are going to overlook. Do we want to just be a society of suffering, or do we want to work towards integrating suffering in a way that understands why we suffer? There are different ways to suffer, and if we just accept it as a way of being, we over look this fact. This leaves us less room to study and come to understand suffering. Already as a culture we are able to see some people suffer because of forces they create (inner desires) and some because of the world we are in (collective desires). Knowing whether we can control a certain kind of suffering changes the way we react to it.
If we take it in as just a way of being, then how will we know (or would we at all) those who are suffering so much that being isn’t worth it. Suffering can be so evasive that it hinders life to a point of paralysis and even death. I am not able to just say that is the way of life. We need to be able to say suffering is one way of life, but also a way of (towards) death. I believe we need to be able to isolate the way of sufferings in order to learn what types are for our benefit and which have gone so far that they are not longer willing one to be. In this, not all ways of suffering are a way of being. Like I said, some are a way of (towards) death. If certain suffering makes life unbearable, I have a hard time as accepting it all as just a way of being.
In our time suffering is pervasive and present. If we are to accept it, we forget why it is there. Suffering first comes when we make choices. Because we choose we suffer. Suffering helps us to learn what choices to make, as well as which ones not to make (when to avoid choosing at all). Suffering commonly points in the way of anxiety, guilt, shame, and other emotions of something we are doing that is not in alignment with our way of being. For us to say it is just another way of being is to overlook the importance and voice suffering has. Suffering for me is not just another way of being, but might be one of the most important ways of being.”

and ANOTHER
7. “Our suffering _________ a new relationship with life.”
~compost, rebirths, perceives, scars (in that we can hate or love a scar), complexes, transmutates,
The idea of “Our suffering compost a new relationship with life,” is a metaphor that rings true to my ways of being. In the world of composting, what you put in it is what you get out with time. In the ideal world, you put in a bunch of organic green and brown matter, it breaks down with the help of the sun (heat), and you end up with a highly rich and nutritious soil. If you have too much of one or the other it takes longer to break down. If you put in “fake” or not real objects such as plastic, then they can’t break down for a long time. If you fill your compost pile with to heavy of objects, such as metals they won’t break without extremely heavy heat. When composting you also need help from the other creatures of the Earth, such as worms, rolley-polleys, and centipedes. However, maggots are a sign of too much water, and not enough sun/heat.
If you have a plant that is suffering and you want to see it grow a new relationship with life, make some compost. Take a few damaged leaves off of it, cutting it back a little. Add to it some of your old pile of compost, here your Earthly friends and past microorganisms already exist and can help break it down. Don’t forget you need to add some brown to your rotting green, maybe some of your class notes might help. Be careful you don’t add any plastic, metals, or work too wet. Then, giving it some time and light to break down will leave you with a nutritious substance. When you return this matter to the root of your plant, you will see a new relationship with life grow towards the Sun.

<3 O's

2009-11-03T19:26:00.000-08:00

---->This image Chilly comic'd of the second <3 circle.

And, this is A little something I wrote in class online discussion about my recent heArt circles with the RAdical FAiries.

I can't recall if I actually said this out loud in class or just repeated it many times in my head. I have been wanting to talk about our outside groups. I fear bringing this up because I don't want to put those on the spot who haven't "done one of their six yet," or make them feel like I am judging them. I have been in situations where it just wasn't right to do a class assignment, and I heavily support you. I also support pushing the guidelines a little in order to satisfy the "request or maybe recommendation" while getting something that is good for you. (this is in a whispering voice..If you need to call together a family dinner and call it group, as long as you went in with some group intentions and thoughts. I think this is justifiable. Especially, if this meeting would of never happened without Larry's request. I feel that having one or three dinners versus not doing the request is well worth not fitting into the "guidelines." Part of me is saying, go ahead, fudge a little. If you tried to follow the guidelines, and they don't fit your situation, than it is better to adjust the guidelines to fit and make a move towards action. I might even say this about ethics.)

Back on my note about talking about our outside groups in class. I also, don't want to seem un-empathetic in saying I am getting gifts from my out of class group while others are having trouble engaging.

I will have my third session tomorrow night, and I am sitting here thinking well this is going good; but what should I be doing in this third session. I have a feeling this assignment isn't about being in the moment only.

To tell a little or maybe a lot of my group. It started with three radical fairies (a self-identified group of individuals, whom choose not to categorize their sexuality [as straight, gay, bi, or beyond] and are trying to understand the lines of intimacy and sexuality beyond what has been created in a religious man and woman monogamous love history [a history that is better not even seen as religious man woman blah blah, but as seen as history, so that we can see what love is saying/wanting in our current world order]. Of coarse this means many things to the different fairies, and I am sure just like all humans some ways are not agreeable to me. So this might be how the term radical came about. Oh, and usually we are seen as more willing to show our bonds through touching. Commonly, fairies sit closer, place hands on shoulders to show kinship, and hug for long times.

Now as to Fairie, we the radical fairies usually are found dressings, homing, and communicating differently than your average human. I like to identify with the word fairie since there is a sense of mythology around the way we/ I live our lives. I could spend much more time on how we like to sustain ourselves through solar power, growing our own food, staying close to the trees, and living in community settings across the US and even world together, but back to my meetings.

So we had the first with four of us. Than, I caught wind of having a whole Atlantian fairie opened heart circle (For those of you who don't know about it, a heart circle is a round-robin style conversation/theraputic session where you are given open and warm space to let us know what is happening in your life. It will be a calm and tranquil space for us to deepen our bonds and come together as the friends, family and faeries that we are. It is also not common to respond to others, as you are giving a space of pure acceptance, therefore response might represent thinking while others are speaking "and even judgement")

GOSH, I feel I have said so much and yet nothing about my experience. So before over 25 Atlantian fairies went to the Short Mountain Sanctuary (literally 1/3 of a mountain owned by fairies in Tennessee) for the two week Fall Gathering, 8 of us met for a heart circle. The intention (sense of what should be discussed till it is talked out then we have more free space at the end) of the circle was to discuss fear, thoughts, expectations, and the like about going to the mountain.

Tomorrow, we will be having up to 15 show and I am thinking, what am I suppose to be engaging in for class? I am being asked to open my heart in listening and not responding (which is so hard, and not like many groups we talk of). There is also not a facilitator, only group members. For the first session a lot of the how to questions before the meeting were turned to me (since I am a master in a psychology program? since I was one of the three who got things going?, because they trust me? because I am seen as a facilitator prior to?), where as I just said ask the group. The intention of this meeting is to discuss how the mountain was, fears, guilt, celebrations, lessons, love and the like. Then, like i mentioned we have more open free time, sometimes even stopping use of the talking stick by the end.

(Stepping into the NOW) I am scared because I just gave you the shortest over view of what a Radical Fairie is that I have ever gave..and it is so commonly mis-interpreted and judged as a gay sex thing. Even by those who I have spent multiple occasions explaining it to. I wonder of those of you who will wikipedia it, knowing what a joke their interpretation is. If you really want to know what a radical fairies is, look at me, not an image in your head.

Also in the now, I feel drained of all I have said, but feel I haven't even said many of the things I intended when I started this post. In this I ask for your questions, thoughts, and comments. So that I can return to this post with more energy next time.
And try imagining yourself in a group session where your role is to only listen, other than expressing from the heart when you want to talk. What does this make you feel?
Reply

Take a deep breath and go slowly (The hunter's moon)

2009-11-03T18:48:00.000-08:00

Health, an ever changing direction (space) in the temporal (time). Something that from the starts requires an other, something different from oneself. The original paradox which first gave life to time and space (our uni-verse).
If I want to be able to define health, I need to turn to the space I am in, the present. Here I ask what is health. Right away, I can see that at different times it has been different things. Then I ask myself, what is health in this present time only. Here I start to see multiple directions (space) of health, even contradictory statements.
The definition of health, for me, can only come from this living paradox. I say living because both sides are growing. Maybe a better word here is expanding or moving. The paradox is almost always living; I say almost because for the “disordered” there is a sense of the paradox closing and dying. The present space in which I hold the past and the future is rarely ever the same. Each time I bring the present into a moment of trying to answer what is health (even healthy), the answer is different. Sometimes even radically different or having multiple answers at once. So when I am trying to define health, I get stuck in that it has meant almost everything to me at one time or another. How can I place a moral judgment on what is healthy?
John Rowan in Ordinary Ecstasy, talking about what John Kekes says on morality states, “there are three basic attitudes to morality: monism (the one big truth or the one big ordering of truth); relativism (the proliferation of many little truths, each good in some area or other); and pluralism, where we allow for more than one truth, but want to know precisely how the various truths relate and make sense in relation to one another.” Relativism might say there is one right answer to every situation; where pluralism can say, there might be more than one right answer to any one situation.
If we find anything that feels like the answer to the question of what is health; then you must feel there are no more questions. I have a feeling we're no where close to the one monistic definition of health. If we feel that there are many little truth, thus all of our truths about health are right in some area or other then this is relativism. If we go beyond this and feel all of our answers are right to the same one question, then we are seeing moral judgment with pluralism.
Now that I have helped myself to understand morality a little more, I might be closer to another definition of health. It is this act of having many different, and even the freedom to create a new definition of health that is most healthiest.
Health is a way of being, that stands in a pluralistic relation to the paradox of time and space. When I want to know (morally judge) based on time, I am ultimately asking how is my present in relation to past and future. When I stand on the other side and want to know (morally judge) based on space, I am ultimately asking how is my present in relation to the direction of my current. The more options and room to create (freedom) we have, the more time and space expand, the more our universe becomes. Defining health can be a form of pluralism. The expansion of our truths of health, and the freedom to create more, is a way of being that requires us to hold more potentialities towards health while still creating other ones.
I don't have a definition of health, but many of them at the same time, even in the same situation or space. I won't say this is health, but these are healthy. I am also willing to read your definitions and create them as my own and help you to have one more.

2:4

2009-10-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

Vixen: Do you have glasses?
Unicorn: Next to the stairs.
V: to use them to get up in heights?
U: Next to the pictureframe.
V: oh, the one of the stars?
U: The one behind you.
V: I see it behind you too
U: Where are you?
V: Only asking questions are we?
U: Why are you?
V: I am not sure why I am.
U: break in the page // we won't let us...?
V: Let us Be // we will let us!
U: Dance Dance Dance (omg this blog post...)
V: What blog Post? Am I asking again?
U:girl we on blogger...
V: Who the vixen and the Unicorn or US?
U:Look around....
V:(swish, swish)
U:Splishy Splashy get those dirty shirtys clean.
V: But I am just his daughter, walking down an icy grave.
U:Where are you going miss sassy? Are you off to visit your grandmother?
V:Every body just hold hands. They don't come back? And I went to check on the tombstone. Mother of the grand yard
U: Yard over the ocean, yeard over the sea, you wont be a yard over me.
V:ya heard, the yard over there is a ocean you sea.
U: Sea before you in back make sure not to krack the back!?
V: it is in the back of your of seeing that makes sure before a kracking.
U: Krack over the star and into the basics.
V: Down the stairs and again with the picture frames!
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How fast can a big ant pile eat to the skeletal.

2009-10-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

We will start with this. Both the sacred and the deserving. Gathered fur.

And for the Fit:

Muh Pimp Ride:

It is hard not to Dissociate what has happened here.

I was told, "Your one of those who less is more"

2009-10-14T15:44:00.000-07:00

-So my next post for class is either on Dissociative Disorders or OCD. I mean how could I not choose Dissociative d/o? Well, I just can't

-I can't remember the last time I didn't have to pack a bag for the weekend. I am over it!

-Always has so much time to get ready for the night then is rushing into the shower and then has to throw on his make-up (I just made a fb slip..it is as if "Bryan C. Crook is" will randomly come before this last sentence as on fb.)

_ is trying things a little differently

Rooting, stemming, can't bloomin' in wintah.

2009-10-13T18:45:00.000-07:00

Brothers in other times.

Still Growing

Here are pictures of my test pieces before they were fired. I found them still on the shelf.

Bue-cannon

Gone with the wind, the novel. A mural by "escapeacritter.com"

Blessed B

2009-10-07T17:02:00.000-07:00

the may pole

What I got from the mountain

His name is the Temple, soon mushrooms will march from his insides to claim the top of his head.
I started testing some colors..lots of oxides and carbonates. some titanium, bone ash, toads belly, cobalt, magnesium..and my personal favorite rutile. and a masonry stain or two. I didn't take any pics of the tiles before hand, but ill have some from after.

I have to think these things up

2009-10-07T16:57:00.000-07:00

I am skipping a week on posting my work for Psychopathology and Health, due to not feeling what I wrote. However, The Humanistic, Existential, Transpersonal week woke me to the right.

Bryan C. Crook

From two written sources our class, and outside discussion, I have been working with some ideas on this weeks topic. Although, I am going to draw some imaginary lines that are not complex enough to stand as a theory, I do believe that they open us up to some fascinating ideas. In reading this paper I ask you to try to let you mind wander, find your own thoughts on top (under, within, and deeper than) of mine.
Recently I have been reading a paper of Jim Dillon's entitled The Primal Vision: The Psychological Effects of Creation Myth. Among many themes in the paper he is expressing a need for us not to forget the affirmative hero, due in part because our time commonly takes up the transcendent hero. “The affirmative hero acts to reinsitute or “affirm” the original order that was disturbed by the disordering event.” This is a hero in a myth that is trying to return the world or universe to the order it had before it went haywire. One can see this example in a hero that is trying to restore what was held before Adam and Eve ate the apple. I will also open the question of could this be a “Humanistic” hero. “The transcendent hero ushers in another order completely, one which transcends the primal vision from which he or she initially came.” A hero in this order might understand we can't go back to what we once had and thus there is a need to try to create a new order in the world/universe. This type of hero might seem post-modern in some light. Even, possibly a “Transpersonal” hero. For me, Jim is not saying one or the other, but both hero myths should be held. The “Existential” hero might be the person in between that is holding both, or one, and maybe even neither.
To take this to a deeper level for me, I see the affirmative hero as trying to establish what was originally there (pre-birth) and the transcendent hero as trying to establish what could be there (death). I think in our time it is more often one takes up the transcendent hero. Part of this, is because were are in existence, not pre-birth and from this we know there is a need to create our life towards something; so that something is there and not chaos in the end. Just like the transcendent hero, we are trying to create a sum of things so that by death we have a new order not chaos. Jim might say, if we forget the affirmative hero, “then the absence of myth in modern life or its neutering through dymythologization would have rather serious psychological consequences.” However, as Jim has inspired me to say, if we forget that we also came from chaos (the unknown) than we are missing great knowledge about how to create order for where we are going. Too many of us fear the nothingness and chaos after life without remembering there was a nothingness before life. This nothingness that exist before doesn't feel like chaos. It feels like there is order. It is a nothingness that leads to birth, that has potentiality, that has a sense making to it. What can we learn about being a transcendental hero, when we don't forget that we believe in the affirmative hero?
Now to a thought made articulate by Irving Yalom's The Schopenhauer Cure. Any great philosopher can tell you there can't be two different kinds of nothingness, that if you have two one must be something and the other possibly no-thing. Yalom writes that Nabokov's memoir Speak, Memory describe life as “a spark between two identical pools of darkness, the darkness before we were born and the darkness after we die.” What I am trying to expand here is that, we too easily put all our energy to try to create order in our lives for the after death (even the order we try to create in life is in light that we want it before the nothingness of after death, thus “for” the after death). But if we are able to understand that there was once order in the nothingness pre-life, what can this give to the nothingness we fear of after life? Why can we fear one and hold the other as beauty, when from where we stand as alive they are the same nothingness? What happens to the heros who spend all their energy creating order for death, when they stop to remember there was order before?
To tie up some loose knots I have in my head, I want to make this all a little more layered. In all that I have said there are three types of energies. 1. The trying to affirm a sense or order that was prior to being born, we all share, and that can still flourish in living environments. 2. The trying to transcend a sense of order now so that when we die we have order 3. The existence that allows for 1. or 2. to be present.
1. Humanistic Psychology
2. Transpersonal Psychology
3. Existential Psychology
I have so much to say at this point, but am left with little that is articulate just yet. I just hope I've tilled the dirt in you and planted some seeds.
My last quirky thought is I am not able to cite Jim's article because it is not yet published. It is not yet born. It doesn't mean that it isn't there, it just exist in its potentiality waiting to be born into (academic) existence.

and for my quest expert-ship I will be presenting:

a mix of career, parenting, and identity issues. some sort of personality disorder..but I don't have to fight what she had just present a "rare butterfly to the class"

the need to rain -dance

2009-09-20T15:08:00.000-07:00

There has been constant rain.
However,
I am painting it.

Image of one prof. and her daught at Fall Gathering I hosted for my program and those within.

lemon over it

2009-09-18T18:21:00.000-07:00

Friends:

My Friend Hawkins in his advanced hyper-space mobile.

Me in my new down to earth mobile.

GA(w)D, I am so Meta

2009-09-13T17:59:00.001-07:00

I am not sure of many things these days. I have reached the continuing idea that I can not live without guilt as long as I owe money. This is an idea I know I can take up differently, but haven't found a way that correspondingly helps me to not accrue heavy amounts of debt while not feeling the guilt. This weight pushes me away from school. I can't just be one who finds commonplace in the idea that many students just accrue debt in order to get a degree. The heavy emotions I have tint all things that make money.

Publication I am currently not working on: The General Anxiety Disorder: Career

Evolutionarily Speaking

2009-08-26T15:36:00.000-07:00

Here are the first two response papers for Psychopathology and Health in a particular Order.

Bryan C. Crook
Recently, I have been reading Dirt, a book written by William Bryant Logan. This book discusses that evolution's central theme is the separation from inside to outside.
“One morning in the Archean Era, an assembly of chemical compounds, possibly clay, obeying some divine suggestion, threw an envelope around itself and began to live. It now had an inside and an outside”
Okay, now let that brew for a minute while we go swimming in another source and idea.

A new study by Dr. Steve Dorus done at the University of Bath in England provides evidence that supports the theory that schizophrenia risk is, in part, a maladaptive by-product, or side effect, of adaptive changes during human evolution. “It also provides genetic evidence consistent with the long-standing theory that schizophrenia represents, in part, a maladaptive by-product of adaptive changes during human evolution - to do with aspects of creativity, language, and human cognition.” I am seeing this as saying schizophrenia evolutionarily came along with some of the highest aspects of human functioning.
To get directly to one point, if evolution is trying to separate (distinguish?) us from the world we live on, and a theme of schizophrenia is to enter into our own world through delusions and hallucinations. Then, are the symptoms of the “disorder” what evolution is trying to do? The act of creating our own world seems to me, to be an ideal of evolution. I say this because, separating from the world is achieved in its most radical sense when we enter into our own world (one is so separated from the environment that they live in another world). Having the evolutionary ability to separate so much from this physical world and enter into “our own world” would give one the possibility to create a world without struggle and suffering. A true account of separation from our Earth I would say.
Okay Bryan, before you go off the deep end, reel it in.
I am not saying that evolution wanted to sabotage us by birthing individuals who around their late teens and early twenties break so far from this world that they can't sustain life's needs (eating, shelter, and the likes). I am looking at it more like a magical gift that all received with higher cognitive functioning, which enables us access a world inside our heads. Yes, some on the spectrum of psychoses get too much of the gift; but what of those who have the ability (all of us who can create?) to enter their own world through hallucinations and even delusions. Backing away from looking at psychoses (schizophrenia) as a disorder and more as a gift (that some get too much of) is where I am headed.
Floating on the dock in the middle of a lake, I stare out into the trees. At some of these times I find that capacity to hallucinate. I can't necessarily control what I see, but I see things. As for delusions, yeah I believe I am an elf, at times I believe I can save the world, and I constantly think I have AIDS even if I just finished getting tested and haven't had any sexual activity. All delusions?
The medical model so often studies the “broken,” leaving evolutionary gifts such as anxiety, hallucinations, delusions, and other symptoms as an expression of sharp glass. A warning of something dangerous, deadly, disgusting, and Broken! This allows the gifts of evolution to attach to fear, fear they may brake us. The whole approach of the medical model (and most the others of psychopathology) in the act of studying “broken brains” tints its findings with fear. What would happen if we looked at all psychopathologies as gifts gone too far or not opened properly?
The biological view point of evolution declares of coarse you'll have those that are too gifted to live, but it be a lot less if you heard what the actions (symptoms) were saying other than pointing to broken. Yes, there is patterns to be read in your genes; but do not forget your gift of the cognitive mind, which also has patterns to be studied. Our gifts of evolution (hallucinations, anxiety, compulsions...) in our wiring are expressive actions given to us by evolution that remind us, we are cognitive. Symptoms are not meant to be completely reduced to wiring, for we are the electricity that runs through it.We beyond wiring can create. We give the symptoms meaning as much as they come with them in hand. We hallucinate a world we live in and at times don't live in. Have delusions of a better, and at times worse place. Have anxiety for reasons to be thought about. The gifts of nature in the medical model we have created, are to commonly looked at as wiring without energy and/or representing broken. I choose to see a different world, I see and hear things they don't, and I'm not broken.

Bryan C. Crook
Ancillary One
Drawing the Line
From the moment we opened this subject in the classroom I heard the question, “Where is the line?” This is not just asking the line between psychopathology and health, but also of suffering (which I don't find to be mutually exclusive). My source is a song written by Bjork called, Where is the Line?. In order to make this about one page, I will put more emphasis in discussing demarcation on the spectrum of psychopathology and health and wrap up with some thoughts on how this effects suffering. Since I will be breaking the song down through my critique and I can't say that there is a directly available summary beyond my own understanding of the lyrics, I will spend more time critiquing from my own read of the song than summarizing an external meaning.
From the first few lines of lyrics Bjork states,
“My purse wide open
you ask again
I see the crime
and cash into accounts
everywhere.”
This stanza to me hold two points worth discussing. “My purse wide open,” can represent the stance of the American people on clinical related issues. Although we live in a democracy we stand open to the decisions made by the large parties. Most major clinical issues are “lined” by a large other; commonly, the face of the liner is the APA (American Psychological Association). Beyond this, we can see “crime and cash into accounts everywhere.” Whether this is psychologists/counselors, APA, universities, health services or insurance/pharmaceutical companies, money stands as a determining factor in where the line goes. Crime is a broad word but can represent anything that is not true to its subject matter, such as the rigid lines of the DSM upon psychopathology. I start with this statement because it effects the public in a general way. To some degree we aren't in control of the “big” lines that the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) outlines and we stand purse open to the clinical field.
A topic I brought up in class, was that we all have a degree of not maladaptive neurotic and psychotic elements in our own lives. This can be with those around us and within ourselves. When a line is rigid such as the DSM makes them, we lose the meaning or what the act is saying. Your neurotic compulsion around sex might not just mean your obsessive-compulsive if your meet the criteria, it might be saying more that the categorical nature of the DSM about your relation to sexuality. Bjork states,
“I am elastic
I want to go out of my way for you
I want to help
help you.”
The big lines that are set by APA in the DSM are bands that hold together concepts. On a more personal level, we are left to recognize and learn from the lines set by society (APA on psychopathology) but have the capacity to be elastic within them. In this light, to take the bands society creates and to be elastic with them is to make them rubbery and bendable. Here the lines set on health by society become rubber-bands, still having walls, but that are now seen as elastic because we can be. For me, Bjork's lyrics are proposing that there are lines set down in ink that are full of cash and crime. However, we are elastic and able to shape our own concept of these lines bending them at our will.
Finally, we want to “help, help you,” representing (for me) that one who is elastic can see the rigid lines of the DSM and the flexible lines that exist in experience, created for our lived-world and by other for theirs. At once, there is almost three bands, some more elastic than others existing layered on top of each other. The helping is the act of being more authentic with the lines of demarcation and trying to do what is for the person (whether yourself or and other). I like to think of this “wanting to help” as a (Humanistic?) helping that doesn't place rigid judgment on the ends of the psychopathology vs. health spectrum. It is more about the capacity to see layers of lines (society, personal, other's) and to be elastic within them all; in this, help is seen as temporally justified no matter the direction on the spectrum.
We are left here with what I think is most important, the act of being elastic while demarcating. Holding lines as rubber-bands is a perpetual act, while setting lines is necessary in the temporal. Bjork bellows out,
“I'm elastic for you
but enough is enough
Where is the line with you
where -- is the line with you.”
When the song is looked at in light of one moment questioning the demarcation of health, we are to ask in that moment, “Where is the line with you.” You is not the other we are trying to “help,” you as the butterfly (the lived experience, whether yours or someone's else in the context of our society). When a butterfly lands in the palm of your hand (even the butterfly of your own story), we are left to demarcate within the elastic three rubber-bands I mentioned –society' s, your own, and the other's--. To take these (and potentially more rubber-bands of “health” such as a place we are working for) and be elastic enough to create our own lines for the situation is a more authentic form of demarcation in order to decide what is “help.” It is the capacity to be elastic when there is need for demarcation that answers the question Where is the Line. The line has the capacity to be elastic itself.

Now on to suffering. There is a type of suffering that stems from the lack of capacity to be elastic. Those who only follow society's lines without questioning and establishing their own rubber-bands take a view of their life from society's eyes (which is potentially ill) and fall away from the sayings of their actions; which is the detaching of meaning, and can cause suffering. As Frankl said, suffering minus meaning is despair. On another side, those who only acknowledge society's lines of demarcation (APA, therapist, family, friends, etc.) sustain suffering for the other's around them. Those they try to “help,” actions are only stripped of saying something particular to the symptom and needed to be reduced. Thus, providing only a rigid line of health (an therefore less of it?).
In each moment we need to draw a line of demarcation we find ourselves at the end of the song. Once we draw that line the song starts over and we work to be elastic, until the temporal declares, “Enough is enough” and we need to draw a temporal line. The song in the end is about love, which in some traditions is the opposite of suffering. Bjork might have been trying to make a statement on how to love and expressed one way how not to suffer; this is, having the capacity to be elastic in questioning where is the line when loving (i.e., helping, again not as for the better determined extrinsically but as for the person in this moment).
References
Björk Guðmundsdóttir. Where is the Line?, Medulla. http://www.bjork.com/facts/lyrics/. 2004.
(click on Medulla and look for the lyrics of Where is the Line?)

molding

2009-08-20T20:43:00.000-07:00

my space i made

my pieces about halfway through today's shaping

Ginger Bug

2009-08-11T21:26:00.001-07:00

Ginger beer combustion of eight days, was about to breach the ninth. Standing in my bathroom cutting my locks, I heard an explosion. Glasses of an old Jim Bean bottle found in all four rooms surrounding the kitchen. The bubbles I saw earlier were a sign. My wild fermentation had exploded. Now, I have washed to the brink of my bed room and find myself here locked in for dry time.

Moving, and more Moving

2009-08-06T21:21:00.000-07:00

Nine of the New Students. (out of 18).

Here are some pictures of what Crissy and I did for her new place. Alice in Wonderland party on Saturday and I am going as the White Rabbit.

Here is Kimbel and Mary's (my bosses) cabin in Blue ridge.

Showarded

2009-08-04T01:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.westga.edu/psydept/index_8601.php

Got this last spring. There was supposed to be this radical picture too...

bananas for everyone.

2009-08-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

Fortunate Mistakings

2009-08-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to share the theme of this time.

I didn't even see the little fella..

My life as Edie Beale

2009-07-30T15:23:00.000-07:00

My Father's MAn CAve

Three Colored Vines of Morning Glory

Im strongly ready for school.

Training Orion

2009-07-30T14:28:00.001-07:00

This is the Forest I have been spending my Summer in. My last trip down showed me a lot of my Forest.

Morning Glow

Pool Hut

Starry Shower

Sweat Lodge

my transplants

Herb Spiral

Fences I built

Fences we grew

Gardens

Screen Porch

The boys and their base

Late night dip

Spring Lake

Stomping

Dome

Wild Fermentation Workshop

Flower Gurl

Blue Tailed Skink

And my thist

Beaded Beded

Labyrinth

Cobb Kitceh

My Tower

Build Are!

Morning swarmth

Hostel in Our Forest
On Bryan's first trip down to the Haostel in the Forest, as a volunteer in his work exchange position he had much to ponder. The little over four hour drive gave him plenty of space to process all that was in his head. The first thing on his mind was excitement in going alone. His first and last trip to the Hostel, was with three friends and only one night. Bryan looked forward to being able to start fresh with some time for the staff, forest, and guest. It felt like he was returning to a space that would heavily nourish him, while giving him the freedom to push who he was.
Bryan had been debating whether or not to take on the name Orion to those in the Hostel. He is known as this to a few different people, using it previously as a symbol. A symbol that Bryan would take on, for particular nights where he would go out alone and no one knew his name. These nights he would set a few task to accomplish. To give you an idea of what I mean, some nights he would be completely honest no matter what the questions. Often this put him in tight situations, but was worth the lessons. Commonly, boundaries and self exploration were the task on hand for Orion. When Bryan went out as Orion, he pushed through insecurities, forced lessons on himself, and found a freedom that was liberating. This was the energy he was trying to cultivate for the Hostel and decided to arrive as Orion.
The first hour of driving pasted along quickly. However, the questions of what Orion's task were particular to the Hostel was looming in the air. Orion felt that as much as he was doing this work exchange for himself, there was a strong pull to help other's through his work. The hostel is a place where people go to stop for a few nights as they travel, learn about sustainability, and get away with nature. The most common subject at the Hostel, is who are you and where are you headed. Over his time at the Hostel, Orion realized how critical this simple introduction would become to his work. In the car that day he knew he needed to be a listener. Using active listening was the first goal on his plate.
Orion thought about how we use this type of listening every day. When someone is speaking it is about quieting your on thoughts, letting go of what you “want” to say, and really hearing what the other is saying. As the weeks pasted on, and Orion returned the forest he explored the new guest and the staff that was always there. At dinner, he sat with those he didn't know and if someone was struggling he made sure to seek them out. In interacting with other's, he pushed himself to focus, to hear their story, and to not let himself hold thoughts in the back of his head that obstructed his listening. He quickly learned this isn't easy over extended periods of time, and that there were many times in other's narrative where their speaking was filled with gaps and signals that they were struggling. These were sometimes seen as pauses, murmurs, backtracking, and body movement. For Orion, this signaled a place to come back to; a place in the other's narrative that needed more time, thoughts, and processing. At times, he would return to these “gaps” in other's narratives and work to help unfold more thought into the gap with the other. As much, as Orion realized he could feel people slowly putting together their puzzle in life, he also realized how many time he told his own story. Orion started to more readily notice his own gaps, pauses, and backtracking. He noted them as gaps worth returning to in that conversation or later on his own.
It was only in Orion's first trip home from work exchange that he realized he was on to something in this Forest. The fences he built in the garden shone as an image that represented the structure he had put in place, and all that would be planted and grown in the trips to come. On the ride back he was processing through the days he had spent in the Forest and came across a few bumps in the road. Orion could feel he was going to have to make a transition from Orion to Bryan in this car trip. This left him unsettled. Why did Orion have to stay in the Forest? Two things came from this processing. First, he realized he was shifting his personality a little to much in the Forest. It was good to push himself, but he needed to be weary of when he was stepping outside the boundaries of Bryan. He wanted to be able to return to the world of Bryan and still be Orion, no matter the name. Issues of dressing, down time, and cutting off cellular/internet communication rose up in the leaving of the forest. He reminded himself that next time he drove down and prepared himself to be in the Forest, he would also need to remind himself that who he was at the forest also needed to be someone he could be outside the trees. The second idea that came from this processing is that the Hostel was the training he was going through at the Hostel should not be left in the Forest. Active listening and taking a step further in helping other unravel their narratives, could and even should practiced outside the Hostel.

Everyone from guest to the manager come to the Hostel to take from the Forest, but also have to give back to it. Orion's role as a work exchange not only meant that he had to complete five hours of work a day, but he also had to constantly be willing to help and to take on task to make things run smoothly. This provided many moments of realizing we all are in this together, and sometimes he had to follow and not lead. Most staff and work exchange stay for weeks and months at a time, they are able to get into how the Hostel works; where Orion had to often make the transition back and forth.
It was this transition that allowed Orion to learn from the microcosm community of the Hostel and bring his knowledge back to the diverse communities he exist in. As his desire grew to give to the Forest, he also felt the same for life outside the Hostel. Each time he traveled down he gathered his energy and faced the Forest, he gave who he was. Part of who we all are, involves stepping beyond what we expect to give and be; we need to keep active in our engagement with life. We step over and under our boundaries, yet most importantly need to have boundaries and to keep in mind where on the spectrum our actions are landing.
The lesson of boundaries can be as prominent in our every day lives as it is in the therapy room. Orion's experience at the Hostel taught him lessons in being aware of boundaries, and honing in on the emotional connections attached to them. There were times people communicated their boundaries, stepped over his, and didn't have strong ones. Both the lines we set-up and interact with are flexible. Again this attitude of staying aware and active listening is a way of being, that lends itself to where the lines are, and where to walk from there.
It is in this active mode that we can keep cultivating the unfolding paradoxical situations of boundaries (narratives, listening, etc.). A paradox that always contains two sides, part of each side in each other, and both needing each other to exist. The notion of a paradox has been with Orion over the past few years. He personally struggles with where to exist on this swirling spectrum. The closer he gets to an answer the farther he has found himself from one side. His lesson here is a simple one for now; keep the paradoxical alive. It is itself a living breathing creature. As time expands so does the sides to our situations. When the paradoxical is alive like the Forest, we can return to it again and again, taking from it what we need to learn and giving to it what it needs to flourish.
Authentic being comes in the act of actively listening (not only to others, but the situation at hand [paradox?], and internal dialogue), understanding one's own and other's personal shifting boundaries, and then responding to situations in action that communicates closest to what one feels. This all wrapped into one, can be called active engagement. Only in an active style of engagement can we be honest to our lived-world. As a therapist, as a friend, as a lover, and as a internal voice in my head, I see how important it is to be active in a constant growth pattern. Constantly growing towards getting at the authenticity of a situation, acknowledging boundaries, and actively being present to the unfolding is as constant as time. This is who Orion was in the Forest and Bryan was outside the trees. The lessons he is learning are the same ones he had years ago; he is just more active in engaging with them.

Looking back at his introduction, Orion realizes how much he wanted to give to this Forest. How much desire it struck in him to do something. Each time he traveled down he gathered his energy to face the forest and give who he was. He quickly realized that having a plan only brought him so far. From his introduction he can see how he feared, “He might not fit in.” Although in the early trips there were moments where he didn't feel right at home, by the end the Hostel was his home. In Orion's final trip he was shown by the others who live in the Forest that he was just a part of their home as he felt he was. Orion even felt a little overwhelmed by the appreciation. He came to realize the person he trained himself to be at the Hostel was someone people wanted around. Someone who listened, was honest, and had his own way of going about life's patterns. Bryan cant help but realize the character Orion was, and looks forward to letting him grow more.
The lessons Orion has learned from his practicum extended beyond practical knowledge of the how-to. Although gardening is still in his future, he has realized it isn't as easy as he thought. Even when you care for a garden, there are organisms, critters, and weather that play a heavy hand in your yield. His practicum has helped him to ground his path of gardening in his life, while it has lifted his path of being with others and counseling. Some of the effects he had on particular people remind him that if he keeps training, becoming a counselor might just unfold as part of his future.
The diversity of the population kept Orion stimulated. The placement gave him he freedom to create new systems, such as leaving 1/5 of the old compost piles beyond in order to keep good bacteria/organisms in the new pile. While, the placement demanded of him and at times asked him directly to complete task. It is hard to evaluate changing the site for a few reasons. The small changes Orion wanted to make, he was able to; but he wonders how far they'll be communicated in time. Each manager that comes to the Hostel in the Forest brings their own goals. Some have spiritual, while others have gardening, partying, and teaching foci. So, change is always a constant in the Hostel. To put it another way, if Orion was to become a manager, he would put more focus on the community. Have activities for bonding, times set aside for socializing. There is some of this in the Forest already but he would like to have more focused time, such as community meeting for all to say what needs to be said. As well as, time set aside to bond over projects. The big projects that need to be done could be given allotted times for everyone to come together and work on it at once, instead of the here is the project and do it when you want to style. There could also be a Sunday activity such as art, that could rotate and bring everyone together for a day of fun and rest.
As for Orion's expectations of what would be completed in the Forest, a lot of them feel short. He only added two planters to the outdoor tub, and rarely spent much time in the gardens his last three trips. However, this is because he was put in charge of dinners, tours, domes, and building a tower in the outdoor Cobb kitchen. His last two trips in particular were focused on building the foundation and finishing his tower. The experience of working with his hands, using his past ceramics skills, and creatively adding to the Cobb kitchen helped draw an end to his trips. He was able to leave a tower, carved with roots and limbs for the Forest to have for years to come. The opportunity to cultivate a healthy side of Bryan as Orion in the Hostel in the Forest, goes beyond the Hostel's land and into his future life. All that he worked towards, trained, and cultivated sit with him now. He finds a sense of pride and inner security from his practicum at the Hostel in the Forest. Whether on his final drive as Orion or Bryan, he could feel that his work over Spring into Summer had an immense effect on his being and provided a movement that will be carried on into the life course.