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New Year Paintings and Poetry

New Year Paintings and Poetry

So, another year, another variant, and we trudge on across the tundra. Courage, creativity, and, yes, peace, love, and understanding are needed now more than . . . Well, they’re needed. In that spirit of hopeful trudging, Spinozablue offers new literature, literary criticism, and home-brewed paintings. Robert Mueller brings us his unique take on Petrarch, and David Groulx gets obliquely iambic. It looks like we’re off to a solid start. I had a stretch there with at least two kinds…

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The Marketeer’s Lament

The Marketeer’s Lament

The lies The lies they spread Have become their truth      I know the pain of such things As I once stood among them Bleeding out Spiraling out      Trying to fathom What once was mine Failing to grow back To the center      Yes — the center of all things Too much to handle so I’m gone For now and always Unless      Unless the last tree Stands against the last wind And there is more time For Sapiens…

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Helgoland: Quantum islands in the storm

Helgoland: Quantum islands in the storm

One could quip, “I must have missed that day,” when it comes to a subject or two during high school. Senior year, especially. I was absent physically more than was wise, and even when I did attend math and science classes, my thoughts were often somewhere else. With the sun, the waves, the girls on the beach, or some day-dream about heroic feats in sports, the arts, or racing old cars that had no business being on Thunder Road to…

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Rutger Bregman’s Humankind

Rutger Bregman’s Humankind

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that much of what we’ve been taught about “human nature” is nonsense. We’ve been told for far too long that we’re naturally selfish, greedy, and violent, and there’s just no point in trying to change the world around us. Suggest a better system, one structured to encourage cooperation, sharing, giving, and living in peace, and all too many cynics will laugh and instantly claim it can’t work — because, “human nature.” Thing is, recent…

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Bedazzled Humans, Dark City, and New Paintings

Bedazzled Humans, Dark City, and New Paintings

Just watched “Dark City” again, one of my favorite movies, ever. It’s been a while since my last viewing. More than a decade, in fact. Unfortunately, the version I watched wasn’t the remastered DVD version I had seen back in 2009, which had provoked this review in Spinozablue many moons ago. It was still excellent, but just not as amazing as the extended version. It moved me, and reminded me that we’re creatures of the light, whether we live in…

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Lauren Groff’s wondrous Matrix

Lauren Groff’s wondrous Matrix

Mother, womb, mater, matrix. An environment for growing, developing, thriving. A special place, an original story, a lasting vision in which evolution is still possible, even likely. In this case, an abbey in medieval England, or an abbess in that ancient home, or the mind that creates the character with surreal visions of new worlds. Lauren Groff’s Matrix is all these things and more. Her heroine, Marie de France, was real, but we know little about her beyond her poetry…

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Lean Fall Stand, by Jon McGregor

Lean Fall Stand, by Jon McGregor

Aphasia. The Antarctic. The mystery of speech and the mind and the white noise between us, and how we recover from trauma, and how we never do. The hit and miss essence of working together to recover, or not. The small family dramas, the miscommunications between those with and without aphasia. The white noise and shattered ice thousands of miles away that never leaves us. Sudden storms. Unbridgeable distances. The worst possible moment for things to go terribly wrong, and…

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Night Sweats on the Chaise Longue

Night Sweats on the Chaise Longue

A thought or two on some recent music. One relatively new song, “Chaise Longue,” from June of this year, and another, “S.O.B,” from 2015. Wildly divergent genres, eliciting wildly divergent reactions. Couldn’t be more different, I suppose. Wet Leg is a band from the Isle of Wight, headed by Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers, names seemingly taken from a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel. The music they make? Not so much. More like something out of Boris Vian, by way of Sally…

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More short fiction plus Campbell

More short fiction plus Campbell

We’ve added a short story by William Kitcher to the Spinozablue mix, and some more paintings by yours truly. As always, your comments and suggestions are most welcome. Finished Campbell’s fine collection of lectures and informal talks, Goddesses, and had some additional thoughts to share. First off, I imagine my main takeaways are not the same as other readers, and what stands out for me now may not resonant with the majority. This is likely the case, as they probably…

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Joseph Campbell and the Feminine Divine

Joseph Campbell and the Feminine Divine

I’ve been reading Joseph Campbell since I was nine. He was foundational for me, along with Robert Graves, Lady Gregory, and Jane Harrison, sparking a greater love of world mythology, its roots, its scope and diversity. Going back to him as of late, I’m uncovering things I either forget about or missed entirely the first go round, and it has me rethinking more than a few things these days. Nearly halfway through his posthumously published book on goddesses, and I’m…

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