Writing Muses, Stories, Journeys and Learnings

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   Vrinda Puja
  

  The most influential person in my life knows this art. But, in practice, I have found that the difference is many times in the attitude and "ripeness" of the recipient. For a good patient, even sour medicine is taken and it will heal. If the person is too delicate (so called sensitive), a strong medicine or remedy can harm them. This is like an art and a science combined. I am still trying to learn it, even after having been transformed by one who is a wonderful example. Thanks for this post!

  
  
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  Tony Bedassie
  

  So true vrinda, most people are offended when you try to provoke them into thinking because of the depth or lack thereof of their consciousness. Few people are able to view life objectively as they always surround themselves with their own ...See more

  
  

  
  
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  Maven Huggins ‎":the matrix is not just a movie ;" lD
  

  
  
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  Vrinda Puja
  

  Thank you Tony, thank you for recontextualizing this important way of learning within a profounder psychology. I like your analogy of the glassy eyed look like water drops falling on the dasheen leaf. We are experiencing this look more and more even in easier situations. Learning requires a mysterious openess, a kind of liquidity, vulnerability, allowing something new to enter us without our rejecting it or our embracing it in spite of the fear and trembling that it may provoke... as you well pointed out the possibility to view a different perspective, and perhaps to even love it! That miracle of learning is closed to the ones who hold on to their own problems and refuse to embrace the larger problems: the tragedy that the whole humanity is in now, from a larger perspective. This teacher, has broken the old me like a nut, has left a seed within me that keeps blooming garden after garden and flowing like river merging into rivers. I love the teacher and the teachings--not easy teachings, true teachings do not come cheap.
  
  I heave heard of the Matrix, but have not seen it. I appreciate that you recommend a very popular movie like this in the context of hard knocks teachings and learnings that provoke us out of dullness, psychic/social sleep. Though some frail characters cringe from coming close to this teacher, the transformation that it provokes and awakens is a rare gift. I believe that you have that gift. I am not sure I have it, because I have not found the ways to discern the difference. Even when a child is running to go under the wheels of a moving train, do we tell him/her sweetly "Honey, stop, stop." No, we have to run, scream and rage. Provoking offends those who rather die than stopping the movement to further dullness, which is like death.

  
  

  
  
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  Vrinda Puja
  

  Maven, thank you for correcting me on this topic. I seldom go to the movies... don't know whether this one comes from a bestseller book, don't even know if, like some movies, this one has entered the fabric of society and informs our younger generations in ways that separate our language and ways of relating. This is important for some of us of a certain age to know perhaps that movies are parenting our very young. Some in wonderful mind-expanding ways, others in not so positive ways. Please tell me more.

  
  

  
  
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  Maven Huggins
  

  not sure where the correction is; if there is one it surely was unintentional...and isnt that ironic and funny to this post..
  
  
  I am presuming Vrindra, you are referring to my comment of "the matrix is not just a movie" which is what came to mind as a caption to Tony;s contribution
  
  but i can say for me, literature, art, and nature are natural teachers for beings who are grounded, connected, integrated and open to evolving. they are for me and I learn so much in those areas; more than from humanimals. If you look through my stream...i started a book yesterday. and only like 40 pages in I got and shared so many passages--lessons from there to be winnowed.> much of what i posted seems as if someone was writing my life and character ;)>so that to me is rich and invaluable. I always see literature as instruction. I have always picked up passages as parables. age old tools for guidance
  (that is the more) and same with film. I am a film buff. Love Love Love. and i too rarely go to the movies but have always made use of cable and renting; I go to artfilm moviehouses but there arent any where i am...but i am weird, i find lesson and instruction everywhere in everything and almost from all situations. observations
  
  I am grateful you and Tony contributed to this thread..
  People are grossly and consistently discomfited by me.and like a piece to a puzzle i am slowly understanding why..you all dispense a lot of that. and i had a huge breakthrough by someone's post not a week ago...Sara Sara Amis talked about being a lightning rod for people with 'mommy issues'/ let us stop and pause how many in the planet that applies to and then add in the other set that it applies but they have no clue. so zombie and asleep they are.
  
  another side to this is people have a real problem when their soul sees who their ego is/are not. they go ballistic.
  Between these two: rock and hard place...i wonder where they bridge? ;0
  
  It is fascinating. and though it has been painful, I am loving it. Life is Rich and riche
  
  a

  
  

  
  
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  Maven Huggins
  

  ‎"tell me more" Vindra...
  
  
  All these stories I have. All these episodes. All these reflections for being inward...I think wish I can go somewhere and have a one woman stage show...just retelling raconteuring.., musing...Read some of my poetry, Talk about who i was then to who I am now. Critique Self. Critque the World about me. The Journey...Read some of my essays or parts thereof... then to integrate the entertaining stuff: the art, the film, the lessons in amazing text and persons...round the globe...my resources are never just who and where I am but international...and the presupposed connection to harness there in...
  
  hm...i dream of that

  
  

  
  
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  Maven Huggins
  

  i feel i rambled Vrindra, let me say this: alice in wonderland and matrix are two movies i think work as maps and mirrors of our real life modern living...
  
  
  what works as mirror of real life, ceases to just be a movie. that is what i meant. :) whew. sometimes it takes me a while to get to my point ;)
  
  and to me, age has nothing to do with it. but that is just me/ and those things you list are interesting to me. I learned of something new this morning: a new identity? a new area to engage, muse about>? and see how I fit>
  feminist art...there is a call for papers in Nigeria, at the Museum of Contemporary Art and though I considered it, realized I am not able to write for it yet. but I realize I probably fit very centrally in that frame, even if I dont use the term feminist but womanist -- the whole idea of critiquing my own art. I never did that before. but an experience I had on monday of other people seeing my art and describing it in ways no one else has ever done puts me in a new frame..
  
  and we close at shared space: finding materials that uplift us as we journey through our human experiences and pain. that is what this whole thread is about

  
  

  
  
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  Maven Huggins you also show me the difference of embarking on such a trip in the presence of children and douens (unformed fetuses) and mature people. really remarkable
  

  
  
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  Vrinda Puja
  

  Maven, I love this conversation (was reading above as you were writing). I have also experienced the enriching ways in which literature, especially what some would call fiction, art and nature keep reshaping learning and a fuller experience of life. I see why the Matrix is not just a movie. It surely serves to ground us and looks like it is a must for me to see in order to help me take a step forward to understanding the language of younger folk.
  
  How wonderful that you are sharing what you are reading with the fb posting. I have to check it out! Finding art that defines our own life has also been a transformative experience for me. This is powerful stuff, it informs our identity in such empowering ways... I find that even when I have not felt empowered, and there is much these days that I feel terribly impotent about --like war and the abuses and oppression against women and girls, when the passages in a book speak to us in meaningful ways, as pushing for a birthing or a breakthrough, even our apparent inaction (like the academic writer's block I am experiencing now) keeps leading to further reflections. And I thank you for this conversation and your substantive posts. In this conversation you are pulling me out of a three months writing rut, which is another story.
  
  I have strange reading preferences lately... maybe because I am a student of a certain age (womanism, feminism, mujerista, matristic social sciences stuff which I find fantastic, but is boring to some). I am glad that you remind me about online movies... It is time I resume netflix, since I canceled it about a year ago, I have been watching documentaries that take me deeper in to human pain. I guess it is a necessary stage, the pain of the world can enter our bones and paralyze us/me, or the overwhelming tragedy of humanity can PROVOKE us/me to action. I will surely let you know when I have netflix again, and hope that you update me on the few decades that I am behind. The last comparative study of two movies I watched, apart from the Corporation and other impressive documentaries, was about The Music Box and Pressumed Innocent. This is how far the movie buff in me has gone.
  
  I am so grateful for your contribution in fb, you are not weird, dear sister, you are compassionate and a woman awake! We live in weird times, social pathology is promoted all around mass media. I believe that we are suffering from super identity crisis which is further pathologized by a topic we rarely speak about any more, the "generation gap" or what some writers call a society of estrangement.
  
  About the mommy issues, Oooooooooooohhhhhhhhhh Goddess Grief! We can talk about this forever, and I hope to befriend Sara in hopes of joining the conversation on the importance of honoring the matristic in us all irrespective of gender.
  
  Please keep discomfitting people around you!
  
  You are a beacon light in the midst of mental, emotional and political numbness! Keep being this refuge for us all!
  Making this conversation helps us weave the ways to these bridge between ego vs One kindness identity from the shores of misundertanding, fear to the shores where women are AWAKE making bridge to an egalitarian society. You help me drop the baggage I need not carry on to a better way of being present.
  Blessed Be dear sister!

  
  

  
  
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  Vrinda Puja You did not ramble. You made perfect sense and it was thrilling to read your vibrant participation in so many aspects that enrich you! I ramble in English as a second language, watch out! I am aware that when I write some things may sound odd...:)
  

  
  
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  Vrinda Puja I am still reading and responding as your post engages me in fascinating areas I can seldom share with others.
  

  
  
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  Vrinda Puja
  

  about the need for papers in Nigeria, I must confess that I have just recently began to scratch the surface on Africa as Motherland, but with the idea of how the women of one country keep inspiring and informing all other women in ways that empower us all, wondering if the PBS documentary on the women of Liberia "Pray the Devil Back to Hell," you find it googling "Women, War and Peace," you may want to consider bringing in some of Aime Cesaire, i have only read his Discourse on Colonialism and it blew my mind--I also come from a colonial country-- and am not sure if you want to reference "The Scramble for Africa: Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 to Divide Africa" which is available online through google, I recommend referencing A. Jacqui Alexander, who I am starting to read in "Pedagogies of Crossing," and posted one of her video conferences, from a course in an intimate conversation mode on how women change themselves and the world.
  
  I encourage you to write this paper for Nigeria. If there is anything I can do to help you. I can send you the syllabi of a few courses on African mother scholars who keep opening the possibilities of an egalitarian world for all of us, if that helps. You are a serious writer, with a very rare sense of intergeneratinal connections, and as such you can contribute much to move us all ahead of the human crisis. We need all the love, the will and the action in the right direction from people like you with the heart and mind set in caring. Will keep reading your posts, I also identify more as womanist, mujerista and matristic biased.
  
  You probably need a peer group to help you kindly critique your own art. You are always doing it mentally, it is probably a matter of us not having done it in paper, but your valor through even more difficult things will make this easier for you. I hope you feel the most positive and kind push to the responsibility of contributing your treasures of loving art and science for Nigeria and others like us. This is sort of the issue I am contending now, the "responsibility of contributing" is a sweet load to let fly.
  
  Thank you again for being with us. And BEST OF LUCK on your writing!

  
  

  
  
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  Maven Huggins ‎"Please keep discomfitting people around you! "
  
  Oh. I have never done that intentionally. Always, Totally Oblivious. I perceive and feel the hate but have never understood where it came from. A Seer Wombmyn reading me once said it, "Women hate you but i cant see why; you have no bad deed/karma in your past life and you have not done wrong" Even she did not see the explanation. I tell you that is new. Not even a week old. If left to me, I would leave the dastardly on their own. I have no use for them and I am so over trying to save anyone but myself. Like Decades over ;) >..so that is not somethng i would choose dear Vrindra. It is not part of my wisdom
  
  On Africa and Her Studies. I chuckle. I did that. It is one of my pains and heartaches in life. I did it and had to give up my library in an estate sale when living got to heavy to bear and i had to drop all and fly away to survive. I went to Tuskegee for my Masters and encountered a History Teacher there, Fluker, who was my doorway. I have almost read it all, up to a time and period. It would be amusing to see what new scholarship there is in that regard, I would call it Black Consciousness History and Awakening but I strongly suspect nothing.. Jackson, Fanon, Frances Cress Welsing, James, ..too many authors to mention...I see people posting videos of the greats and the ones who lasted the longest...dr. Ben, my brain cant recall them all. But what i do--is integrate all the stories and frameworks and writers/thinkers/authors across the board. Matching all those post colonial inquisitors with Latin American freedom fighters and in relation to Liberation Education and Liberation Religion as religion has been one of the ways to lock us in. Material and Deepening I got Vrindra but never used, never put it back into the world --but just made me a Radical --gave my warriorhood moorings ;)
  
  I am so far removed from that material, in company, in consciousness, life and living awareness. I do myself but my surroundings? Absent.
  
  I have also moved from that a bit because almost all the authors I read, in that framework of elevated historical consciousness were all men. My journey has given me a wizening regarding the absent voice. I am not sure where i am with that now. I dont feel so much of an academic. I theorize some things but it is not in a gendered frame so much which is why the link i learned of this morning is a new thing..but we will see. lots to see
  
  i like your "Responsibility of Contributing" what that created a heavy burden for me to carry these fallow years. and so i have learned one never has to struggle to contribute if that is what one is to do...it makes for hard truths but if that be the case, who is the fool to refute the universe? LOL
  
  I am posting this conversation to my blog. Rich stuff here ♥

  
  

  
  

  
  

  

  
  
  
  
  

  Vrinda Puja

  Maven, the problem of a lost legacy worries and bothers me. I wonder why it does not take away my sleep. When I think about the fact that children have been gradually robbed of childhood in the last two generations... which, of course, have been retrained in a process of gradualization, by changes in education policies that deliberately diminish human potential (John Taylor Gatto, Charlotte Iserbyt, Diane Ravitch, Ivan Illych's Deschooling Society (available full in pdf online), in addition to the tragedy of knowing that our children in urban areas do not see a star studded sky at night. Where have the stars gone for our children? Where have their hopes gone? I feel responsible and impotent... and I don't know what god makes me sleep at night.
  
  And I wonder, if the youth of mature people comes in the ways that we engage the young in co-creating a co-dreamed world from all that we had in the past that was wonderful and is lost, to the vision of the young's constructive dreams. Who cares anymore? We care, we know more who care. The good people are pregnant and waiting to birth a peace train. A few days ago a friend posted an invitation to join an Italian Matristic scholar at CIIS, San Francisco. I am in the east coast, so I googled and found a talk in English by Heide Goettner-Abendroth, and even when the pace is slow (Q & A style), the concept is ripe and I hope we can join a movement like this in the US.
  http://vimeo.com/39259036 Thank you.

  

  Culture matriarcali (en)

  vimeo.com

  Heide Goettner-Abendroth, filosofa, fondatrice dell’Accademia Hagia per i Modern...See more