"One learns to swim in the winter and to skate in the summer ". -- William James

"Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib'd, In one selfie place, but where we are is hell, And where hell is, there must be ever be." -- Marlowe

"Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance." -- Ishmael in Moby Dick, "The Chapel"

Alchemical image in the sign of Scorpio: the will needed to separate and neutralize the venomous thoughts within.

Religion can be a very wishful and beautiful vision of otherworldly purity. This is a temporary balm for the spirit But sadly this purification often fails to penetrate the destructive illusions under which the believer is held captive, and helps perpetuate, here in this world.

Original famous painting in the High Museum. Fed into AI and now a tree grows in Antarctica.

High Museum trees

I typed in copilot: create an image of Dante guided by Beatrice in hell in the style of Titian. I love this image. It seems very much like what I would hope my next book project may mature into.

Of day dreams and night dreams:
"The castle in the air is not a stepping stone to the nocturnal labyrinth, if anything the nocturnal labyrinths lie like cellars beneath the daytime castle in the air " Ernst Bloch

And we live in the middle passage between.

A very nice article by Esme Weijun Wang, the author of The Collective Schizophrenias.

The Courage to Question Your Doctor www.reasonsforliving.co/p/the-courag...

From the Black Holocaust museum in Atlanta. theatlantavoice.com/support-loca...

photos.app.goo.gl/kRd8miAK7yqF...

This episode of Mad In America discusses the ways in which a biomedical mental disease model suffocates the existential dimensions of suffering.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...

JUST A REMINDER ...

... of how close we are today ...

Exploding Myths About Schizophrenia: An Interview with Courtenay Harding - Mad In America www.madinamerica.com/2025/03/expl...

The legal consensus for the last 150 years since the CHinese Excluson Acts has been that anyone born in the land is a citizen. The popular consensus of course is 60/40. To an important extent, we are deciding if we are a nation of laws, or of majority opinion.
youtu.be/OBFX4EuAWHc?...

Wouter Kusters has a profound perspective on madness.

"In the scientific and medical language, the absurdity and paradox of the act of suicide... disappear. The problem of suicide ... ends up in the realm of disease patterns and symptoms."
suicide-and-its-prevention.eu/speakers/dr-...