Kelsey Parker, MFT*

"Every transition begins with an ending. We have to let go of the old before we can pick up the new —..."

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 16:00:00 -0700

“Every transition begins with an ending. We have to let go of the old before we can pick up the new — not just outwardly, but inwardly, where we keep our connections to the people and places that act as definitions of who we are.”

- William Bridges

Photo

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 05:11:28 -0700

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness,...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 20:57:00 -0700

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”
―Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

"When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown up we would no longer be vulnerable...."

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 03:21:33 -0700

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability. To be alive is to be vulnerable.”

- Madeleine L’Engle

"Talent develops in tranquillity, character in the full current of human life."

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:37:29 -0700

“Talent develops in tranquillity, character in the full current of human life.”

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher

By turn hilarious and haunting, poet Shane Koyczan puts his...

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:56:41 -0700

By turn hilarious and haunting, poet Shane Koyczan puts his finger on the pulse of what it’s like to be young and …different.

"Most people think that shadows follow, precede, or surround beings or objects. The truth is that..."

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:54:31 -0700

“Most people think that shadows follow, precede, or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.”

- Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate

For no other reason than its sublime beauty: “Daydream” by...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 20:22:29 -0700

For no other reason than its sublime beauty: “Daydream” by cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima.

Jim Naughten: Documenting the Herero tribe of Namibia and its...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 18:23:00 -0800

Jim Naughten: Documenting the Herero tribe of Namibia and its 20th-century German-influenced attire

Even in a continent rich with fantastic traditional garments, the Herero tribe of Namibia stands out. Photographer Jim Naughten first came across and photographed members of the tribe while traveling across Southern Africa 15 years ago. Naughten returned in 2011 with better camera equipment and produced this eye-catching series. Merrell has just published a book of the work, and two shows open in March: at Klompching Gallery in Brooklyn, and Margaret Street Gallery in London.

The origin of the Herero dress is early-20^th-century German colonization. The outfits, which at first were forced on the Herero, later became a tradition, a choice, and a source of pride and status as they made the fashion their own. Tribe members wear the German uniforms at various ceremonies, funerals, and festivals as a way of honoring their warrior ancestors.

Photo: Jim Naughten/courtesy of Klompching Gallery, Brooklyn, N.Y.

theparisreview: The colours stay within the mind, the lightWill...

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 07:55:26 -0800

theparisreview:

The colours stay within the mind, the light
Will not so easily permit itself
To be put out. In thoughts once more at home
A foreign fire will gleam, tints taken from
A sail, a wake of water widening out
Or subtle colours that make crumbling buildings
Renew themselves. These we have with us still.

And home again we learn how much we build
Abroad, put roots down in impermanence
Yet waver not from what time drags away
But are drawn too—like colours fading fast,
Like slow canals escaping to the sea.
Rest in this power to adapt, remember
The mind still turns like the huge globe and shows
Now Italy, now England and we are
The axis on which all our journeys move.

—Elizabeth Jennings, “XI. Journey from a Landscape,” from Sequence in Venice
Photography Credit Viktor Gårdsäter, from “Balloon Man’s Last Walk,” via Booooooom

"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like..."

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 11:27:00 -0800

“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.

For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

everlane: Designed by London’s Haptic Architects, the Mountain...

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 21:52:38 -0800

everlane:

Designed by London’s Haptic Architects, the Mountain Lodge on Sognefjorden is a remote compound of cabins complete with indoor soaking pools.

Yes, please.

"I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the..."

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 13:06:47 -0800

“I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can’t tell fast enough, the ears that aren’t big enough, the eyes that can’t take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.”

- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (via bookmania)

therhumboogie: By Jeremy Miranda, each of these beautifully...

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 20:05:54 -0800

therhumboogie:

By Jeremy Miranda, each of these beautifully done paintings has such a dreamy sense of layers, and worlds within worlds. The thread connecting each piece, using ladders, really is a sharp focus for the work linking different dimensions to one another, mesmerising stuff.

"So when you realise you’ve gone a few weeks and haven’t felt that awful struggle of your childish..."

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 19:08:16 -0700

“So when you realise you’ve gone a few weeks and haven’t felt that awful struggle of your childish self — struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence — you’ll know you’ve gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you’ve gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself. The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”

- Ted Hughes, in a letter to his 24-year-old son

explore-blog: The Wheel of Intense Emotions – Jessica Hagy...

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 23:14:50 -0700

explore-blog:

The Wheel of Intense Emotions – Jessica Hagy revises Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions to include the vital missing part.

"Literally, psychologist means ‘one who studies the soul’, we think of it as a scary word in our..."

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 16:27:45 -0700

“Literally, psychologist means ‘one who studies the soul’, we think of it as a scary word in our harsh-sounding, Germanic language, but it actually means something really beautiful. I also like that it is ambiguous as to whether it’s me studying my own soul, or yours, or you studying my soul, or me asking you to study your own. It’s like a big impossible object that goes around and around.”

- Iain Woods

theparisreview: “The theme of art is the theme of life itself....

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:56:02 -0700

theparisreview:

“The theme of art is the theme of life itself. This artificial distinction between artists and human beings is precisely what we are all suffering from. An artist is only someone unrolling and digging out and excavating the areas normally accessible to normal people everywhere, and exhibiting them as a sort of scarecrow to show people what can be done with themselves.”

—Lawrence Durrell, The Art of Fiction No. 23

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the..."

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 19:34:13 -0700

“When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”

- Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish engineer and inventor

In an article for The American Scholar, T. M. Luhrmann presents...

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 19:13:00 -0700

In an article for The American Scholar, T. M. Luhrmann presents a new understanding for how to deal with disturbing voices:

“Voices arise when the person is confronted with overwhelming emotional trauma he cannot handle,” Marius Romme explained as he strode across the stage at the Maastricht conference. “We know this.” It is generally agreed that the concept of dissociation was coined by Pierre Janet, as the 19th century turned into the 20th, to describe a disruption in the normally integrated processes of identity, memory, and consciousness.

If it is true that distressing auditory hallucinations are the dissociative consequences of trauma, the implications are enormous. Dissociative disorder has a positive prognosis, one of the most positive in the realm of psychiatric disease, whereas schizophrenia is often thought to have the worst. Dissociative disorder is understood to be a reaction to events in the world; schizophrenia is usually imagined as a largely inherited vulnerability. Dissociation is best treated with therapy and interaction; schizophrenia is assumed to require medication, often heavy. The new way of thinking opens the possibility that people do not hear voices because they are crazy, but that their apparent craziness may be the result of the brain-numbing chaos that can result from hearing voices. It suggests that we can help by teaching people to cope with their voices, rather than viewing the voices as evidence of organic damnation.