The Year 2018 (Or: I hope you like clouds )

8 min readMay 6, 2018

I greatly appreciate the responses my essays have been getting over the last couple months.

Needless to say, my readers are awesome. I’m working through your thoughtful replies with the detail that they deserve. Thanks for your patience!

In the meantime, I’ve been working on some projects in 2018 that I’m pretty excited about. This post is a way to summarize and reflect on what’s been happening.

Some of these pieces are in the publication process elsewhere so I’m sharing the earlier drafts in google docs format. (Hence the cloud reference in the title.)

Without further ado, I’ll start with a series of pieces that came out of a workshop I participated in at the Creative Non-Fiction Magazine.

How to Open Your Hips

During the total lunar eclipse on January 31st, 2018 I had a vivid and detailed lucid dream where I met a lion-headed moon Goddess who made quite the impression on me.

She prompted me to ask “the question I’d been seeking to answer” and after cycling through a few moments of utter panic I finally realized she came to help with some tricky yoga related blockages I’m working on in the hips.

We went on quite a journey, and I compiled my recollections into a how-to manual that’s a homage to some medieval grimoires that I like.

You can read a draft of this piece by clicking here.

I was really fortunate to perform selections of How to Open Your Hips at a reading of creative non-fiction that was organized at the wonderful METTĀ

A Heavy Shadow

I also developed a piece that compares the lives of four generations of women in my family with the metaphysics and mythology behind the Sola Busca tarot deck.

You can read this one by clicking here.

I was again very honored and grateful to recieve an invitation to read selections from this piece. This time, it took place at Creative Non-Fiction itself in front of a full house.

It was an exhilarating experience.

Freud was Wrong

This one is an experiment in micro memoir. Not sure where it will ultimately live, but I think it has some potential so sharing here.

Check it out!

Poems

Some of the wonderful writers I’ve been workshopping with are brilliant poets and they’ve inspired me to explore the form.

Fate is Now

it’s simple,

simple,

simple, Love

make it simple

simple

we’re not as rigid as we seem

It was taking me weeks to get something I liked until I got frustrated and gave myself 15 minutes to finish something. The poem Fate is Now is what I came up with and it’s one of my favorite creations ever.

Sublime Modernity

You were born in a dark deep freeze

And died encircled, white,

in my hair

like a coiled Snake

entwined through the

Air and hardening

in my hands

When I see your words

A hand reaches inside

My skull and a butterfly

Starts flapping in my

Throat and my pineal

gland is now a sea of jelly

And I think twelve thousand birds

Will sing at the sunrise

In early 2018 I finished up Sense and Sensibility and was a bit sad because it was the only Austen novel I hadn’t ever completed. I wrote this poem as a homage to her the morning after.

Free indirect speech

Tell your god

The sky is hemmed

In thin grey bands

Like a vinyl blouse

And the sea undresses

In lacey waves

And the thing she was

when the world was seventeen

is not who she has to be

nor

the person we should be

the Goddess she was

yesterday

is not

the human you are

in this moment

an oak

grown from a seed

every year

The leaves

Mature and die

and every year

she grows

brand new skin

This is another one inspired by some of the literary techniques Austen pioneered.

The Praxis Blog

This is where I explore my intense interest in personal growth, self development, and applied philosophy.

I’m extremely interested in experimenting further with new forms and styles to engage this audience with.

Most of what I read in this genre is glib and cliche. Worse, it can lead to what I’ve been calling procrastination by self development.

I can assure you that I’m both guilty of indulging in cliches and procrastination by self improvement so I’m excited to continue investigating these subjects.

Here’s what I’ve written on the subject in 2018 thus far:

Why you Should be an Anti-Reader

Dream Big, Think Small

What is Willpower and How Should You Use It?

3 Productive Alternatives to Embarrassment

Speaking and Workshops

If you’re reading my blog you’ve probably come across some of my ideas on dreaming. I’ve had the great privilege of spreading these ideas through public workshops in 2018.

Pittsburgh Jung Group

The first workshop was at the January meeting of the Pittsburgh Jung Group.

Above is a video overview of the content we covered. You can check out the doc I’m reviewing by clicking here.

Late Capitalist Dream Magic in the Desert of the Real

It was absolutely thrilling to present at Golden Thread especially since my journey with dreams has been deeply influenced by the work of Aleister Crowley.

It felt incredibly significant to speak at a body of the O.T.O

Here’s the description I wrote for the event:

After a powerful personal experience with lucid dreaming, I became fascinated by the many theories of the ontology of dreams. In this presentation I’ll teach dream analysis and lucid dreaming strategies. I’ll also dive deep into the interpretation of dreams held by the Runa — indigenous people living in the forests of Peru. I’ll also do a survey of the history of major theories of the ontology of dreams — from the pre-Socratics all the way through to Nietzsche.

Lastly, I’ll lead a series of visualization and imaginal techniques to use throughout the day and before sleep to explore some of the settings and landscapes that emerge during sleep.

You can check out the outline I used for the event by clicking here.

I think this workshop exposed my biggest flaw as a speaker. It was an incredibly dense talk and I tend to present with great animation and plenty of digressions.

This can be engaging, but also risks losing the thread.

I’ve been regrouping since this event and am excited to present again at a large gathering of alternative healers in June of 2018.

Non-Writing Creative Experiments

My theme for 2018 is spontaneity so I wanted to stretch my comfort zone and experiment with some things I’ve never tried before.

The first thing I came across was acting.

Improv

In January, I signed up for a class at Steel City Improv and found myself on team Resting Bitch Fern.

My writing has improved immeasurably since I began this experiment. I’m feeling more creative, less rigid, more skeptical about labels, and less insecure.

Steel City’s motto “You are enough” is something I’ll always remember.

We did a class show in front of a sold out house of ~70.

Here’s me playing a stalker at a middle-school dance:

Here’s me playing an overbearing boss:

Improvisational Dance

A great thing about pushing your comfort zone is that you have to go further and further to keep getting benefits.

The idea of participating in a dance workshop was so far out of my previous consciousness before embarking on the spontaneity project that I would have been bewlidrhed if you told me it was in the future.

Nevertheless, I came across the wonderful dance group Slow Danger and the classes they offer.

I’ve participated in three modules so far. Needless to say, I have very little natural talent or affinity for dance. Despite this, I absolutely love it.

Many of the people I’m working with are incredibly talented ballerinas or interpretive dancers. This was quite intimidating at first, but they seem to appreciate my enthusiasm and I’m getting incredible support.

Obviously, it’s more of a somatic and kinetic practice, but the instructors have been great with introducing me to the philosophies and theories they’re drawing from so I can have an intellectual anchor.

Here are some that have been particularly fascinating:

Future Projects

To conclude, I’ll say that I have a number of pieces cooking at the moment.

Everything you always wanted to ask about Jung (but were afraid to ask Shakespeare)

This is one I’m particularly excited about. Much more on this in the immediate future.

In short we’ll look at some of the concepts we’ve already explored in depth on this blog vis a vis Jungian psychology using Shakespeare plays as a guide.

I am a Dead Avocado

Ah, this essay. It’s something I’ve been working on for awhile for The Good Men Project.

It’s about exploring similarities between shame and grandiosity using the plant alchemy of Paracelsus as a metaphor with a dash of the pragmatic philosophy of William James for good measure.

The Orgasm Manifesto

I don’t often tip my toe (or anything) into political writing, but orgasm equality is something I feel strongly about.

I’ll just leave this one hanging, but briefly I’ll say it’s greatly influenced by the the work of Valerie Solanas and Wilhelm Reich.

The DSM 666

This one has been fun to write. I’m highly critical of the project to medicalize conscious experience. Drawing on writers from Foucault to Szasz I’m revisioning the DSM in a kind of parody / reductio ad absurdum.

Thanks again for the excellent comments and for following the blog! Excited to see where we go from here.