The courage to be something other than what one is, to give birth to oneself, and to leave one’s former body on the ground. And without having answered to anyone about whether it was worthwhile.

Is that all you want to be? Liked? Wouldn’t you rather be passionately and voraciously desired?

If ordinary people really knew that consciousness and not matter is the link that connects us with each other and the world, then their views about war and peace, environmental pollution, social justice, religious values, and all other human endeavors would change radically.

‘Sex’ doesn’t sell. Erosion of female self esteem does. The feeling of superiority over women does. Turning women into ‘things’ to be studied, scrutinized & judged and then calling it ‘sex’ does. Sex doesn’t sell. Objectification does

I find the notion of happiness rather strange… It has never been a goal of mine; I just don’t think in those terms. […] I try to give meaning to my existence through my work. That’s a simplified answer, but whether I’m happy or not really doesn’t count for much. I have always enjoyed my work. Maybe “enjoy” isn’t the right word; I love making films, and it means a lot to me that I can work in this profession. I am well aware of the many aspiring filmmakers out there with good ideas who never find a foothold. At the age of fourteen, once I realized filmmaking was an uninvited duty for me, I had no choice but to push on with my projects. Cinema has given me everything, but has also taken everything from me.

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

But the tension between what I feel and what I can communicate is considerable.

There is the staircase, there is the sun. There is the kitchen, the plate with toast and strawberry jam, your subterfuge, your ordinary mirage. You stand red-handed. You want to wash yourself in earth, in rocks and grass What are you supposed to do with all this loss?

I stopped looking for the light. Decided to become it instead.

I have often fought, fought & won, not perfection, but an acceptance of myself as having a right to live on my own human, fallible terms.

“Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse; its social goals are non-coercive knowledge produced in the interests of human freedom.” 

I like stories where women save themselves.

You never forget. It must be somewhere inside you. Even if the brain has forgotten, perhaps the teeth remember. Or the fingers.

All animal, you reach back through years of untamable breathing to remind yourself that you will never not be storm, the cellar doors on your heart’s prairie, they don’t know shut, they don’t know batten or bolt or nail, they loose, they windswept, they wingbeat wild & waiting to swing any-which-way your breath blows.

More than once, I’ve been a bell broken Against its own ringing.

Addiction is pretty simple. It’s what happens when people don’t get what they need, and they end up soothing themselves.