Spring in Portland is great, even if you don't leave your own porch...

It's been a while since I've posted here.  I'm working on my dissertation and hopefully I'll post some bits when I feel they are polished enough.  In the meantime, my sister is visiting from Durango and we had a great time at the Portland Japanese Gardens.  It rained (expected), showed (whaaaat?) and sunned (OMG!)...

I wonder about the extent to which dichotomous thinking is either hard-wired or at least dependent on completely non-social forces.  It seems almost to be a thermodynamic question, that is, a question of trying to optimize the amount of energy spent in thinking for a given situation.  Thinking is a very expensive activity, physiologically...

It's quite a dilemma - not being able to directly check much of what we are exposed to and presented as 'knowledge'.  Unless we begin to discover our own ways of knowing (a very difficult proposition, but I think possible), then we likely remain wanderers in the fog of our own (and other's) unconsciousness....

Our experience of ourselves is in many ways completely mediated by aspects which are located beyond the normal boundary of the "I".  I'd like to offer one possible way of looking at the issue.   I approach this question concerning the boudaries of the "I" by taking into account the transformations of the "I" as...

Alfonso Montuori, one of my professors at CIIS, has identified three styles, or modes, of learning, which he calls the narcissistic, the reproductive, and the creative. From his article, The Quest for a New Education, From Oppositional Identities to Creative Inquiry, narcissistic learning is "an approach to education that sees the source of knowledge as...

The role of destruction, and of the working out of polarities, is a subject that has been dealt with an the alchemical tradition for a very long time.  Alchemically, it is understood that the issue you are dealing with, in which you find yourself (the prima materia) MUST go through a process of putrefaction, of...

sometimes you stand on the borders of things waiting for that little nudge just the thing you needed for you to fly 

There are some things about creativity that have been on my mind.  I have been trying to hone in on the qualitative experience of the creative moment... what does it feel like to be creative?  What kinds of qualities distinguish the feeling of being creative from other types of feelings, like the feeling of 'producing',...

Knowing is essential, so that we can unknow. Finding a way is essential to losing the path. Adding brick to brick is essential to knock the wall down. Knocking down walls is essential to create materials for new walls. Losing the path is essential to find a new way. Unknowing is essential to find new...

We must be capable BOTH of forming models AND of dissolving them. We shouldn't either become model-less, nor bound by any model, including the one you are proposing. Tensions must be maintained. Tensions must collapse. Tensions must be created. Tensions are maintained. Tensions collapse. Tensions create. Maintain tension. Collapse tension....