Category Archives: fear

Letters of Import: Visions Of A Future 8

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Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
Visions Of A Future 8
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Illustrations & abstract digital art by j. kiley
© jennifer kiley 2013
First Posting 03.19.13
Posted Weekly Early Tuesday Morning
Eighth Posting 05.07.13silver divider between paragraphsanyone living or dead is purely coincidentalsilver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphsletters - visions of a future 8silver divider between paragraphsTuesday, November 19th, 2007

Dear Annie

It was your first solo flight today Annie. That was the most excellent group. The best group I have ever attended. My bias is being put aside and my words are honest and direct. You brightened up that group session. Everyone spoke without having to be coaxed out of any shells. No one was hiding. The quiet ones who regularly sit there and Mr. Xxx has to be the one who says what they can’t say. Not that he really makes one want to open up or gives them a chance too. You made everyone feel your enthusiasm, even though the subject was a rough one. Talking about not wanting to be touched or barely being able to let your spouses or mates try to kiss you. Forget about sex or making love; you really brought out the toughest subject.

I know you didn’t open the session with that in mind. Lisa wanted to talk about her partner. Being a lesbian myself, it is hard to believe that being sexually abused by men when you are a child would effect so strongly an intimate relationship with another woman. You would think that would be safe. In my case, I had such mixed signals. My mother was a sadist. My grandmother, the gentlest woman I have ever known. Everything about her was soft and tender. I never felt anything threatening about her. She was pure love and generosity with me. There were no doubts with her. She loved me up until she died and even then she visited me all the time from the other side. Many dreams we would sit together with her sitting in a chair on her home’s porch and my head resting on her lap. She would always just stroke my hair. She was so tender and I felt so bonded with her. It was like she never died, I got to visit with her more often after she died than when she was alive.

I wanted her to live forever. It never entered my mind she would die. She told me that it would happen. I didn’t believe her. I told her No! That would never happen. I wanted her to always be with me. But I was so wrong. She did die. It was only a short time after that conversation. She was gone.

Her dying wasn’t my first contact with death. A five year old boy drowned. He lived across the street from our family. He was so sweet. Everyone in our neighborhood loved him. He was a little angel, so sweet and innocent. The other child with him, when it happened, left him alone, dead or drowning in the water, while he ran home and didn’t tell anyone what had happened. The search was awful. Everyone was frantic. The whole neighborhood that loved him went out on the search. It brought down a great sadness over everyone after he was found.

Nothing could be done. It was too long. Could the other boy have saved him if he ran for help? No one could answer that question. It did eventually come out about what happened. The whole truth, they were in a place that was dangerous even for adults. The little boy tried to balance as he walked across a narrow crossing and fell into the deep water new the waterfalls. Neither boy knew how to swim. The other boy didn’t want to get into trouble. Children were forbidden to go this place by the pond. When asked if he had seen this boy that drowned, he lied and told everyone No when asked.

Somehow his conscience ate at him enough to break his silence. He told the truth after hours had passed. But it was way to late. It was over. The little five year old boy was way past drowning. Shock and blaming the boy who was alive followed him around for a longtime. That boy wasn’t trusted by the people of our neighborhood. Most people were very judgmental of his entire family. They were crude and socially unacceptable and most of all they never went to church. Ours was a God fearing group except them and one other family that everyone thought were Communists. It was all rather ridiculous. It was so devastating to the boys family, especially his mother. I felt bad for them. I wasn’t that old myself and I loved the little boy who drowned. He was like a little angel. It was all very sad.

My grandmother dying, though, was a different kind of devastation. She was my protector and the only person I could communicate with. We created a special alphabet. It was secret. We could write and no one could read what we sent to the other. She was my only physical contact that was good touch. Everyone else abused me, either sexually or through physical beatings. Which was worst? Both, they overlapped in their sexual abusive nature. Subliminally, it could all be traced back to sexual submission. Whippings. Beatings. Rapes. Forced touches. Kidnapping. Bondage. Child pornography. None of these were by any choice that I made. It was all against my will.

I was a sex slave and exposed to all kinds of physical and sexual brutality, including the denial of nourishment. The greatest pain was being denied the right to express any emotions or sounds. In particular, I was beaten harder if I uttered any sound. The worst sound, that I could make and that received the worst of the punishment, was to cry. I was forbidden to cry. Crying brought out the worst wrath of the Shadow Mother. She would whip me or hit me with all sorts of objects until I would stop crying. I was filled with tears. I needed to cry. It was part of my nature to cry. I cried all the time. But she hated it. She was determined to drive it out of me. She worked on this mission for many years until she found success. My grandmother’s death was her day of success. That was the day I was told not to cry for the last time. As I wad holding my grandfather’s hand, after having just returned from looking into the coffin at what was once the warm body of my loving grandmother. I kissed her cold forehead. She wasn’t there.

My grandfather’s hands were warm. We needed contact but my uncle was a mean bastard. He helped my mother to kill her. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it like a clamp and told me not to cry and added that I was upsetting my grandfather. My grandfather was crying with me. But I listened to him. He was just echoing the rant I’d heard from his sister, the Shadow Mother, throughout my bruised childhood. I stopped crying and I did not cry after that moment ever, with this one exception, unless someone I loved deeply died suddenly. Then I would lose control. But if I just want to cry I cannot do it. The tears are trapped. What will release them naturally, I just don’t know. I’ve tried for year. Doing therapy since I was 19 years old has not been able to breakdown that barrier. Would you, Annie, like to have a go at it. Do you think you can find the secret passage inside of me where the barrier has the door closed, locked and barricaded?

The gentleness in your voice carries an echo of a hypnotic ability. I feel that you could coax someone who is so closed off from her feelings, like I am. I need someone sensitive but emotionally strong and gentle to draw out the one who holds onto the tears so tightly. I really want you to be the one who breaks through my barriers. I know they are built very strong and they are extremely thick. Behind the wall, it is dark and scary. We want to be released from where the Shadow Mother has us locked up. She holds the key. So, only someone who can perform magical and mystical feats will be able to break through and cause the blockade to crumble down and set me free. I need magic. White magic with a great deal of power.

A great many curses of the Black Arts have been cast on me. Their demons keep me closely guarded. Trust me, when I tell you that it is not madness talking. This is all quite real. The demons haunt me almost constantly. They torture me with lies. They try their damnedest to confuse my mind so that I will doubt my reality. At times, I know that what I perceive as real is false. I know when they are trying to trick me but I can’t stop it from effecting me. They take over my mind. I fight it so I still have a glimpse of the truth. It takes so much strength to not feel madness trying to take over.

I must rest. How I will be able to trust you with all of this information and hope you do not think we are certifiably mad, stark raving loony. We are not crazy. We couldn’t be more sane. But right now we need sleep. We’ll write more again soon.

You did a fantastic job being a great psychotherapist today. I can see the future and I see you helping me. I feel you are the one I need right now. You are perfect you may be a novice but you have a strong connection to the soul. Your spirit has a great power. That is one of the things we need as a weapon. That is all for right now. I must rest.

Regards,
Madison

Ps. The force is strong in you. That is good until next week.silver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphsThis note is to assure the strictest of confidence.

To Annie,

At this moment I am not trying to be a coward, but I feel if I hold back now or never send this to you, then I am freeing myself up to write whatever I wish without need of censorship. Maybe someday, when I am feeling more familiar with just who you are and what you might mean to me, this parameter will be altered and a copy of this and future letters will be relayed to you. For now I want to maintain secrecy, to protect you, Annie, and to protect myself from over testing the boundaries between us and to record the development of our relationship.

I want Annie Haskell to trust me. I want you to know I am trying to protect you and also myself from any humiliation. Writing to you in this way frees up my words as I speak them onto the page. Some future date, if I feel trusting enough, I will release to you what I have written in honesty. Right now, I will keep my words confidential. On my honour, no others shall see these pages, I promise you that.

Regards,
Madison Taylorsilver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphs

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labyrinth of a wandering wonderland

the labyrinth called “wandering wonderland.” it is where madison, scottie and their cats, patrick, sparky and toker loves to escape to

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madison's woods of imagination where she takes long walks to reflect

madison’s “woods of imagination” where she takes long walks to reflect. it is starts just past the labyrinth

silver divider between paragraphsLE CHATEAU DE ROCHER
le chateau de rocher by j. kiley (c) jennifer kiley 2013 824x552

le chateau de rocher is the home of madison and scottie & their three cats sparky toker & patrick

silver divider between paragraphsQUOTATIONS from: LETTERS of IMPORT: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst

“A Dream

The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares”
— Madison Taylor

“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander”

“A therapeutic relationship is often more psycho-emotionally intimate than a marriage, or a romantic attachment. I know things about my patients that they would never dream of revealing to their spouses or families. Why is that? One word — trust. If you do not have a connection with a therapist, you cannot trust them. If you do not have trust, you will not expose yourself, and if you do not expose your innermost being, what good is the therapy?” — unknown but ask any great therapist

“Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence…whether much that is glorious–whether all that is profound–does not spring from disease of thought…” — Edgar Allan Poe
silver divider between paragraphsQUOTATIONS of VISION:

“If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse… but surely you will see the wildness!” ― Pablo Picasso

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” ― Albert Einstein

“Writing is…. being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.” ― Mary Gaitskillsilver divider between paragraphs

Letters of Import: We Chose Life 7

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Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
We Chose Life 7
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Illustrations & abstract digital art by j. kiley
© jennifer kiley 2013
First Posting 03.19.13
Posted Weekly Early Tuesday Morning
Seventh Posting 04.30.13silver divider between paragraphsanyone living or dead is purely coincidentalsilver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphsletters - we chose life 7Tuesday, November 12th, 2007

Dear Annie

I must bring this to your immediate attention. Last week, when I wrote to you in our usual letter, I included a poem. It was a raw and painful poem to write. I would really like to discuss some of it with you in this letter. I hope you don’t mind. It has been making me feel rather vulnerable, even though I haven’t sent you the letter yet. Someday, any day, might be when I do get brave enough and really write these letters with the direct expectation of mailing them to you or handing them to you in person. The second way would make me feel more assured that you received the letters personally and no one else touched them or might accidentally open them. I don’t think anyone at the counseling center would ever do something like that intentionally. But these are very private letters meant for your eyes only. Just thinking about discussing the poem I wrote is making me feel rather anxious. In fact, I feel like I am starting to have a panic attack. Let me take a Klonopin before we continue. After that I will post the poem and the paragraph that followed it. I want to discuss that along with the poem. I’ll be right back.

Here I am, back really quickly. It will only take about 15 minutes for the med to take effect. Well, here goes, this is the poem once again appearing in one of my letters I am writing to only you. If I ever give these letters to you, I must have your word that you will never ever show these to anyone else. No one must know what I am telling you. These have to be our secret. If you only knew how I feel inside.

How do I really feel about you Annie? Right now, I have no idea. Too afraid to go inside to find out what I truly feel. The whole of the world confounds me. It just makes me feel depressed. It just feels that I can’t hold onto the people I love. They just tend to die. It’s not like they’re even old. When you die in your twenties, I would call that dying “Forever Young.” Too many die FY. You’re not going to do that, are you Annie?

What do you think of my poem? If you read it now, how would you decipher it? I’ll play both of us. You go first, or should I? Let me pull out the first three lines. The writer, the lover, the thinker: isn’t something missing? Whose feeling anything? The lover is just sexual. You can do that without any feelings at all. The writer is mental but could be emotional with the words they are expressing. But I don’t think so. It’s cerebral. The thinker, existential separation anxiety filled with analytical theorizing until infinity gets exhausted.

Someone is missing. Someone who connects in a soulful way with people or animals. Who is that? Lets think about it. Send out feelings to find out who they are? You think a spiritualist. I thought I was one of those people. I believe in the spirit, the soul, the astral body, the separation from the physical. The soul is just carrying the weight of the body while its heart beats and air fills its lungs and the grey matter still is able to function to make the physical tissues of the body perform.

I was thinking tonight about Heaven Annie. As I made it up the stairs to bed and my cat always raced up the stairs before me. We play that game every night. I make believe I’m going to beat him tonight. It’s always the challenge. There’s no way in Hell that I can ever beat him. But he loves the game. You want to know his name? He goes by many. He has such a magnificent personality. We call him Sparky because he sparks like fireworks. It’s not his official name. That one is proper. We named him Higgins after the character in the great Broadway play Pygmalion. He responds to anything but Higgins and he rather prefers being called Sparky.

What the Hell are we talking about? Is it about making it through with some enjoyment and to try to forget about all the nightmares? Or are we suppose to face the nightmares? The soul tells me that we have to or we won’t make it. I have too many. How about you? What are your bad dreams? What tried to fuck you up? Any bad people in your dreams? You seem pretty together but anyone can put a mask on. Why do you suppose we all try to hide from everyone? We are all human. Our feelings fall somewhere into the human category. Are we afraid people will think we are crazy or too weird?

Back to the poem, the next three lines are pretty explosive. Feeling the fool for not hearing, the silence for not screaming and feelings trying to blow the whole thing wide open but being stopped somehow. What stopped me? You probably would like to know that. A good reason, how about one of the abusers threatened to kill me right at the moment I told him if he didn’t stop I would go to the police. Wrong thing to say to a nasty, mean pedophile. He tried to kill me but he stopped at just making me feel he was going to crush my head into stones like Stonehenge. He pulled back but not until he told me he would not only kill me but my whole family. Those other people who also abused me. For some reason I felt I needed to protect them. I didn’t care if he killed me. My life was ruined. They all in combination destroyed who I am. They crushed my life. I am dead. My spirit has been stolen from me. It’s like in Peter Pan, they stole my shadow, my reflection. I don’t have one any longer. I am invisible. That’s why no one can see me. Why I never get noticed except when someone wants to hurt me or make me feel more pain so that I really do want to be invisible. I just wanted to die.

The only reason I stayed alive was I loved my grandmother. The funny thing about it all, my grandma, she had an accident shortly after this and went into the hospital. She never went home again. I saw her once at the hospital. I climbed into her hospital bed with her. Under the oxygen tent, we hugged. I held her so close. Her arms used her strength, as much as she could and held me close. Then it was time to go. I gave a bunch of kisses to say goodbye to her. I didn’t know I would never see her alive again.

She died in protest. They wanted her to become one of the forgotten. She wasn’t going to let them do that to her. She told them that it was something she would never do, going to a nursing home. She stopped her breathing and her heart from beating. She left me behind. I stopped living when she stopped, too.

“The feelings trying to explode…Where was the awareness?” I was clueless on what or who to, if anyone, to talk to. I never talked to anyone back then. Words were not my companion when spoken out loud. Not something I even knew how to do. Didn’t know how. Had no practice. What would have been the right words to say anyway? I didn’t know them to say or to even write down on paper. I am only learning now how to connect my words with feeling.

“We say ‘Welcome to the surface.’ It should have been Welcome to the circus. “Now what needs to be done?” We need to find someone new that we can really talk to. Someone who will listen and really hear what we are saying. Not judge us. Try to understand. And not constantly criticize us and try to put us down. Diminish who we are. That’s been done all our life except in college. For some reason I mattered when I was in college. I felt important and wanted. The same happened when I was part of the Women’s Center when I lived in Connecticut. It’s not so much I want to feel important. I just want to feel like I matter. Everyone I think needs to feel important in some way.

“Releasing the energy ensnared for decades amongst twisted webs…” I have been so blocked. My thoughts and feelings didn’t have an outlet. And I didn’t know how to say the words. I was made my own prisoner eventually, out of fear. Demons possessed me with fear. All the demons from all the years of abuse and made to feel like I was nothing, a nobody that had no worth or purpose.

“The voice is seeking freedom but holding onto multiple secrets.” We have a central voice but we also have multiple voices. With all the alters, we have to listen to all their voices and all the needs they tell us that they have. It’s hard to keep track or remember. It is really confusing inside our head sometimes. But we were working with a woman therapist who had her moments of quality therapy but she had her problems. I have an obsessive alter who was in love with her and obsessed with her. Let’s call it quite dependent. We were attached. We needed her. She was the first therapist that figured out what was going on inside our head. She figured out the DID. I have to admit when she told us we has other personalities, it really freaked us out. Kind of went into shock and some heavy denial. No way could that be possible. She said the psychiatrist agreed with her after he tested me.

That was the big secret. We thought realizing we were Gay was enough of a shock but being MPD was more difficult. Coming out of that closet was worst. It took us a while before we could tell Scottie and we had been together for a long time at that point. Almost 15 years. When I found the courage to tell her, her reaction was: “Oh, I already knew.” I asked her why she didn’t tell me. “Because you needed to figure that out yourself.” Of course, she was right. It wasn’t easy. Like I usually do, I bought or borrowed every book I could find on the subject of MPD. I learned it all. Enough to get a degree.

There is so much more to discuss in this poem. I packed it with a great deal of exposure of my past. I need a break. I may try to answer more of the points in this letter or carry it over to the next letter.

It’s a list of some of the confusion that smashed into our life. It started when we were really little and didn’t stop. The abuse continued when we were adults. No was the word that meant nothing to anyone who wanted something from us. Our body betrayed us. We couldn’t stop anyone from forcing us. Some didn’t even realize they were forcing us but they were. If we shut down inside we became frozen. We couldn’t stop what was happening. This started when we were little and continued into our adult relationships. It was all on some degree of force. We weren’t there in our bodies. We left or went deep inside or floated on the ceiling until it was over.

It wasn’t consensual. It was a form of rape and abuse. We wanted love but not sex. We didn’t want to be sexually aroused because it would always end with us disappearing and our bodies would shut down. It was like turning the keys off in a car. The engine would stop running and so would we. Eventually we created an outside person, a human robot, who faked our life like a computer. She would accumulate data. And learned the expected behavior and that would be hos she would perform. We were safe inside while she was out there living a fake life as a fake person. A puppet represented us. She hid in plain sight. No one would find us with the puppet self having a controlled pattern of behavior, always asking questions to improve her performance do she wouldn’t be detected.

Our hiding place was discovered by this woman therapist. She saw through the facade. She was tricky and scary to us. She got to close. We started to care too much. She opened up the rawness in us. She made us need people. Specifically, she made us need her too desperately. We felt so close to her. But more like the fox in Le Petite Prince by Antoine de St. Exupery. She tamed part of our wildness. She made us want to be loved by her. Being loved and wanting to love in return puts such a control on you. I began to develop an overwhelming need for her. It was driving me mad. Everything started falling apart. My life felt out of control.

Our hiding place was revealed. There was no place to go except into madness and wanting to commit suicide. Suicide has always been a part of our life. It is a part of our breathing. It is always an alternative to the divine madness. We can escape that way any time we chose. But it is not an answer we can choose. Not with all that we are responsible for. Our life needs us to be in it. Everything has changed. We are learning to begin to live. We have found a purpose. It is delicate and sometimes difficult to balance but we are giving our new life all that we are able to give it. We know and are learning what we are able to do. We are able to write. We are able to be creative. Our artistic nature is starting to blossom. We are letting it be free. It likes that. It feels like are trusted to let the muse guide us. She always seems to be when we need her. We don’t push it. We let it be a natural flow. We like, no we love where we are now. It does have its difficulties with the mentally creative activities that bombard our brain. But we work hard on that more with our doc then with Mr. Xxx. He is about as helpful as a dead skeleton. His sense of warmth and communication I’d to tell stories that do not at all relate to what I am feeling or going through. He doesn’t help me at all except to give me reasons to escape my life. He lets me run away. I know I have my weaknesses but I need to find my life before I die or I kill myself because I can’t live with the confusion any longer or the depressions or rage.

I want to say that I am here and I want to stay alive. We want to be here. We choose life.

We fought through them trying to destroy us. They didn’t succeed. We are still alive. No matter how many battles. No matter how many nights we have to fight to make it alive til morning gets here. Therapy, knowing my psychoanalyst is there is so reassuring. It means at least one person is out there in our Universe that knows we are alive. That we exist. Being alive is a higher grade than just existing. The artist that lives inside of us makes it all matter. Otherwise, nothing else matters. If I didn’t have my art, my animals, the women I love and the men who are decent that I love. A good home and family who I love and who love me. The special people who know who they are. They are part of what make this life I live matter. But that involves some major time tripping. I am having visions of a future in my life, but I must be patient and wait for that time to happen. It is a good sign that I make it to that future. Others do not.

Here in 2007 I have you Annie. I am focusing on that. Your presence is beginning to mean something more to me than I even understand at this moment. We will see where that takes us.

Until next time.

Regards,
Madisonsilver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphsI attach this to the letters I write to you Annie to assure the strictest of confidence.

To Annie,

At this moment I am not trying to be a coward, but I feel if I hold back now or never send this to you, then I am freeing myself up to write whatever I wish without need of censorship. Maybe someday, when I am feeling more familiar with just who you are and what you might mean to me, this parameter will be altered and a copy of this and future letters will be relayed to you. For now I want to maintain secrecy, to protect you, Annie, and to protect myself from over testing the boundaries between us and to record the development of our relationship.

I want Annie Haskell to trust me. I want you to know I am trying to protect you and also myself from any humiliation. Writing to you in this way frees up my words as I speak them onto the page. Some future date, if I feel trusting enough, I will release to you what I have written in honesty. Right now, I will keep my words confidential. On my honour, no others shall see these pages, I promise you that.

Regards,
Madison Taylorsilver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphs

silver divider between paragraphs
labyrinth of a wandering wonderland

the labyrinth called “wandering wonderland.” it is where madison, scottie and their cats, patrick, sparky and toker love to escape to

silver divider between paragraphs
madison's woods of imagination where she takes long walks to reflect

madison’s “woods of imagination” where she takes long walks to reflect. it starts just past the labyrinth

silver divider between paragraphs
QUOTATIONS from: LETTERS of IMPORT: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst

“A Dream

The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares”
— Madison Taylor

“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander”

“A therapeutic relationship is often more psycho-emotionally intimate than a marriage, or a romantic attachment. I know things about my patients that they would never dream of revealing to their spouses or families. Why is that? One word — trust. If you do not have a connection with a therapist, you cannot trust them. If you do not have trust, you will not expose yourself, and if you do not expose your innermost being, what good is the therapy?” — unknown but ask any great therapist

“Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence…whether much that is glorious–whether all that is profound–does not spring from disease of thought…” — Edgar Allan Poesilver divider between paragraphsQUOTATIONS on LIVING:

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame…” — Jack London

“There are two kinds of people. One kind…they congealed into their final selves…you can expect no more surprises from them…the other kind keep moving, changing… They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young. In my opinion, they are the only people who are still alive…” ― Gail Godwin
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“Here’s Looking At You Kid”

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“Here’s Looking At You Kid.”
Film: Casablanca
Starring Humphrey Bogart & Ingrid Bergman
Playing Roles of Rick Blaine & Ilsa Lund
Created by jk the secret keeper
Posted 04.28.13

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Casablanca: Rick Blaine & Ilsa Lund "Here's Looking At You Kid." 1024x768

Casablanca: Rick Blaine & Ilsa Lund “Here’s Looking At You Kid.”

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Rick: Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then, and it all adds up to one thing: you’re getting on that plane with Victor where you belong.

Ilsa: But, Richard, no, I… I…

Rick: Now, you’ve got to listen to me! You have any idea what you’d have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten, we’d both wind up in a concentration camp. Isn’t that true, Louie?

Captain Renault: I’m afraid Major Strasser would insist.

Ilsa: You’re saying this only to make me go.

Rick: I’m saying it because it’s true. Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.

Ilsa: But what about us?

Rick: We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have, we, we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.

Ilsa: When I said I would never leave you.

Rick: And you never will. But I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that.

[Ilsa lowers her head and begins to cry]

Rick: Now, now…

[Rick gently places his hand under her chin and raises it so their eyes meet]

Rick: Here’s looking at you kid.

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casablanca 1947 680x1915

casablanca 1947

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casablanca: rick blaine & ilsa lund in paris cafe 680×540

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casablanca: rick hanging out with sam

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casablanca: ilsa role played by ingrid berman

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FILM REVIEW of CASABLANCA

“Here’s looking at you kid.”

There are so many memorable lines and scenes in the film “Casablanca.”
Casablanca (1942) Directed by Michael Curtiz: Starring Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine; Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund; Peter Lorre as Ugarte; Claude Raines as Louie (Head of Police/Rick’s Friend); Paul Henreid as Victor Laszlo; Sydney Greenstreet as Ferrari, proprietor of the night club The Blue Parrot.

Just one of the fifty films a studio would make each year back in the day. Casablanca was just one of those films thrown into that collection. Who knew it would spring forth and become the success that it is. Today, it is considered one of the top romantic films of all time.

Won for Best Picture 1942 Oscar. One of the most universally admired films ever made. On most lists of the greatest films of all times. Even people who don’t like old films or black and white films love Casablanca. Roger Ebert said he doesn’t think he’s heard of any negative reviews of this film ever. All the characters are all good except the Nazis. Vichy are the French who collaborate with the Nazis.

Rick’s Cafe Americain in Casablanca in French Morocco, where everyone went for entertainment or to hang out for a drink or to go to the back room where there is gambling going on. Here, in Casablanca, some may obtain exit visas but others may wait and wait and wait. At the beginning of the film, you find out that some couriers were killed in the desert and robbed of exit visas. Officials wanting to see a man’s papers, causes the man to freak out, his papers are not in order, so he runs and is shot and killed because he didn’t halt when ordered to. Life is meaningless.

When Louie, the head of the police, is asked by Major Strasser, what is being done about the murder of the couriers, his answer is: “We’ve rounded up the usual suspects.” No one likes Nazis and the head of the Nazis in this movie doesn’t make them any more popular and maybe makes them even less popular. The Marseillaise is the present day French National Anthem. Remember that when you watch Casablanca.

Ugarte shows up and talks to Rick. Wants to have a drink with Rick but as a rule he doesn’t drink with any of the guests of his night club. Ugarte likes to brag to Rick. He just is looking for Rick’s approval but knows that Rick despises him but he is the only person that Ugarte trusts. Rick does finally seem impressed with him. You’ll have to watch the movie to find out why.

Ferrari wants Rick’s place. He is always trying to buy it. It’s the best place in town. Sasha hangs out there and is sort of Rick’s girl friend and is a bit of an alcoholic. It’s understandable she wants to drink the times are during the 2nd World War and it is making everyone edgy and the French are being ruled by the Germans.

Louie and Rick get involved in a conversation and Louie asks why Rick came to such a God Forsaken place like Casablanca. Rick’s a smart ass and says: “It’s for the water.” But, of course, it is a desert. Rick’s is permitted to stay open because he just doesn’t want to get involved. But he has in his hands something that a lot of people are looking for but no one has any idea what that is. Louie tells Rick there is a famous patriot of the war headed for Casablanca. A member of the Gestapo, Major Strasser, is expected at the club. He is a thoroughly disagreeable Nazis but then what Nazi isn’t. That I may say often.

A major happening occurs at Rick’s but he reassures everyone to settle down and get back into enjoying themselves. Rick actually sits down with the Nazis. The Nazis make mention about invading New York. Rick warns them about staying away from certain sections of New York. They may not be safe. They start in talking about Victor Lazslo being on his way. Rick assuring them that he doesn’t plan on getting involved.

Victor Laszlo and Ilsa Lund eventually show up as expected and walk through the cafe and take a seat in the night club. Expect that many will be approaching Victor fairly often because of his importance and how nervous they make the Nazis. Ilsa starts asking about the piano player and who owns the Night Club. Louie tells her it is a man named Rick. Major Strasser is introduced and acts like the ass that he is. Starts applying his power over Laszlo.

It is evident that Ilsa and Victor are close but at this time we know nothing of their relationship other then they are traveling together. Victor leaves her at table to meet a man at the bar and finds out about Ugarte.

Ilsa wants to speak to the piano player. His name is Sam and she asks him to play some of the old songs. There is a sadness between Sam regarding Rick. She wants him to play a the song “As Time Goes By.” Sam sings the song for her. Out comes Rick telling Sam he’s not suppose to play that song. Rick sees Ilsa sitting at her table. The last time Rick saw Ilsa was in Paris when the Germans marched in to take over the city. He was unnerved seeing her again. He was so not himself that he actually had a drink with all at the table breaking his precedent of not drinking with guests of the night club The Americain.

Later back in his rooms, Rick has a bottle, and tells Sam he is not planning on going to bed. He thinks Ilsa is going to show up. Sam isn’t going to leave his boss alone. He starts getting maudlin. “Of all the gin joints in all the world, she walks into mine.” He wants Sam to play “As Time Goes By.” Sam doesn’t want to open the wounds.

Flashback: Paris with Rick and Ilsa driving around in a convertible. then down by the Seine. In the hotel drinking champagne. “Who are you really and what were you before and what did you think?” Ricks asks. Ilsa’s response: “We said no questions.” All the best lines in these scenes. So many to write down and remember. She reveals an answer without the question. Watch the movie to find out what she told Rick.

Outside, newspapers are being passed around. The Germans are coming I believe are the headlines and what they are saying in French over the microphones. There is a lot of action going on out in the streets.

The most famous line is spoken by Rick toasting champagne with Sam and Ilsa: “Here’s looking at you kid.” Everything is falling apart. “Where were you ten years ago?” Rick said he was looking for a job. For some reason there is a price on Rick’s head but no one knows why. It’s time for everyone to leave Paris. Their suppose to meet at the train station from where they will be leaving. Ilsa loves him so much and the war, she hates that in just the opposite emotion. She thinks that they will be taken apart. “Kiss me as if it is the last time.”

It’s raining at the train station. With three minutes until last train leaves. No Ilsa but Sam and Rick are waiting. There is a note from the Hotel. Fade Out Paris Train Station as you watch the rain wash the ink off of the note in Rick’s hand.

Fade In: Rick’s Rooms enter Ilsa. She wants to talk to him, to tell him a story. It’s about a girl who meets a man, a very courageous man. She looked up to him. She thought it was love. Who did she leave him for? Laszlo or others in between?

Victor and Ilsa meet Strasser at Police station. Strasser guarantees Laszlo will never receive an exit visa. His only way to leave is to be a traitor to his people. Do you really think he is the type of man to be a traitor. Nazis have no sense of integrity so they do not understand an enigma like Victor Laszlo. An important person to their leaving has been reported to be dead.

Rick visits The Blue Parrot and talks with Ferrari, who wants the letters of transit. He tells Rick he thinks he knows where the letters are. Rick purposely left his club so the police would have a chance to ransack it. Louie’s men were impressively destructive at Rick’s Place in order to win points with Major Strasser. Louie blows with the wind. He is with the Vichy. The Vichy being the French who go along and reluctantly support the French. The French who are loyal to their own country feel betrayed by the Vichy.

A young woman comes to Rick to plead for some help. She will have to sleep with Louie if her husband doesn’t win enough money so they can afford a visa. If they use only the money they have there would be nothing left. Louise fully expects her to have sex with him if the money isn’t won. Louie sees that the young woman and Rick are being obvious about conspiring. They are all in the backroom where the gambling goes on. Louie is an odd duck. Louie accuses Rick of being a rank sentimentalist.

Victor has a visit with Rick. The Underground tell Victor all sorts of very impressive things about activities that Rick was involved in during the war.

In Rick’s Cafe, the Nazis are singing about the Fatherland. It is so despicable to the French in the club that they have a singing competition. Guess who wins. Strasser is not very satisfied. He tells Louie to find an excuse to close Rick’s. He tells Rick the reason is because he is shocked that gambling is going on in his club.

Strasser just keeps getting creepier. Threatens Ilsa.

Later Ilsa and Victor speak about the letters of transit and what Rick said about asking his wife why he won’t give up the letters.

Ilsa goes to Rick’s rooms and tries to get letters from him. She wants to tell him what really happened in Paris. The feelings between them, have they been buried or are they gone? The truth comes out. She had no hope that Victor was alive when she was in Paris with Rick.

Victor and Rick talk. They are not that far apart in what they believe.

Louie and Rick talk about letters. Louie doesn’t like Strasser.

Approaching the final few scenes of the film. Cafe Americain is still closed by order of the Prefect of Police. Ferrari has taken over the Cafe. Louie thinks he is at Cafe to arrest Laszlo but Rick surprises him and makes him call the airport to tell them that there is to be no trouble about two letters of transit. Everything is building up to the excitement of what is all going to culminate in some of the biggest surprises yet in the film.

Best closing scenes in any movie and best closing lines. Memorable til the final line.

For the rest of the film and to fill in all the spaces that I have left out, you will need to find a copy of this film on DVD or streaming from online or whatever source you are able to find to watch the whole thing and to see how it ends. It is a thoroughly amazing film to watch. It seems the perfect film in detail, dialogue, scenes, settings, storyline, acting and durability. It has all the perfect elements and the best acting. Filled with sentiment and sacrifice. I first saw this film when I was in my 20s. It was such a surprise that I did not see it when I was a kid. It is understandable for older children and a fascinating film for all adults.

The following videos do have SPOILERS so watch them if you have seen the film already or if you don’t mind seeing scenes before seeing the film. I am sure a great many of you have watched this film. But if you haven’t, it should be on everyone’s’ film list as a must see. The sheer acting alone and the love story and the screenplay is brilliant. The cast is to die for. Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman play the leads. They are two of the finest actors of all times. Worthy of anyone’s time to find out how great they are in Casablanca. No one had any idea what a remarkable film this was going to turn out to be. The special benefit if this film is you get to hate the Nazis and you get to curse them out without impunity. It has the most classic lines of almost any film ever made. Enjoy the videos and seriously consider locating this film if you haven’t seen it and find it so you can watch it again. “Here’s Looking At You Kid.” jk the SK

Tribute To Casablanca
Filled With Spoilers

Casablanca La Marseillaise

All About the Film “Casablanca”

The relationship between Rick and Ilsa was filled with Desire. I am going to write a poem about Desire in my new form of Haiku. I refer to it as X-treme Haiku. I use an altered form of Haiku with the onji (lines) in the 5 – 7 – 7. I do as few or as many verses as I feel will tell the story that I am writing. Sometimes the story will more often be a touch abstract and other times it may be a philosophical exploration, or a story that may have the appearance of something that may b close in resemblance to a fable. With X-treme Haiku I want to allow myself the freedom to write about what I want but to also include restriction which will encourage restraint on my part so that I will write more concisely with the use of fewer words that will contain an understanding and a discipline toward accuracy. I have been using this style of X-treme Haiku for a short while now and find it makes me more disciplined. It involves research and a greater understanding of the words I use. Being precise about definitions of the language I am using. There is a cleanness to the design. The other rules are for myself and they include the use of words. I do not or try not to repeat a word within the same verse or if possible within the same poem unless absolutely necessary. I like mystery in my poems so I do have the tendency to be a touch cryptic and/or abstract. I like analyzing what it is I am writing about. I am honest about whatever it is I have chosen to write about. I believe in going into the depths of what I mean in what I write. Truth is essential. Directness is essential. Abstraction is often essential. I believe in creating a puzzle that must be deciphered. I do not often hand out the simplicity of a matter. A specific reason for that is when I am writing I am also trying to interpret and examine in depth what subject is I am writing on and usually for the purpose of trying to understand what is within or what it is about that I am writing. Now to the poem.

x-treme haiku: "desire" by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 2013 823x6441

x-treme haiku: “desire” by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 2013

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Play It, Sam — As Time Goes By

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QUOTATIONS on FILM & DESIRE:

FILM:

“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.” ― Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

“It starts so young, and I’m angry about that. The garbage we’re taught. About love, about what’s “romantic.” Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and drastic unhappiness after The End? Why are sick and dangerous personality types so often shown a passionate and tragic and something to be longed for when those are the very ones you should run for your life from? Think about it. Heathcliff. Romeo. Don Juan. Jay Gatsby. Rochester. Mr. Darcy. From the rigid control freak in The Sound of Music to all the bad boys some woman goes running to the airport to catch in the last minute of every romantic comedy. She should let him leave. Your time is so valuable, and look at these guys–depressive and moody and violent and immature and self-centered. And what about the big daddy of them all, Prince Charming? What was his secret life? We dont know anything about him, other then he looks good and comes to the rescue.” ― Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming

“Only the gentle are ever really strong.” ― James Dean

“Certain things leave you in your life and certain things stay with you. And that’s why we’re all interested in movies- those ones that make you feel, you still think about. Because it gave you such an emotional response, it’s actually part of your emotional make-up, in a way.” ― Tim Burton, Burton on Burton

“Ezekiel 25:17. “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.” I been sayin’ that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin’ made me think twice. Now I’m thinkin’: it could mean you’re the evil man. And I’m the righteous man. And Mr. .45 here, he’s the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you’re the righteous man and I’m the shepherd and it’s the world that’s evil and selfish. I’d like that. But that shit ain’t the truth. The truth is you’re the weak. And I’m the tyranny of evil men. But I’m tryin, Ringo. I’m tryin’ real hard to be the shepherd. — he became the shepherd instead of the vengeance.” ― Quentin Tarantino

“A good movie can take you out of your dull funk and the hopelessness that so often goes with slipping into a theatre; a good movie can make you feel alive again, in contact, not just lost in another city. Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again. If somewhere in the Hollywood-entertainment world someone has managed to break through with something that speaks to you, then it isn’t all corruption. The movie doesn’t have to be great; it can be stupid and empty and you can still have the joy of a good performance, or the joy in just a good line. An actor’s scowl, a small subversive gesture, a dirty remark that someone tosses off with a mock-innocent face, and the world makes a little bit of sense. Sitting there alone or painfully alone because those with you do not react as you do, you know there must be others perhaps in this very theatre or in this city, surely in other theatres in other cities, now, in the past or future, who react as you do. And because movies are the most total and encompassing art form we have, these reactions can seem the most personal and, maybe the most important, imaginable. The romance of movies is not just in those stories and those people on the screen but in the adolescent dream of meeting others who feel as you do about what you’ve seen. You do meet them, of course, and you know each other at once because you talk less about good movies than about what you love in bad movies.” ― Pauline Kael, For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies

“Books and movies, they are not mere entertainment. They sustain me and help me cope with my real life.” ― Arlaina Tibensky

DESIRE:

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” ― Epicurus

“Things are sweeter when they’re lost. I know–because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.” ― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“She leaned forward and caught at his hand, pressing it between her own. The touch was like white fire through his veins. He could not feel her skin only the cloth of her gloves, and yet it did not matter. You kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire. He had wondered once why love was always phrased in terms of burning. The conflagration in his own veins, now, gave the answer.” ― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess

“Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebody—really want him—it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause a lacerating injury.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“I desire to be with you. I miss you. I feel lonely when I can’t see you. I am obsessed with you, fascinated by you, infatuated with you. I hunger for your taste, your smell, the feel of your soul touching mine.” ― Jack Llawayllynn, Indulgence

“Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone.” ― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
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Your Elusive Creative Genius

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Your Elusive Creative Genius
TED Talk: Elizabeth Gilbert
Post Created by jk the secret keeper
Created 04.21.13
Posted 04.24.13

jean miro - harlequin's carnival c. 1924-5

jean miro – harlequin’s carnival c. 1924-5

“Eat, Pray, Love” Author Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.

All people who are creative should listen to this TED Talk. Elizabeth Gilbert gives a most brilliant talk about creativity in a most humourous way. You will hear yourself in what she is saying. What she says will also give you some perspective to your life. jk the secret keeper

Elizabeth Gilbert — Your Elusive Creative Genius — TED Talk

QUOTATIONS on CREATIVE/CONFIDENCE:

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.” ― Henry David Thoreau

“Believe in yourself and there will come a day when others will have no choice but to believe with you.” ― Cynthia Kersey

“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” ― Osho

“The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas. — Terrance McKenna

“Solitude is the soil in which genius is planted, creativity grows, and legends bloom; faith in oneself is the rain that cultivates a hero to endure the storm, and bare the genesis of a new world, a new forest.” ― Mike Norton, White Mountain

“When walking alone in a jungle of true darkness, there are three things that can show you the way: instinct to survive, the knowledge of navigation, creative imagination. Without them, you are lost.” ― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“Writers do not have the privilege of sleep. There is always a story coming alive in their heads, constantly composing. Whether they choose it or not.” ― Coco J. Ginger

“Remember to delight yourself first, then others can be truly delighted.” This was my mantra when I published my first book in 1990, and still holds true. When we focus on the song of our soul and heart, then others will be touched similarly. Sometimes people wonder or worry whether people will like or approve of their creative expression. It’s none of your business. It’s your business to stay present and focused for the work of your deepest dreams. It might look crooked or strange, or be very odd-but if it delights you, then it is yours, and will find it’s way into other hearts.” ― S.A.R.K.

“All you have to do is put one word after another, and remember how great it feels to be a writer.” ― Stephanie Lennox

“In his creative work the artist is dependent on sources and resources deriving from the spiritual unconscious.” ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search For Ultimate Meaning

Teen Suicides - I wish I had a real answer

1 Reply

Reblogged from Vampire Maman:

It is sad that my 13 year old daughter talked about suicides for about a half hour last night. She wouldn’t shut up about it but then again, she needed to talk about it. But what was scary was how she was so matter of fact about it. But she was also passionate and angry about it.

This isn't the first time she talked about it.

Read more… 859 more words

bully film posterBullying is an issue everyone, whether you have children or not, should be concerned with and should be upset about. This post that Vampire Maman wrote brought up many important points that need to be addressed immediately. Bullying should not be tolerated or allowed to exist in our school systems. Go to her site and read the complete post. Join in the non-violent fight of stopping this HORRIBLY SAD situation, where children think that suicide is the only answer to ending the pain of bullying. Stopping the Bullies is the answer and coming to the aid of those who need help. Tell them it will be alright. Help stop their pain by stopping the torture and stopping teen suicide because of it. "Teen Suicides - I wish I had a real answer" written by Vampire Maman *******I have the film "Bully" but I haven't watched it yet. My therapist thought it would be too triggering. Someday soon I am going to see it. (She gave me her approval today to watch this as long as I do some Art Work while watching to de-stress me. *******The young man in the film, I have heard who was mercilessly bullied, now has come out of his shell because of the film. He has lots of friends. He is a success story. *******Far too many teens have taken the road to commit suicide. It is far too painful and the bullies are far too merciless. *******I understand the effects of bullying. I was in music, marching band, orchestra, theatre, sports, and other activities that drew unwanted attention to myself. I didn't fit in anywhere, and I was also extremely shy. But when I was in school the bullying wasn't what it is today. Suicide wasn't the first solution. I don't remember anyone succeeding or attempting suicide. But I may have just blocked it all out. I know that I did think about it. I even did try to commit suicide because of the pain inside of me.But I realized that suicide wasn't the answer. I didn't want to die, I just wanted the pain to stop. *******It seems that today, it is the first resort to ending the pain. Like you, I don't know the answers. If you tell on the bullies, you are considered a snitch, and it makes the bullying worse. I think you are right , there should be a no tolerance rule on bullying. You bully kids you are out of that school. Try a little home schooling on the bullies. Let the other kids live in peace. ******* I suppose, if I were a student today, I might or rather I would be one of the at risk kids to commit suicide. I know from the way I felt at that age, I would not be able to take the kind of torture they are handing out today. *******I think maybe it is time for me to watch the film "Bully." It is one of the top issues I try to focus on and I try to talk about on the secret keeper, but I haven't done it recently. I have an avatar of purple lightning on FB that I vowed I would not replace until bullying was brought under control and stopped. *******It is time to watch the film, review it and to talk about it. *******Vampire Maman, your post is great. Something I needed to read right now. Thank you for bringing up the issue to help people become more aware. There does need to be a constant awareness bringing "Bullying" to everyone's attention. We need to be continually reminded that the issue exists. *******It is curious that I happened to be talking to my partner Shawn about this just this past week. I wondered where was our copy of "Bully." I told her about the boy I mentioned above. I lost my point. Until I remember, I would like to say that I think the point of Vampire Maman's of giving strong support to the weaker kids is a brilliant idea. All kids should get involved. *******I remember. It was about one of the authority figures on a film clip I had viewed, who was from the school where the film "Bully" took place. She said, that "she has ridden the bus in question," (she is talking to some parents,) "and the kids were nothing but behaved. There wasn't any problem here, that she saw." Well, she sounds like a real idiot. Does she really think those kids, especially the bullies, are going to act out while she is present. How stupid is she. This is the mentality kids and parents are dealing with, because they don't see it, it isn't happening. They would rather not see reality, that way they don't have to do anything about it, or feel responsible for the bullying happening. Who knows maybe some of them were bullies themselves and feel, "well, isn't that too bad. why don't they stop whining and just suck it up." *******Something has too happen in the schools. Bullying should be tantamount to abuse on many levels and should not be tolerated and should be prosecuted. It's plain out and out torture. *******Since when is it ok to torture kids. It's like one level below domestic violence, which once upon a time was ignored, and not considered significant enough for the police to do anything about it, until someone was usually killed. *******I am going to reblog this, and later today I'm going to try to find our copy of the film "Bully" and watch it. *******Sometime this week, if I am able, I am going to write a review of the film "Bully". But if not this week I will do it as soon as I am able to. It will be soon, I promise you that. jk the secret keeper. ps. A Great Post Vampire Maman. jk the secret keeper *******STOP BULLYING NOW---*******STOP TEEN SUICIDE NOW---*******SUICIDE IS NOT THE ANSWER---*******IT IS ONLY AN ALL TOO PERMANENT ANSWER FOR A TEMPORARY PROBLEM.

Unknown: The Haunting

2 Replies

Unknown: The Haunting
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Abstract Digital Art
Selected and Created by j. kiley
Created 04.21.13
Posted 04.22.13

unknown by j. kiley (c) jennifer kiley 2013

The Flower Duet (Lakmé)

The Hunger – Deneuve Sarandon Tribute Lesbian Love Kiss

QUOTATIONS on HAUNTING:

“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you–haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” ― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.” ― Neil Gaiman, M is for Magic

“Heaven is comfort, but it’s still not living.” ― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

“The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.” ― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Each leaf that brushed his face deepened his sadness and dread. Each leaf he passed he’d never pass again. They rode over his face like veils, already some yellow, their veins like slender bones where the sun shone through them. He had resolved himself to ride on for he could not turn back and the world that day was as lovely as any day that ever was and he was riding to his death.” ― Cormac McCarthy, Child of God

“Ghosts could walk freely tonight, without fear of the disbelief of men; for this night was haunted, and it would be an insensitive man who did not know it.” ― John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat

“The popular notion that ghosts are likely to be seen in a graveyard is not borne out by psychical research… A haunting ghost usually haunts a place that a person lived in or frequented while alive… Only a gravedigger’s ghost would be likely to haunt a graveyard.” ― John H. Alexander, Ghosts! Washington Revisited: The Ghostlore of the Nation’s Capitol

“A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest. If you’re not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a memory, which are involuntary, you’re not interested or even involved.” ― Jack Kerouac, Book of Sketches

“Libraries are full of ghosts, books being the most haunted things of all.” ― Maya Panika

“Ghosts don’t haunt us. That’s not how it works. They’re present among us because we won’t let go of them.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said, faintly.
“Some people can’t see the color red. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” she replied.”
― Sue Grafton, M Is for Malice

“Here and there and not just in books we catch glimpses of a world of once upon a time and they lived happily ever after, of a world where there is a wizard to give courage and a heart, an angel with a white stone that has written on it our true and secret name, and it is so easy to dismiss it all that it is hardly worth bothering to do. … But if the world of the fairy tale and our glimpses of it here and there are only a dream, they are one of the most haunting and powerful dreams that the world has ever dreamed…” ― Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale

Dark Night of the Soul

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Dark Night of the Soul
By Jennifer Kiley
Inspired By Reading
Abstract Digital Art j. kiley
Written 04.18.14

kindness covers all by j. kiley (c) jennifer kiley

dark night of the soul --- abstract digital art

dark night of the soul — abstract digital art

Dark Night of the Soul
By Jennifer Kiley
Inspired By Reading
Written 04.18.14

Those of you who have heard of the dark night of the soul know the kind of pain and confusion it can bring. It used to be used to describe a spiritual crisis. Now it describes a psychological darkness. Here is a description of a major symptom to describe what it is: to feel one no longer has a grasp or sense of the realness of the ground beneath one’s feet. It doesn’t feel solid, nor does it feel like it has a strong basis in reality.

Something in one’s present day happens and causes it to trigger thoughts from the unconscious that draws the dark night into “the light.” Carl Jung thought the psyche was causing this to happen. That the symbols or images or flashes that were coming from the unconscious were being brought to the surface in order to help an individual grow. A direct form of Enlightenment would occur which is when the unconscious becomes conscious. The dark night, though appearing to be a negative force is actually aiding in this occurrence.

“Creative suffering burns clean; neurotic suffering creates more soot.” The Jungian analyst Marion Woodman wrote this. Her meaning is that repeating pain in a non-productive way does not create one’s healing or move one forward. One needs to go deep within the source of the center to that power where the emotions are hiding and/ or existing. Doing this should bring to one a self-understanding and with a great deal of work, it should lead eventually to liberation of the self. But one needs to first do the difficult work of fighting with one’s demons and angels. They will bring with them the healing that one will be needing. It’s a difficult fight and it is a spiritual and psychological fight. When one is looking for one’s spiritual reality, it is a necessary fight to find one’s meaning.

Dark nights are meant to happen in order to tear apart the ways in which we deal with reality and our own growing. We must be forced to let go of our illusions and/or our delusions that have been controlling our thinking, our way of behaving and how we are able to express our feelings. This is essential in order to regain control of our self and the way that we behave in our life.

It enables us to find our real self and release our great need for control. The most difficult part is our needing to tear down how we learned to deal when we were children. We need to release all of the built up anxiety and our sense of overwhelming vulnerability that kept us from functioning then and keeps us from functioning now. We must always remain connected to our self while we construct our new way of being in our new lives, where we are going to be more real. And most importantly we must give up the need to always be in control. That is an important one. The bonus that comes with doing all of this is that we will be getting into an upgrade of an automatic elevator to a higher level of consciousness.

So you see, sometimes we have to enter into hell to find our way out of it. And gradually we will lose the negative aspects of our lives and find in their place courage, strength and self-love. And most importantly finding freedom and get on into growing. We will start feeling a more secure sense of well-being that will keep expanding. This may feel like just words and a dream but it can happen.

When one’s life begins in such a dark atmosphere and one is alone in that darkness, all that is felt is fear and dread, so what is left to remember is shaped into a memory overflowing with fear.

It’s time to let that fear and that past go and to reawaken the child who is buried deep inside, who wants her freedom to begin to live again, to cry again, to laugh again, to stop feeling overwhelmed by the positive feelings of life like love, caring, joy, belonging and more, to allow her to have healthy relationships that are not messed up with demons of the past filling her mind with senseless fears of abandonment, punishment and abuse. It really is time to let all of it go and just leave it back there in the past, in that time which should no longer exist now.

© jennifer kiley 2013

Darkness — Disturbed

QUOTATIONS on DARKNESS/DARK NIGHT:

“If we never experience the chill of a dark winter, it is very unlikely that we will ever cherish the warmth of a bright summer’s day. Nothing stimulates our appetite for the simple joys of life more than the starvation caused by sadness or desperation. In order to complete our amazing life journey successfully, it is vital that we turn each and every dark tear into a pearl of wisdom, and find the blessing in every curse.” ― Anthon St. Maarten

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” ― Terry Pratchett

“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” ― Anne Frank

“I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.” ― Franz Kafka

“When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for you to stand upon or you will be taught to fly.” ― Patrick Overton

“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.” ― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Darkness does not leave us easily as we would hope.” ― Margaret Stohl

Letters of Import: A Look Inside 5

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Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
A Look Inside 5
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Illustrations by j. kiley
© jennifer kiley 2013
First Posting 03.19.13
Posted Weekly Early Tuesday Morning
Fifth Posting 04.16.13silver divider between paragraphsanyone living or dead is purely coincidentalsilver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphsletters-to-import a look inside 5Tuesday, October 29th 2007

Dear Annie,

In my letter this week, I want to open your eyes a bit wider on all of the people you are getting to observe in the women’s therapy group. My intentions are to do my own analysis for you of who I feel and think the people in this group and it’s fearless leader really are. Strictly from my point of view. I have a really good sense of people. A sensitivity that enables me to psychically feel what is going on inside of anyone I am in contact with in a close proximity. Sometimes I am too hypersensitive and pick up too much of what is coming off of people I am around. It is not a gift but an annoyance and makes me feel really anxious and agitated. There is no way to block out the bad from the good. I get all the emotions blasting at me all at once. It is extremely overwhelming and disconcerting especially when there are too many people all in extreme states of disturbance.

I should really start with the person you seem to be getting closest to first, Robin. She is someone who is difficult to get to know. My sense is her barriers are extremely high up. She doesn’t really like people , yet she gives the appearance of wanting someone in her life. Maybe more than one person but she can be quite negative about everyone who shows her any interest in wanting to get to know her. I get close to her but if I am truly honest, whenever we talk, I always feel so hyper afterwards and I often find myself shaking. She brings up too much information. Triggers too many memories in me. I’m not sure if we have very good boundaries in our relationship. She can be extremely critical of everyone I know, especially Mr. Xxx. She is right about him but it does under-mind that relationship just the same. I go along with the lambasting of his character and his flaws as a therapist.

We do have some similar issues we are coping or not coping so well with. It is not my place to go into her problem but I will talk to you freely about mine. I am open about my past. What I remember of it. It was severe and it was traumatizing. I lived the life of someone who exhibited the symptoms of autism. I didn’t speak or relate to anyone. I never talked. My introversion was extreme. Relating to other people, especially my family, was totally impossible for me. I was much older when I put that diagnosis together. It was wrong but I needed to have answers. I am part cat and extremely curious. When I first got high on pot I needed to analyze what exactly was the reaction I was experiencing. I wanted to understand what it was doing. A true scientist. I missed my calling.

Never developed the full picture on marijuana except that I loved getting high and it made everything enjoyable except the creeping paranoia. Otherwise, music, talking, writing, anything I did was on such a higher level of enjoyment when I was stoned. It opened up my shell of silence. The only other drug I felt the same way about was mescalin. Read the whole Bhagava-Gita in one session tripping on that stuff. Even went on a visit to McDonald’s on the same trip and came to the aid of a damsel in distress from a rather grumpy employee. I told him to show a bit more respect for people. That was cool and unusual behavior for me. It felt good to stand up for someone who was having the experience of being bullied.

It was just a year prior to my great discovery. I finally figured out or should I say came to an acceptance and acknowledgement of my true sexuality while I was attending college. I realized I was a lesbian and I was already living with the woman who became my first lesbian lover. We took forever to realize we didn’t need men to be sexual. She felt we did and when she said. “I would love to be sexual but we don’t have any men.” My rather stoned and wine laden mind responded rather boldly by saying without thinking at all, the following words were uttered from my mouth, “But we don’t need any men.” We had each other and some strong feelings of attraction and love for each other. We played around with our physical feelings all summer by playing tactile games, for example, lightly touching the bottom of each others feet. If you are ticklish, just get past it, because I will tell you it is one of the most erotically, sensual experience ever without actually having to be direct about your sexual behavior

I think I drifted a bit away from the topic. Warning: don’t trust Robin. I like you and I don’t want her to hurt you. She has a way of cutting into you behind your back. We may be friends but I am not sure why that relationship works. She does bring out the worst in me. It makes me critical but not in a constructive way. To criticize with truth is one thing but to assassinate a character is unkind and mean and cruel. That is what it is. She can be cruel.

I will tell you more later as we get closer. Now I feel I have said enough and need a break. I will go deeper as our relationship develops and I feel our trust growing. I am observant and I am willing to share my secrets with you within reason for now. I somehow think we are going to go deeper into a good relationship. My feelings for you resonate at nothing less than extremely positive. So I will close now.

More to come later. You can be sure of that. This is proving to be quite cathartic for me. I may never send these to you, so what I am writing is more to me like a journal than a confessional or a revelation for you to learn about this crazy group of people of which you have been thrown into the middle. We do all have some extremely good qualities and some not so kind natures. Maybe that is what is to be expected from such a group of damaged individuals.

I will follow up that statement of “a group of damaged individuals,” by saying we had the bad fortune of being situated with families who had no understanding of us and treated us in any manner of abuse that could ever cross your mind and then go even further and you may never come to the end of what may have been done to us in the name of abusive child rearing and abuse of every nature possible. What it did to our psyches has yet to be completely determined.

I am stopping now. It is beginning to feel that I am stepping beyond the bounds I feel comfortable. So to another time and for another letter. I stop right here.

Regards,
Madisonsilver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphs(This note is to ensure these are written in the strictest of confidence.)

To Annie,

At this moment I am not trying to be a coward, but I feel if I hold back now or never send this to you, then I am freeing myself up to write whatever I wish without need of censorship. Maybe someday, when I am feeling more familiar with just who you are and what you might mean to me, this parameter will be altered and a copy of this and future letters will be relayed to you. For now I want to maintain secrecy, to protect you, Annie, and to protect myself from over testing the barriers or boundaries of what the potentials could be between us and the development of our relationship.

I am adding this in order that you, Annie Haskell, will know that I am trying to protect you and also myself from any humiliation. It will free up my words as I speak them upon the page. And on some future date, if I feel trusting enough, I will release to you what I write in honesty, but for now I will keep my words confidential. On my honour, no others shall see these pages, I promise you that.

Regards,
Madison Taylorsilver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphs

silver divider between paragraphsQUOTATIONS from: LETTERS of IMPORT: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst

“A Dream

The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares”
— Madison Taylor

“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander”

“A therapeutic relationship is often more psycho-emotionally intimate than a marriage, or a romantic attachment. I know things about my patients that they would never dream of revealing to their spouses or families. Why is that? One word — trust. If you do not have a connection with a therapist, you cannot trust them. If you do not have trust, you will not expose yourself, and if you do not expose your innermost being, what good is the therapy?” — unknown but ask any great therapist

“Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence…whether much that is glorious–whether all that is profound–does not spring from disease of thought…” — Edgar Allan Poesilver divider between paragraphs

Writing Is Being Alive

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Writing Is Being Alive
Haiku & Collage Created by Jennifer Kiley
Post Created 04.08.13
Posted 04.11.13

autumn spectrum of colour and light --- artist unknown

autumn spectrum of colour and light — artist unknown

writing is being alive by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 2013

writing is being alive by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 2013

Schubert — “Serenade”

QUOTATIONS for BEING ALIVE/PURPOSE:

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in his cosmic loneliness.

And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat, looked around, and spoke. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.

“Certainly,” said man.

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.

And He went away.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it”
― Gautama Buddha

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Life is filled with unanswered questions, but it is the courage to seek those answers that continues to give meaning to life. You can spend your life wallowing in despair, wondering why you were the one who was led towards the road strewn with pain, or you can be grateful that you are strong enough to survive it.” ― J.D. Stroube, Caged by Damnation

“I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all..” ― Leo Rosten

“A writer – and, I believe, generally all persons – must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here. I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.” ― Richard P. Feynman

All The Lonely People...is available now...free!

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Reblogged from On The Plum Tree:

Click to visit the original post

Introduction: All The Lonely People

 

More than one in ten people suffer from chronic loneliness...

 Our cultures do little to recognise this alarmingly growing trend. In fact, chronic loneliness can become a disease that eats into the soul causing depression and deep psychological change. The chronically lonely person asks, "What's wrong with me?" Why don't I fit in? Why am I the odd one out?"

Read more… 435 more words

All The Lonely People is an Anthology, a collection of words, art, writing, prose, poems, meaningful sentiments about loneliness, photography, pain, fear, feelings, sharing similarities and differences at where our lives are now, where they came from and where they are headed. Niamh Clune had a brilliant idea to bring together the works of artists in various fields with herself included, for she is also a brilliant artist with multiple talents, and had us write about, paint, take photographs in order to present our inner thoughts and feelings about loneliness and also aloneness or solitude. Dr. Clune gathered all the multitude of submissions and selected what she felt worked and put the Anthology together herself, a daunting job, in the least. We all thank her for her strength and sensitivity for doing such a remarkable task. Personally, when I thought about writing a poem or poems, I wasn't sure whether I felt loneliness or understood it. I want to say that it was a difficult struggle to come to terms with the feelings that surround these two states of being as I was writing what ended up being two poems. I threw away my first attempt. I had no idea what it was that I was even writing about. I was confused and debated with my partner what exactly was loneliness. I didn't understand. I rejected the idea that I felt Loneliness. I didn't want to accept that I could possibly feel lonely. The thought made me feel uncomfortable and if it were true then shame accompanied the acceptance of feeling this state. By the time I completed my two poems, I discovered deep inside a place that was quite dark and I found that state of loneliness. It felt awful and I felt so isolated and I couldn't handle how it made me feel. You will understand when and if you read my poems or any of the other poems or prose or look upon the paintings and photographs and just absorb the words of the other writers and you may understand. I put that in my poem on Loneliness, what it made me feel like and how I felt I needed to handle it. And at the last moment, near deadline, I finally think I understood what it really meant to feel Aloneness, a completely different state. As I struggled, I can see from what I read that I believe it is and was a struggle for all of us to experience the state of loneliness at all stages in our lives. This Anthology "All The Lonely People" is something everyone should look at and read. It may help you to understand what it is to be lonely. If you are lonely, it may help you to understand what it is you are experiencing. If you know someone who is lonely, it may help you to reach out to them, to offer a hand to lead them away from their loneliness. For whatever reason, seriously consider downloading this Anthology. It is available for Free right now. I downloaded it and I am amazed at the honesty and the feelings and fear that people see or have experienced or are experiencing. The introduction helps to explain a great deal about chronic loneliness. If you follow this reblogged post back to its origin you will find the complete Introduction there and also the link to where you will be able to download "All The Lonely People" for Free. If the title sounds familiar to some, it is from the lyrics of the Beatles song "Eleanor Rigby." "Ah, look at all the lonely people." Please learn about Loneliness. It is of utmost importance to find an understanding of how devastating a condition this can be. Loneliness eats at your soul. Take a chance by downloading "All The Lonely People." Thank you. Here is a caption from the Introduction that struck me all too closely: "There is the loneliness of those abandoned by the loss or death of a loved one...suddenly vulnerable, forced to begin anew, shifted from the comfort of knowing and loving someone to being surrounded by strangers again." Jennifer Kiley...jk the secret keeper