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Now That The First Draft Is On The Page—Then What?

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a divider for posts no 1Now That The First Draft Is On The Page—Then What?
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Written June 11th 2013
Illustrated by j. kiley
Post Created June 16th 2013
Posted June 16th 2013a divider for posts no 1

a flower of many colours-this is for you

a flower of many colours-this is for you

a divider for posts no 1now that the first draft is on the page then what by j. kiley (c) jennifer kiley 2013a divider for posts no 1

Maksim Mrvica — Wonderlanda divider for posts no 1QUOTATIONS on REMEMBERING:

“The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts….We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.” ― Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces

“Remember that you own what happened to you. If your childhood was less than ideal, you may have been raised thinking that if you told the truth about what really went on in your family, a long bony white finger would emerge from a cloud and point to you, while a chilling voice thundered, “We *told* you not to tell.” But that was then. Just put down on paper everything you can remember now about your parents and siblings and relatives and neighbors, and we will deal with libel later on.” ― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Read. As much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and ­irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won’t need to take notes.” ― A.L. Kennedy

“One couldn’t be selective when remembering the past. Ignore the turmoil, chaos and pain – and the truly great memories would not shine with such luster.” ― Karen Fowler, Memories For Sale

“I seemed to be upon the verge of comprehension, without the power to comprehend as men, at time, find themselves upon the brink of rememberance, without being able, in the end, to remember.” ― Edgar Allan Poe

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so you want to be a writer?

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so you want to be a writer?
Post Created by Jk the secret keeper
Created June 11th 2013
Posted June 14th 2017
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so you want to be a writer by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 2013
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Philip Glass – Aguas da Amazonia (HQ)
colours multi psychedelic divider for posts newQUOTATIONS of CHARLES BUKOWSKI:

“That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.” ― Charles Bukowski, Women

“being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.” ― Charles Bukowski, Women

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.” ― Charles Bukowski, Women

“People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.” ― Charles Bukowski, Women

“You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.” ― Charles Bukowski, Women

“I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. It didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.” ― Charles Bukowski, Women

“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.” ― Charles Bukowski, Women

“There’s no way I can stop writing, it’s a form of insanity.” ― Charles Bukowski, Women
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Letters of Import: Miss Seeing You-Difficult 13

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Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
Miss Seeing You-Difficult 13
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Illustrated by j. kiley
First Published March 19th 2013
Published Early Tuesday AM
Thirteenth Posted June 11th 2013silver divider between paragraphsanyone living or dead is purely coincidentalsilver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphsletters-miss seeing you-difficult 13silver divider between paragraphsTuesday, December 25th, 2007
Christmas Day

Dear Annie,

Not seeing you today was so painfully difficult. I realize it is Christmas day and you are with your family and I am, of course, with mine. Our furry kitties, Patrick, Toker and Little Sparky and our feathery Amazon Parrot, V Woolf. At present, we are all spread out together in the family room. Scottie is looking for a great book to read for the holiday week. She likes to choose a special book every year. She starts it out and when her voice begins to crack, it becomes my turn. I love this part. When I was in school, I prided myself on being able to read without a mistake or tripping over a word for the greatest length of anyone in my class. It was a feat that I still hold the record to. It’s a good habit to have if you ever have to do a book reading. Which as you may know, I do fairly often. More locally, then in the past, when I use to travel all over the states and sometimes even over in Europe, particularly in England.

I know this is suppose to be a joyful time of the year. Scottie and I have a good time together. We have a special Christmas Eve dinner, which was delicious last night, and there are always leftovers. We started the Christmas Eve feast our first Christmas together, before we were actually together. But that story is for another time. Something has been running through my mind, which I cannot talk about in therapy, private or group, but I need to get it out of my system. It has to do with crying. All the films we watch at Christmas should make me tear up or cry, especially at the end of Alastair Sims’s Scrooge, A Christmas Carol. His is the all time best film on Dicken’s story. I’ve watched it every year since I was a child. That is what I want to talk about. When I was a child, I remember I would swallow my tears in the lump that formed in my throat. I was too afraid to cry or for anyone to see the tears in my eyes. I better explain why. It is not a pleasant story.

I don’t cry. It is something I cannot do. Only when something so traumatic happens can I cry and then I can’t seem to stop. Everything sets me off. But only in private can I show my tears. I shut down completely around everyone, even Scottie, and during a sad film where crying is completely acceptable behavior. As I said, Tiny Tim always gives me a lump in my throat. It is my body trying to protect me by holding back the tears. It’s probably because I really want to scream. There is so much rage pent up inside of me. I want to let go of it but I’m afraid.

It’s shame. I am ashamed of my tears. There is a really good reason. When I was really young I use to cry all the time. It really drove my mother insane. My brothers would tease me and call me a cry baby. I hate that term. It made me cry even more. My mother use to tell my brothers to leave me alone. She left me alone to. But then suddenly, I must have reached a certain age when my mother didn’t find it acceptable any longer for me to cry. She flipped out and became some dark creature and mean as Hell. It started. She turned into a Demon. When ever she found me alone, she turned on me, like some cornered animal and started to beat me, all the while screaming at me. I became terrified and of course I would start to cry. This made her even more angry. Her seeing the tears in my eyes and falling down my cheeks enraged her. That’s when I discovered that tears were dangerous. They ignited a full blown rage in my mother. That was when I started thinking of her as evil and in therapy I came up with the name for her of The Shadow Mother. That’s what I called her in my mind. I cannot use the other word alone. It disturbs me.

My tears from that point on caused me to be physically, emotionally, psychologically, sexually and spiritually abused in the most vicious ways imaginable. The depth of abuse crossed the lines of any kind of abuse in ones childhood. The Shadow Mother wasn’t my only abuser but the things she did to me were so harsh. One would not expect a mother to do these things to their young child. Now that I am older and understand more I can describe what she did to me. She was into bondage and dominance mixed in with sadomasochism. In her beatings there were not any safe words to make it stop. That’s when I felt it brought the abuse into a questionably sexual realm with The Shadow Mother. The word No and Stop in her mind meant to keep abusing. Crying only doubled and tripled the intensity of the beatings. She started out by striking me through my clothing at first but as the frequency of the abuse increased eventually she would not get enough satisfaction with striking cloth, she wanted to beat my body on my flesh where she could see the effect of her brutality. She wanted to see the bruises and the tears in my skin. She used various weapons. Usually what ever was near at hand but she had a favorite switch taken from the branches of a tree from our yard that she liked the most.

Silence and no movement were the only things when combined that worked to stop her. I needed to be dead or show the appearance of someone dead for the abuse to stop. Maybe not technically but physically without sound or motion. That was the first part. When that was over there was one more phase to the abuse. It wasn’t over until I, the child and one abused, went to her closed bedroom door and groveled at the door with The Shadow Mother inside. She was always dead silent. I was always on my knees pleading with her to forgive me. I had to ask my abuser to forgive me. I’d ask her multiple times to forgive me. I was trained well into being submissive but even with all the pleading there was no forgiveness. Not ever. The door never opened. There was never a sound made from inside those walls behind that damned door. I was left there till oblivion escorted me away. Memory blanked from that point on. Rewind tape and repeat performance at a future but unknown time. Just her performance was the only thing that was repeated over and over again in all its brutality and my submission and pleas for forgiveness were echoed in those halls and bedrooms.

I am sorry that I am telling you this now but Christmas is about family and I have no family. I left them all behind when I became brave enough and my first therapist managed to convince me I needed to leave that place of unbalanced confusion, madness and inequity. There are no blood family I want anything to do with except a niece and her family. We are close and keep in touch but I have never met her. My agoraphobia has prevented us getting together. Her family want to meet Scottie and me. It’s just I have a terrible time being around people. I relate to them from a distance, through cyberspace. With the few exceptions. Physical contact is not something I am very good at except with my animals and Scottie. I do group and private therapy but do not relate well in my private sessions. As far as group goes, I can handle the people in group as long as it’s in a therapy room. Now, it seems to be developing into something impossible and uncomfortable to handle. If you weren’t there Annie, I wouldn’t return. Your entering my life when you did has saved me. I hope in the near future you will come to my rescue even further. You becoming my psychoanalyst is my Christmas wish and those wishes always should be answered.

Merry Christmas Annie. And thank you for entering my life when you did. It means more to me than I am able to express to you in person at the moment. Oh, by the way, Scottie finally settled on her choice of books to read over the holidays. It’s Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited.” We loved the series and have watched it several times. I seem to recall that the opening line of the series was spoken by Charles Rider, played by the actor Jeremy Irons (one had no idea of who he was at the time in the states) saying off camera, “I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him. That was unavoidable for, from his first week, he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty, which was arresting, and his eccentricities of behaviour, which seemed to know no bounds… I was struck less by his looks than by the fact that he was carrying a large teddy-bear”.” It should be fun hearing Sebastian talk about his teddy bear Aloysius, “If it could only be like this always – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper…” Love both of these lines but I wish the second one could be true most of the time. I, also, love all the adventures Sebastian had with Charles at Cambridge together. Then there is Sebastian’s family, the mother was almost impossible to take to heart and overly pompous in her religiosity and the same of brother Bridie, what a bore.

It was easy to love Sebastian’s sisters Cordelia and Julia, and spending time at Brideshead, the Flyte homestead, that was mostly marvelous in the beginning. And Sebastian’s father was a free spirit, who was accepting and had found love away from England in Italy, away from his wife and the mother of his children. When all starts going wrong, that I don’t like. Sebastian is my favorite and I don’t like that Waugh gives him such a bad turn. It should still be exciting to have Scottie reading to us as I rest my head in her lap and stretch out the rest of my body on the sofa with a throw over me, our cats Patrick, Toker and Sparky curled up on top of the sofa with us, and a fire roaring in the fireplace. Quite the romantic and cozy scene. Add to that some Schubert or Rachmaninoff playing in the background or Michael Hoppe and the sweetness of the spiritually uplifting flute and the peaceful serenity the music induces inside one’s soul.

I’d say thanks for listening. In a way you are, at least in my head. Annie, that does help me make it through, believing that you are there for me. Maybe after this letter you might not want to deal with someone who has been so damaged. It isn’t easy to be around that shit I wrote about. It’s in my psyche and I hate having to remember. I don’t often. My defense mechanisms are like iron vaults. They lock up the darkness as best they can but there is always the sneakiness of memories. They don’t like being trapped in any containment. They have no idea they are so destructive to me. All they want is their freedom. Being creative helps to release them in a way that I have more control over them but one doesn’t have control over one’s nightmares unfortunately. They sneak out through all those symbols in the unconscious, thank you Carl Jung, that collective unconscious that manifests its self by bringing back the dead to haunt me, so that I will be forced to remember, even if it is in code. Eventually, the code is broken and the symbols are understood. They must be. It is the only way to work things out and be rid of their hold on me. Out, out damned nightmares. I may joke but I want my dignity back and my honour and innocence.

Annie, this is what you would have to look forward to if you decide to accept the challenge to be my analyst. I so hope you will. Please don’t turn away from me now. I can feel my insecurities are already starting to grow. There is nobody I am able to turn to who will help me. I’ve tried so many therapists and analysts. I need help. There isn’t much time. My strength is weakening. I feel suicidal so often. Holding back the dam from breaking just won’t work much longer. With all my heart, I am asking you sincerely to please help me.

Sorry for such intensity. I am not able to help myself. It is part of who I am. All I want to say now in finishing this letter is to wish you a great holiday vacation. I hope it’s wonderful spending time with your family. I look forward to seeing you after the first of the year. It will be hard to make it through that long. I will work on being creative. My new screenplay needs working on for Scottie to begin setting up her method of attack. She’s beginning casting after the New Year. The casting department at the studio have lined up actors for auditions after the holidays. So I am under pressure to have something decent for them to read in their try-outs. Plus I want to work are some of my computer art. That should capture my full attention.

I look forward to seeing you the second Tuesday of the New Year. Bye for now. Next week is New Year’s Day. I hope I haven’t totally freaked you out as much as I have myself. “Like madness is the glory of this life.” — Shakespeare-The Timon of Athens

Quite Fondly,
Madisonsilver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphsTo Annie,

I write these letters in the strictest of confidence. I am not trying to be a coward, but I feel if I don’t hold back now and never send these letters to you, then I am freeing myself up to write whatever I need without any censorship. There will be secrecy to protect you, Annie, and to protect myself. But I also want to record the development of our relationship as it truly happens. At least, in the way it appears in my own mind.

I want you to trust me, Annie. I am freer writing to you this way. If I know I will not be sending these letters to you. I will be more honest with what words I use and feelings I express. I will know I am not hiding anything from coming to the surface. It frees up my libido. I will keep my letters confidential. On my honour, no others shall see these pages, I promise you that.

Fondly,
Madisonsilver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphs

Annie Haskell --- Madison Tayler's Psychoanalyst's Office

Madison Tayler’s Fantasy of Annie Haskell’s Office as a Psychoanalyst. Not real.silver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphs

Maksim — Somewhere In Time — Theme Song For “Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst”

silver divider between paragraphsThis is the poem I would like to include in this letter. I like to leave a poem if I find one that I would like to share with you. Since I am not even sure if I am going to give these letters to you, I felt it is okay if I include a poem within these letters. And if some day, I change my mind and I hand my building collection of letters to you, then I will likely evaluate all that I have written to determine if all of the content feels acceptable to me to share openly with you. I may feel too shy to be so vulnerable. We will proceed as we have for now and see this as a way of recording the experience of getting to know you and in turn get to know how this all effects me as I record this experience in writing.silver divider between paragraphsNo Healing But Time
By Madison Taylor
Dec. 23th, 2007

No healing but time.
Even that is a projected hallucination.
Feeling a hold on what is real.
Moments creep in and change things up.
Waiting for time to pass so the pain will stop.
Losing control.
Not able to control the intensity
hurting the flesh
corrupting the instrument of the mind
controls the dam from overflowing.
Tear everything apart
to stop the insanity of waiting
from circling the brain.
The madness takes over
rips it all apart so it becomes bearable.
Eventually, the torture subsides
is replaced with a more acceptable level.
The waiting feels less maddening
the feelings brought down
to a more manageable level.
But the waiting still exists.
The pain remains.
The intensity is spread out
to a bearable diversion of acceptance.
There still exists time between the madness
and the satisfaction
the pain will be subdued
to a reasonable state bearable
to only the divinely mad.
Losing control sometimes
is the only acceptable answer
to certain situations.
Healing needs to be done
only in a way that allows
for all possibilities of acceptance.

© madison taylor 2007silver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphs

Queen — Who Wants To Live Forever — Theme Song #13 For “Letters of Import: Miss Seeing You-Difficult 13silver divider between paragraphs

labyrinth of a wandering wonderland

the labyrinth called “wandering wonderland.” it is where madison, scottie and their cats 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 paragraphsglass enclosed pool le chateau de rochersilver divider between paragraphsfamily gathering place and hangoutsilver divider between paragraphs
madison's study/library 640x480

madison’s study/library

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scottie's study library

scottie’s study library

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front foyer and staircase 812x612

front foyer and staircase

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Maksim — Somewhere In Time (A New Version-with Quotations-of the Theme Song for “Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst”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 paragraphsQUOTATIONS on MISSING YOU-DIFFICULT:

“I like to see people reunited, maybe that’s a silly thing, but what can I say, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can’t tell fast enough, the ears that aren’t big enough, the eyes that can’t take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“I had my chance.’ He said it, retiring from a lifetime of wanting. ‘I had my chance, and sometimes in life, there are no second chances. You look at what you have, not what you miss, and you move forward.” ― Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“All I can think about is what she must be doing, and how I wish she were still here.” ― Pittacus Lore, I Am Number Four

“Tamani smiled softly and lifted a hand to her face, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and letting his thumb rest on her cheek. ‘Trust me, it’s no picnic missing you. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.” ― Aprilynne Pike, Spells

“He tried to tell me week after week to accept things as they were and move on with my life. But if there was one man who had put his life on hold to wait for something or someone, it was him.” ― Cecelia Ahern, A Place Called Here

“Didn’t I say I’d always be your same stars? If you get to missing me, just look up.” ― Anne Rivers Siddons, Fault Lines

“Usually time alters and affects everything, but when someone you love dies time cannot change that, no amount of time will ever change that, so time stops having any meaning.” ― Rosamund Lupton, Sister

“I won’t let you have it. I won’t give you this moment. I won’t let you fill up this valuable organ…I own it. I won’t do it. I can’t think, I won’t think about it.” ― Coco J. Ginger

“…there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week.” ― Robin McKinley, Pegasussilver divider between paragraphs

Identity Is Not Just Who You Are

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Identity Is Not Just Who You Are
Post Created by Jk the secret keeper
Post Created June 2nd 2013
Posted June 5th 2013
4p identity poster
Josh Whedon ’87 Delivers 181st Commencement Address @ Wesleyan University

May 26th 2013

Award-winning writer, director, and producer Joss Whedon ’87 delivered the Commencement Address during the 181st Commencement Ceremony. Watch a video of his address or read the text just below video of this speech. He created Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. Serenity. Angel. Firefly. The Avengers. Much To Do About Nothing. Dollhouse. The Cabin In the Wood. Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. And much more…


Joss Whedon ’87 – Wesleyan University Commencement Speech – Official

Joss Whedon '87 Delivered the Wesleyan Commencement Address 640x424

Joss Whedon ’87 Delivered the Wesleyan Commencement Address

“Commencement address—it’s going well, it’s going well. Thank you, Jeanine, for…making me do this. This is going to be great. This is going to be a good one. It’s gonna go really well. Two roads diverged in a wood, and… no. I’m not that lazy.

I actually sat through many graduations. When I was siting where you guys were sitting, the speaker was Bill Cosby—funny man Bill Cosby, he was very funny and he was very brief, and I thanked him for that. He gave us a message that I really took with me, that a lot of us never forgot, about changing the world. He said, “you’re not going to change the world, so don’t try.”

That was it. He didn’t buy that back at all. And then he complained about buying his daughter a car and we left. I remember thinking, “I think I can do better. I think I can be a little more inspiring than that.”

And so, what I’d like to say to all of you is that you are all going to die.

This is a good commencement speech because I’m figuring it’s only going to go up from here. It can only get better, so this is good. It can’t get more depressing. You have, in fact, already begun to die. You look great. Don’t get me wrong. And you are youth and beauty. You are at the physical peak. Your bodies have just gotten off the ski slope on the peak of growth, potential, and now comes the black diamond mogul run to the grave. And the weird thing is your body wants to die. On a cellular level, that’s what it wants. And that’s probably not what you want.

I’m confronted by a great deal of grand and worthy ambition from this student body. You want to be a politician, a social worker. You want to be an artist. Your body’s ambition: Mulch. Your body wants to make some babies and then go in the ground and fertilize things. That’s it. And that seems like a bit of a contradiction. It doesn’t seem fair. For one thing, we’re telling you, “Go out into the world!” exactly when your body is saying, “Hey, let’s bring it down a notch. Let’s take it down.”

And it is a contradiction. And that’s actually what I’d like to talk to you about. The contradiction between your body and your mind, between your mind and itself. I believe these contradictions and these tensions are the greatest gift that we have, and hopefully, I can explain that.

josh whedon received honorary degree from wesleyan university 2013

josh whedon received honorary degree from wesleyan university 2013

But first let me say when I talk about contradiction, I’m talking about something that is a constant in your life and in your identity, not just in your body but in your own mind, in ways that you may recognize or you may not.

Let’s just say, hypothetically, that two roads diverged in the woods and you took the path less traveled. Part of you is just going, “Look at that path! Over there, it’s much better. Everyone is traveling on it. It’s paved, and there’s like a Starbucks every 40 yards. This is wrong. In this one, there’s nettles and Robert Frost’s body—somebody should have moved that—it just feels weird. And not only does your mind tell you this, it is on that other path, it is behaving as though it is on that path. It is doing the opposite of what you are doing. And for your entire life, you will be doing, on some level, the opposite—not only of what you were doing—but of what you think you are. That is just going to go on. What you do with all your heart, you will do the opposite of. And what you need to do is to honor that, to understand it, to unearth it, to listen to this other voice.

You have, which is a rare thing, that ability and the responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself, to at least give it the floor, because it is the key—not only to consciousness-but to real growth. To accept duality is to earn identity. And identity is something that you are constantly earning. It is not just who you are. It is a process that you must be active in. It’s not just parroting your parents or the thoughts of your learned teachers. It is now more than ever about understanding yourself so you can become yourself.

I talk about this contradiction, and this tension, there’s two things I want to say about it. One, it never goes away. And if you think that achieving something, if you think that solving something, if you think a career or a relationship will quiet that voice, it will not. If you think that happiness means total peace, you will never be happy. Peace comes from the acceptance of the part of you that can never be at peace. It will always be in conflict. If you accept that, everything gets a lot better.

The other reason is because you are establishing your identities and your beliefs, you need to argue yourself down, because somebody else will. Somebody’s going to come at you, and whatever your belief, your idea, your ambition, somebody’s going to question it. And unless you have first, you won’t be able to answer back, you won’t be able to hold your ground. You don’t believe me, try taking a stand on just one leg. You need to see both sides.

Now, if you do, does this mean that you get to change the world? Well, I’m getting to that, so just chill. All I can say to this point is I think we can all agree that the world could use a little changing. I don’t know if your parents have explained this to you about the world but… we broke it. I’m sorry… it’s a bit of a mess. It’s a hard time to go out there. And it’s a weird time in our country.

The thing about our country is—oh, it’s nice, I like it—it’s not long on contradiction or ambiguity. It’s not long on these kinds of things. It likes things to be simple, it likes things to be pigeonholed—good or bad, black or white, blue or red. And we’re not that. We’re more interesting than that. And the way that we go into the world understanding is to have these contradictions in ourselves and see them in other people and not judge them for it. To know that, in a world where debate has kind of fallen away and given way to shouting and bullying, that the best thing is not just the idea of honest debate, the best thing is losing the debate, because it means that you learn something and you changed your position. The only way really to understand your position and its worth is to understand the opposite. That doesn’t mean the crazy guy on the radio who is spewing hate, it means the decent human truths of all the people who feel the need to listen to that guy. You are connected to those people. They’re connected to him. You can’t get away from it.

This connection is part of contradiction. It is the tension I was talking about. This tension isn’t about two opposite points, it’s about the line in between them, and it’s being stretched by them. We need to acknowledge and honor that tension, and the connection that that tension is a part of. Our connection not just to the people we love, but to everybody, including people we can’t stand and wish weren’t around. The connection we have is part of what defines us on such a basic level.

Freedom is not freedom from connection. Serial killing is freedom from connection. Certain large investment firms have established freedom from connection. But we as people never do, and we’re not supposed to, and we shouldn’t want to. We are individuals, obviously, but we are more than that.

So here’s the thing about changing the world. It turns out that’s not even the question, because you don’t have a choice. You are going to change the world, because that is actually what the world is. You do not pass through this life, it passes through you. You experience it, you interpret it, you act, and then it is different. That happens constantly. You are changing the world. You always have been, and now, it becomes real on a level that it hasn’t been before.

And that’s why I’ve been talking only about you and the tension within you, because you are—not in a clichéd sense, but in a weirdly literal sense—the future. After you walk up here and walk back down, you’re going to be the present. You will be the broken world and the act of changing it, in a way that you haven’t been before. You will be so many things, and the one thing that I wish I’d known and want to say is, don’t just be yourself. Be all of yourselves. Don’t just live. Be that other thing connected to death. Be life. Live all of your life. Understand it, see it, appreciate it. And have fun.


Original Graduation Song

QUOTATIONS on COMMENCEMENT:

“Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer.” ― David McCullough Jr.

“Read. Read all the time. Read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.” ― David McCullough

“Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand without having experienced. They can think themselves into other peoples’ places. Of course, this is a power like my brand of fictional magic that is morally neutral. One might use such a power to manipulate or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or peer inside cages. They can close their hearts and minds to any suffering that does not touch them personally. They can refuse to know. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think that they have any fewer nightmares than I do.” ― J.K. Rowling

Letters of Import: Last Time This Year 12

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Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
Last Time This Year 12
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Illustrated & abstract digital art by j. kiley
First Published March 19th 2013
Published Early Tuesday AM
Twelfth Posted June 4th 2013silver divider between paragraphsanyone living or dead is purely coincidentalsilver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphsletters-last time this year 12silver divider between paragraphs
Tuesday, December 18th 2007

Dear Annie,

This week I want to tell you some serious shit about myself. Letting my guard down almost to naked in these revelations. You know more about me in these letters than anyone does so far. And I haven’t even started filling you in on anything that gets close to the deeper meanings in my life.

I have been reading a great deal lately about bipolar disorder. Nobody has come out and told me straight that it is part of what I am dealing with in all my weirdness and bizarre behaviors. But I am not without analyzing the material and figuring out what seems too familiar to my life. I may not see things accurately from the inside but when I see it in Scottie’s eyes and read it in my writing I know without any real reluctance that bipolar visits me on a regular schedule with its major fluctuations.

I have the speed of someone who mainlines coke. Try having a conversation with me when I am not depressed or suicidal. How often does that occur. My wanting to die. Being obsessed in my mind all the time with thinking of ways to cut open my arms and bleeding out. It seems a gruesome way to die but even though blood usually bothers me, in this state of mind it seems the easiest way to slip away into death. Losing consciousness into a slow comatose state. Pain becomes unnoticeable. It really ends the pain. Suicide does. It’s not death I seek. It’s peace. Pain free and finished. No more memories. No more primal screams inside my mind. No emotions. No tears. Stolen. Robbed. Buried deep within my soul so it bears the suffering I should feel. What I feel is lack of feeling anything when I am deeply depressed. Maybe I am wrong about that. Maybe depression is the strongest of feelings. It may be all of them at once. All the negative emotions ripping out my heart at one time.

Who says bipolar isn’t fun. It can take you higher than a kite. Not a drug high, though that is kind of what you feel. But in this instance I am speaking about real flying high in the sky. Soaring. Catching the up draft. Being your own motor and wings. When I write on bipolar, I am hooked up to the muse and she goes fast. She is one blazing force of nature. Hot waves of energy pass through me. All that she wants is to give freely but you need to accept her terms. Simple really: just create until you can’t see the screen of your laptop. All becomes a blur and even then you must keep moving forward until the last ounce of creativity is used up. You will know when. You just stop. There is nothing left but to end it.

I read a book called “Touched With Fire” by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison. She has become my Goddess. Her words speak to my mind like she lives inside of it. Her theory about creativity and divine madness and the artistic temperament all touch my insides like fire has scorched my body with truth. When I was a teenager, I had the strangest idea that I was going crazy. But why would I even think that. What did it feel like to be crazy? I had no idea but somehow I thought I was headed in that direction. It felt like it would be so easy to just lose your mind. It would break away just like that. Well, reading “Touched With Fire” was actually reassuring. Knowing all these famous and creative people who had bipolar and a divine madness, as I have grown to like it referred to. An artistic temperament that made you delusional, but made you one hell of a creative artist. A poet, a musician, a writer, a painter, from Lord Byron to Beethoven, Lincoln to Churchill, Kurt Cobain to Emily Dickinson. People from all professions that contributed great amounts of creative work to charge up the world with gifts unimaginable.

It does make one grandiose at times. Feeling better about yourself. Going on an ego trip one minute and feeling like death is the only answer the next. It destroys your ability to think clearly or tell the difference between reality and delusions that appear so real and believable. It is so destructive and then so creative and productive. Bipolar enables you to produce feats of creation beyond the bounds of most people. You go for hours and days just creating. Your concentration is unbelievable and so crystal clear and focused. Everything keeps pouring out of you.

It’s balancing the mood swings that make it so difficult. I will not take psych meds. They are poison to me. They have fucked up my health. They’ve caused me to faint. I’ve had seizures. My mind gets so dulled out I can’t think clearly or remember anything. It’s fucked up my short term memory so I am lost at recalling anything someone has just told me. Terrible with names I heard a moment ago. I try to say something and if I don’t get it out in that moment, it is gone. Blue what, I ask myself. Why did I say blue and then forget what if anything did it mean? It is frustrating. When I get into conversations with people, I get so excited that I must speak more words in a minute than anyone speaks in an hour. And topics are like butterflies flitting from flower to flower but in a hurricane wind storm.

The divine madness does allow me to be creative. It frees my mind to release control and let ideas and words and images flow through my mind and out onto paper. Thank the goddess I have a computer so I can almost keep up with my thoughts. My hand would break if I had to write as fast as my thoughts pour out of me. The drawback is the pain I feel going from pure elation to feeling terror and depression and the loneliness I feel when all I want to do is die. There is such a hopelessness. I cannot reach out to anyone. What do I say? I am too frightened or introverted to open up about the depth of my darkness. It is an all-consuming dark that takes over. Blinding me to anyone or anything. I have figured out how to work through the suicidal feelings and the depth of the depression that pulls me into the darkest, deepest of holes. I write. I keep writing. Anything that comes into my mind. I have no shame about speaking the truth. There is no honour in silence. The world must know and understand that there are places the mind can take you that do exist but only some can enter.

This is what you would be working with if you ever became my psychoanalyst. You would hear my stories and live through my mind and delusion and irrational thoughts. I have ruined relationships, I am sure because I had no idea the bipolar was causing me to behave in ways that I did not understand. I have hurt my partner because of what I thought I needed. It fucks you up sexually. Being abused when I was a child screwed me up to have sex with anyone but it also set me up to think or believe that is the only way one can relate to another human being. Everything between myself and another person always became sexual. It wasn’t because I wanted sex. It was because that was the way it was supposed to be. So I was taught by my abusers. If you wanted attention, you spent time with them and when they tried to touch you, you tried to stop them but it never worked. If you didn’t want attention they just raped you and molested you. It taught me that was the way life was. Sick. Demented. Perverted. Cold. Damaging. Surreal. Abusive. Everyone abused me except one. She was someone special. Someday I will tell you all about her.

It seems sex is supposed to be one of the addictions that bipolars have. Would I say I was addicted to sex. Yes. Not in the way you think. It was really fucked up for me. Now I don’t want anyone touching me.

If we work together, I hope you can help me with this. I don’t trust anyone but for an unknown reason I am drawn to you and I believe you are the one who can help me. I have gone to so many shrinks. Some I became really attached to. But most of them fucked me up more than I already was. One even thought because I was obsessed with her that I was going to stalk her. She was the one that was crazy not me. I admit I do get obsessed but that is one of my personalities. That therapist knew that. She also knew that she became obsessed when she lost the only one who loved her. That person died suddenly and it crushed her. Shattered her into pieces. Left her feeling abandoned. Nobody to love her. So when anyone shows her any attention she is drawn to them like a magnet. She is so filled with needs. But the others let her have her needs and accept her. That therapist was a fool and really fucked up that alter to the point where she felt so bad about herself that she just wanted to disappear forever. Instead she just felt guilty about everything she felt and she started to feel that if she felt love that she was being bad. What kind of therapist drives a kid to feel that she is bad for feeling love?

These are issues that need to be worked on. It is an enormous job to take on the responsibility of us as a client. Mr. Xxx was a jackass. He had no idea who we were. He drove everyone underground into the darkest hole. We felt depressed all of the time. All we wanted to do was sleep. So that is exactly what we did. Sleep. All day. All night. Get up because Scottie made us feel we needed to wake up. And we felt guilty leaving her alone by herself. Not that we were great company. All we did once we were awake was to watch TV until it was time to go back to bed. The only time we got up during the day was to go to out therapy appointments or to see the doctor. The world was fucked. We were fucked up. We just wanted to block out everything. We didn’t want to feel anything. Whenever we felt anything we just would fuck things up.

Now we actually have a chance to rejoin part of the human race. We may actually get to see you in therapy. Something might actually start to make us feel better. Right now that is the only hope we have. The hope that someday soon we can tell Mr. Xxx to go fuck himself. With great pleasure I would look forward to that moment. To really, actually, in a state of reality, I would be able to utter those words. “GO FUCK YOURSELF. IT IS OVER. I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN.” Exit stage left. Here it comes, the final curtain call with Mr. Xxx. The forceful and intentional slamming of his office door so hard that the reverberations would be felt all the way to the door of my home and Scottie would hear and applaud. That is the day I am waiting ever so patiently for. Do I have the guts to do that? You had better prepare yourself to wear headphones at that very moment. Be sure it will happen. Exactly when, is still to be determined. As a child I was a famous door slammer. I slammed my bedroom door so hard, so many times, that the last time I did it, it fell off its’ hinges and crashed to the floor. The truth. May the goddess strike me with lightning if I am telling a lie. Oh, by the way, I do not lie. I tell the truth. I am too honest for anyone to believe.

So there you have some of it. Do you still have the courage to take me on as your client? The last length of time that it took to write this letter has left me with a blank in my mind as to what exactly I shared with you in the words I wrote. And whether I have the courage to read this over is, at this very moment, an uncertainty. I may just take my chances that you will be able to accept my honesty and to get past it and accept the conditions of my paying you, or rather, my insurance paying you to hire you as my soon to be next psychoanalyst. I do hope this deal goes into effect in as short a time as possible. The waiting and anticipation is, pardon the expression, killing me, literally killing me. I have so little time left to deal with where I am now. I am in desperate need to change the conditions of my life and to rid myself of someone I need to be gone from my consciousness and I need you to help me do it.

I am not an extremely confident person at the moment. Do not let the bipolar or stronger personalities fool you. We are very afraid of change. We fear leaving our home to go anywhere. And now we have finally gotten to a place where it actually might happen. That we will in the real world, fire our psychotherapist, better recognized by the name Mr. Xxx, for all his perversely sick sense of humour and his tasteless innuendos of a sexual nature and the endless telling of his self-promoting and unwanted sharing of his personal life during my therapy time when we are supposed to be working on getting me into a better state of being. And added onto that, his egotistical need to be the smartest person in the room. It is sickening and I really want to see it come to an, unknowing on his part, ending and before the next full moon rising. That gives us some time but not more than I will manage to live through.

This has been exhausting but worth letting go of some truths. I am trying to be open with you and writing these letters is great practice for when the real therapy sessions actually happen in my waking life. You sitting across from me and my either lying down on the couch or sitting up facing you. I don’t know how traditional you will want to play it. We will see. Soon. Please make it soon.

Until next time, I hope things have progressed.

Regards,
Madisonsilver 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

Annie Haskell --- Madison Tayler's Psychoanalyst's Office

Madison Tayler’s Fantasy of Annie Haskell’s Office as a Psychoanalyst. Not real.silver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphs

Maksim — Somewhere In Time — Theme Song #1 For “Letters of Import”silver divider between paragraphsThis is the poem I would like to include in this letter. I like to leave a poem if I find one that I would like to share with you. Since I am not even sure if I am going to give these letters to you, I felt it is okay if I include a poem in these letters. And if some day, I change my mind and I hand my building collection of letters to you, then I will likely evaluate all that I have written to determine if all of the content feels acceptable to me to share openly with you. I may feel too shy to be so vulnerable. We will proceed as we have for now and see this as a way of recording the experience of getting to know you and in turn get to know how this all effects me as I record this experience in writing.silver divider between paragraphsDon’t Lock Me Up
By Madison Taylor
December 16th 2007

Don’t lock me up
Don’t make me sleep
Losing consciousness
Loses part of me
Holding on awake
Needing senses sharp
Safety’s what I seek
Don’t want nightmares
Living inside of me
Roaming my sleep
Dead wanting me
If I’m awake
There’s no way out
To follow me
If I let go
Give in to them
Let sleep take hold
They’ll find me easy
Trap me, bind me
They’ll never ever
Let me go.

© madison taylor 2007silver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphs

Evanescence – Lithium — Theme Song #12 For “Letters of Import: Last Time This Year #12″

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labyrinth of a wandering wonderland

the labyrinth called “wandering wonderland.” it is where madison, scottie and their cats 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 paragraphsglass enclosed pool le chateau de rochersilver divider between paragraphsfamily gathering place and hangoutsilver divider between paragraphs
madison's study/library 640x480

madison’s study/library

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scottie's study library

scottie’s study library

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 paragraphsQUOTATIONS on BIPOLAR:

“Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You’re frightened, and you’re frightening, and you’re “not at all like yourself but will be soon,” but you know you won’t.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you’re high it’s tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one’s marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends’ faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against– you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been mildly manic. When I am my present “normal” self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In sort, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Bipolar robs you of that which is you. It can take from you the very core of your being and replace it with something that is completely opposite of who and what you truly are. Because my bipolar went untreated for so long, I spent many years looking in the mirror and seeing a person I did not recognize or understand. Not only did bipolar rob me of my sanity, but it robbed me of my ability to see beyond the space it dictated me to look. I no longer could tell reality from fantasy, and I walked in a world no longer my own.” ― Alyssa Reyans, Letters from a Bipolar Mother

“Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It’s fun and it’s frightening as hell. Some patients – bipolar type I – experience both extremes; other – bipolar type II – suffer depression almost exclusively. But the “mixed state,” the mercurial churning of both high and low, is the most dangerous, the most deadly. Suicide too often results from the impulsive nature and physical speed of psychotic mania coupled with depression’s paranoid self-loathing.” ― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family

“Compared to bipolar’s magic, reality seems a raw deal. It’s not just the boredom that makes recovery so difficult, it’s the slow dawning pain that comes with sanity – the realization of illnesss, the humiliating scenes, the blown money and friendships and confidence. Depression seems almost inevitable. The pendulum swings back from transcendence in shards, a bloody, dangerous mess. Crazy high is better than crazy low. So we gamble, dump the pills, and stick it to the control freaks and doctors. They don’t understand, we say. They just don’t get it. They’ll never be artists.” ― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family

“Absurdity and anti—absurdity are the two poles of creative energy.” ― Karl Lagerfeld

“Except you cannot outrun insanity, anymore than you can outrun your own shadow.” ― Alyssa Reyans, Letters from a Bipolar Mothersilver divider between paragraphs

Plum Tree Books Launches Pa Dug & Rosie In The Garden Series

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Reblogged from On The Plum Tree:

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¨ Everything in the garden serves a purpose

¨ Basic science in rhyme with beautiful illustrations for ages 3—6

¨ Easy learning and teaching

¨ Onomatopoeia for fun!

Everything In The Garden Serves A Purpose

I asked 4 yr old Ralph if he thought a story about a worm could be fun. He grinned. Ralph was one of a group of children at the Lechlade Festival participating in the launch of the first two little books in the Pa Dug & Rosie series.

Read more… 352 more words

If you are looking for inspiring books for your young charges, the Pa Dug & Rosie Series is where to find them. Great story. Great Rhyming. Written by Niamh Clune. Great Illustrations. Illustrated by Marta Pelrine-Bacon. Something that will help children learn more easily. The books are filled will fun & joy & something a child will find within, a great deal of enthusiasm about books. A good track for any child to discover. Jk the secret keeper.

Whimsical Serendipity

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Whimsical Serendipity
Post Created by Jk the secret keeper
Videos Created by Jennifer Kiley
Created May 31st & June 1st 2013
Posted June 1st 2013
Dedicated To Shawn: EARLY BIRTHDAY PRESENT—HAPPY BIRTHDAY on JUNE 3rdsilver divider between paragraphs

carter the lion 1036x780

carter the lion—HAPPY EARLY BIRTHDAY MOM SHAWN—JUNE 3rd

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Carterlionsilver divider between paragraphs4p if the goddess were an irridescent kittiesilver divider between paragraphs(1) purple flowers with clourful butterfly beautiful(1) 5 kitties looking up
silver divider between paragraphs4p love makes us feel wonderful poster5 kitties in a rowsilver divider between paragraphs4p everything is determined einsteinsilver divider between paragraphs

time to wake up says “kitty”
silver divider between paragraphs4p haiku humour parody lt purple
silver divider between paragraphs4p live with intention poster by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 2013silver divider between paragraphs4 poster fog-clouds-houses-trees-landscapesilver divider between paragraphs

All In The Geese Family (June 1st 2013)silver divider between paragraphs4p kung fu kittie hie yasilver divider between paragraphs4p laptop kitten obamasilver divider between paragraphs4p kitten cuteness at sleep with mousesilver divider between paragraphs4p tuck says kindness is never a flawsilver divider between paragraphs4p cats-love-computers my avatarsilver divider between paragraphs4p einstein only reason for timesilver divider between paragraphs4p enchanted green walking bridgesilver divider between paragraphs4p Beautiful Green Indian peacocksilver divider between paragraphs4p honesty love postersilver divider between paragraphsQUOTATIONS on WHIMSICAL & SERENDIPITY

“As I look out at all of you gathered here, I want to say that I don’t see a room full of Parisians in top hats and diamonds and silk dresses. I don’t see bankers and housewives and store clerks. No. I address you all tonight as you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers.” ― Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

“Flowers lead to books, which lead to thinking and not thinking and then more flowers and music, music. Then many more flowers and many more books.” ― Maira Kalman

“These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination.” ― Rabindranath Tagore

“Do you know a better time than the present for igniting your dreams?” ― Carolyn Tody, Author and Artist, A Whimsical Holiday for Children

“Vital lives are about action. You can’t feel warmth unless you create it, can’t feel delight until you play,can’t know serendipity unless you risk.” ― Joan Erickson

“Sometimes serendipity is just intention unmasked.” ― Elizabeth Berg, The Year of Pleasures

“But in Friendship, being free of all that, we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart… — C.S. Lewis

“In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations – that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted… Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes.” ― Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution

“It’s a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn’t even know you were aiming for.” ― Lois McMaster Bujoldsilver divider between paragraphs

Honest and True

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Honest and True
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Illustrated by j. kiley
Created May 29th 2013
Posted May 30th 2013silver divider between paragraphs

Mysterium Angel poster created by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 2013 874x618

Mysterium Angel poster created by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 2013

silver divider between paragraphshonest and true by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 2013silver divider between paragraphs4p fogging mountainssilver divider between paragraphs

Massenet “Meditation” from Thais, Yo-Yo Masilver divider between paragraphsQUOTATIONS on HONESTY:

“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.” ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.” ― Charles Dickens

“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking…” ― Leo Tolstoy

“Friends are honest with each other. Even if the truth hurts. -Maggie” ― Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride

“I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or fears?” ― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.” ― Jane Austen, Emma

“Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“The human body is the best work of art.” ― Jess C. Scott

“Let’s tell the truth to people. When people ask, ‘How are you?’ have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don’t want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you.” ― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

“This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy.” ― Susan Polis Schutz

“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

“Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.” ― Thomas Jefferson

“We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Truth never damages a cause that is just.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

“Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” ― Franz Kafkasilver divider between paragraphs

Letters of Import: Finding Identity 11

1 Reply

Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
Finding Identity 11
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Illustrated & abstract digital art by j. kiley
First Published March 19th 2013
Published Early Tuesday AM
Eleventh Posted May 28st 2013silver divider between paragraphsanyone living or dead is purely coincidentalsilver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphsletters-finding identity 11silver divider between paragraphsTuesday, December 11th, 2007

Dear Annie,

Your news was extremely exciting to me. Graduation is just a few months away. Shortly, thereafter, you will be presented with your license to practice psychoanalysis. A brand new office will be yours. I imagine it with a black couch, one where one’s body sinks slightly into the softness of the cushions. You’ll have the most tasteful decor. An abstract piece of art hanging over the couch, where your eyes can get lost in while you listen intently to the complicated psychological issues of each of your needy and rather moderately needy clients. Of course, they will need you or they wouldn’t be seeing you. I am hoping I will be one of those patience who will be demanding of your time and needed attention. It is an assumption that you will want me to be one of your clients. Hopefully, I will be at the top of your list. Am I dreaming or will I have a chance to see you as my analyst?

It will finally enable me to end the farce between myself and Mr. Xxx. What a fucking idiot seeing him has made me. I don’t mean I am dumb and I don’t mean he is stupid. He has this insecure need to intellectualize everything or to feel a need to be in a competition with everyone so that he appears he is the smartest one the room. He does it in private sessions and you can see how be comes across in group. He’s such a connoisseur of the arts, like he is the only one that has ever had an artistic experience. Let him get started talking about writers, it’s like he is the only one who has ever read a book. The world outside his world, including myself, have been exposed to and sought out an education in the liberal arts whether through college courses and/or through what are called life experiences. Sometimes the latter is often more effective because there, you are the one seeking, wanting and choosing what you are studying on a continual basis, with subjects you are keenly interested. I do go on about his bull shit.

I have to thank you. It was incredible, your invitation to meet with you after group tonight. That was a surprise. And my excitement to hear your news. You told me I was the first person you told outside of your co-workers. That surprised me and made me feel so honoured. I know for a long while I have had these secret thoughts that I wished I could share with you. How much I wished I could have talked to you about you becoming my analyst. It never felt like the right time. It didn’t feel appropriate for me to approach you unless I knew you felt the same. A real Catch-22 situation. That would have been the only way to find out how you felt by talking to you. We always seem to forget what we ourselves need when trying to not hurt the feelings of others. That it was an alright subject for me to bring up with you in direct conversation. I didn’t know before we talked today where either of our loyalties should have been directed. I know now that we need to take care of ourselves first. Not being selfish but being protective.

You are being supervised by him, Mr. Xxx. It would only seem logical that you would defer to him. What I wanted seemed only secondary. Now I know that isn’t as I expected it to be. You actually like me. My feelings haven’t been fantasies. That you have considered asking me if I wanted to see you professionally. You knew my mind. It has been so obvious, the animosity between myself and Mr. Xxx. A thoroughly unhealthy relationship that has been deteriorating for years. My nerves have just been too paralyzed to move on any active pursuit of change. It is nearing that time now. The courage and a sense of security is all I need to find in order to radically change my life.

Starting a new therapy relationship means to radically end a pre-existing disaster of one that has been dead and in need of terminating since practically it’s inception. I need the nerve and the circumstances to bring forth my killer instinct to cleanly put that psychologically sick situation to rest. It has to be done quickly and cleanly. The least amount of blood shed the healthier. I cannot take care of him. I’ve done that for too many years. Trying not to confront him when I should have.

Talking to that friend I mentioned who crucifies him whenever we talk. I am never certain how accurate my perceptions are unless I get feedback from someone else, I feel I should be able to trust them to tell me the truth and not their distorted perceptions of a distortion of what I see. I cannot trust anything that I thought I was learning from this witness. It was their agenda I was being given, not the truth of my situation or a truth about this person. So all that I know is nothing I can depend on believing. It was all inaccurate information based on pure prejudice.

Now, I know I feel a stronger connection with you after out talk today. The next step depends on what transpires over the next several weeks. I still need to figure out what to do. How to do it. What to say. Try to talk things out to try to salvage anything that still remains. Not to sure there is anything left. I need to know somehow that you will be there to help me help when there is s transition to be made. I am trusting you to be supportive. But I know I must wait until all is set. It’s expected there will be a major blow up with Mr. Xxx. He’s never exactly got me or what I’ve needed. Now, he has an even lesser reason to try to understand. I think he is going to challenge me on everything I say, no matter what it is about or who it is about. He feels right about everything and that I am continuously wrong on any and every subject or person I want to talk about. That is the first thing I’ve got to confront him on. I am right about what I say. He needs to back off.

I will not tell him anything about you or what we have talked about. That I will leave to your discretion. When you feel the time is right, then you decide what you want to say and how much you want him to know. He is not going to hear anything from me.

I think that is all I want to write to you about at the moment. Thank you for trusting me with you confidence. It is our secret. The only thing I am going to do is wait and when the blow up comes. It will come soon, I feel. I will be ready to walk out and never look behind me. That will be the day it will all be over. So, I say that is all for now.

Until next time.

Regards,
Madisonsilver 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

Annie Haskell --- Madison Tayler's Psychoanalyst's Office

Madison Tayler’s Fantasy of Annie Haskell’s Office as a Psychoanalyst. Not real.silver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphs

Maksim — Somewhere In Time — Theme Song #1 For “Letters of Import”silver divider between paragraphsThis is the poem I would like to include in this letter. I like to leave a poem if I find one that I would like to share with you. Since I am not even sure if I am going to give these letters to you, I felt it is okay if I include a poem in these letters. And if some day, I change my mind and I hand my building collection of letters to you, then I will likely evaluate all that I have written to determine if all of the content feels acceptable to me to share openly with you. I may feel too shy to be so vulnerable. We will proceed as we have for now and see this as a way of recording the experience of getting to know you and in turn get to know how this all effects me as I record this experience in writing.silver divider between paragraphsMy Identity
By Madison Taylor
Dec. 7th, 2007

I am here
This is my life
It has been a strange one
A painful one
Filled with unfallen tears
Empty people with empty feelings
Invading my world
Always wanting something from me
Things that no one would want to give
I stand back
Look at my past
I try not to repeat the mistakes
My boundaries try to keep the users out
But some invade
Others are chosen carefully
All I ask for is to love
To give love
Learn to accept love
The latter is the harder of the two
Someone to “get me”
Understanding is important
Which ever direction it travels
Sexual touch is not that important
When offered from another
Tender touch that come with hugs
Those I love and accept
But there must be love
There must be respect
Nothing less will do

Who am I?
Someone creative
A woman who wants to care
To love and be loved
Someone who needs to create
When the muse calls
That means when ever I am awake
I need my dreams
My animals
My mate
My friends who mean it
And a good Psychoanalyst
To keep my life on track
There may be more
But that is it for now

© madison taylor 2007silver divider between paragraphsletters-divider for sections of books-heart echosilver divider between paragraphs

Metallica — Nothing Else Matters — Theme Song #11 For “Letters of Import: Finding Identity”(Theme Song # 11 for Letter of Import: Finding Identity 11

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labyrinth of a wandering wonderland

the labyrinth called “wandering wonderland.” it is where madison, scottie and their cats 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 paragraphsglass enclosed pool le chateau de rochersilver divider between paragraphsfamily gathering place and hangoutsilver divider between paragraphs
madison's study/library 640x480

madison’s study/library

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 paragraphsQUOTATIONS on IDENTITY:

“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” ― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” ― Oscar Wilde

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“We know what we are, but not what we may be.” ― William Shakespeare

“Perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.” ― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre silver divider between paragraphs

Soul In Darkness Or In Light

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Soul In Darkness Or In Light
X-TREME HAIKU: “DEPRESSION”
WRITTEN BY JENNIFER KILEY
ILLUSTRATED by j. kiley
POST CREATED MAY 26TH 2013
POSTED MAY 26TH 2013silver divider between paragraphs

touching air to water dark yet light 642x501

touching air to water dark yet light

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soul in darkness or in light by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 2013 805x3969

soul in darkness or in light by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 2013

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twisted japanese maple 675x1014

twisted japanese maple

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Evanescence — My Heart Is Brokensilver divider between paragraphsQUOTATIONS on DEPRESSION:

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” ― Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral’s Kiss

“I didn’t want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that’s really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you’re so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.” ― Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.” ― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“When you’re lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert

“When you’re surrounded by all these people, it can be lonelier than when you’re by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don’t feel like you can trust anyone or talk to anybody, you feel like you’re really alone.” ― Fiona Apple

“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?” ― John Keats, Letters of John Keats

“Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don’t believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it’s good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.” ― Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

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