I’ve been reading Carl Jung’s Principle Archetpyes to help me orient my next steps into articulating aspects of the four-dimensional creative matrix that is at the center (ha) of all my work. It was in reference to Jung that I first learned about synchronicity: the nods and winks of the greater collective consciousness that we are on a path that serves us, serves our conscious evolution, well,
Like, sitting at a cafe, lost for hours in writing scenes aboard a ship, looking with surprise at the time and worrying that you’ve lingered too long, Then, though you’ve paid almost no attention to the music preceding this moment, song lyrics float from the speakers, “though the truth may vary, this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore;” and laughing because, among other things, you’ve been doggedly altering canonical details (or varying truths) to better suit your liking—to better suit your own objective inner knowing.
Or, after wrestling with some of the worst your mind has to offer, having the inexplicable impulse to take a different route to a routine destination. And, stopping behind a car that pulls out unexpectedly, casually turning your head to see a brightly colored sign you’ve never noticed before: “Bare Raydiance Tanning” (why precisely that is so perfectly entertaining I decline to explain. Call it… a well compounded inside joke).

I have a little leather-bound notebook full of such small, seemingly meaningless moments in time.
Why?
To free myself from the grasp of a collective inheritance of relentless self-doubt—one irrefutable page at a time.

the speaker at the Starbucks drive-thru: “how are you doing today?”
my mind, completely out of nowhere: gradually working my way back to an ecstasy of pure knowing.
me outloud, now giggling while trying not to giggle: “good. You?”
after ordering and waiting in line I’m still laughing: “she probably thought I’m high.” More giggling. “I think I am high.” Laughing. Trying to stop laughing. Which makes me laugh even harder. “I’m laughing at my own joke.” Laughing harder. Turning my face up to the invisible ethers of non-physical energy: “I’m laughing at your joke,” Laughing even harder because I’m talking to nothing. And then laughing even harder because that’s an even funnier joke. Then trying not to laugh, and laughing even more for it..
Why is this funny?
Because pure joy.
Pulling up to the window, completely unable at this point to rein it in. I must have a disability. Even funnier.
Me, between laughing:: “I’m so sorry, I swear I’m not high.”
Yes you are.
Oh my god.
More compounding.
Her: “That’s okay, I wish I was in that good a mood!”
“I just thought of something funny as I pulled up and now the harder I try to stop laughing, the harder I laugh.”
She takes my card and says, looking curious and as if she wants to ask what the joke is. Be in on it. “Is it, is it like an inside joke?”
I start laughing even harder, “Oh my gosh, yes!” I hadn’t thought of that. “In fact, that’s what makes it so funny, exactly, It’s an inside joke.”
She really does look like she wants to be in on the joke, as she hands me my things and I pointlessly keep trying to stop laughing, while laughing so hard now that I’m crying and my stomach hurts. The pure, unintended stupid hilarity of the moment is too much.
“Thank you, thank you, take care,” I say as I prepare to drive away.
“I hope the rest of your day goes as well as this,”
“Have a good day, too,” I say inanely as we so often do,
I plan to have the rest of my life go as well as this.
It really is as stupidly simple as that.
Do I sound crazy?
Well, I guess I am.

I finally uploaded a presentation of my paper given at the PAMLA conference in 2022. I’d recorded an audio-only reading of it last November, the morning after having sat on the panel, with the intent of uploading it. I just couldn’t figure out how to pair the audio with my slideshow, so scrapped it. But here I managed to cobble something together that worked.
My 5 yr old can be heard a few times in the background, mumbling and moaning a bit in his sleep. Life unfolds amidst scholarship.

This paper, excerpted conceptually from my master’s thesis, illustrates the basic governing logic behind paradigmatic frameworks and how to distinguish them morphologically: Dialogism & Dialectics in Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness

So that you don’t have to scroll down to find it, here’s a link to the poem I wrote, one that came out of what you could call the polyamorous creative synergy generated by the conference, channeled and focused through my own particular set of lenses: Paradise is Here: an unruly epic ode to PAMLA 2022

I’ve finally uploaded a few videos!
Here’s a link to a live stream that outlines the basic mechanics of the human creative process:

Creative Matrix Basics

This is a video I recorded after attending a beautiful, stirring live performance of “intimate cello” tuned to 432Hz, (featuring a guest-star appearance by Freud’s observant ghost), articulating the insights I gained into some of the dynamic interactions in this four-dimensional archetypal creative matrix—particularly the vital role of the son/brother archetype—as well as going a bit further about the scope and depth of social cohesion (what we call spirituality).
Essentially, I discovered the source of strong emergent creativity without quite realizing it—the moment the son begins empowering himself to begin pushing back against the patriarchal narratives that have inhibited his emotional expression:

Stellar call and response [I’m editing this video down for better focus and brevity]

And a very short introduction to the creative foundation of the personal aesthetic, playing off a teeny smidge from Kant’s Critique of Judgement:

Joy as a universal baseline for the personal aesthetic

There is nothing more consistently attractive
to children at a playground
than a man willing to play
lava monster.

We are not afraid of the future

We are afraid of the past

We are afraid to feel.

Sometimes in idle moments
I compose with irreverent humor
the most entertaining vows
I can think of. Here’s one:
“I commit to your keeping
my merciless determination
to focus on the very best of you,
to find goodness and rightness
and sensibility and brilliance
in everything you say and do,
no matter how stupid.”
And then I laugh not only at my own
anticipation and wit
but also at myself,
realizing I’m doing it, again.
Sometimes I cry for the exact same reason. 
The impulse to share
this little bit of absurdity
with you is as strong, as easy,
as natural to me as if
we were, in fact, friends.
In touch with one another;
as if nothing else
has ever been the case.
And so I continue,
to the best of my ever-growing
ability, to dutifully ignore
the apparent reality
that we’re not,
and skip along
with my happy anticipation, anyway.

The defense rests her case.

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

Move along.

When I reviewed it a second time. I had to stop at my morose, unintentionally affected intonation of the word “abandoned.” Aaand the line that follows. I just could not handle the cringe factor and laughed at a far more amused new round of omg go away! Whyyy, whyyyyyyy?!?! Lisa just delete this, for god’s sake!

Nope. As much as it makes me squirm in near agony, I’m keeping it, for god’s sake!

That I couldn’t hear myself the first time around, and can hear it so clearly now, just a few weeks later, is really saying something about all the release work I’ve been doing. Pent up emotions affect everything we say and do, however insensitive we may be to it.

So, yeah, seriously just move along. Go away. Nothing to see here.

whether war or peace,
it is waged in the heart.
Hearts don’t lie.

though less methodical.
bunch-relax-bunch-relax-bunch—
eventually;
I’ll get there.
Some bunches are stronger
and some inches are longer than others.