The ferment of genius in a broken world.

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”
― Anaïs Nin

Photograph by Massimo Sestini, accompanying the Italian navy in rescue June 2014

According to (nearly) universally held scientific beliefs human beings have traversed the breath of the Earth for over 60,000 years. Migration is not a new phenomenon, neither, sadly, is the terror of being a refugee, but the epic proportions of displacement are all too familiar across the globe certainly are new.

Somalis in Ethiopia

There can be nothing more de-humanising than to have your community scattered, the traditions of your culture destroyed, to experience the brutality of violence directed toward you because of your geographic location (and the covetousness for what lies beneath your feet) or your faith. That we, who are all ‘of one’, could do this to another and not understand that we are doing this to ourselves (for eventually we always reap what we sow) is beyond my capacity to comprehend.  Being assigned refugee status and then being forced to live in an encampment with tens of thousands of others who likewise are forced to accept this fate and ‘live’ on the handouts of NGOs is beneath human dignity. And yet, according to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, UNHCR, there are more than fifty (50) million people living this way. FIFTY MILLION PEOPLE living in tent cities and if you can read this from the comfort of a home, where water runs in your tap and flushes your toilet, where you can bathe, and cook, and sleep anytime you wish, a piece of you – in our common existence – is living this other life.

I believe in the ferment of genius.  That there are ideas floating all around us, destined to be pulled down because at a precise moment in time we see a problem and know with every fiber of our being that there is a solution to it that ‘we’ have been called upon by the universe to fix.  Goethe understood it too.

Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.
                                                                                                     ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Because of her Lexus Design Award winning “Weaving a Home” project, I discovered the extraordinary work of Abeer Seikaly a couple of weeks ago. I have worked with artisans and craftspeople for more than a decade to find a way of taking their traditional skills and making them contemporary and commercially viable so, you can imagine how Seikaly’s efforts took my breath away. The conjunction of honoring the traditional housing of nomadic peoples everywhere, seeing in handwoven baskets a possibility for something more, and her training as an architect have created something truly innovative and worthy of the (all too often loosely assigned) appellation of genius.

In combination with “ovens made from old bath tubs” we might be able to fix some pressing problems and build communities (and all the healing, dynamic energy which accompanies such) within refugee camps to restore a level of human dignity.

I have facilitated introduction between Ms. Seikaly and a friend of mine who is the CEO of Glen Raven (Sunbrella) fabrics.  I suggested that the integration of a rain collection and cooling system into the functionality of her design and they have now taken the conversation into the business development core of Glen Raven for direct conversations. I can’t know the outcome, but I see NO REASON why something couldn’t be developed for those living near salt water but within an arid environment to cope with increasingly demands on water resources. I am so very hopeful of something smart, and cost effective, will come of the connections I saw and acted upon.

If you enjoy my blog please consider ‘buying me a cup of tea’ in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and then, please do share the blog with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Behind the picture postcard – barbarity.

It is the perfect illusion of a highly civilized society.

The wabi-sabi of imperfect, impermanent perfection found everywhere from paving stones and the patina on temple bells to the way that water is directed to rain chains and through bamboo drains. Vistas as shadowed places that stun us visually the way hundreds of thousands of plants of exactly the same botanical genus cascade across a tiered parkscape, and tiny smooth stones of all the same colour are found underfoot.  The rice powders used for paper to protect skin from the sunlight in a parasol, to write upon, for brightening complexions, and for nourishing her people (and so many of the rest of us as well).

Elaborate tea ceremonies, the confetti of pale pink cherry blossoms, exquisitely adorned Geisha and Zen gardens.  Yes, Japan.  Its modernity and reverence for ancient customs, and programmes designed to honor and preserve its most precious national treasures set an example that mayhap be too late for far too many cultures to embrace. Japan, in so many ways, leaves the rest of the world breathless and stunned.

So in this land of perfect facades of ritual and decorum it should come as no surprise that an America has stunned the Japanese ~ US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy has done the unthinkable in diplomatic circles, she has challenged the status quo of the local culture.

Her words of 17 January,  found on Twitter and across the faster-than-the-speed-of-sound media globe, carry the resonance of an ancient gong being sounded and have brought credence to the outrage of eco-warriors, animal rights activists and ordinary citizens alike.  The killing cove of Taiji, the massacre of the sentient beings so close to our humanity in its highest form of love talking to babies in utero – the dolphin.  When I saw the first pictures my stomach lurched into my throat, my heart clenched, the pain seized me as a cellular level and my words got stuck.

Yes, I Tweeted, yes I signed petitions (here’s a list to provide vent to your outrage).  It’s taken a week for me to be able to process and frame the barbarity of this annual event – barbarity that can be found in every society, not just Japan’s (before any of you reading this get all righteous and smug). Senseless slaughter that even as I write these words, type in search terms and select images and hyperlinks, have bile rising into my throat and tears streaming down my face – these are not tears of gratitude, nor humbled tears, these are tears of anger and outrage and disgust.

Taiji – Dr Reese Halter published in Huffington Post

WE ARE SO MUCH MORE THAN THIS … ) please consider watching the 2010 Oscar-winning feature film documentary The Cove.)

 

Man’s inhumanity. DEAR GOD WHEN WILL WE STOP?

Not just to each other but all other sentient beings. 

In the midst of this bloody carnage of waste, panic and horror  a pure albino dolphin calf emerged ~ named Angel.

And being white, and as a rarity in nature revered by the spiritual community for conveying innocence, purity, something Divinely ordained, Angel gives us hope against the unspeakable.  

The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) is primarily responsible for the cultivation of this massacre – in fact each and everyone of us that has ever gone into an aquarium to marvel at the antics and charm of a bottlenose dolphin “show” owns a piece of the responsibility. And finally, the Indian government has said ENOUGH!  “Whereas cetaceans in general are highly intelligent and sensitive, and various scientists who have researched dolphin behavior have suggested that the unusually high intelligence; as compared to other animals means that dolphins should be seen as ‘non-human persons’ and as such should have their own specific rights and is morally unacceptable to keep them captive for entertainment purpose,” the Ministry of Environment and Forests has decided to forbid the keeping of captive dolphins for public entertainment anywhere in the country.

Though I have never swum with them, I have stood on the decks of sailboats accompanied by pods of dolphins, growing up with Flipper made the magic of my personal encounters that much ‘more’.  The Japanese are indignant over the growing global outrage – I am only sick.

If you enjoy my blog please share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Dirty Dancing, Venn Diagrams, Epigenetics and (surprise) Davos

The cherished 1987 film Dirty Dancing comes to mind with its most memorable line uttered by protagonist Johnny Castle (as played by Patrick Swayze who evidently initially hated the line) at the end of the film:

“Nobody puts Baby in the corner”

I can remember thinking at the time, and every single time I hear one of the songs from the film, we all need to be seen for whom we really are and valued for the traits that make us unique and amazing, to not pass judgment or to stereotype based upon appearances or circumstances. And yes, sometimes that means to stand out in public and do something unexpected, loud and wonderful to own our potential greatness.  I don’t mean to make it sound simplistic, I know it isn’t.  Like many of you reading this I have experienced exclusion.  In the grand scheme of things these are trivialities, less than the weight of a single snowflake but with each subsequent incident I am reminded of feeling like I was not good enough. Oh, but the snowflake created in a state of optimal frequency is a truly beautiful thing – the others, not so much.

Right now a triviality that six months or a year from now will be (I hope) forgotten, pains me.  I have puzzled about my reaction for 24 hours, had a disturbed sleep as a result (writing most of this subconsciously and during REM sleep), and I am still not sure if it hurts because it was shared on social media in the first place or because my primary role in this event was kept anonymous even as my company was promoted. I wasn’t seeking a shout-out, still wouldn’t be comfortable with this gesture as this was after all a rather private expression from my heart; but  if I am to be completely honest the public sharing of my gesture (sans moi) feels as if to know me is some source of embarrassment to this person rather than the bragging right of my own perception of a friendship rich with shared intimacies.  In reacting both viscerally and intellectually I started thinking first about my personal history of being excluded and then about the concept and acts of inclusion and exclusion in our greater society and the impact of such on our world.

I mention this out of confusion mostly, because I try to make my life function like a Venn Diagram – everyone’s individual circle finding something in common with at least some of those other circles, and then in the middle something (or someone) which connects it all.  My mother once said “your Christmas parties are like Chamber of Commerce mixers” – (ouch?)  But shouldn’t life kind of be like that? Throwing a vast mix of people together who touch our lives, physical and virtual, all different, all with the potential of complementary, contrasting and overlapping interests, all of whom, because the centre circle of a Venn Diagram – that is to say you (or me), find some path to synergy that might not otherwise be discovered?  I have found that with three amazing, yet very different, individuals – my new business partners in Croatia, as a result of tossing them into a virtual room together.

OH YES, I do recognise that just because we, at the centre, would like everyone to see what we see in the others languishing or dynamically participating fostering change, that collaboration and cooperation isn’t always possible (though another well-meaning friend raps me verbally on the fingers for my absolute unwillingness to deal with disruptive people who don’t also possess a degree of integrity and a positive attitude).  I maintain that learning to listen to that little bird in our gut and cut our losses, no matter how uncomfortable dealing with a situation might be, will only serve to foster greater productivity and harmony on a global basis.

Under the study of epigenetics all of our experiences embed their coding (positive or negative) into our cellular memory and create resonance that multiplies; with each subsequent painful exclusion our being is diminished of its ability to function at its optimal frequency.  The dis-ease which so many chafe against is the direct result of cellular dissonance rather than harmonic resonance.  It’s why the discussions taking place in Davos, Switzerland this week are so important. With a mere 85 people on a global basis have assets equal to the world’s 3.5 billion poorest there is something very wrong and the genetic code of suffering is passed to future generations like a predisposition to diabetes or cancer.

Davos (though I have not been invited and doubtful would “fit in”) is kind of like the fictional resort in the Catskills of Dirty Dancing, powerful people talking about, mixing with the “underclasses” (at least hypothetically) and messing with ordinary lives struggling to survive or simply to live with what happiness and joy is allotted to the masses while they arrive in private jets, sip Champagne and sleep on high thread count sheets. I am not denying the Swiss the financial windfall – though it seems to me that for what is spent on meeting and talking about solving the worlds’ problems could find greater value in actually solving some of the worlds’ problems.

Let’s go back to the the snowflake because – surely someplace such as Davos, Switzerland has millions of beautiful ones – the six ancient Solfeggio frequencies used in the composition of Gregorian chant

UT – 396 Hz – Liberating Guilt and Fear

RE – 417 Hz – Undoing Situations and Facilitating Change

MI – 528 Hz – Transformation and Miracles (DNA Repair)

FA – 639 Hz – Connecting/Relationships

SOL – 741 Hz – Awakening Intuition

LA – 852 Hz – Returning to Spiritual Order

created the snowflakes at right.  Let’s stop excluding people, let’s create resonance and inclusion and beauty. Any bright mathematicians and bio-researchers out there care to apply their talents to fine tune humanity using these frequencies and lifting people up out of poverty and healing our planet in the process? 

If you enjoy my blog please share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Which Walter Mitty Are You?

FYI – The following is NOT a movie review – 😉

Christmas Day Evening: 7:30 PM at the Cineplex with my girlfriend Jennifer Sertl to see on opening day (something I rarely do) The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

Humor me, click here and open a new window to listen to this while reading! 

Walter Mitty is the ‘Negative Assets Manager’ which, while I think was cheekily poking fun at the derivatives market and the sub-prime housing crash, is quite literally what Ben Stiller’s character does – he takes care of the photographic assets (the negatives) that made Life magazine so special; even as his character initially is seen to be largely invisible – the grey toned, transparent and shadowed version, the negative, of a potentially dynamic and colourful, person.  Walter’s title is so fitting because it’s also the perfect analogy to the malaise of what most of humankind is actually experiencing – caught up in soulless jobs where corporate merger and acquisition teams squeeze the last drop of humanity from us while we stare at bank accounts and balance sheets with seemingly insufficient funds or go searching for some eternal truth and wind up missing the actual living of life.  Ben Stiller said, “What I liked about Steve’s (Conrad) script was the idea that Walter wasn’t really imagining himself as someone else, he was imagining a better version of himself.”  And that, more than the gorgeous cinematography or that Stiller actually did most of his own skateboarding down the twisty-turny road in Iceland, is what I loved about the movie – watching Walter discover the best version of himself (and, of course in doing so, finding himself worthy of love).

So much of our contemporary experience relies upon crutches to prop up ourselves to get ‘get through’ instead of really experiencing life. All the minutiae and excuses, the failure to step outside of our comfort zone and stretch ourselves as far as we possibly can – I don’t believe it is the fear of failing as much as it is hesitancy against the pervasive peer pressure to not draw undue attention to ourselves in seeming too assertive in expressing our wants or our possibilities. I am sure every culture has some variation of this but, in Sweden the word Lagom, in the context of societal behavior, means “to blend in appropriately”.  We become every variation of beige, taupe and grey living in a state of lagom. I’d like to apply Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s widely, otherwise attributed, quote from her article published in American Quarterly in 1976 entitled Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668-1735 to my stream of consciousness here: “Well-behaved women (or men) seldom make history; …”

Prayer flags at Panboche, photo by Martin Edstrom

History isn’t always about academic study, or being noteworthy against the billions of humans who have lived or will yet live, history is made up of our stories, about the experiences small and great that define us, the choices we make to discover or to reinvent ourselves, to create value and meaning, history is always based in a personal set of experiences.

I enjoyed Walter Mitty sufficiently to see it again and it isn’t because I am a huge fan of Ben Stiller (or wasn’t), but the development of Walter’s being – the singular walk we all must endure is so palpable in the scene where he is abandoned by his Sherpas (which would never really happen) to navigate the precipice of a Himalayan summit alone. My girlfriend Jennifer’s favorite line from the movie comes from this scene, “I’m going to keep this short, I need to make oxygen choices.”  Isn’t all of life about discerning what we need, want, value and aspire to make our reality? It’s so fitting that (although filmed in Iceland) that the home to Shangri-La, the mythically created place of James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon (a 1st edition of which can set you back four figures!), the path to the spiritual awakening as found by Theos Bernard and Heinrich Harrer’s Seven Years in Tibet that are all found in the Himalaya’s, where seekers, real and imagined, ‘find’ themselves and where ultimately Stiller’s Walter finally comes across Sean Penn’s photojournalist character Sean O’Connell and the (equally very real and also allegorical) Snow Leopard. The meaning of life found in traditional rites of passage that have guided boys to becoming men and girls to become women for thousands of years always have found in ritual quest for enlightenment and connection to the Source in solitude. The difference in the movie, and in most of our rather common lives, is the stumbling into rather than the purposeful decision to set out.  Walter, like so many of us, fulfills his journey primarily because other people are depending upon him, have entrusted him (or bullied him) into action.  His path is righteous and selfless and heroic just as Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey and like Paulo Coelho’s protagonist in The Alchemist the treasure he traveled so far to find was with him all along – in the end it is his personal victory in the discovery of himself that we celebrate (in our case with applause in the theatre at the end).

Understanding the challenges facing ordinary men and women as they become heroes is to be courageous and go into the unknown and become the greatest version of ourselves.

If you enjoy my blog please consider sending me the price of a cup of tea in your currency via PayPal to livelikeadog@gmail.com and do share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my print or ebook from Amazon, please click on the cover art of my book, ebook also available through Barnes & Noble and Lulu, thank you! 

Dorian Gray, President Obama – it’s still corruption

Our inboxes – a fascinating place where society and culture converge

Wow, you’re absurdly beautiful and fascinating 🙂 And, at least it seems, rather open-minded. A perfect combination. Would love to find out more 🙂 And I read your profile, even the questions / answers. My grandpa is from Croatia! 

J.

So, I visit his profile and he lives in Boston (where I made my home for a decade) and respond:

Dec 11, 2013 – 2:07pm

I am BLUSHING – true! Jack (is this your real name is?) there is not a woman (of any age) that doesn’t wish to read that she is BOTH absurdly beautiful and fascinating – but when it comes from a man that is 21, and looks like a movie star from the 1950s? um, how do I EVEN respond? Dear God what did I do today to deserve such manna from heaven? Perhaps as you complete your profile and we’ll have more in common than the fact that I lived in Boston for a decade and your grandfather comes from where I hope to make the next chapter of my life – swimming in the Adriatic on a nearly daily basis! You are a wonder – thank you for your gift, here, this comes to thank you in the only way I know how, a nod to your heritage and the city where you live: http://wp.me/p3A6uH-E9
Teresa

Dec 11, 2013 – 2:10pm

Wow, thanks for your amazing message 🙂 I’m really glad you like it 😛 Would love to take you out next time I’m in Croatia, or before then, even! 🙂 

J.

It should be noted I am not a cougar, and the conversation continues via IM chat– condensed and modestly edited

(2:10:42pm)jb017:would love to take you out next time I’m in Croatia

(2:11:48pm)MyLifeIsLove:You can’t even imagine how much I am blushing right now! Oh, thank you for your message Jack

(2:12:07pm)jb017:Really? 🙂

(2:12:08pm)MyLifeIsLove:really, OMG yes

(2:12:16pm)jb017:You’re so beautiful! I can’t stop looking at your photos

(2:12:21pm)MyLifeIsLove:really blushing like a 16 year old

(2:12:23pm)jb017:Have you ever been with someone younger like myself? 😛

(2:12:25pm)MyLifeIsLove:LOL, sigh

(2:12:37pm)jb017:🙂

(2:12:39pm)MyLifeIsLove:not “that” much younger

(2:12:50pm)jb017:Haha 🙂 But you look like you’re 20!

(2:13:11pm)MyLifeIsLove:LOL, no suntanning, seaweed on my face at least weekly since I was 12, very little alcohol consumed

I am sure you are all reading this and assuming that I, the older woman by 30 years, would be the one being an unduly corrupting influence on the moral fiber of this much younger man and, you would be wrong! I stumbled into Fifty Shades of Grey because I failed to read his Q&A prior to the rapid migration from ‘nice note to IM chat’ and I should know better! Anyway…

(2:13:46pm)jb017:nice 🙂 how young was he? 😛 And are you really the best kisser ever? I love great kissers.

(2:15:12pm)MyLifeIsLove:I will be 53 in Feb so Christian would have been 25 or 26 at the time

(2:15:29pm)MyLifeIsLove:I am going to write a sentence, and then you are going to read it, then close your eyes, okay?

(2:15:57pm)jb017:ok

(2:18:57pm)MyLifeIsLove:It’s dusk over Boston harbor, returning from the North Shore under motor sail at 5 knots, the Champagne sits sweating in rivulets, a glass in each of their hands, he leans down and takes her face on one hand, thumb against her mouth, takes her glass from her, sets it down next to his, and cuts the engine, his other hand is in her hair, and he sweeps her to his chest and tips his head to meet her mouth – parted, breathless waiting for his mouth to meet hers, the air between their mouths is as if coloured with the phosphorus that skips along the bowsprit, he wants to consume her, but she holds him in this tension to breath his scent to fall under the spell of the moment, there is nothing but the sound of their shared heartbeat and breaths. Now, you can close your eyes Jack

(2:20:09pm)jb017:wow…

(2:23:22pm)jb017:wow…so amazing, i would love that…

(2:24:43pm)MyLifeIsLove:if you learn to think like this, then you can kiss like that

(2:28:21pm)jb017:I’ve been imagining your kiss

(2:31:05pm)jb017:you’re a dream come true

(2:32:02pm)MyLifeIsLove:Jack you have to cut me a break

I was not trying to seduce this man, but recognise that understanding all the potential of what a kiss can be, even when it isn’t yet a kiss, is vastly different than ‘what follows’.

(2:32:07pm)jb017:🙂 My only fear is that I’m too kinky for you 😛

(2:33:00pm)MyLifeIsLove:LOL, how can you know “enough” at 21 to be to know enough to be kinky??

(2:33:50pm)jb017:Hahaha 🙂 I do

(3:18:54pm)jb017:I’m here, baby 🙂 been looking at your photos and having naughty thoughts 😛 love your legs, sexiest legs ever

(3:19:58pm)MyLifeIsLove:this I doubt but thank you

(3:20:08pm)jb017:Would love them around me 🙂

(3:20:15pm)MyLifeIsLove:whoa, you cut to the chase, blushing, again

(3:20:36pm)jb017:Sorry 🙂 Couldn’t help it

(3:21:05pm)MyLifeIsLove:I suppose I really am flattered (on some level) but “in my world”

(3:21:22pm)jb017:Haha 🙂

(3:21:28pm)MyLifeIsLove:(or rather my idealised world) one gets the entwined limbs at least after dinner

(3:28:27pm)MyLifeIsLove:omg, I just got to your wingspan image in the pool, good God how long are your arms?

(3:29:12pm)jb017:very long 😉 very nice fingers

(3:29:17pm)MyLifeIsLove:beautiful btw, that dimple of yours is killer!

(3:29:46pm)jb017:thanks 😉

(3:30:54pm)jb017:gosh, I’d love to put you in doggie position, spread your ass and lick your asshole, deep and long, tongue all in 😉 there, i said it 🙂 sorry if i shocked you

(3:32:03pm)MyLifeIsLove: you are correct you do know more than I do how can you be 21 and KNOW THIS STUFF? and know that you like this?

(3:32:25pm)jb017::P, yeah 🙂

Right now, you are wondering what this has to do with the President of the United States – I would like to know who put him in the doggie position or if he really thinks that he is going to put the whole world in the same and ‘take us from behind’.  Right now, I am reminded of the 17^th century Darien Company debacle in Scotland – but it’s worse, much, much worse.

The Darien Scheme, as it came to be known, tied up about 25% of the money circulating in Scotland on a speculative colonization investment in Panama which was beset by everything that could go wrong and did; subsequently bankrupting the Scottish aristocracy who, in turn, sold their country cheap to England to eliminate their debt in the form of the signing of the Treaty of Union which successfully eliminated Scottish sovereignty for 300 years. In reverse, this is about to happen to every country in Europe and the Pan-Pacific Rim; pay attention here people!

The President of the United States (I am so angry I can’t even type his name) and a team of bureaucrats under confidential NDA (non-disclosure agreement) and God only knows who outside of the government (or how much our President has clearly been bought and paid for) have drafted the most comprehensively evil piece of international trade legislation ever written – it’s called The Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement and in Europe the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) and everyone, everywhere should watch this video to understand the power it would give multi-national corporations over the sovereignty of nations and the citizens of our world, it is truly terrifying! I have never considered myself an extremist or a protestor; if you had told me a year ago I would actually agree with Julian Assange about anything I would have told you that you were insane, but thank God for Wikileaks and Anonymous and all those ‘rabble-rousers’ bent upon transparency and toppling corruption!  I’d like to know what happened to the man who gave us “The Audacity of Hope” because right now, between the juvenile behavior of taking a selfie and openly flirting (in front of the world and his wife) at Nelson Mandela’s funeral and the after-party images with George Bush, we seem to be bearing witness to the corruption of Dorian Gray under the tutelage of Lord Henry Wotton – only none of us know who Wotton is as it comes to Barack Obama (and that is even scarier).

Libertines have always held a kind of morbid fascination for writers, and right now the morally bankrupt of our society at the highest level have EVERYTHING in common with John Wilmot, the 2^nd Earl of Rochester, Vicomte de Valmont of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 18^th century masterpiece Les Liaisons dangereuses, and a young man whose conversation with me you read above I just met on OKCupid (21, over 6’2”, dimpled and simply ridiculously handsome) and sadly who, steeped in the consummation of (vast) sexual experience, seems will sacrifice the sublime pleasure of sensuality and tenderness and possibility of ever realizing true love makes me think of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s 19^th century protagonist – where Dorian wistfully expresses, as the portrait capturing his perfect youth is complete, his willingness to sell his soul to ensure that the portrait would assume the corruption realised as he pursues heightened levels of debauchery yet remains ever youthful and perfect.

The libertine used to be solely concerned with the corruption of youthful, virginal, feminine flesh and then their riotous immorality transcended to include opium dens and debauchery encompassing both sexes in group orgies under Oscar Wilde’s pen – what concerns me, makes me angrier than I have ever been about any politician, is the secrecy in which these documents have been drafted over the course of the last 7 years. I am repulsed by the arrogance that assumes that we, the citizens of the world, will simply bend over an take it doggie fashion while unknown C-level executives of multinational corporations do the same to Barack Obama to migrate even more wealth into the 1%. I don’t care where you live, and as I am blessed to have readers in 67 countries as of this date, but I beg you to cease being silent – contact your legislators at the federal level, join organised (peaceful) civil disobedience demonstrations, sign one of these petitions and get vocal on social media, NOW!

The Ill Wind of Human Dysfunction

Learning to ‘go with’ the wind gets you out of harms way a bit faster!

Teresa Fritschi, Commarglo Managing Director

We learn to embrace the wind at the tenderest of ages, where a single piece of 8 ½ by 11 white paper magically folded seven times, once cast with the flick of a wrist, will imprint our brains with the rudimentary theories of aerodynamics and physics, give us metaphorical wings to fly, and make us ponder ‘what’s up there, and who’s out there’.  And, when our paper airplane comes back down to Earth from cutting a graceful arc through the cerulean, have us come to recognise the impermanence of all experiences and the rationale behind neurons feeding our brains electro-chemical impulses which force us (in the best and worst possible way) to capture memory.  It should, also, impart resilience.

Those trees which survive the gale force of thunderstorm, tornado, tropical depression or hurricane are not sturdy oaks or mighty chestnuts but saplings, bamboo and willow, their inherent nature is of…

View original post 559 more words

The Ill Wind of Human Dysfunction

We learn to embrace the wind at the tenderest of ages, where a single piece of 8 ½ by 11 white paper magically folded seven times, once cast with the flick of a wrist, will imprint our brains with the rudimentary theories of aerodynamics and physics, give us metaphorical wings to fly, and make us ponder ‘what’s up there, and who’s out there’.  And, when our paper airplane comes back down to Earth from cutting a graceful arc through the cerulean, have us come to recognise the impermanence of all experiences and the rationale behind neurons feeding our brains electro-chemical impulses which force us (in the best and worst possible way) to capture memory.  It should, also, impart resilience.

Those trees which survive the gale force of thunderstorm, tornado, tropical depression or hurricane are not sturdy oaks or mighty chestnuts but saplings, bamboo and willow, their inherent nature is of flexibility to bend with the wind instead of standing rigidly against it.  For thousands of years the martial arts have taught this – flowing through the obstacle instead of ‘fighting it’; harnessing Chi (or Qi) much the way the folds of the paper airplane allow it to ride the air currents.  Physicists and various scientific disciplines are peeling away the layers of the ‘weight’ of positive versus negative thought with more refined versions of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRIs). If you have yet to hear/read, negative thoughts have considerably MORE weight from the perspective of physics and thus, the reason a growing number of us, why the state of our planet ‘feels’ like the dissonance which can be found in a piece of Shostakovich.

I recently experienced for the second time in my life (and a decade passing between) an atom bomb of human emotion directed at me complete with threats of physical violence, repeated use expletives and shouting (and yes, shrapnel spitting landing on my face) over my verbally ‘protecting’ an earthworm from incineration by this man’s son on the hot BBQ a group of us had just finished using. (All of which turns out to be multiple misdemeanor offenses of harassment.) My initial reaction was to block the energy and stand rigid, but that stance and the shift in my accompanying energy building within me felt inauthentic to my nature.  I then tried to walk away, and I was physically blocked.  I lowered my voice to a whisper (which was right for me but still failed to stem the anger being directed at me) and took deep breaths – none of it worked. The witnesses to the three episodes involved ‘didn’t want to be in the middle of it’. This is precisely how abuse and terrors of all kinds take place right next door, in front of us, and on the other side of the world. Ultimately I chose not to file a police report, I take my chances on future episodes but my life lesson now includes CALL THE POLICE!  On the way to that decision, I consumed several dry gin martinis – somehow it’s okay to want a drink but not need a drink; I am not proud of embracing this crutch.  What proved more successful was ‘re-tuning’ my being to the Gregorian chant of Hildegard von Bingen; within can be found both resonance and dissonance – necessary to create harmony – the Ying and Yang, darkness and light, of music.

I ache over the loss of five years of friendship, am thoroughly confused over ‘my child can do no wrong’ mindset, of people who praise God with one breath and dishonor their respective Prophet with the next, and whose anger management skills are non-existent.  As our connected energy (“one being with the Father” as well as atomic-ly speaking) bears down on us I am acutely aware that only mindfulness will foster a shift, and that resilience is built into our ever dynamic a path.  I will return to my version of normal sooner as a result.

If you enjoy my blog please share it with your friends on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter – I am @TeresaFritschi. To order my book, please click on the cover art of my book below, thank you! 

Available in print or e-book at Amazon, e-book at Barnes & Noble.