"the reflective character, the introvert, though certainly trying to deal with his unruly affects, is in reality more influenced by his passions than the man whose life is consciously guided by desires oriented to objects. The latter, the extravert, tries to get away with this all the time, but is forced to experience how his subjective thoughts and feelings constantly stand in his way. He is far more influenced by his psychic inner world than he suspects. He cannot see it himself, but the people around him, if observant, will always detect the personal purpose in his striving ". <...>.

"The other, the introvert, with his conscious thought-out intentions, always overlooks what the people around him see only too clearly, that his intentions are really subservient to powerful impulses, lacking both aim and object, and are in a high degree influenced by them."

"​The observer and critic of the extravert is liable to take the parade of thinking and feeling as a thin covering that only imperfectly conceals a cold and calculated personal aim. Whereas the man who tries to understand the introvert will readily conclude that vehement passions are only with difficulty held in check by apparent sophistries. "

Came across this article  about the portrayal of people with Autism in fiction and how it feels sometimes that including a character with Autism serves as a plot device.

I came across the article shortly after reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon,
which does not suffer from treating autism as a prompt for exploring  life twists.  A delightful book! 

The Trouble With Autism in Novels
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/books/review/autism-marie-myung-ok-lee.html

I'm extremely grateful to be part of Claiming Voice  exhibit at Pacific Northwest College of Arts.
Come check it out: PNCA Gallery 157 (and 153 - mine!) January 3 -26 in 2019.

I've been blessed with an opportunity to meet and work alongside and learn from me fellow artists also in this exhibit  - Mark Dunst -  Drew Fredenburg - Kathi Miller - Elizabeth Serreau - and from our curator Sara Siestreem.

It's been a year long conversation that was rich and inspiring and grounding and cathartic and a conversation that set you free.
​

Reading Schopenhauer I discovered that he writes a lot about Solitude-cheerfulness-intelligence triangle.

"hearing of interesting events which have happened in the course of a man's experience, many people will wish that similar things had happened in their lives too, completely forgetting that they should be envious rather of the mental aptitude which lent those events the significance they possess when he describes them; to a man of genius they were interesting adventures; but to the dull perceptions of an ordinary individual they would have been stale, everyday occurrences"

_ I thought it has interesting implications for the world of televised life, Instagram, etc.; the majority of content is skewed towards presenting exceptional and amazing things is no big deal, not towards how ordinary turns extraordinary because of the "mental aptitude".

Also, disclaimer: Schopenhauer was a terrible racist. And a snob.

Doubt is based on man's separation from the whole of reality, on his lack of universal participation, on the isolation of his individual self. <...>He flees from his freedom of asking and answering for himself to a situation in which no further questions can be asked and the answers to previous questions are imposed on him authoritatively. In order to avoid the risk of asking and doubting he surrenders the right to ask and to doubt. <...>. He "escapes from his freedom" (Fromm) in order to escape the anxiety of meaninglessness <...> Meaning is saved, but the self is sacrificed. And since the conquest of doubt was a matter of sacrifice, the sacrifice of the freedom of the self, it leaves a mark on the regained certitude: a fanatical self-assertiveness. Fanaticism is the correlate to spiritual self-surrender: it shows the anxiety which it was supposed to conquer, by attacking with disproportionate violence those who disagree and who demonstrate by their disagreement elements in the spiritual life of the fanatic which he must suppress In himself. Because he must suppress them in himself he must suppress them in others. The weakness of the fanatic is that those whom he fights have a secret hold upon him; and to this weakness he and his group finally succumb.
​
From The Courage to Be

She can get a chair; she can sit down and write. Facing the blank page. The blank page also faces her with freedom.
<...>
Stand with the woman by the table. Sit with the woman facing the blank page, or blank canvas. A space waiting for filling. These spaces are perfect. What is perfect terrifies.
<...>
The steam of tension evaporated. The moment passed. The fear, buried. It is easier like this. It is ordinary and safe. We hurry to fill in spaces with everydayness because spaces frighten us, but, the dividing line between fear and excitemnet is thin.
<...>
In bardic times, it was considered a great misfortune to have a poet in your family. But if the poet happened to be a woman, this was double misfortune, for she, as a woman, would have double the power. ... Magic surrounded the poet's power and this power was feared.

LP lyrics have been resonating and redefining experiences. 

​There was a time, there was a life, I was inside my head
And finally I rested in your bed..

You don't know, you're almost near it.. 

Motto

In the dark times,
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing
About the dark times.

Bertolt Brecht “Motto to the 'Svendborg Poems' ” 
​Translated by John Willett

- I used him, but, you know, I paid for it, in not being known by him.
-And as for that - passion - I was so estranged from it that I could hardly remember what appetite was like or what confidence was like that would let it show.

- ... you do gain a small distance from anything by keeping it in suspension in your mind while you work on finding the words to fit it. I think this is interesting because you also lose sight if you ruminate on something in your head all the time. The difference is in one case your producing something and in the other your are sort of stuck in thought cycle.