www.postsecret.com

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black-mirror/4od#3327867

http://collectiveagency.us/blog/darkside

Take me back - both my flatmate and i dreamt of beaches as we were waking up to the frosty barn that is our flat. I dreamt that i was back here, on 'Castaway Island' (LOL) Vietnam, except it was so hot this time, and all the girls got naked because it was paradise and they just didn't care. Probably something to do with the fact getting undressed from PJs in the morning is HORRIBLE. 

I can't believe i was ever on this beach. The whole experience was surreal - it was the night we stayed on this island and swam topless in the light-up plankton and played 'I Have Never' until the wee hours that back near our anchored party boat in the bay, a neighbour boat sank and around 17 travellers died. We didn't hear the news until we were back on dry land and turned our mobiles on.

♡ knitting the holiest scarf ever ♡

" Lit from within, the hue and brightness of each varies as time passes, reflecting the transit of different planets. In a 9-minute cycle, Mori has condensed the movements of the solar system over the course of a year.

The familiar imagery of ancient stone circles anchors the movements of the heavens to our own human history. "Our life was inherited from our very remote ancestors and given to us now, and we will transfer it to future generations," Mori says. The chain of life reaching back through history, and our ancestors' reverence for the natural world, are strong themes in the artist's work - reminding us how interwoven we are with our environment. At the entrance to the gallery, a sound installation makes the point explicit. "We are nature," Mori's voice echoes. "We are sustained by nature."

"I was using the formula of how a black hole has been fed, a circle stretched into a spiral form," she says. Yet her aim was not to create a true depiction of a white hole - if such a thing even exists - but to convey the idea of a place where the "spirit or soul of the star is born again".

Conceptually multifaceted yet aesthetically simple, Mori's art is informed not only by physical sciences and archaeology but also her explorations into the workings of the mind. "When you come to a deeper consciousness you acknowledge your life, other living beings, atoms and subatomic particles. Those things are all here in our bodies," she says. "I try to visualise how we are connected in the physical world from the very small primal particles to a greater universe."

And she succeeds: Mori's works not only illuminate connections across all levels of existence, but they put that existence in context - urging us not just to take care of our world, but to savour our time in it. "

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2013/01/mariko-mori-from-stone-circles-to-stardust.html

How can this relate to the convergent media module? Convergence of different technologies - the technologies themselves do not show convergence but the brain's interaction with them and how they are utilised.

"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs."

Banksy

http://beta.18daysinegypt.com/#/

"I am, I have, I can. I am, I have, I can.

I am, I just am. I don't need to identify anything beyond that - I just am, I exist, I'm here, I'm present, I'm grateful. I am. 

I have, I have. I have enough, I am enough.

I can, I can, I can. I can do anything I set my mind to, I can be fully engaged and fully present here and now. I can shine my light in a bolder way. I can be free, I am free, I am."

"You are magnificent. You don't have to do anything to prove it, you just are."

Dear Todd Akin,

I am writing to you tonight about rape. It is 2 AM and I am unable to sleep here in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am in Bukavu at the City of Joy to serve and support and work with hundreds, thousands of women who have been raped and violated and tortured from this ceaseless war for minerals fought on their bodies.

I am in Congo but I could be writing this from anywhere in the United States, South Africa, Britain, Egypt, India, Philippines, most college campuses in America. I could be writing from any city or town or village where over half a billion women on the planet are raped in their lifetime.

Mr. Akin, your words have kept me awake.

As a rape survivor, I am reeling from your recent statement where you said you misspoke when you said that women do not get pregnant from legitimate rape, and that you were speaking "off the cuff."

Clarification. You didn't make some glib throwaway remark. You made a very specific ignorant statement clearly indicating you have no awareness of what it means to be raped. And not a casual statement, but one made with the intention of legislating the experience of women who have been raped. Perhaps more terrifying it was a window into the psyche of the GOP.

You used the expression "legitimate" rape as if to imply there were such a thing as "illegitimate" rape. Let me try to explain to you what that does to the minds, hearts and souls of the millions of women on this planet who experience rape. It is a form of re-rape. The underlying assumption of your statement is that women and their experiences are not to be trusted. That their understanding of rape must be qualified by some higher, wiser authority. It delegitimizes and undermines and belittles the horror, invasion, desecration they experienced. It makes them feel as alone and powerless as they did at the moment of rape.

When you, Paul Ryan and 225 of your fellow co-sponsors play with words around rape suggesting only "forcible" rape be treated seriously as if all rapes weren't forcible, it brings back a flood of memories of the way the rapists played with us in the act of being raped -- intimidating us, threatening us,muting us. Your playing with words like "forcible" and "legitimate" is playing with our souls which have been shattered by unwanted penises shoving into us, ripping our flesh, our vaginas, our consciousness, our confidence, our pride, our futures.

Now you want to say that you misspoke when you said that a legitimate rape couldn't get us pregnant. Did you honestly believe that rape sperm is different than love sperm, that some mysterious religious process occurs and rape sperm self-destructs due to its evilcontent? Or, were you implying that women and their bodies are somehow responsible for rejecting legitimate rape sperm, once again putting the onus on us? It would seem you were saying that getting pregnant after a rape would indicate it was not a "legitimate" rape.

Here's what I want you to do. I want you to close your eyes and imagine that you are on your bed or up against a wall or locked in a small suffocating space. Imagine being tied up there and imagine some aggressive, indifferent, insane stranger friend or relative ripping off your clothes and entering your body -- the most personal, sacredprivate part of your body -- and violently, hatefully forcing themself into you so that you are ripped apart. Then imagine that stranger's sperm shooting into you and filling you and you can't get it out. It is growing something in you. Imagine you have no idea what that life will even consist of, spiritually made in hate, not knowing the mental or health background of the rapist.

Then imagine a person comes along, a person who has never had that experience of rape, and that person tells you, you have no choice but to keep that product of rape growing in you against your will and when it is born it has the face of your rapist, the face of the person who has essentially destroyed your being and you will have to look at the face every day of your life and you will be judged harshly if you cannot love that face.

I don't know if you can imagine any of this (leadership actually requires this kind of compassion), but if you are willing to go to the depth of this darkness, you will quickly understand there is NO ONE WHO CAN MAKE THAT CHOICE to have or not have the baby, but the person carrying that baby herself.

I have spent much time with mothers who have given birth to children who are the product of rape. I have watched how tortured they are wrestling with their hate and anger, trying not to project that onto their child.

I am asking you and the GOP to get out of my body, out of my vagina, my womb, to get out of all of our bodies. These are not your decisions to make. These are not your words to define.

Why don't you spend your time ending rape rather than redefining it? Spend your energy going after those perpetrators who so easily destroy women rather than parsing out manipulative language that minimizes their destruction.

And by the way you've just given millions of women a very good reason to make sure you never get elected again, and an insanely good reason to rise.

#ReasonToRise

Eve Ensler

Bukavu, Congo

Follow Eve Ensler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/eveensler

http://onebillionrising.org/news/entry/read-eves-latest-huffpost-piece-dear-mr.-akin-i-want-you-to-imagine

feeling so blessed in my beautiful tidy room full of plants

‎"Atheist are routinely asked how people will know not to rape and murder without religion telling them not to do it, especially a religion that backs up the orders with threats of hell. Believers, listen to me carefully when I say this: When you use this argument, you terrify atheists. We hear you saying that the only thing standing between you and Ted Bundy is a flimsy belief in a supernatural being made up by pre-literate people trying to figure out where the rain came from. This is not very reassuring if you’re trying to argue from a position of moral superiority." - Amanda Marcotte

"We had 20 beautiful souls at my Santa Monica Eckhart Tolle Meetup last night... and as I listened to people share their 'stories', it really hit me how often the mind goes to the past for the cause of its suffering.

Everything from "Well Michael, there was this time I had this experience of oneness when I was young and I want to get it back," to "I had a tough childhood and it still bothers me." 

The thought came to me - gee, without the past, what would the mind have to complain about!?"

next day nerves

sit back and unwind, let your brain unravel, slip sliding away like traveling on wet gravel

"In every moment of our lives, there seems to be two different versions of reality taking place. One, is the surface reality and it is where who you think yourself to be exists as the main character in the movie of your life. It is in this surface reality where you interact with the other characters, make choices, and advance your storyline. Deeper than this surface reality, yet always existing within it, remains a spiritual reality. This reality remains peaceful and unmoved by the actions and reactions of the surface reality. It views the characters in the surface reality as various messengers delivering the wisdom of the spiritual reality, so the characters can learn exactly what each has been brought to learn in every scene of life's vivid movie. It is from this spiritual reality where one might imagine the soul resides, with one's lifetime serving as an interactive way for the soul to impart its wisdom to a world of characters. The characters we think we are deliver soul wisdom and create experiences for one another, and reap the rewards by becoming more conscious. To become more conscious, is to realize what you are, underneath the surface of form, and beyond all thoughts and ideas." - Matt Kahn

♡ HAPPY 2013 ☆

I am cementing my intentions to:

move from my head back to my chest day-to-day

regain a sense of power and control in my work

regain a peaceful shine to aim both inwardly and outwardly

be outside more

be aware of my changing priorities, how these affect me and the people I love, and place lucid dreaming somewhere in this shifting tower of priorities