My mental circus, inside and out.

New image posted on ghostlyphotographs.  If you feel inspired, but don't yet have login information, contact Emma Pele, who is not necessarilly the author of any texts posted on ghostlyphotographs, though they are published under her name, out of convenience.  In fact, part of the fun may be guessing who is doing the posting!

Posted by: EmmaPele at November 30, 2006 20:00 | link | comments

Just an update:  I'm still waiting for people to sign up for the interactive fiction.  Will post new photo tomorrow.  Cheerio, EmmaP

Posted by: EmmaPele at November 28, 2006 20:53 | link | comments (2)

An invitation

We're starting an interactive fiction on motime.  Let me know if you want to join us.  Every week, I'll publish a new photograph, and then the writing will be like a wiki, where you can add or change as you like.  The url is http://www.ghostlyphotographs.motime.com 

Posted by: EmmaPele at November 24, 2006 22:20 | link | comments (3)

Thanksgiving

On the day before Thanksgiving last year, Emma's mother died.  So Emma spent Thanksgiving on the couch with a blanket over her head, by herself, hardly knowing what to grieve for anymore, having lost four significant people in the course of one year.  This year, however, she is approximately 80 percent at peace.  (The other 20 percent an anger that is slowly eroding, like sandstone under a waterfall, because of diligent attention.)  Outside her window this morning--winter trees.  Emma loves the subtlety of winter trees, the red berries, the last remaining golden leaves, the touches of color that wait until spring to fall to the ground.  And now, planning to bake some bread to take to her father's house this afternoon.  Much to do this weekend, building a compost pile for the last fall leaves, going over the copyediting, writing a book review.  What the Buddhists say: how lucky you are to have a human lifetime.  Don't waste it.

Posted by: EmmaPele at November 23, 2006 20:54 | link | comments (5)

the pain of others

Bad dream last night, and then awake, thinking of the Buddhists  who set themselves on fire to protest Diem, and others--Alice Herz, Norman Morrison, Roger Allen LaPorte, George Winne--in sympathy for the victims of napalm.  Now, over 100,000 dead in Iraq in another purposeless war.  It is impossible to imagine that pain unless we set ourselves on fire or see our own children lying dead on the ground.  All the truly great social movements have occured when people have allowed themselves to feel the pain of others, but it is not so easy to open up in that way.  After all, we are busy guarding ourselves against our own pain by constant escapism, while at the same time desperately wishing that someone would recognize our pain and be truly sympathetic in the deepest way.  That is difficult to do without a hidden aversion and the thinly disguised contempt that we call "pity."  All our instinct is to push away pain.  To set oneself on fire for another--it is almost unimaginable.   But now easier to imagine smaller acts of sympathy and compassion, to think less of maintaining the self. 

Posted by: EmmaPele at November 22, 2006 20:40 | link | comments (2)