Writing advices in 2021? People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them. People are never satisfiedIf they have a little, they want moreIf they have a lot, they want still moreOnce they have more, they wish they could be happy with little, but are incapable of making the slightest effort in that direction. Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose – and commit myself to – what is best for me. There is only one way to learnIt’s through actionEverything you need to know you have learned through your journey. What hurts us is what heals us.
Unexpected encounters with adversities often fail our natural coping mechanisms and make us vulnerable to burnout and hypertension. By developing the habit of regular meditation, we can successfully tame our mind to survive the storm. Studies have shown that Open Monitoring Meditation and Mindfulness-based Stress Relaxation Techniques reduce the stress hormones and make us more vigilant and self-aware. Research suggests that if we introduce meditation into the work culture and encourage professionals to practice the same regularly, they surely could work more efficiently under stressful circumstances and prevent the workload from taking a toll on their health (Lazar et al., 2006).
One of the most interesting studies in the last few years, carried out at Yale University, found that mindfulness meditation decreases activity in the default mode network (DMN), the brain network responsible for mind-wandering and self-referential thoughts – a.k.a., “monkey mind.” The DMN is “on” or active when we’re not thinking about anything in particular, when our minds are just wandering from thought to thought. Since mind-wandering is typically associated with being less happy, ruminating, and worrying about the past and future, it’s the goal for many people to dial it down. Several studies have shown that meditation, through its quieting effect on the DMN, appears to do just this. And even when the mind does start to wander, because of the new connections that form, meditators are better at snapping back out of it.
I first got in touch with Rachel because I was working on a project for a magazine, and I needed contributors. I emailed her from the burner phone I’d bought at Wal-Mart the day after I got out. I told her about the project, said I liked her poems, her journalism. She didn’t act stuck up or anything. We talked about books and shit. It came naturally to us. This didn’t go without controversy. Some took issue with her feelings about her own experience, something to the effect of it being unethical of her to exploit her own exploitation. She was even accused of being a “fake” sex worker. Her accusers were not sex workers, so it’s anyone’s guess how they might know enough to tell a fugazzi from a genuine article, but this is neither here nor there. A few porn stars bowed up to troll for White, and that was the last of people saying she was a fake. Find even more details at https://mytrendingstories.com/article/sprinkle-of-jesus/. Assonance is when vowel sounds are repeated in two or more words that are close to each other in the poem and have different consonants. An example of this would be “The octopus flopped on the cot – kerplop!” Several words in the example contain the short “o” sound, but the words contain different consonants.
There’s a quote in an interview you did about the idea of poetry being inherently queer. Intuitively, that makes a lot of sense. Well, you can’t talk about poetry without talking about Sappho. Are your shorter poems inspired by Sapphic fragments? Completely. Poetry is open to the innumerable differences of the reader, and the way it falls in the reader’s ears, there is that flirtation there, and that act of invitation, which is to me inherently queer. I can’t help but think of poetry in the tradition of Sappho—how can she not be a part of any love poem that you’re writing? Then I was wondering if every poem was a love poem. That also might just be me unable to write anything other than love poems because of my belief in romance that I can’t undo in myself, which I want to play with and intellectualize. What does love look like to you, intellectually? For me, being in love is simply having someone who is a comrade, sharing the same values, sharing a same sense of beauty, sharing a same sort of joie de vivre or love of art, being aligned. That’s what being in love is.
Lake Atitlan was described by Aldous Huxley as the most beautiful lake in the world. Situated in the Guatemalan highlands, the lake is a stunning exhibition of natural splendor. The portal to Lake Atitlan, the city of Pananajachel, is also a portal to an indigenous world of the Mayans and other ancient peoples. It is a beautiful area, with many tourist attractions, opportunities for exploration, scuba diving and learning Spanish.
Have you noticed how meditation absorbs you into the moment? Mindful awareness comes naturally to us when we meditate, and we reach ‘flow’ state where our mind is in complete harmony with itself. A study on the effects of an eight-week mindful meditation course found that people who are regular meditation practitioners had heightened attention and concentration span. Even people who meditated for short durations showed more focus than individuals who did not meditate at all (Jha, Krompinger, Baine, 2007).