“This is such a pleasure to read. Unlike most books with writing prompts, this one goes in depth with sensitizing you to ground yourself in awareness of where you are and why. Grazie, Linda, for this marvelous work.”—Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun In this engaging creative writing workbook, novelist and poet Linda Lappin presents a series of insightful exercises to help writers of all genres—literary travel writing, memoir, poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction—discover imagery and inspiration in the places they love. Lappin departs from the classical concept of the Genius Loci, the indwelling spirit residing in every landscape, house, city, or forest—to argue that by entering into contact with the unique energy and identity of a place, writers can access an inexhaustible source of creative power. The Soul of Place provides instruction on how to evoke that power. The writing exercises are drawn from many fields—architecture, painting, cuisine, literature and literary criticism, geography and deep maps, Jungian psychology, fairy tales, mythology, theater and performance art, metaphysics—all of which offer surprising perspectives on our writing and may help us uncover raw materials for fiction, essays, and poetry hidden in our environment. An essential resource book for the writer’s library, this book is ideal for creative writing courses, with stimulating exercises adaptable to all genres. For writers or travelers about to set out on a trip abroad, The Soul of Place is the perfect road trip companion, attuning our senses to a deeper awareness of place.
The Aesthetics of Natural Environments is a collection of essays investigating philosophical and aesthetics issues that arise in our appreciation of natural environments. The introduction gives an historical and conceptual overview of the rapidly developing field of study known as environmental aesthetics. The essays consist of classic pieces as well as new contributions by some of the most prominent individuals now working in the field and range from theoretical to applied approaches. The topics covered include the nature and value of natural beauty, the relationship between art appreciation and nature appreciation, the role of knowledge in the aesthetic appreciation of nature, the importance of environmental participation to the appreciation of environments, and the connections between the aesthetic appreciation of nature and our ethical obligations concerning its maintenance and preservation. This volume is for scholars and students focussed on nature, landscapes, and environments, individuals in areas such as aesthetics, environmental ethics, geography, environmental studies, landscape architecture, landscape ecology, and the planning and design disciplines. It is also for any reader interested in and concerned about the aesthetic quality of the world in which we live.
“Creator, do you have a family?” said my youngest. And he answered! Thus began our healing through awareness with Mina (how we address the human person—God—who built our universe), the archangels, and many others in spirit world. Our explosive conversation over the next 18 hours revealed God, angels, humanity, why we are as we are, and our universe as never before imagined. Spirit mediums Christopher McKeon and his daughters Ayako and El shatter the paradigms and magical thinking handed down to us through history by religion, philosophy, mysticism, and science. Experience, as we did, healing of your trauma, pain, and suffering through gaining awareness of your true reality. Included are ten historical spirit persons who give short testimonies of their experiences to help explain certain aspects of our—your—life reality. You'll never feel the same, or look at the world around you the way you did, as your awareness takes flight from unawareness with new wings on new winds. Be prepared for a story of life like nothing you've ever experienced. Best of all, you'll learn how you, too, can talk to Mina, 'angels,' your spirit family and guides, and willing spirit persons to get your own answers (without having to take ours on faith) as a ground-floor participant in the nascent worldwide energy testing community! For Mina, this book is all about healing your pain and suffering by revealing our personal, and larger, human reality. You'll find it all inside. A chapter summary: Part I is a narrative of our experience discovering energy testing and our shocking meet-up with our ‘creator;’ Part II describes how you and our universe are infinite and eternal as existence, time, space, and consciousness, including: —an overview regarding our true natural reality: matter, energy, gravity, mass, lightspeed (normal and actual), relativity and the quantum, black holes, the Big Bang, quantum entanglement/tunneling, how the natural universe interacts with the supranatural (spirit) universe; —what is All Existence of which our universe is a part; —all about consciousness (psyche) and how our physical body interacts with our spirit body; —‘psyche fundamental force’ (Intentionality); —and culture as the individual; Part III describes the origin of humanity and includes: —the birth of humanity; —who and what our creator is —how our universe came to be our home —why human life seems destructive and filled with pain and suffering; Part IV is the real ‘woo-woo’ of the book and includes: —how we exist and live as physicospirit-embodied individuals; —our mind, conscience, PTSD; —killing, abortion, euthanasia, suicide; —lineage and DNA; —what happens at death; —fate, destiny, and free will; —suffering, hope, depression, reincarnation, and the origin of slavery; —happiness, love and hate; —government and society; —evil; —beauty and ugliness; —spirit world; —the chakras and aura as they really are and what they do; —Intentionality; —who and what ‘angels’ really are; —history of Earth’s humanity and radiometric dating; —our physicospirit self; —religion; —what is healing, how to heal; —human freedom; —astral projection, the Akashic Records; —marriage, sex; —animal familials; —ten historical spirit persons' testimony: Duke Wen of Zhou, Hitler, Hannibal Gisco, Mio, Mnidho of Nihoa, Tethys, Jesus, Sun-myung Moon, Muhammad, Buddha; Part V teaches you energy testing so you can learn how to talk to Mina (God), 'angels,' your spirit family, spirit guides, and any willing spirit person to get your own answers to life.
The period from the 5th to the 7th century AD was characterised by far-reaching structural changes that affected the entire west of the Roman Empire. This process used to be regarded by scholars aspart of the dissolution of Roman order, but in current discussions it is nowexamined more critically. The contributions to this volume of conference papers combine approaches from history and literature studies in order to review the changing forms and fields of the establishment of collective identities, and to analyse them in their mutual relationships.
From its first publication, what is now known as the Immortality Ode has been praised for the magnificence of its verse and disparaged for its paucity of meaning - the ‘immortality’ of the subtitle unsubstantiated, and the ‘recollections’ insubstantial. Yet Wordsworth’s idea of immortality has clear precedents in the seventeenth century, and recollections of childhood are Traherne’s starting point for the recovery of a lost vision comparable to Wordsworth’s. Via the power of the imagination, or reason, they believed they could experience a renewed vision that both termed variously Paradise, or infinity, or immortality. Graham Davidson traces the origins of Wordsworth’s poetic impetus to his resistance to the Cartesian division between mind and nature, first adumbrated by the Cambridge Platonists. If reunited, Paradise was regained, but this personal trajectory was tempered by a deep sympathy for the woes of mortal life. Davidson explores the consequent dialogue through some of Wordsworth’s best-known poems, at the heart of which is the Ode. In the last section, he demonstrates how Wordsworth’s publishing history led the Victorians and modernists to misinterpret his work; if one considers Eliot’s Four Quartets as odes, facing several of the same problems as did Wordsworth, there is some irony in Eliot’s dismissal of the Immortality Ode as ‘verbiage’.
Throughout the long centuries of western metaphysics the problem of the infinite has kept surfacing in different but important ways. It had confronted Greek philosophical speculation from earliest times. It appeared in the definition of the divine attributed to Thales in Diogenes Laertius (I, 36) under the description "that which has neither beginning nor end. " It was presented on the scroll of Anaximander with enough precision to allow doxographers to transmit it in the technical terminology of the unlimited (apeiron) and the indeterminate (aoriston). The respective quanti tative and qualitative implications of these terms could hardly avoid causing trouble. The formation of the words, moreover, was clearly negative or privative in bearing. Yet in the philosophical framework the notion in its earliest use meant something highly positive, signifying fruitful content for the first principle of all the things that have positive status in the universe. These tensions could not help but make themselves felt through the course of later Greek thought. In one extreme the notion of the infinite was refined in a way that left it appropriated to the Aristotelian category of quantity. In Aristotle (Phys. III 6-8) it came to appear as essentially re quiring imperfection and lack. It meant the capacity for never-ending increase. It was always potential, never completely actualized.
