Wandering in Circles: Venichka’s Journey of Redemption in “Moskva-Petushki” examines the definition of redemption in Venedikt Erofeev’s Moskva-Petushki. By placing Erofeev’s poema in conversation with other travel narratives from Russia and the West, the book explores the meaning of redemption across societies and cultures, and how Erofeev creates a commentary on the possibility of redemption in a broken political and social system. Through this comparative approach to Moskva-Petushki, this work offers a new reading of the text as a journey of failed social and personal redemption.
How far would you walk for happiness?After living in Japan for over half a decade Todd Wassel finds himself at a crossroads in life and caught between worlds. Out of work, out of love, and drowning in debt, Todd is convinced that there should be a purpose to life, but nothing has worked out up to now. Desperate, he launches a last-ditch effort to understanding what a meaningful life really is by walking the grueling 750-mile, 88-temple Buddhist pilgrimage on Japan's remote island of Shikoku, again. In search of himself and a Japan he thought was lost, Walking in Circles, lovingly retells Todd's sometimes outrageous, painful, and suspense filled journey. Todd is joined on the path by an eccentric group of characters, naked Yakuza trying to shake him down, a wandering ascetic searching for enlightenment while hiding from the Freemasons, and a Buddhist Monk who hates America but loves beef jerky.Walking in Circles is more than a humorous travel memoir of personal transformation. Todd crafts an intimate portrait of a changing Japan and a nation in search of meaning. What he finds changes his life forever.Are you prepared to find enlightenment on the backroads of Japan?
A breathtaking, suspenseful story of one man’s obsessive search to find the truth of another man’s downfall, from the author of The King Is Always Above the People, which was longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction. Nelson’s life is not turning out the way he hoped. His girlfriend is sleeping with another man, his brother has left their South American country, leaving Nelson to care for their widowed mother, and his acting career can’t seem to get off the ground. That is, until he lands a starring role in a touring revival of The Idiot President, a legendary play by Nelson’s hero, Henry Nunez, leader of the storied guerrilla theater troupe Diciembre. And that’s when the real trouble begins. The tour takes Nelson out of the shelter of the city and across a landscape he’s never seen, which still bears the scars of the civil war. With each performance, Nelson grows closer to his fellow actors, becoming hopelessly entangled in their complicated lives, until, during one memorable performance, a long-buried betrayal surfaces to force the troupe into chaos. Nelson’s fate is slowly revealed through the investigation of the narrator, a young man obsessed with Nelson’s story—and perhaps closer to it than he lets on. In sharp, vivid, and beautiful prose, Alarcón delivers a compulsively readable narrative and a provocative meditation on fate, identity, and the large consequences that can result from even our smallest choices.
An autobiography by the influential ecologist and philosopher covering her life from her childhood in a rural area of western New York State to her marriage, travels, involvement in environmental activism, and spiritual journey through Buddhist faith and practices.
An analysis of wandering within different game worlds, viewed through the lenses of work, colonialism, gender, and death. Wandering in games can be a theme, a formal mode, an aesthetic metaphor, or a player action. It can mean walking, escaping, traversing, meandering, or returning. In this book, game studies scholar Melissa Kagen introduces the concept of “wandering games,” exploring the uses of wandering in a variety of game worlds. She shows how the much-derided Walking Simulator—a term that began as an insult, a denigration of games that are less violent, less task-oriented, or less difficult to complete—semi-accidentally tapped into something brilliant: the vast heritage and intellectual history of the concept of walking in fiction, philosophy, pilgrimage, performance, and protest. Kagen examines wandering in a series of games that vary widely in terms of genre, mechanics, themes, player base, studio size, and funding, giving close readings to Return of the Obra Dinn, Eastshade, Ritual of the Moon, 80 Days, Heaven’s Vault, Death Stranding, and The Last of Us Part II. Exploring the connotations of wandering within these different game worlds, she considers how ideologies of work, gender, colonialism, and death inflect the ways we wander through digital spaces. Overlapping and intersecting, each provides a multifaceted lens through which to understand what wandering does, lacks, implies, and offers. Kagen’s account will attune game designers, players, and scholars to the myriad possibilities of the wandering ludic body.
In the last decade, a great variety and volume of scholarly work has appeared on mind-wandering, a mental process involving a vast range of human life, connected with “first-person perspective” and “personhood”, submental thinking, mental autonomy, etc. While different and emerging features that flow into and out of one another (second field, mental travel, visual imagery, inner speech, unspecific memory, autobiographical memory, fantasies, introspection, etc.) and negative and positive approaches seem to describe mind-wandering, we offer an interdisciplinary theoretical and empirically informed and informative overview on mind-wandering studies and methodologies oriented toward the educational field. The aim is to transform and enrich the debate on mind-wandering but also to show how theoretical arguments and research findings could inform the teaching-learning context. This groundbreaking book, moves along three representations of developed scientific knowledge: imaginary lines, circles and spirals. The first section, “The Lines”, develops new lines of inquiry on attention (selective and sustained) and mind-wandering, the influence of age and mind-wandering, embodiment, consciousness and experience and mind-wandering. In the second section, the “Circles”, groups of Chapters on the same topic, methodology (tasks and measurement), intervention (auditory beat stimulation and mindfulness practices) and creativity, recreate a dance of interacting parts in which there are always profitable, decisive and retroactive exchanges between the information that each group or author activates. The last section, “The Spirals”, critically discusses the absence of a unified theoretical perspective, in the pedagogical field, attentive both to the processes of emergence and the interactions between parts.
Declining church attendance. A growing feeling of betrayal. For Christians who have begun to feel set adrift and disillusioned by their churches, Where Goodness Still Grows grounds us in a new view of virtue deeply rooted in a return to Jesus Christ’s life and ministry. The evangelical church in America has reached a crossroads. Social media and recent political events have exposed the fault lines that exist within our country and our spiritual communities. Millennials are leaving the church, citing hypocrisy, partisanship, and unkindness as reasons they can’t stay. In this book Amy Peterson explores the corruption and blind spots of the evangelical church and the departure of so many from the faith - but she refuses to give up hope, believing that rescue is on the way. Where Goodness Still Grows: Dissects the moral code of American evangelicalism Reimagines virtue as a tool, not a weapon Explores the Biblical meaning of specific virtues like kindness, purity, and modesty Provides comfort, hope, and a path towards spiritual restoration Amy writes as someone intimately familiar with, fond of, and deeply critical of the world of conservative evangelicalism. She writes as a woman and a mother, as someone invested in the future of humanity, and as someone who just needs to know how to teach her kids what it means to be good. Amy finds that if we listen harder and farther, we will find the places where goodness still grows. Praise for Where Goodness Still Grows: “In this poignant, honest book, Amy Peterson confronts her disappointment with the evangelical leaders who handed her The Book of Virtues then happily ignored them for the sake of political power. But instead of just walking away, Peterson rewrites the script, giving us an alternative book of virtues needed in this moment. And it’s no mistake that it ends with hope.” — James K. A. Smith, author of You Are What You Love
From the internationally bestselling creator of Wreck This Journal... wan·der verb \ˈwän-dər\ to walk/explore/amble in an unplanned or aimless way with a complete openness to the unknown Several years ago when Keri Smith, bestselling author of Wreck This Journal, discovered cryptic handwritten notations in a worn copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, her interest was piqued. Little did she know at the time that those simple markings would become the basis of a years-long, life-changing exploration into a mysterious group known only as The Wander Society, as well as the subject of this book. Within these pages, you’ll find the results of Smith’s research: A guide to the Wander Society, a secretive group that holds up the act of wandering, or unplanned exploring, as a way of life. You’ll learn about the group’s mysterious origins, meet fellow wanderers through time, discover how wandering feeds the creative mind, and learn how to best practice the art of wandering, should you choose to accept the mission.
