Poet Olivia Gatwood knocks 'em dead (video)

O. Gatwood, 9/5/19; Seven, Ananda (Dharma B Meditation), A. Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Olivia Gatwood: "Ode To My Bitch Face"

(SlamFind) SlamFindTV is a platform for spoken word poetry media to watch local, regional, and national poetry events on demand. Subscribe today. Follow poet Olivia Gatwood on twitter. She is part of SPEAK LIKE A GIRL, a feminist, interactive spoken word poetry show designed to change the conversation on college campuses (speaklikeagirl.com) SlamFind.com

All this gratuitous use of the word, Gatwood could sing with Kreayshawn

Here's an ode to my resting bitch face (O.G.)

Last night (Friday, Sept. 8, 2023) was The Prose Bowl in Pasadena with the Get Lit: Words Ignite youth poets opening for the feature, Olivia Gatwood (Dharma Buddhist Meditation). Everyone was good, some better, but Gatwood was great and showed them how it's done.

• VIDEO: 10 years before, Gatwood made it to slam finals
• Get Lit poets combined with yoga at Modo, Echo Park

Olivia Gatwood performs poems from LIFE OF THE PARTY | The Bell House

(Penguin Random House) Olivia Gatwood reads from her poetry collection, Life of the Party, recorded live at The Bell House. Read more about Gatwood's book: bit.ly/2ZkA6xO.

• "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" (Olivia Gatwood, Button Poetry)
• Dharma Lemon (feature) live at El Cid open mic, Los Angeles
• Get Lit: Words Ignite - Classic Poetry Slam

Sign up for the Penguin Random House newsletter to get more videos like this and tailored book recommendations, particularly when we all turn into teen girls: bit.ly/2k9u67A.

Another hit last night with Gatwood's amazing pre-Barbie "Ode To Pink"

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Zen monk: No. 1 Thing About Happiness

Contributor Jeffrey Marsh, CNBC, 6/15/23; CC Liu, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Koans are an integral component of Zen practice: What's the sound of one hand slapping?

I lived as a monk and studied Zen for 20 years: Here’s the No. 1 thing people miss about happiness

Maura O'Hollaran left Boston

Many of us are taught to believe that we need to be in perfect control of our lives in order to be successful or accepted. But that mindset made me unhappy for years.

Growing up nonbinary, I spent a lot of time escaping to an imaginary world where I controlled everything, including what other people thought of me.

I constantly chased this idea that if I could just get that partner, that job, or that money and acclaim, I could finally relax and be happy.

To break this toxic mental habit, I did something drastic: I moved to the woods and lived among a community of Buddhists.

• *This is an adapted [and edited] excerpt from Take Your Own Advice by Jeffrey Marsh (published by TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC) Copyright © 2023 by Jeffrey Marsh.

I have since spent 20 years studying Zen Buddhism. At the monastery, I learned a valuable lesson about happiness that people often overlook:

We can't control everything that happens to us, but we can control how we [react and how we] treat ourselves.

Allowing ourselves to feel happy, no matter what our life looks like, is the key to real happiness.

Struggling for control won't make us happier

Leonard Cohen went from Hollywood up into the woods of LA's Zen Mountain Center.

.

Why? When we hold on to the need for control, we start to feel responsible for all outcomes of our life. But can we really control what people think of us, or who does or doesn't give us a chance, or who we'll date, or where we'll get a job?

Julia found happiness in a tree named Luna.

We might have some say in these things, but so much of life is unpredictable — and that's part of what makes it beautiful. Unpredictability connects us all.

Another problem with the need to control is that it makes us constantly chase after a life we aren't living, making it hard to appreciate the one we do have.

For example, right now, we might be worried about finding the perfect partner. In a few years, it might be finding the perfect job.

How to let go of the desire to control

If I controlled love then I'd be happy.

If we FREE ourselves from the need to control everything, we can experience more happiness and gratitude RIGHT NOW in the present.

Here are some ways to get started:

1. Stop and reflect. Let's think about all the ways we're focusing on an imaginary future instead of the present. We can ask ourselves:

• Do we sometimes let our need to control the future get in the way of enjoying the present moment?
• When do we tend to do that and why? It is essential to honor our dreams, but how can we put some of that energy into the most important things in our life today?
• What can we be grateful for right now?

Living on Luna, saving trees, made me happy

2. Redefine unrealistic expectations we set for ourselves. Can we find that voice in our head that keeps reminding us of the need for control?

• Let's tell that voice, in no uncertain terms, that we are not living to impress it.
• Imagine living a life where that inner voice is irrelevant.
• Instead, we can direct that energy toward things that give us a sense of joy and peace.

3. Let's allow ourselves to be happy in the present moment.

• Let's close our eyes, take three slow breaths, and give ourselves permission to feel happy. 

If I move to the woods, can I meditate Zen?

TIPS: When we find ourselves struggling, think about why that is.

I've found that when people think about giving up control and letting life guide them, fear can get in the way. There will always be stressful situations that need our attention, like taking care of the people in our life.

But we can let happiness in by shifting our focus from future-oriented fears to the present.

We deserve to roll with the life we've got. We deserve to flow with the unexpected and not "have it all together."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jeffrey Marsh (they/them) is one of the world's foremost commentators on nonbinary identity and activism. Their TikToks and compassionate short-form videos have garnered over one billion views. Marsh's How To Be You was the first nonbinary memoir, and they are the first nonbinary author to sign a book deal with any "Big 5" publisher worldwide. Their latest book, Take Your Own Advice, is out now.

• Monk mummifies himself then gets coated in gold to be a Buddha statue
• I asked 300,000 people to share the tiny habits that changed their lives the most—here are the top 4 answers
• I'm a psychology expert in Finland, the No. 1 happiest country in the world—here are 3 things we never do
• I spent 10 years studying what makes us happy in life—here’s the No. 1 thing I overlooked the entire time

Want to be smarter and more successful with money, work, life? Sign up for new newsletter: Get CNBC's free Warren Buffett Guide to Investing, which distills the billionaire's No. 1 best piece of advice for regular investors, do's and don'ts, and three key investing principles into a clear and simple guidebook.

Breathe correctly for a very long life (video)

5 ways to improve breathing with James Nestor

(Penguin Books UK, 2/7/22) Author James Nestor says we're all breathing wrong. Here he breaks down five ways to transform our breathing, from increasing our lung capacity for longevity to stopping breathing through our mouths.

• Order a copy of the book Breath

There is nothing more essential to our health and wellbeing than breathing: Take air in, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet, as a species, we humans have lost our ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.

In Breath, journalist James Nestor travels the world to discover the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like yoga to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can [as the Buddha recommended in the practice of mindfulness of in-and-out breathing called anapanasati:

• jump-start athletic performance
• rejuvenate internal organs
• halt snoring, allergies, asthma, and autoimmune diseases
• even straighten scoliotic spines
• improve the beauty of the face.

None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. We'll never breathe the same again.

• The Penguin channel: SubscribePenguinYouTube
• Twitter | twitter.com/penguinukbooks
• Website | penguin.co.uk
• Instagram | instagram.com/penguinukbooks
• Facebook | facebook.com/penguinbooks

Science: What can mend a broken heart?

CC Liu, Crystal Quintero, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Maanvi Singh (npr.org)

Can tea soothe the spirit and melt away pounds? (5 teas that melt fat/yahoonews.com)

Penguin sweaters in Australia help birds avoid poisoning after contamination by oil spills due to a few capitalists' impact on environment (Phillip Island Nature Parks/CBS News).

.

Scientists on what can mend a broken heart

Morning Edition, Feb. 16, 2015

If I don't get you, oil will! (Amos Nachoun/ABC)

[What hurts more than what Buddhism calls dukkha -- not getting what one wants, being separated from the loved, contact with the unloved? We translate this wide-ranging Sanskrit word as suffering or unsatisfactoriness. It hurts.]

Don't eat me, Mara. I'll reflect.

Anyone who has suffered a break up knows it can take time to get over it. While isolation or wallowing in self pity is not a great idea, reflecting on a recent break up CAN help speed up the healing process.

• AUDIO: LISTEN NOW (1:57 mins)
• Download 
• Nothing Higher to Live For: A Buddhist View of Romantic Love
• Real Love: A Valentine's Special
  (Love Sex Money, WNYC.org, Feb. 14, 2015) Sometimes love fits neatly on a card. Sometimes, it spills over into rehab, divorce, or a call from a former Wyoming senator.   

Through A Lens Darkly: Black photography fades up to joy

PBS tonight: documentary shares the good and bad of black history through American photography.

(Facebook) "Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People" is a two-hour PBS documentary film and multimedia project that explores the ways black communities in the U.S. have learned to use the medium to construct political, aesthetic, and cultural representations of themselves and their world.

• Code Switch, Race, Black Lives Matter: Reading List

America loses Poet Laureate to Mara (Death)

Philip Levine, who found Poetry on Detroit's assembly lines, dies at 87: In his six-decade career, Levine found grace and beauty in the lives of working people, especially the people and places of his youth. He was a United States poet laureate and a Pulitzer Prize winner. 

• Books, Poetry, Remembrances

Beyond BPA: Court battle reveals shift in debate on plastic danger

In 2007, a plastic called Tritan became a hit, partly because it was free of the chemical BPA. Then, a competitor began suggesting that Tritan products contained other chemicals that act like estrogen.

Maybe they'll listen to music (Andrew McCallister/The Crossroads Project/npr.org)

Climate scientist uses arts to stir hearts for Earth's fate

(Joe's Big Idea) Physicist Robert Davies worked with a classical quartet and two visual artists to create a musical performance about climate change. The music and images, he says, help the information take hold. [Otherwise attendees agree with the facts and figures without taking action to save energy and the world.]

Why is the USA polluting the seas with trash?

A fisherman collects water on a beach littered with trash at an ecological reserve south of Manila in 2013 (Francis R. Malasig/EPA/Landov).

 .

Trash is coming, not the cleanup.

(NPR/The Two-Way) Plastic is one of those inventions that transformed the world. It's light, durable, and lots of things can be made with it.
 

But it's also transforming Earth's oceans -- and not in a good way. A lot of plastic ends up there. Scientists are just now getting a handle on how much plastic trash has gone to sea. Up until now, estimates have been very rough. It's hard to measure waste in the oceans; after all, salt water covers 70 percent of the planet.

 

But another way to figure out what's out there is to measure how much debris is coming off the land. That's what engineer Jenna Jambeck, at the University of Georgia, decided to do (publishing her findings in this week's issue of the journal Science). Jambeck was a good fit for the job. More
 

Scientists start to uncover mysterious grey goo [chemtrail cloud?] killing birds. The substance coated the feathers of hundreds of birds in the San Francisco Bay last month, killing more than 300 (cbsnews.com).

• Tons of plastic pellets: Hong Kong's typhoon cleanup could take months 
• Navy funds a small robot army to study the Arctic
• American police keep killing people with impunity 
• California man's murder case prompts new state law The law, which took effect in January, makes it easier for a defendant to get a conviction overturned when experts recant their [perjured] testimony.
• VIDEO: Beating the war drum: ISIS militants beheading hostages

[The CIA sets up situations governments can exploit as propaganda that serves as pretext for joining the U.S. military-industrial complex's war on the Middle East using Islam/Islamists as a convenient target. (AP) The makers of the video identify themselves as the Tripoli Province of the ISIS group -- the Islamic militant group that controls about a third of Syria and Iraq]. War propaganda from mainstream media cheerleaders:

• Video purports to show ISIS militants beheading hostages [to anger you to demand war rather than merely accept it]
• [Angelic] Kayla Muellers' [heroic] boyfriend: I wanted to save her [but I didn't, so let's attack them and kill them all]
• Egypt [joins CIA and MIC as it] strikes Libya and pushes for international action [more from the Middle East neighbors]
• New ISIS video shows execution of 21 Christians
• Egypt takes on ISIS with airstrikes
• Egypt airstrikes target ISIS camps in Libya after mass beheadings
• Chicago neighborhood supplies Ukranian army
• Bob Simon's last "60 Minutes" report: Curing Ebola 
• Forecast: Another arctic blast to come
• Bank hackers pull off $1 billion cyberheist
• Teens more sleep deprived than ever
• "Fifty Shades" burns up the box office

"Antarctica: A Year on Ice" (video)

Amber Larson, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Laemmle.com

Playing now at Laemmle's cinema at finer art house outlets around the country.

"Antarctica A Year on Ice" is a visually stunning journey to the end of the world with the hardy and devoted people who live there year-round.

The research stations scattered throughout the continent on the underside of the planet, around the South Pole, host a close-knit international population of scientists, technicians, and craftspeople. Isolated from the rest of the world, enduring months of unending darkness followed by periods when the Sun never sets, Antarctic residents experience firsthand the beauty and brutality of the most severe environment on Earth.

Capturing epic battles against hellacious storms, quiet reveries of nature's grandeur, and everyday moments of work and laughter, this unique documentary shows a steadfast community thriving in a land few humans have experienced.

Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags (foxnews.com)

Using specially modified cameras and spectacular time-lapse photography, filmmaker Anthony Powell captures the splendid marvels of the region like no film before. The film gives testament to the planet’s natural wonders, humanity’s thirst for adventure, and the emotional extremes that accompany a year within the last pristine wilderness on the planet.

• Winner! Calgary International Film Festival 2013 - Best International Documentary
• Winner! Calgary International Film Festival 2013 - Best First Film, Documentary
• Winner! Bel Air Film Festival 2013 - Best Documentary
• Winner! Beckenridge Festival of Film 2013 - Audience Award
• Winner! New Zealand Film and TV Awards 2013 - Best Documentary Cinematography
• Anchorage International Film Festival 2013 - Best Documentary 2nd place

On a dare, Metallica decided to play every continent and ended up at the world's bottom.

Sexy Hindu history book banned in India

Wisdom Quarterly; Nina Porzucki, author Prof. Wendy Doniger, PRI's The World (pri.org)

Amorous godly couple Krishna and Radha (Emuishere Peliculas/flickr.com/PRI.org)

 

Judge not. This is religious temple art (U

After years of a legal battle, Penguin Books India, a division of Penguin Random House, has agreed to pull its book, The Hindus: An Alternative History from Indian bookstores.
 

The history book, which its author [Harvard, Oxford Indologist] Wendy Doniger has described as an alternative, Howard Zinn-esque version of the history of Hinduism, has been accused of denigrating Hindus and Hindu [Brahminical Vedic] traditions.

 

(goodreads.com)

“It tells an aspect of the history of Hinduism that is unpleasant for a certain type of Hindu, what I would call a fundamentalist Hindu, to accept,” said Doniger, who is a professor of history of religion at the University of Chicago.

The lawsuit against Doniger and Penguin was filed by Dinanath Batra, a leader of the conservative Hindu group, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti.
 
Among their specific accusations is that the book wrongly includes a map of India that excludes Kashmir, the subject of a territorial dispute with neighboring Pakistan. [Hey, Doniger, even we think it's going too far!
 
This isn’t the first time that Doniger has encountered an impassioned and vocal response to her ideas about Hinduism. More 

 

The Politics of Sexuality in Ancient India: The Indebtedness of the Kamasutra to the Arthasastra

Shivdasani Lecture by Prof. Wendy Doniger, November 2013

Penguin to withdraw BANNED book (MW)

The depth and extent of the influence of the textbook of politics (Arthasastra) on the textbook of sexuality (Kamasutra) is surprising, most evident in the high incidence of distrust, betrayal, and force in sexual relationships.

 

And the subsequent influence of the Kamasutra upon not only the erotic literary traditions of India but the eroticism of the bhakti [devotional] tradition, particularly in Bengal, accounts in part for the darkness of that tradition, its emphasis on divine abandonment, betrayal, and even violence.

 

Prof. Wendy Doniger [M.A., Ph.D. (Harvard University), 
D.Phil. (Oxford University)] is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School, University of Chicago, and in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, the Committee on Social Thought.

 

Prof. Doniger's research and teaching focus on translating, interpreting, and comparing elements of Hinduism through modern contexts of gender, sexuality, and identity. Her courses in mythology address themes in cross-cultural expanses, such as death, dreams, evil, horses, sex, and women; her courses in Hinduism cover a broad spectrum that, in addition to mythology... More

• Pretty girls party at Kismet in Hyderabad, India 
• WEED: CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta on US cannabis
• PHOTOS: Brad Pitt's intimate pix of Angelina Jolie
• Dylan Farrow talks about Woody Allen molestation; convicted American murderer Amanda Knox

(TYT) Adopted daughter Dylan Farrow says Woody Allen molested her at age 7

"Fifty Shades of Grey" is HOT (cartoon)

"Peterotica" (Family Guy); DailyMail.co.uk; Wisdom Quarterly

Peter-Erotica fan: "Your prose suggests a male, working-class version of Emily Bronte."

It's mediocre, juvenile, with boring sex

Vanessa Allen, The Daily Mail

Better selling than Harry Potter, almost as hot

It may be the fastest selling paperback in history, but Fifty Shades of Grey is condemned as "mediocre and juvenile" by a leading novelist.

The verdict was delivered by Barbara Taylor Bradford, the doyenne of women’s fiction whose 27 novels have sold 88 million copies worldwide.

The author of A Woman of Substance said she was left "a little disappointed and confused" after reading the so-called "mommy porn" book.

Worse still, she described the novel’s much-hyped sex and bondage scenes as "a little repetitive, even boring -- and that’s despite all the sex toys."

 

  

The Fifty Shades trilogy has sold more than four million copies on Amazon’s British site alone since it went on sale in March, out-performing Harry Potter.

The books center on a university student, Anastasia Steele, and her introduction to kinky bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, and sado-masochism (BDSM) at the hands of her billionaire older lover.

Working-class Peterotica by Peter Griffin as read by icon Betty White (Pewtershmidt Publ.)

The trilogy was dubbed "mommy porn" because of its soaring popularity among women in their 30s and 40s and celebrity fans that include Victoria Beckham and television presenter Amanda Holden.

Submission in exchange for being taken care of?

But Mrs. Taylor Bradford told The Lady magazine: "I can’t really see what all the fuss is about. Yes, it’s rather racy. There’s even a pair of handcuffs. But as an author in my 70s, I can’t help but think it’s rather mediocre. Juvenile even."

The 79-year-old added: "In fact, while I’ve never indulged in, ahem, bondage myself, I did expect a little more of it in the book. It is, after all, what most of the kerfuffle has been about."

She said she found the DH Lawrence classic Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer more erotic and better written. More

 

As erotica I missed my chance for a big finish just like the Kool Aid Guy

Mommy porn author speaks

  
(20/20, ABC News) Part 1: E.L. James reveals the surprising research behind her mega hit erotic novel trilogy and soon to be Hollywood exploitation catastrophe -- even worse than the cinematic presentation of Eat Pray Love with Julia Roberts. "E.L. James writes like a Bronte devoid of talent," the hostess reads the criticism to the author, perhaps referencing Peter Griffin's working-class stab at erotic fiction: "Dull and poorly written," "S and M for Dummies," "A sad joke, puny of plot," "For what it's worth, Fifty Shades of Grey is pornography plain and simple." But in the New York Times review of books, in the electronic-book section, the top three titles were James' works. So let us see. What's all the fuss?

  

Selected readings by famous voice actors

WARNING: Rated XXX (NC-17), graphic language, sexual situations!

Ellen DeGeneris read: Sanitized for viewers protection

 

Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis role play to 50 Shades of Grey

• Fifty Shades of Grey to become a Musical?
• Violent past leads women to risky sex
• "Sex and Buddhism," Part 2: Lay Buddhists
• VIDEO: Cleansing for weight loss and sex
• Dr. John Gray (author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus) wants us to have cleaner bodies, better partners and relationships, and more sex. "Health is wealth." Plant-food is medicine. And when our food is our medicine, we don't need medicine. We certainly are more...
• VIDEO: Zen, Sex, and the Slow Orgasm
• Penguins are sexually depraved perverts
• Sex life of Sloths worse than Penguins?
• Islam: Questioning Mohammed's sexuality 
• Confessions of a Christian sex addict

Penguins are sexually depraved perverts (video)

Periscopepost.com expanded by Wisdom Quarterly

Are penguins perverts? New pamphlet reveals “sexual depravity” of birds

[It's not just rapist ducks.] Century-old Antarctic account alleges necrophilia and sexual abuse among penguins.

  

Background

Deviants? (slapthepenguin.com)

A pamphlet has emerged detailing apparent sexual depravity among penguins. Written by George Levick, a scientist with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition, Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin contains observations of necrophilia and sexual coercion and abuse carried out by gangs of “hooligan” penguins.

  

According to the BBC Levick’s account was considered so shocking that it was left out of the official version of his published work on penguins, with the Natural History Museum suggesting a compromise: “The then keeper of zoology at the museum, Sidney Harmer, decided that 100 copies of the graphic account should be circulated to a select group of scientists.”

• "Depraved" sex acts by penguins shocked polar explorer 
• VIDEO: Cute baby penguin filmed meeting first human

Only two copies remain, one of which was recently discovered among the museum’s papers. This isn’t the first time the sexual behavior of penguins has hit the headlines. In 2011, a Canada [Toronto] zoo sparked outrage after deciding to separate “gay” penguin couple Buddy and Pedro in order to encourage them to find female mates. The story was dubbed “Brokeback Iceberg.”

WARNING: Gay themes in comedic gay context, coarse language! "Homo-
sexuality is found in over 450 species. Homophobia is found in only one." 
The many gay animal species bring the practice's abnormality into question.

 

But will the latest allegations of necrophilia and sexual abuse damage the penguin community’s cute image for good? 

  

Calm down, dears, they’re just penguins

Dr. Levick's notebook coded in Greek (BBC)

“What is happening here is the projection of human values onto a different species,” wrote Tim Stanley on a Telegraph blog. We seem to forget that penguins – and indeed other animals – don’t make moral choices, or have a sense of sexual identity. “At the same time that we more ruthlessly exploit animals than ever before, we also seem determined to find qualities within them that we can empathise with. We want to turn them into mirrors of ourselves,” Stanley said. 

Further research clarifies penguin “perversion”

Douglas Russell, curator of birds at the Natural History Museum, told The Observer that this apparently depraved behavior can be easily explained: young adult penguins are sexually inexperienced and simply don’t understand how to behave during mating season. “A dead penguin, lying with its eyes half-open, is very similar in appearance to a compliant female. The result is the so-called necrophilia that Levick witnessed and which so disgusted him,” Russell explained.

Scary scene in "Happy Feet" of seal predation and Robin Williams shtick