By Adam J. Pearson Carlito’s Way and Scarface are two of the undisputed greatest mafia films of all time. Both films excel in their rich, gritty, realism approach to the mafia genre, their high-quality acting, their skillful cultivation of atmosphere, their iconic cinematography, and excellent script-writing. The two films also invite comparisons with one another…
Month: April 2013
Grounded in the Body: The Importance of a Healthy Attitude and Mindfulness of the Body
By Adam J. Pearson As we go about our daily lives, we often encounter messages that encourage us to create an unhealthy relationship with our own bodies. Whether it is idealized depictions of muscle and thinness that inspire anorexia, bulimia, bigorexia, insecurity, and self-loathing, or spiritual messages that the body is dirty, debased, and not…
Playing With the Structure of the World As Experienced: On Terrance McKenna’s “Syntactical Nature of Reality”
By Adam J. Pearson “Do not confuse the moon with the finger pointing at the moon” —Zen Proverb “The food is not the menu” —Huston Smith “The map is not the territory” —Alfred Korzybski *** Terrence McKenna once claimed that “the syntactical nature of reality, the real secret of magic, is that the world is…
Memory, Money, Persistence, and Propaganda: Four Fragments of Conversation
By Adam J. Pearson Memory and the Fleetingness of the Present Windy Kian: Everything a person experiences vanishes instantly;There is no trace left of yesterday’s experience. Adam Pearson: Right, there is no trace except for a very limited, diluted, convoluted form inscribed in the neuro synaptic patterns of the brain as memory. The trace is limited, because…
On Nonsense Poetry
By Adam J. Pearson One of my favourite poetry exercises is writing nonsense poetry. Essentially, you simply set a piece of paper or blank Word document in front of you and begin writing. You write whatever nonsense comes to mind without censoring a word. It is essentially automatic writing in poetic form. It is pure…
A Few Thoughts on Pope Francis I
By Adam J. Pearson Even though I do not consider myself a Christian in any formal sense, I have thus far had great cause to support the new pope, Pope Francis. As a child, Francis suffered from life-threatening pneumonia, which gave him a deep, personal understanding of the suffering that accompanies illness. As a result…
