“…and if the species is to achieve its aspirations for justice, reduced suffering and transcendent life, and if it is to prevent the triumph of machinery that it so clearly fears, an unprecedented level of imagination is required.” Barry Lopez
Just incredible. THIS: "Such prayers require another language." Yes Deena, and you wove it all so wonderfully...giving us access to a deep wisdom that we have never ever needed more. ❤
Ty Deena- this kind of aligns with what I’ve been trying to do with the writing and also spending time with Jungian thought, thinking we’re going thru a necessary dark passage back into the self. In my lighter moments I think maybe this is the way that we need to have in the forefront of our minds to stop climate change and face reality. At least we’re all getting familiar with this country and what democracy might-could mean. Partly we need safety and I’ve been bold enuf to think that your profundity is our safety bec I do think it’s possible that we all could be imprisoned. We need deeper layers of language that can keep us united-connected that AI is not able to figure out. I’ve recently found out that my career as a psychotherapist is one of the least likely to be ended. We’ve got somehow to stay true to ourselves which has always been the value to me of what you’ve been teaching.🙏
"Layers of language that keep us united,” indeed. That means the language is more than ‘content’ or ‘thought’ - another being altogether, or another being all together.
yes. imagining rain. imagining a word in no language. that is no longer a longing. imagining to no longer be able to long, or kill. or long. - - or to recognize the actions of my/our kind - - what kind of animal may that...must that...be? not human.? not us? but made of rain... made of breath? yes. made of breath. (and yes, for the imprisoned who tonight cannot breathe.)
The photos are beyond hideous, and should never be posted. The jailers know exactly what they are doing in staging these Reifenstahl exhibits, the condemned prisoners have no say in being photographed by their oppressors, and there is nothing for viewers to obtain from looking at these photos beyond existential disgust.
Yes, the photos are beyond hideous and their reality should never exist. But this is being done in our name, these are where immigrants are being sent and our existential disgust and refusal is essential if this is going to stop. Your term Reifenstahl exhibit is an important soul searching connection for all of us.
This is the note I shared to notes in introduction: It pains me to post these photos on this essay, but because it pains the prisoners so very much and pains all our souls and then if you read before and after these images, there are the acts of imagination we must enter, as Barry Lopez states, to end such cruelty in our culture and on behalf of Earth. What do you think? What does your heart tell you?
Yes, I did read your note, and I commend your profound sympathy with the prisoners. However, Barry Lopez was wrong. When we have no social power in a horror, we most often delude ourselves by arrogating that violent and destructive power to being within our control.
We as onlookers could not stop the holocaust in Gaza, not even with a heightened power of knowledge. We as civilians cannot get these men out of El Salvador. We cannot save the women condemned either to death from forced birth or to endless suffering from being unable to provide a decent life to their forced birth children.
To mix a 60s metaphor, we don’t need photos to know which way the wind blows. We don’t need snuff films or staged prison photos to know the very real mass murder being done by powerful entities in our name. Social reality is beyond awful, and while awareness is valuable, so is disavowal.
Dear Martin: I hear you and have been thinking about what you are saying. My fear is that this is not staged. So the question i will carry is, does showing such images even though I do not in any way think they are the equivalent of snuff films, which like so much media were designed to titillate, add to the neutralization of horror and suffering? Or does looking at these images and not looking away as so many would like to do so they don't get upset and can live their lives despite others' suffering, does facing such images, which are real, even as they say they are staged, the staging is real, which people are suffering this moment, bring us to self scrutiny about our values, about the rabid individualism, for example, that is part of what leads to this, and the fear of 'the other' and hierarchy, might it get us to ask how our life styles created the conditions in their countries ( and ours) so that they had to leave, why do they have no alternative but gang activity, if if if some of them were part of that .... why why why. To establish change one doesn't have to engage in a great action amd see a great resu;t, but individuals living and thinking differently will coalesce, or can coalesce into other ways of being. My hope at least. Intersting, is it not, that this exchange, ostensibly about difference between us, also reveals an alliance. I will be considering what you are saying .... i do, personally, hold the ordinary familiar media writers responsible in part for this horror, those who write films and shows, those 'good people' who brought us here in pursuit of their livings and 'success. I do not want to fall into a similar situation of inadvertently adding to the violence in the world rather than doing what i can to make such untenable. Again, thank you so much for thinking and writing.
between the American and the Israeli governments, it is a race to outdo the barbarity of the "oven masters" of once upon but not so damn long ago Germany .
i wish I didn’t understand this comment and that I didn’t agree. You will be interested in The Story that Must Not be Told. it went to the copy editor today.
Just incredible. THIS: "Such prayers require another language." Yes Deena, and you wove it all so wonderfully...giving us access to a deep wisdom that we have never ever needed more. ❤
Thank you, Stephanie, this moves me so very much.
Ditto re: your writing Deena. Grateful to be a reader here.
Ty Deena- this kind of aligns with what I’ve been trying to do with the writing and also spending time with Jungian thought, thinking we’re going thru a necessary dark passage back into the self. In my lighter moments I think maybe this is the way that we need to have in the forefront of our minds to stop climate change and face reality. At least we’re all getting familiar with this country and what democracy might-could mean. Partly we need safety and I’ve been bold enuf to think that your profundity is our safety bec I do think it’s possible that we all could be imprisoned. We need deeper layers of language that can keep us united-connected that AI is not able to figure out. I’ve recently found out that my career as a psychotherapist is one of the least likely to be ended. We’ve got somehow to stay true to ourselves which has always been the value to me of what you’ve been teaching.🙏
"Layers of language that keep us united,” indeed. That means the language is more than ‘content’ or ‘thought’ - another being altogether, or another being all together.
yes. imagining rain. imagining a word in no language. that is no longer a longing. imagining to no longer be able to long, or kill. or long. - - or to recognize the actions of my/our kind - - what kind of animal may that...must that...be? not human.? not us? but made of rain... made of breath? yes. made of breath. (and yes, for the imprisoned who tonight cannot breathe.)
Ah, my poet friend!
The photos are beyond hideous, and should never be posted. The jailers know exactly what they are doing in staging these Reifenstahl exhibits, the condemned prisoners have no say in being photographed by their oppressors, and there is nothing for viewers to obtain from looking at these photos beyond existential disgust.
Yes, the photos are beyond hideous and their reality should never exist. But this is being done in our name, these are where immigrants are being sent and our existential disgust and refusal is essential if this is going to stop. Your term Reifenstahl exhibit is an important soul searching connection for all of us.
This is the note I shared to notes in introduction: It pains me to post these photos on this essay, but because it pains the prisoners so very much and pains all our souls and then if you read before and after these images, there are the acts of imagination we must enter, as Barry Lopez states, to end such cruelty in our culture and on behalf of Earth. What do you think? What does your heart tell you?
Yes, I did read your note, and I commend your profound sympathy with the prisoners. However, Barry Lopez was wrong. When we have no social power in a horror, we most often delude ourselves by arrogating that violent and destructive power to being within our control.
We as onlookers could not stop the holocaust in Gaza, not even with a heightened power of knowledge. We as civilians cannot get these men out of El Salvador. We cannot save the women condemned either to death from forced birth or to endless suffering from being unable to provide a decent life to their forced birth children.
To mix a 60s metaphor, we don’t need photos to know which way the wind blows. We don’t need snuff films or staged prison photos to know the very real mass murder being done by powerful entities in our name. Social reality is beyond awful, and while awareness is valuable, so is disavowal.
Dear Martin: I hear you and have been thinking about what you are saying. My fear is that this is not staged. So the question i will carry is, does showing such images even though I do not in any way think they are the equivalent of snuff films, which like so much media were designed to titillate, add to the neutralization of horror and suffering? Or does looking at these images and not looking away as so many would like to do so they don't get upset and can live their lives despite others' suffering, does facing such images, which are real, even as they say they are staged, the staging is real, which people are suffering this moment, bring us to self scrutiny about our values, about the rabid individualism, for example, that is part of what leads to this, and the fear of 'the other' and hierarchy, might it get us to ask how our life styles created the conditions in their countries ( and ours) so that they had to leave, why do they have no alternative but gang activity, if if if some of them were part of that .... why why why. To establish change one doesn't have to engage in a great action amd see a great resu;t, but individuals living and thinking differently will coalesce, or can coalesce into other ways of being. My hope at least. Intersting, is it not, that this exchange, ostensibly about difference between us, also reveals an alliance. I will be considering what you are saying .... i do, personally, hold the ordinary familiar media writers responsible in part for this horror, those who write films and shows, those 'good people' who brought us here in pursuit of their livings and 'success. I do not want to fall into a similar situation of inadvertently adding to the violence in the world rather than doing what i can to make such untenable. Again, thank you so much for thinking and writing.
At least 50 Venezuelans sent to El Salvador prison entered the US legally according to the Guardian May 19, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/19/el-salvador-prison-migrants-us-report
between the American and the Israeli governments, it is a race to outdo the barbarity of the "oven masters" of once upon but not so damn long ago Germany .
i wish I didn’t understand this comment and that I didn’t agree. You will be interested in The Story that Must Not be Told. it went to the copy editor today.