Inside/Outside, Hard/Soft, and In-Between—New Writing & Art from the Chiseled Edges of Vulnerable Life
Dear readers & friends,
I’m delighted to report that we’re back from our late-summer break with a whole season of beautiful, inspiring, thought-provoking, and sometimes challenging creative work to share with you.
All those adjectives apply to our first piece of the new season, an essay by Stephanie Wellen-Levine titled “An Astronaut on Earth (If I’m Brave Enough),” which (despite the parenthetical) bravely explores the author’s continued experience of living in acute isolation in the wake of the COVID pandemic. You will not only perhaps learn a few new things about COVID by reading this essay, but you’ll also gain a window into another human’s deeply felt existential, psychological, and spiritual questions (with some attempted answers) coming out of the pandemic experience—which may reflect, perturb, or clarify some of your own.
We have a new comments section on the site, which only requires your name and email address (which is not published) to participate, and Stephanie has been generously replying to comments, so please feel free to kindly share your thoughts. It adds a lot to the value and meaning of publishing a piece like this.
Readers are also commenting on our other publication this past week, a beautiful visual and poetic tour called “Being In Nature: The Artwork of Robin MacDonald-Foley.” Robin works in both sculpture and photography, and has especially made a practice of working outdoors. “My studio is wherever I am,” she writes.
“When the pandemic years impacted my active lifestyle, an outdoor sculpture space took shape in my backyard, and with it came a more focused shift to my passion of stone carving. The immediacy of photography formed a perfect complement with the intensive nature of my stone practice. As a conceptual thinker, my mind’s eye is never resting. It’s a daily dose of art for me, whichever way I view or feel things.”
The images in the piece are complemented by a selection of poetry and quotes, curated by editor Brian George. You might want to enjoy a cup of tea, or whatever you like, let yourself relax for 20 minutes, and take it all in.
As mentioned, we welcome your feedback in our new comments section—however, we also still have our community forum at Infinite Conversations, where you can more deeply connect with others. It’s just that this is now a private zone for Metapsychosis community patrons and Cosmos Co-op members. We hope this provides a more intimate and inviting space for deep dialogue, authentic connection, and creative exploration.
Membership in the Metapsychosis community starts at $7/month and includes added benefits such as reading groups, writing workshops, and member-focused events, as well as discounts on new titles from Untimely Books. Cosmos Co-op membership starts at $12/month and includes even more perks. Become a Metapsychosis patron to support our writers and artists! Or join Cosmos Co-op if you want to co-create with us!
This season we’re also bringing renewed attention to our archives going back to 2016, which is full of literary and artistic riches—so here’s a piece from the late, great cultural historian, philosopher, and poet William Irwin Thompson, titled “Four In the Morning,” originally published on 27 June 2016. It begins:
The universe is crawling with unseen life:
angels and djinn and spiritual guides.
Like the excess in a stagnant pond,
this abscess of the Absolute
is obscenely corpulent
in every nook and cranny,
armpit and crotch
of the Great Mother
of dark energy and dark matter…
And you can read the rest of it here.
Have a beautiful week, everybody.
Until next time,
Marco V Morelli
Editor-in-Chief, Metapsychosis journal
Co-Creator, Cosmos Co-op
@madrush: on Mastodon | on Infinite Conversations
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