Category: Stories
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Beyond Oedipus: Law, Desire, and the Symbolic Order
Jacques Lacan’s “return to Freud” wasn’t mere reverence but radical reinterpretation. He transformed our understanding of the Oedipus complex and the human psyche through reconstructing Freudian concepts. This essay explores how Lacan’s reading opened new theoretical possibilities for psychoanalytic thinking, suggesting that our previous understanding of mythology was just the surface of a deeper structural topology.
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The Weight of Nothing: Grace, Meaning, and the Courage to Be
Human existence is a struggle for meaning, authenticity, and redemption in a chaotic world. In this text, we look at some of Flannery O’Connor’s gripping stories and read them with insights from Sartre and Kierkegaard. We also explore existentialism with Thomas Merton, where grace transforms despair into hope and freedom.
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The Burning Man is drowning
The event is known around the world: Burning Man. After a two year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Burning Man has returned to the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada for its annual week-long event. Running from August 28th to September 4th, 2023, this year’s Burning Man has seen the largest crowds ever, with […]
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Dia de los Muertos 2022
Oakland in 2022 is a town with many problems, and a very high murder rate (There were 107 murdered people between January 1 and October 30, 2022). Nevertheless, it is also a resilient city, and its diverse communities celebrate their cultures in spite of difficult circumstances. One of those yearly events is the Mexican “Dia […]
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Pyramus and Thisbe
Much of our humanity consists of stories that speak of tragedy, misfortune, conflict, deep emotions, or humor. Here is an ancient story that originates from Babylon. The accompanying picture, see below, is a wood relief from Dresden, 1656, created by Johann Georg Fischer. Pyramus and Thisbe are lovers who ran into really bad luck. The story […]
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Fashion Ghosts
What is real? A good question to ask at the beginning of 2022. How do we move from reality to fiction? Or rather backward: We live with fictions, but what is real? The intention of this post is to show the beautiful facades of San Francisco through the 2021 Christmas period, almost devoid of humans. […]
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Holidays in the Bay Area -2020
The holiday season starts with Thanksgiving (end of November) and lasts throughout December. It includes Hannukah, the Winter solstice, Kwanzaa, Christmas, as well as a few other memorable events, like our tribute to consumerism, Black Friday. The year of 2020 was extreme: A pandemic, massive political protests, the worst wildfire season in California’s history, and more fire […]
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Venice Beach
Venice Beach is California at its best: the diversity, irreverence, and playfulness of Venice Beach attracts millions of visitors every year. With all its diversity, it seems to remain what it always was: Street shops for tattoos, marijuana, and T-shirts, entertainers performing their shows with sizable audiences, graffiti, ballgames, roller-blades, and tourists. There is a […]