Am I Blue?

 

Am I Blue?

 

 

Am I Blue? By Alice Walker

https://www.peta.org/magazine/2025/am-i-blue-by-alice-walker/

 

Alice Walker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Walker

 

 

A true touching story from the acclaimed author of The Color Purple showing that every animal is someone

 

 

It was a house of many windows, low, wide, nearly floor to ceiling in the living room, which faced the meadow, and it was from one of these that I first saw our closest neighbor, a large white horse, cropping grass, flipping [his] mane, and ambling about. …

 

We were soon in the habit of feeding him apples, which he relished. … Sometimes he would stand very still just by the apple tree, and when one of us came out he would whinny, snort loudly, or stamp the ground. This meant, of course: I want an apple.

 

It was quite wonderful to pick a few apples … and patiently hold them, one by one, up to his large, toothy mouth. … I had forgotten the depth of feeling one could see in horses’ eyes. I was therefore unprepared for the expression in Blue’s. Blue was lonely. Blue was horribly lonely and bored. I was not shocked that this should be the case; five acres to tramp by yourself, endlessly, even in the most beautiful of meadows … cannot provide many interesting events. … No, I was shocked that I had forgotten that human animals and nonhuman animals can communicate quite well; if we are brought up around animals as children we take this for granted. By the time we are adults we no longer remember. However, the animals have not changed. … It is their nature to express themselves. … And they do. And, generally speaking, they are ignored.

 

After giving Blue the apples, I would wander back to the house, aware that he was observing me. Were more apples not forthcoming then? Was that to be his sole entertainment for the day? …

I do not know how long Blue had inhabited his five beautiful, boring acres before we moved into our house; a year after we had arrived – and had also traveled to other valleys, other cities, other worlds – he was still there.

 

But then, in our second year at the house, something happened in Blue’s life. One morning … I saw another horse, a brown one, at the other end of Blue’s field. Blue appeared to be afraid of her, and for several days made no attempt to go near. We went away for a week. When we returned … the two horses ambled or galloped along together, and Blue did not come nearly as often to the fence underneath the apple tree.

 

When he did, bringing his new friend with him, there was a different look in his eyes. A look of independence, of self-possession, of inalienable horseness. His friend eventually became pregnant. For months and months there was, it seemed to me, a mutual feeling between me and the horses of justice, of peace. I fed apples to them both. The look in Blue’s eyes was one of unabashed “this is itness.”

 

It did not, however, last forever. One day, after a visit to the city, I went out to give Blue some apples. He stood waiting, or so I thought, though not beneath the tree. When I shook the tree and jumped back from the shower of apples, he made no move. I carried some over to him. He managed to half-crunch one. The rest he let fall to the ground. I dreaded looking into his eyes – because I had of course noticed that Brown, his partner, had gone – but I did look. If I had been born into slavery, and my partner had been sold or killed, my eyes would have looked like that. The children next door explained that Blue’s partner had been “put with him” (the same expression that old people used, I had noticed, when speaking of an ancestor during slavery who had been impregnated by her owner) so that they could mate and she conceive. Since that was accomplished, she had been taken back by her owner, who lived somewhere else. … Blue was like a crazed person.

 

Blue was, to me, a crazed person. He galloped furiously … around and around his five beautiful acres. He whinnied until he couldn’t. He tore at the ground with his hooves. He butted himself against his single shade tree. He looked always and always toward the road down which his partner had gone. And then, occasionally, when he came up for apples, or I took apples to him, he looked at me. It was a look so piercing, so full of grief, a look so human, I almost laughed (I felt too sad to cry) to think there are people who do not know that animals suffer. …

 

But most disturbing of all, in Blue’s large brown eyes was a new look, more painful than the look of despair: the look of disgust with human beings, with life; the look of hatred. … And what that meant was that he had put up a barrier within to protect himself from further violence; all the apples in the world wouldn’t change that fact.

 

And so Blue remained, a beautiful part of our landscape, very peaceful to look at from the window, white against the grass. Once a friend came to visit and said, looking out on the soothing view: “And it would have to be a white horse; the very image of freedom.” And I thought, yes, the animals are forced to become for us merely “images” of what they once so beautifully expressed.

 

 

Excerpted from the essay “Am I Blue?” from Alice Walker’s Living by the Word, published by Harper Collins. 

  

Why American Women Are Undatable

 

Why American Women Are Undatable

 

No One Wants to Play with a Porcupine

 

 

Mark McDonald, M.D.

 

Dec 22, 2022

 

 

“I don’t even want to go on any dates anymore. They just feel like a chore.” I heard this from my twenty-four-year-old male patient this week. I hear it frequently from men everywhere. I hear it in bars, at professional conferences, over coffee at lunch. I hear it because American women have become undatable.

 

American women today suffer from a combination of emotional and characterologic pathology that renders them unfit to be romantic partners to men. On the emotional side, they are angry, anxious, and dysregulated. Men find them exhausting and not at all fun to be around. In addition to their unpleasant emotions, men must also contend with their toxic personality traits: narcissism, ingratitude, and an overbearing and judgmental attitude that appears to be constant. American women approach dating as a fact and fault-finding mission, with a degree of arrogance that can only come from a profound absence of self-awareness. They have no idea what their role is in the encounter or how to properly support the man who is leading the date. They act as saboteurs rather than facilitators. Most men have tired of this.

 

Certainly, the failings of men play their own role in the dating disaster of today’s America. I have written about these failings extensively here and in my first book, United States of Fear. Masculinity is in decline in the West; without it, dating cannot be successful. Strength, courage, mastery, and honor are the essential traits of masculinity, according to Jack Donovan, author of The Way of Men, and few men display those traits today. Yet equally few women display the essential traits of femininity, either. Donovan explains that to find a woman desirable, a man requires nothing more than for her to be pretty, carefree, and charming. Today’s American women cannot even meet that expectation.

 

I went to dinner recently at a restaurant in Westwood, near the UCLA campus. Every customer appeared to be a university student. I noticed a group of girls walk past me as they got up from their table. They all looked and dressed alike: oversized tee shirts, baggy jeans, non-styled hair, no make-up. They appeared to be poorly dressed boys. I turned to the woman I was with and commented, “They don’t look attractive at all.” She replied, “That’s the current style. I don’t think they’re trying to look attractive.” Observing the rest of the young women around me, I saw that she was right. Most of the others resembled them. Appearance, though, is not the only way in which American women are not trying to be attractive.

 

The typical American woman today projects limitless entitlement, ruthless competitiveness, and advanced emotional incontinence that makes it all but impossible for a man to tolerate her, much less enjoy her company. A recent Instagram video that went viral showed a French man walking the streets of Los Angeles explaining how he had just walked out on his first date at a restaurant with a local woman after observing that her lengthy food restrictions and preferences eliminated nearly every option on the menu. “Au revoir, Jennifer,” he concluded. An American woman living in Russia posted a thread of complaints on social media after failing to get to a second date with any local man after six months in Moscow. “One man told me at the end of the first date that I wasn’t attractive enough for him to go out with a second time. I reminded him that I earn more money than him and have a better apartment – an apartment that I pay for with my own income.” Additional comments made it clear that she was entirely unaware of the expectations of local men regarding both feminine dress and body habitus, and that Russian men couldn’t care less what she makes or how nice her apartment is. They want a pretty, charming, carefree woman and aren’t hesitant to say so to her face. American men want the same thing but don’t have the clarity of mind or the courage to say so. They have become pussied.

 

I believe the root cause of this problem in American women is environmental. It is a problem of bad values. Women in this country have been taught that looks don’t matter, that career is more important than family, that men are either dangerous or weak and incapable, and that the world would be a better place if only women were in charge. Everything they are taught is wrong. Everything they are taught is a lie. And the fault lies with schools, media, feminism, and parents. These institutions and individuals have corrupted their minds, their emotions, and their characters. They have trained women to live in a fantasy world of us vs them, where the “me” is more important than the “we,” where one’s feelings dictate truth and goodness, and even virtue itself. These toxic teachings have rendered women developmentally arrested and incapable of adult partnerships with men.

 

This tragedy harms not only men but women. Men need women, but so do women need men, despite what feminism has taught. American men today have largely decided they would simply rather be alone than continue to feel battered and exhausted by an unending stream of bad dates with unpleasant women. No healthy person wants to play with a porcupine.

 

-----

 

Mark McDonald, M.D.
Psychiatrist and author of United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis and Freedom From Fear: A 12-Step Guide to Personal and National Recovery

  

Yoga of Radiant Presence

 

Yoga of Radiant Presence

 

 

Yoga of Radiant Presence with Peter Brown

https://www.facebook.com/groups/987254385402454/

 

The Texture of Being – Explorations in Peter Brown’s Work

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1714135629525745/?ref=share&_rdr

 

Rob Matthews

https://www.facebook.com/groups/987254385402454/user/679381516/

 

 

* * * *

 

You Are This: The Certainty of Radiant Presence

 

A Talk from the Retreat of March 23, 2020

 

We’re here to explore the yoga of radiant presence.

Radiant presence is reality.

Radiant presence is this immediate actuality – right here, right now.

Comprehensive. It’s what is.

Ordinarily, the presence of your reality may seem very complex.

It may seem to be you. It may seem to be your world, your body, your personality, other people, other things –

a vast array of conditions and things that appear separate from each other.

But in actual fact, there’s only one thing present:

This radiant presence – this reality right here – is the one thing that is.

Its nature is peculiar, because it seems to be all these different things.

It seems so complex, with many implications, many situations, many problems.

But that complexity is only how it’s interpreted by intelligence.

In truth, it is one thing.

One system.

One being.

And this being is you.

This being is God.

This being is the Atman.

This being is reality.

And it is nothing other than this – right here, right now.

So, there is a process of being with this, exploring this, discovering that it is not the complexity we think it is.

It is not the partialization we assume.

You are not the limited being you may be used to imagining.

By exploring the present actuality of experience, right here, right now,

you discover this one condition – this radiant presence –

this is what is present, this is what you are.

And as you discover this, the implications of what’s occurring – of what you are – change drastically.

We’re all familiar with the normal human worldview:

You are a limited person in a vast environment,

in a more or less precarious position,

struggling to survive, to succeed, to be happy, to secure your needs.

Right now, we seem to be in a precarious social situation.

People are uncertain about what’s going to happen,

unsettled by implications and possible problems.

But the implication of radiant presence is one of eternal fullness, richness, completeness, meaningfulness, profundity –

Beyond space and time.

And this is the actuality that is here.

This is what you are.

As you discover this through your own exploration,

you come to appreciate – and enjoy – the lusciousness of this implication,

by contrast with the paltriness of personal identity and consensus reality.

And the beautiful thing is:

you get to have your cake and eat it too.

You don’t lose your human personality.

You don’t lose your life.

You don’t lose your identification.

But you discover that all these are partialized modes

within this transcendental completeness that is actually present –

modes through which it expresses itself.

So –

Feel your being.

You are.

This is – right here, right now.

Feel this.

Notice that you are feeling it.

Notice that you cannot not feel it.

You know this is.

You know you are.

Feel this knowing.

Feel its richness, its certainty.

This is undeniable.

It is self-verifying.

It doesn’t depend on belief.

It doesn’t depend on ideas.

This is certainty.

Notice that you know this.

That you feel this.

That you are this.

That’s the implication:

What does it feel like?

What does being feel like?

What does your presence feel like?

It’s comprehensive.

It includes everything.

It supports everything.

Being supports you.

Being supports your world.

Being supports itself –

and yet, it is supported by nothing.

By nothing.

Being seems simple – we take it for granted.

We know we are, but we don’t attend to it.

It seems boring, hidden, uninteresting.

But in fact, it’s the other way around.

Being is the most important thing.

Being is fullness.

Being is richness.

Being is what everything is,

and where everything comes from.

It’s what you are.

It’s what your intelligence is.

It’s what your power is.

It’s what your functionality is –

just simply this being, right here.

And the way that’s so is known directly:

by feeling it.

By exploring it.

It will show you what it is.

It will show you how it is what it is.

Radiant presence is a very strange condition.

Unlike anything we are used to thinking of.

It is one thing – completely and entirely itself –

yet infinitely differentiated within itself.

But those differentiations don’t depart from it.

They don’t add to it or subtract from it.

They are flavors of apparition,

occurring within it as its expression, as its being.

But in itself, it is unaffected by what appears within it.

This is very difficult to think about.

It’s paradoxical.

It’s unthinkable.

Illogical.

Irrational.

But it doesn’t need to be conceived.

Simply feel it.

And you will have it for yourself –

the way that this is so.