In SamSara, you might stumble upon a typo or a misspelled word here or there, but you stand a far greater chance of reclaiming a misplaced piece of your soul. A lost-in-life tractor salesman plopped smack dab in the center of Florence, Italy seems a bit odd, but even more bizarre, he’s the only man in a group of  eighteen women psychologist who are attending a seminar concerning the feminine aspect of the psyche. In other words, primitive man meets goddess."True this book takes you on a physical journey from California to Ireland via Switzerland, Italy, and France. However, if a potential reader quickly glancing over the back cover thinks this will be run of the mill – travel log kind of entertainment - beware. The cover may give a hint to some that this is more like a journey ‘to hell and back’, but that’s putting it lightly. SamSara is not only a page-turner, but provides valuable insights into a very small part of mankind, those who do not fear Freedom but instead demand it as their individual right.  I found this novel to be a very unique action thriller, which takes place in a micro cosmos of one single person: Malcolm Clay. He takes the longest and most convoluted journey any-one could imagine. Malcolm is in my eyes a hero taking the terrible risk of traveling the un-charted regions of his own psyche, deep down to vast regions of fear and pain but also of brilliant revelations full of light and hope. "SamSara portrays the struggles of a man searching for freedom from his puritanical up-bringing and the existential traumas of his youth. Again and again, he comes up against dead-ends and frightening reminders of images from his past. His dream sequences are wonderfully portrayed. One in particular comes to mind, about tigers and how a number of these dangerous animals invade a house, and professionals are called to exterminate them. But instead of killing them, the tigers are tranquillized, and one realizes that the ani-mals are symbolic of the sometimes overwhelming demons within us, energies that have to be subdued and sometimes even separated so that we can slowly develop a relationship and come to terms with these integral aspects of ourselves as opposed to denying their existence and continuing to suffer in a host of neurotic or even psychotic ways. "After the stage for this fine novel has been set, the pace really picks up: I had a hard time fumbling through the pages fast enough, and the ending really threw me. No, I won’t even give you a hint. But, let me just say: It has nothing to do with the snake biting at its own tail - swallowing, perhaps, but certainly not biting! If I may quote some very clever personality whose name I have never known: “The beginning is in the end.”"In my opinion, the very essence of SamSara is about the transformation of images, and Mel Mathews is quite masterful in the way he moves readers through this process, building to high points of interest and excitement, before letting off, allowing the reader time to relax and enjoy a more normal flow of life as these old ghost are slowly transformed into vital companions. I found it rewarding and enlightening to accompany Malcolm during his metamorphose from a person haunted by his past, yet willing to gamble not only his worldly goods, but even his soul, to become the individually decisive and free man he longs to be." J.G. Moos Kuesnacht, Switzerland

SamSara

Literature & Fiction

Mathews, Mel

Contemporary

il piccolo editions

On the Doorstep of the Castle: A Play of Teresa of Avila and Alma de Leon

Clark-Stern, Elizabeth

Dramas & Plays

These poems, written from lived experience, speak for the survivors of personal violence. The pain inflicted on so many families in our violent age has seldom been faced with such unflinching determination to depict it honestly and wrest from it an acceptance of suffering based on a full, active and meaningful view of life. Does anyone escape suffering? No, that is why those who survive and go on to a new acceptance of life, reach out to those who are for the present victims. Tragedy teaches what intuition always whispers: there is a realm in which we are all present to each other; we are One in the deep heart's core. We mourn those who die, and we move on through the knowledge that what has happened to them, no matter how brutal or tragic, does not define them-or us. Our spirits and our souls tell us who we are and give our lives their meaning.

Dark Healing

Messer, Richard E

Poetry

Feathered Ladder: Selected Poems

Landis, Brian

Slattery, Dennis Patrick

Joseph Bobrow's poems are prayers for safe haven. They are sutras for life, for the protection of soldiers, children, mothers, fathers, everyone. We can take refuge in our relationships with one another, and in the beauty of the world. --Maxine Hong Kingston, author, activist, and the recipient of the National Medal of Art from President Barack Obama. Joseph Bobrow's poems know that every day we are dying and that every one of those dying days we are also fully alive. He writes that "memory and inclination are subject to conditions on the ground," and so they are in these moving poems which are the gift of seeing and of the ability to respond to tragedy and delight in equal measure while weaving them into the fabric of a life fully realized. --Dan Gerber, Author of Sailing through Cassiopeia, 2013 Book of the Year Award in Poetry from The Society of Midland Authors. Joseph Bobrow's poems are down-to-earth meditations on the poignant mysteries of life, love, and loss. Not one is abstract or philosophical; every one is a Dharma talk with heart. I kept touching into moments of Bobrow's experience that mirrored--and enriched--my own. Bows! --David Richo, author of You Are Not What You Think: The Egoless Path to Self-Esteem and Generous Love. Reading Joe Bobrow's poetry makes me want to live more wildly, more fully. His poems live in an irresistible arc between the raw and vivid details of his precious life and a sense of vastness, of spaciousness, of universality. I want to return to these poems again and again. His voice makes me want to reply with my own poetry, and to touch his voice in the darkness. --Stephen Cope, best-selling author of The Great Work of Your Life and Yoga and the Quest for the True Self In the dense moments of Bobrow's writing Intensity hovers, swells. Pain and bliss rise, fall, rise again. Which will it be moment to moment? Where can we go when it is happening? Seek refuge in a poem? These poems accost us with more of how it feels to be alive. Be ready. --Michael Eigen, Author of Under the Totem: In Search of a Path

After Midnight: Selected Poems

Bobrow, Joseph

Charles Zeiders has given us a great gift; a poet, healer, and lover, he shares with fearless eloquence his heart, his mordant wit, and his empathic depth. Most of all, however, he inspires hope, hope in the human soul. I am captivated by his words and reading him I can feel my soul's enthusiastic approbation. You must give your soul the same pleasure. -Dr. Stephen Martin, Jungian Analyst and President Emeritus of the Philemon Foundation Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems teems with psychic and spiritual energy. It’s like a Hieronymus Bosch painting that includes the Marx Brothers and splotches of transcendent gold. - Peter Devlin, from the Introduction Zeiders’ love poems depict the paradoxes of a Christ-redeemed eros . . . But the volume explores the insane side of love…Like Dante’s Virgil, Zeiders navigates us through an earthly Inferno of malignant narcissists, charlatans, and pedophiles…Thankfully, the poet brings us safely to the other side . . . Just as the Christian vision of the universe begins and ends with Love, so Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems provides hope. -Joseph Walls, from Kiss Epiphany: A Spiritual Critique of Love Poems and Other Terrible ProblemsFrom the exploration of the transfigured state found in the “Love Poems” we turn to the “Other Terrible Problems” . . . Nietzschean nihilism presses upon us. So does war and gore…Psychopaths head our institutions . . . we cannot find a way to offer our eros in the mad contexts they create . . . yet, the lesson is that within the container of love . . . one’s en

Love Poems and Other Terrible Problems

Zeiders, Charles

"To quote Norman O. Brown quoting Euripedes, "God made an opening for the unexpected," and at long last we have what many of us have greatly desired: a collection of poems by Paul Watsky. His is a singular voice in contemporary poetry, with a range that encompasses the wry, the mordant, the laugh-out-loud funny and the deeply moving, often within the same poem. One of Ovid's earliest critics complained that he did not know when to leave well enough alone. In this he resembles the eponymous hero of Watsky's "The Magnificent Goldstein," and, come to think of it, Watsky himself, for which we have cause to rejoice." -Charles Martin _____________________________________________"We meet an observant poet telling a story, his story: wryly perceived incidents of family and history-all given with elegance, wit, and intimacy. A concise, carefully crafted, timely view of the world." -Joanne Kyger

Telling the Difference

Watsky, Paul

Requiem returns us to an eternal theme, a dialogue with Soul, and we know quite well what happens when one dialogues with Soul-we change, consciousness is enlarged, the impossible becomes possible and we no longer are compelled to blindly follow in the deathly path of our forefathers. 
Requiem is a fictitious account of a scenario played out in the mind of many Israelis, pertaining to existential reflections and apocalyptic fears, but then, as well, the hope and commitment that arise from the abyss of trepidation. While set in Israel sometime in the present, it is a story that reaches into the timelessness of history, weaving discussions with Heine and Kafka into a tale of universal implications.

Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return

Religion & Spirituality

Shalit, Erel

Judaism

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky was the first child born in the New World to a family of German Jewish refugees from the Shoah. Many in her family were lost in the death camps. It has been the subject and the gift of her poetry and prose-to write herself out of the terror, into life. Naomi had a special tie with her only surviving grandparent, the painter Emma Hoffman, whom she called "Oma." Oma showed her that making art can be a way to transmute grief, a way to bear the unbearable. The cover of Adagio and Lamentation is a watercolor by Emma Hoffman-an interior view of the Berkeley home where Naomi visited her often as a teenager. Oma tried her best to make a painter of her, but Naomi was no good at it. Poetry was to be her vehicle. Adagio and Lamentation is Naomi's offering to her ancestors, a handing back in gratitude and love. It is also her way of bringing them news of their legacy-the cycle of life has survived all they suffered-Naomi has been blessed by many grandchildren.

Adagio & Lamentation

Lowinsky, Naomi Ruth

A zen garden is a sacred, meditative, and symbolic space-a microcosm representing the world. Every detail is meant to quiet the soul. Stepping stone paths and tiny bridges are deliberate means of slowing one down to enhance the meditative experience. In many such gardens, the whole garden cannot be viewed from a single vantage point. Rather, one discovers different views of the garden as one sits in a tea house, walks on a path, comes around a corner, or crosses over a bridge. There may be three prominent stones: a flat stone symbolizing earth, a large tall stone symbolizing heaven, and a stone lantern symbolizing the human element. And there may also be foxes!-as was the case for Karlyn Ward. Visitation in a Zen Garden records in image and word what happens when a family of foxes takes up residence in the author's backyard zen garden. Using her analytic experience, Karlyn Ward links the visitation with biology, behavior, wonder, and depth psychology. What could be the meaning of this close encounter with little wild animals "simply" being themselves in her own back yard? What is the symbolic meaning of the fox, and what did Jung have to say about it? Why does the fox "happen" to choose this garden at this time?

Visitation in a Zen Garden

Arts & Photography

Ward, Karlyn M

Photography & Video

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