Comments on: Madness, Genius, and the Things We Don’t See

By: Hexagram 38 and bag ladies | Answers I Ching blog

Hexagram 38 and bag ladies | Answers I Ching blog — Sun, 16 May 2010 11:04:14 +0000

[...] I always enjoy finding someone writing about hexagrams without knowing it. Here is Zoë of ‘Essential Prose’ writing about Hexagram 38, Opposing. [...]

By: Kelsey

Kelsey — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 23:00:05 +0000

Just discovered your blog and you coaxed me in with this post. Great thoughts… I’ve often felt the same, which is to say that perhaps we both have some disturbing thoughts about what genius could truly be. Anyways, I’ll be following.
p.s. I like your name – it’s the same as my niece’s

By: Zoë

Zoë — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:25:24 +0000

I love this Fitzgerald quote, Kevin. You’re right, rejection is part of the process, and it’s a fine line…! I completely agree that madness/creativity is the ability to connect things in a new way, one that might not even be decipherable to many… or perhaps deciphered in a completely different way…

By: Zoë

Zoë — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:22:56 +0000

Now to remind myself of this every morning…!

By: Zoë

Zoë — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:22:32 +0000

Wow, hi!! Great to see you here.

Yes, it’s a pretty amazing feeling to open yourself up to an outlook that your mind seems to automatically reject… I think that’s what makes our ability to connect, to draw patterns, healthy and blossoming…

By: Zoë

Zoë — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:21:08 +0000

Right on point… I can’t even imagine how many of these opportunities we are blind to.

And so we are always searching, listening, looking, hoping to have our sense opened wider…!

By: Zoë

Zoë — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:20:08 +0000

I was just reading something in which an autistic woman credited her success in her particular field to the perspectives resulting from her autism… and she said that if given the choice, she would not choose to live without autism. Of course I forget what I was reading, and cannot cite it. But important and fascinating to hear these perspectives!

[the dots over the e: on a PC, it's alt+1+3+7 on the side keys; on a mac, it's option+u, then press e ]

By: Zoë

Zoë — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:17:04 +0000

Thank you for reading and commenting, Christianne! I’m very intrigued by your pursuit, and am checking out your site now… here’s to absurdity : )

By: Christianne

Christianne — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 02:58:29 +0000

Hi there … new here, and first time commenting.

I love this idea from Einstein that anything not sounding completely absurd from the start is hardly worth following. The idea to start a tribe moving ever so determinedly toward nonviolence, in order to create a more loving, nonviolent world, struck me as utterly bizarre about two months ago. Who was I … ?? What could I … ?? How was it ever … ?? Could things ever … ??

I decided in the end I wanted to believe in the possibility of goodness and change and in the power of love to be greater than anything else. So I started the tribe. I’m glad to know Einstein would likely applaud. Seems like a good man to have on one’s side.

Love what you’ve written here in this post, Zoe. That motorbike story is amazing. I, too, would love for you to find that woman again and try to discover what she’s found!

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:48:37 +0000

A quote I found as a teenager stuck with me all these years from F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Crack Up “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” From Hamlet “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” I always figured the smart kids in class were more depressed or biploar because they realized knowing answers would get them beat up and ostracized. (I played dumb a lot and have watched my own students refuse to answer even when they knew — it’s not worth the taunting). To be really good I think artists have to have deep and powerful emotional experiences and in an ephemeral world that challenges our perceptions and faiths, the sensitive are cut the deepest. Also, standing out in the crowd be it via arts or even sciences means you can expect some conflict or even rejection. It is a daring thing to do and often the world tries to beat you down. Prophets are typically the one’s at the edge of sanity and tip to one side of the line or the other based on the number of people they enchant: Jeremiah, Jesus or Mohammed vs. choose any cult leader or various other failed messiahs contemporary to Jesus but likewise done away with. One is crazy the other just talked to god. Carl Jung treated James Joyce’s daughter for schizophrenia and allegedly said the girl and her father suffered similarly. Try reading Finnegan’s Wake. Van Gogh. Anne Sexton. The list is so long of creative types who were slightly or horribly unhinged in some way. Perhaps madness/creativity is the spilling forth of randomly connected thoughts. Some can sort them into a never before seen order or expression, while some others can’t at all, and still others have literary critics who create meanings even the artist/crazy person didn’t see.