Reflective Writing and Poetic Musing by Condemiang + Stories About the World

This gentleman was the one who got me interested in sexuality from an early age.  Back in 9th grade, I was constantly holed up in the school library, utterly absorbed in his brilliant case studies on psychotherapeutic treatments using association techniques. A truly great man. He argued that most psychological problems stem from sexual issues.  And honestly, given the atmosphere of Victorian Europe where women were forced into extreme modesty, it seems quite reasonable—almost historically empirical—to suppose that such issues arose from women’s repressed sexual freedom. Or at least, that’s the kind of conclusion I think I might be inclined to possibly agree with. Maybe. But the "woman problem" isn’t just a women’s issue.  Problems of a particular class don’t stay confined to that class.  Society is an organism—when one part breaks down, the effects ripple across the whole.  Ignore it like it’s none of your business, and you’ll end up with a metaphorical smack in...

My Favourite Friends Software Light is both illumination and the very source of distortion and blindness to us. Don’t ask me why—please. Explaining it is so complicated that I’d end up foaming at the mouth and spitting as I talk. But if you really insist, we’d better do it over a drink—at least the spit from an alcohol-disinfected mouth would be somewhat safer. It was through Rainer Maria Rilke that I first discovered metaphor—those quiet bridges between the visible and the invisible. From that moment, I stepped gently but irrevocably into the realms of literature, history, and philosophy. I chose the sciences, yes, and spent the next 38 years shouldering the consequences of that decision. But I never wonder if the other path would have been better. I believe the person I’ve become is the best possible result of the road I walked. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky. Most of what I longed for came to me. And the things I didn’t attain? Perhaps they were never what I truly desired in the ...