Surprised at Being Alive


Book Description

From flying with the Screaming Eagles in Vietnam to serving with the Marines and the Royal Navy, this memoir recounts the life of a career military pilot. Sometimes it just isn’t your day. Whether your helicopter comes apart in flight due to equipment failure, or another aircraft runs into you in midair, or an enemy gunner lands his rounds in exactly the right spot to take you out of the sky. That’s why, after twenty-four years and more than five thousand flight hours with four armed services, Maj. Robert Curtis was surprised to still be alive when he passed his retirement physical. His flying career began in the thick of the war, flying Chinooks over Vietnam with the 101st Airborne. From there, Curtis continued to serve with the National Guard while attending college. By then, flying had become an addiction for Curtis, so he continued on with the Marine Corps and Royal Navy. Over the next seventeen years, he would fly off US and British ships from Egypt to Norway and all points in between. Curtis flew eight different helicopters—the wooden-bladed OH-13E, through the Chinook, SeaKnight, and SeaKing—in war and peace around the world. During that time, many of his friends died in crashes, both in combat and in accidents. But some combination of skill, luck, and superstition saw him through.




The Trauma of Everyday Life


Book Description

Trauma does not just happen to a few unlucky people; it is the bedrock of our psychology. Death and illness touch us all, but even the everyday sufferings of loneliness and fear are traumatic. In The Trauma of Everyday Life renowned psychiatrist and author of Thoughts Without a Thinker Mark Epstein uncovers the transformational potential of trauma, revealing how it can be used for the mind's own development. Epstein finds throughout that trauma, if it doesn't destroy us, wakes us up to both our minds' own capacity and to the suffering of others. It makes us more human, caring and wise. It can be our greatest teacher, our freedom itself, and it is available to all of us. Western psychology teaches that if we understand the cause of trauma, we might move past it while many drawn to Eastern practices see meditation as a means of rising above, or distancing themselves from, their most difficult emotions. Both, Epstein argues, fail to recognize that trauma is an indivisible part of life and can be used as a tool for growth and an ever deeper understanding of change. When we regard trauma with this perspective, understanding that suffering is universal and without logic, our pain connects us to the world on a more fundamental level. Guided by the Buddha's life as a profound example of the power of trauma, Epstein's also closely examines his own experience and that of his psychiatric patients to help us all understand that the way out of pain is through it.




I'm Surprised I'm Still Alive


Book Description

Follow Jimmy on his journey from his birth, through to the birth of his first child at the age of 21. His early life was filled with every kind of deprivation, he was constantly living on the edge of starvation, the threat of death was never far away either from his home life or from his multiple abusers, the authorities knew what was going on but they didn't help, the most they did was observe, the schools also knew the treatment he was getting at home, every day of his young life was lived in fear, his mind, his body, and his very soul were shattered, 3 times he was placed into a children's home, a place that should have offered a bit of safety, but this place was no better, it was just another place of fear and terror and abuse, only this time at the hands of strangers. for little jimmy no matter where he turned, he found no peace or comfort, his abuse and torment went on until he was in his early teens. Jimmy's early life left him confused with what he was meant to be, was he straight or gay, he hid all the traumas from everyone, at times he would drink away the pain, but it never left him. help arrived in the shape of Judy, she loved his pain away, it was a love he had never felt before, a pure unconditional love for both of them, but this was ripped away from them through lies and deceit, it led to them being jobless, penniless, homeless, a mental hospital, and the ultimate ending of their love, none of it their fault, all done out of pure spite. Jimmy was left alone no Judy, no family, no home, no job, no money, no hope and no help, he tried to get his life back together as best he could, but he would endure more obstacles, a house fire that nearly killed him, a 21st birthday spent alone in the cold and rain, a spell in prison. His life only made sense when his first child was born, its when he began to feel normal, but for over 40 years Judy remained in his head and heart, how could he just forget her, he couldn't.




Being Alive


Book Description

Anthropology is a disciplined inquiry into the conditions and potentials of human life. Generations of theorists, however, have expunged life from their accounts, treating it as the mere output of patterns, codes, structures or systems variously defined as genetic or cultural, natural or social. Building on his classic work The Perception of the Environment, Tim Ingold sets out to restore life to where it should belong, at the heart of anthropological concern. Being Alive ranges over such themes as the vitality of materials; what it means to make things; the perception and formation of the ground; the mingling of earth and sky in the weather-world; the experiences of light, sound and feeling; the role of storytelling in the integration of knowledge; and the potential of drawing to unite observation and description. Our humanity, Ingold argues, does not come ready-made but is continually fashioned in our movements along ways of life. Starting from the idea of life as a process of wayfaring, Ingold presents a radically new understanding of movement, knowledge and description as dimensions not just of being in the world, but of being alive to what is going on there. This edition includes a new preface by the author.







Becoming Alive


Book Description

What does it mean to be and feel alive and real? How do we become and be alive together? Human beings are uniquely concerned with the question and marvel of what it means to feel alive and real, as well as the lifelong struggle of being alive together. Becoming Alive proffers a psychoanalytic theory of experiences of being alive, acknowledging that analyst and patient, indeed, each of us, are caught up in the larger drama and mystery of being alive. Focusing on the challenge in any psychoanalytic theory to demonstrate the relation between culture, community, and the individual, LaMothe's theory provides a bridge between the three, arguing that organizations of experiences of being alive are inextricably yoked to cultural stories, rituals, and practices. Enlivened by clinical illustrations and examples drawn from wider culture, Becoming Alive brings together psychoanalytic developmental perspectives, infant-parent research, semiotics, and philosophy in providing a comprehensive, lucid, and systematic description of subjective and intersubjective experiences of being alive.




Apropos of Nothing


Book Description

The Long-Awaited, Enormously Entertaining Memoir by One of the Great Artists of Our Time—Now a New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller. In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working alongside comedy greats, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he achieved recognition and success. With his unique storytelling pizzazz, he recounts his departure into moviemaking, with such slapstick comedies as Take the Money and Run, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long, and enormously productive career as a writer and director, from his classics Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Annie and Her Sisters to his most recent films, including Midnight in Paris. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure. This is a hugely entertaining, deeply honest, rich and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time.




The Story Of An Hour


Book Description

Mrs. Louise Mallard, afflicted with a heart condition, reflects on the death of her husband from the safety of her locked room. Originally published in Vogue magazine, “The Story of an Hour” was retitled as “The Dream of an Hour,” when it was published amid much controversy under its new title a year later in St. Louis Life. “The Story of an Hour” was adapted to film in The Joy That Kills by director Tina Rathbone, which was part of a PBS anthology called American Playhouse. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.




The Long Reach


Book Description

Poems deal with truth, religion, nature, thought, the role of poetry, death, visions, age, and the past.




Be Alive (John 1-12)


Book Description

When Jesus spoke, people listened. When Jesus traveled, people followed. When Jesus arrived, hearts and lives were transformed. No other Gospel gives such extensive explanation to Jesus' ministry as the Gospel of John. The first three Gospels describe events, but the fourth Gospel describes the significance behind those events. Through miracles, parables, and relationships, Jesus shows how He is the fulfillment of God's promises of old. He is the Word, the Light, the Lamb—the eternal Son of God. Let the humanity of Christ move you as He feels your joys and pains, and let the deity of Christ awaken you to the life He has planned!