These three little stories, which were written in one sitting as notebook sketches, were composed around 1990 when I was teaching at public high school in Long Island New York . Three Stories Copyright 1990, Jonathan Zap Smoke “Life sucks.”  Marc said in a flat, quiet voice while passing a joint to his friend, Andrew.  It was late August and the two boys were reclining on the slopping walls of dusty grass and tangled weeds leading to the bottom of the sump where they frequently went to smoke. “You always say that.” said Andrew “Because it’s true.” replied Marc. There wasn’t much that could be added to this since they both felt it ...

This story, a fragmentary take on the life of a home boy, was written in the Eighties when I knew a lot about that subject as I was teaching in the South Bronx .  This place and time was ground zero for the hip-hop explosion.  Grand Master Flash came from my high school, and I was especially close to some of the more talented graffiti writers.  I knew Keith Haring and the Fun Gallery was right across the street from where I lived in the East Village so I was able to help some get their work shown.    This story was published in Long Shot (http://www.longshot.org/), a literary journal edited by my friend and fellow teacher in the South Bronx , Danny Shot.  Allen Ginsberg, who lived a block away ...

READ PART I FIRST CLICK HERE Projection----the Enemy of Peace and Justice---Part II copyright Jonathan Zap, 2005 There was an implication stated at the dinner that “the media distorts the situation,” no mention of who it distorts in favor of, but an apparent assumption that political correctness made that unnecessary to spell out,  that, of course, all media distortions must be in Israel’s favor.  The media distorts all sorts of things and in all sorts of directions.  Some major media venues in this country are owned by Saudi Arabia which also has the intimate backing of the Bush administration. Some have pointed out that media reports of suicide bombings in this country often give more sympathetic treatment to the bombers than their victims.  For example ...

Projection---the Enemy of Peace and Justice Part I copyright 2005 by Jonathan Zap photo copyright 2000 by Jonathan Zap "Projection can be observed at work everywhere, in mental illness, in ideas of persecution and hallucinations, in so-called normal people who see the mote in their brother's eye without seeing the beam in their own, and finally, in extreme form, in political propaganda."  ---C.G. Jung This essay came into being in a strange way.  At the time I wrote this I worked for a non profit, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center , and recently I attended a dinner they put on, and heard some one who is part of their International Collective (RMPJC is an umbrella organization with many separate components) speak about an international issue from a point of view that I found dangerously one-sided.  I began to think about writing an email to the staff ...

The metabolism of our species is reaching a feverish intensity as we approach an evolutionary event horizon.  One symptom of this feverish metamorphosis is our mutating relationship to body. Suffering associated with body image has reached such epidemic proportions in our culture that it must be counted as one of the greatest spiritual plagues ever to be visited upon mankind. Media bombards us unceasingly with images of ever more idealized youth and beauty while vast portions of our population undergo voluntary starvation, grueling exercise regimens and surgery in an effort to control their body image. Attempts to control body image often result in collapsing self-esteem, intense suffering and premature death through self-imposed famine. The temptation is to view body image problems as an isolated illness, rather than a phenomenon that points right to the core of our evolutionary predicament. What from one vantage seems an illness ...

The first time I ever photographed an I Ching coin toss caught a coin landing on its edge  photo copyright Jonathan Zap " Synchronicity " is a term that was coined by C.G. Jung in the 1940s after some dinner conversations with Einstein.  Jung defined synchronicity as an "an acausal connecting principle." In other words, synchronicity describes relationships that are not mediated by cause and effect, but instead have an acausal parallelism. Jung was searching for a way to account for those uncanny, completely improbable "coincidences" (assumption of randomness) where something from the inner life and something from the outer world would "synch up." For example, Jung reccounts an incident that occurred when he was treating a woman patient.  This woman, according to Jung, was blocked from progressing in her psychoanalytical treatment because she tried to apply a superficial ...

Some Things to Consider Before Dream Interpretation © 2000 Jonathan Zap The phrase, “dream interpretation,” can be somewhat misleading.  From my point of view dreams are not puzzles awaiting solution, but life experiences.  Dream interpretation is at least as subjective and limiting as “life interpretation.”  It would probably be meaningless, for example, to attempt an interpretation of what you did last Tuesday.  But on some Tuesday there could be a dramatic episode of the sort that would later become a frequently repeated story or anecdote. These dramatic episodes could be subject to interpretations such as, “That certainly taught me never to believe that people are who they say they are.”  Similarly, most of the dreams that people bring for dream interpretation are dramatic episodes where insistent meanings are ...

The Way of the Warrior: An Authentic Life Stance with Heart © 1996, 2009 by Jonathan Zap Edited by Austin Iredale WHAT IS A WARRIOR? Being an interdimensional traveler involves an arduous journey, and the stance that I recommend for this journey is that of the Warrior. Why is being a Warrior important, and what is meant by being a Warrior anyway? Language is so often a barrier to understanding. The word, " Warrior ," for example, presents many problems. Sometimes the best available word has a shadow, a dark area of connotations that may be alien or even contradictory to what we are trying to convey. If we want to convey the possibility of a more effective focus in our lives, the word "discipline" comes to mind. But "discipline" can also mean to punish, and our Puritan heritage gives the word an ...

Click HERE to link to my old site where this type written paper has been scanned and stored.