Prodigies are easy. They advertise their genius from the get-go. Late bloomers are hard. They require forbearance and blind faith. Whenever we find a late bloomer, we can’t but wonder how many others like him or her we have thwarted because we prematurely judged their talents.
...
If you are the type of creative mind that starts without a plan, and has to experiment and learn by doing, you need someone to see you through the long and difficult time it takes for your art to reach its true level.

Late Bloomers, by Malcolm Gladwell
thx Alexei Kapterev (src)

“I came to writing really by the back door,” Foer said. “My wife is a writer, and she grew up keeping journals—you know, parents said, ‘Lights out, time for bed,’ and she had a little flashlight under the covers, reading books. I don’t think I read a book until much later than other people. I just wasn’t interested in it.”
Foer went to Princeton and took a creative-writing class in his freshman year with Joyce Carol Oates. It was, he explains, “sort of on a whim, maybe out of a sense that I should have a diverse course load.” He’d never written a story before. “I didn’t really think anything of it, to be honest, but halfway through the semester I arrived to class early one day, and she said, ‘Oh, I’m glad I have this chance to talk to you. I’m a fan of your writing.’ And it was a real revelation for me.”
Oates told him that he had the most important of writerly qualities, which was energy. He had been writing fifteen pages a week for that class, an entire story for each seminar. “Why does a dam with a crack in it leak so much?” he said, with a laugh. “There was just something in me, there was like a pressure.”
As a sophomore, he took another creative-writing class. During the following summer, he went to Europe. He wanted to find the village in Ukraine where his grandfather had come from. After the trip, he went to Prague. There he read Kafka, as any literary undergraduate would, and sat down at his computer.
“I was just writing,” he said. “I didn’t know that I was writing until it was happening. I didn’t go with the intention of writing a book. I wrote three hundred pages in ten weeks. I really wrote. I’d never done it like that.”
It was a novel about a boy named Jonathan Safran Foer who visits the village in Ukraine where his grandfather had come from. Those three hundred pages were the first draft of “Everything Is Illuminated”—the exquisite and extraordinary novel that established Foer as one of the most distinctive literary voices of his generation. He was nineteen years old.

the final lesson of the late bloomer: his or her success is highly contingent on the efforts of others. [...] Late bloomers’ stories are invariably love stories, and this may be why we have such difficulty with them. We’d like to think that mundane matters like loyalty, steadfastness, and the willingness to keep writing checks to support what looks like failure have nothing to do with something as rarefied as genius. But sometimes genius is anything but rarefied; sometimes it’s just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table. [...]
“Sharie never once brought up money, not once—never,” Fountain said. She was sitting next to him, and he looked at her in a way that made it plain that he understood how much of the credit for “Brief Encounters” belonged to his wife. His eyes welled up with tears. “I never felt any pressure from her,” he said. “Not even covert, not even implied.”

и ещё немного интересной информации, почерпнутой из рассылки gaiamedia:

1. SpaceCollective - по первому восприятию, сайт пересекается с ted.com. миссия сайта: SpaceCollective. Where forward thinking terrestrials exchange ideas and information about the state of the species, their planet and the universe, living the lives of science fiction today.

• загляните на страницу Gallery - впечатляет:)  однако трафик, осторожно если актуально:)
• каждый зарегистрировавшийся обеспечивается персональной временной капсулой - Personal timecapsules, в которой будет сохранен ваш личный вклад в общую миссию участников КосмическогоКоллектива ;)
• предоставляется возможность присоединяться к существующим исследовательским проектам и создавать свои
• ознакомиться с последними добавленными работами можно на этой странице. столько всяких интересных тем - глаза разбегаются... нужно непременно этот сайт будет поисследовать подробнее...

2. интересный перцептивный тест-эксперимент. что самое главное - он оказывается в конце чертовски забавным!!))) внимательно прочтите инструкцию и следуйте ей!:)


3. в Перу аяхуаска объявлена частью культурного наследия. правительство Перу объявило традиционное знание и применение аяхуаски, практикуемое аборигенами Амазонских лесов национальным культурным наследием. Объявляя о "признании" аяхуаски, правительство указало, что аяхуаска обладает психотропными свойствами, воздействуя на психику, ментальное состояние, поведение, восприятие и известна по всему миру как растение, передающее духовное знание... В Бразилии правительство пока находится на стадии рассмотрения данного вопроса.

чувствую, что в ближайшие полгода в моей жизни произойдёт что-то, в корне меняющее меня или мой образ жизни.

...Джунгли сводят человека с ума. Или, может быть, не сводят, а как раз наоборот: возвращают тот образ мысли, который был свойственен ему когда-то. Нашёптывают. Пробуждают в нём и обостряют давно забытые, погребённые где-то в глубинах души чувства, ощущения, эмоции и инстинкты.
...
Джунгли сводят человека с ума. Джунгли свели с ума и меня. Они обрушились, ошеломили, разжевали и извергли уже новым существом. Потерявшим способность мыслить прежними категориями и не понимающим логики, казалось бы, элементарных вещей. Элементарных для тех, одним из которых я был когда-то.
До того, как умер и родился вновь. До того, как сошёл с ума. Попав однажды под чары джунглей, человек никогда не вырвется из них. Не захочет. И не сможет. Для него уже не будет «другого», как не стало его для меня. Нужно время, чтобы осознать это и принять. Сначала одолевает страх. За ним приходит боль и отчаянье. Это проклятье, если пытаться сопротивляться, и благословение, если принять новое как данность. Но, в любом случае, такова судьба тех, кто однажды неосторожно переступил черту, и зелёный мир звуков, запахов и духов сомкнулся у них за спиной. Всё, что было прежде, перестало быть.

Amazanga Indian Tribes Adventure - Клуб путешествий Андрея Шляхтинского

Я люблю комфорт и хорошее вино, но променяю это за возможность захлебнуться настоящей жизнью южных улиц, ловить рыбу и самому готовить её на костре где-то на пустынном пляже, пить местную самогонку или коктейль с грибами — галлюциогенами и смотреть, как синее море пожирает красный диск Солнца.

Сергей Винский, http://blog.junglecambodia.ru/2008/07/05/

First LSD-Assisted Psychotherapy Study Begins!
The first subject was treated in Peter Gasser, MD’s LSD/end-of-life anxiety study in Switzerland on May 13th. This marks the beginning of what will become the first LSD-assisted psychotherapy study in over 36 years. While we’re sad that Albert Hofmann didn’t live to actually see the first administration of LSD in this study, we’re glad he knew the study was fully approved and that the initial subject was going to be enrolled in the study soon.

New Psilocybin Neurogenesis Study Begins at the University of South Florida
Researchers Juan Sanchez-Ramos PhD, MD and Briony Catlow MS at the University of South Florida in Tampa have just started an exciting new study to see if psilocybin can help promote the birth and development of new brain cells (neurogenesis) in an area of the adult brain called the hippocampus, which is associated with learning and memory. The psilocybin that is being used in this study is coming from an unused portion of a gram of psilocybin that MAPS purchased several years ago for $12,250 and then donated to the University of Arizona for Dr. Francisco Moreno’s psilocybin/OCD study.

Breakthrough PTSD Treatment Study with MDMA Nears Completion
Michael Mithoefer MD’s US MDMA/PTSD study is almost complete! In a few days, subjects #18, #19 and #20 will complete their final non-drug psychotherapy sessions. For final outcome measures, one will be completed later in June and another one in early July. Subject #21 will have her third MDMA session in July, and her final outcome measures in September. After that the study will be finished and we’ll analyze the data. Then we’ll prepare a report to the FDA and write a scientific article for submission to a peer-reviewed journal for publication. There are many steps in our march toward Phase 3 trials. However, with the completion of this initial pilot study--which will become the foundation on which everything else will be built--eventually, the prescription use of MDMA for PTSD will be available for all who need it. A breakthrough treatment for PTSD is sorely needed…and with your help, we will give this gift of healing to the world.

Boom Festival Seeks PsyEMS Volunteers

The Boom Festival in Portugal is now accepting applications for volunteers to provide Psychedelic Emergency Services. If you are interested in getting involved and can pay for your own travel expenses to the festival, please contact David at: kosmicare @ boomfestival org