Visit our Shop:

  • Personalized, limited edition wall art
  • Merchandise with our images on them

Welcome to Life Love Illusion — Here's a quick intro:

  • At our About page, you can learn why we're here.
  • Shop for wall art and merchandise with our photographs and images on them.
  • If you Register and login, you can comment on most anything on the site.

Why not enjoy some time exploring the site?

Get email alerts

Why miss out on what's new? Choose from three categories for your alerts.

If your subscription was successful, use the "Edit Account" page to make further changes. If there was an error, refresh the page to try again.

Signup for Email Alerts
X

Lists*


Login–Register

Click to popup the Login prompt — or else use Register to set up your LLI account.

I must open this piece by clarifying three things off the top: I agree that strict measures were needed in an attempt to stem the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. Further, action or not, there are many intricate concerns about how to equitably distribute the pain of the pandemic. Even more, there are deeply difficult questions about how alternative courses of action may trade off lives lost to coronavirus against […]

De-Weapon­izing “Prepared by Science”

Society & Politics
The image is a tweet dated 23 Mar 2020 @ 4:11am. The tweeter is blurred and the text is cropped and partially blurred. What we can see reads: "Good morning, Texas...prepared by science...move as a state from...#StaySafeStayHome...430,000 deaths"
If good science supports it, indeed we should believe it. But weaponized appeals to authority don't make for good science or healthy society.
Why the film is worth your time What makes a momentary acquaintance more than just momentary? In Goodbye Solo, it’s a quick, sharp moment of insight combined with great concern for other people. It drives the title character, Solo, to relentlessly pursue keeping the relationship alive. The film excellently explores profound depth and sincerity of human care, offering a rich perspective on awareness of and love for others, including strangers. Introduction to […]

Watch This: Goodbye Solo

Before Viewing Film Guide
Goodbye Solo movie poster: Solo stands on a rock ledge, his hand up to the sky and a young girl behind him, silhouetted by the setting sun.
A quick, sharp moment of insight combined with great concern for other people drives the title character, Solo, to relentlessly pursue keeping alive a relationship with a stranger.
How the film enriched and changed me I came away from Goodbye Solo wanting the capacity to love as quickly and intensely as Solo did in the film. Having experienced his immediate — and sustained — reaction to a fellow human in crisis, I want to be that ready to reach and stretch to care for another life. The moment (two minutes into the film) when Solo realizes that William has […]

Bahrani’s Goodbye Solo: Love Pursues the Stranger

After Viewing Film Analysis
Having experienced the lead character's immediate and sustained care for a fellow human in crisis, I came away from Goodbye Solo wanting to love even a stranger as quickly and intensely as Solo did.
Here’s a riff on an old expression: If I claim to make a speech in the middle of a forest with no one else around, is it really a speech? At dictionary.com (i.e., Random House), there’s this: So yes. I uttered it, I declared it, it was speech. Only the question isn’t, “Is it speech?” I’m asking, “Is it a speech?” Back to the definition: So it wasn’t. There was […]

The God Who Does Not Exist

Why We Believe What
If I give a speech alone in a forest, is it really a speech? Definitions, implied or explicit, matter with important questions, silently forming how we think and when we go awry.
Twenty-six states in the USA have filial responsibility laws, which make it a legal duty to financially support one’s indigent parents, potentially including extensive healthcare and nursing home costs. You don’t have to like coughing up the money, but if the hospital or the nursing home — or dear ole mom herself — takes you to court, you may go to jail if you don’t. The law makes it your […]

My Favorite Things

Jesus and the Way
Jonah's big fish is a red herring. More interesting is the broken parallel toward the end of the story.
The street, loud with traffic and wind, was respite to Isak, the noise proceeding through his blond skull, rattling from his mind the fading echoes of the coldness of his girlfriend’s parting words. The gray sidewalk passed steadily beneath his feet, growing darker until the street lights came on, then a bit lighter and brown. Rarely did his eyes rise from that surface. I should head off any assumption that […]

Up I See Colors

Flash Fiction
[revised] Isak wanders in central Stockholm, the noise chasing away unwanted echoes in his mind.
Rakuten Kobo sells audiobooks and e-books in partnership with Walmart Advertisement -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <strong><em>Rakuten Kobo</em></strong> sells audiobooks and e-books in partnership with Walmart
Gabriela’s uncle unknowingly told her the precise night and time she could arrive. Hers was a journey of seeing — her eyes and her camera, her transport. Back at ten, working alongside mamá, she barely felt the pain of the knife. She was captivated by the deep red, and yet also its brightness, that came from her finger. “Es la vida,” mamá said, covering the flow with a kitchen rag. […]

The Day and Time

Flash Fiction
A young girl's heart is captured by the notion that blood is life flowing.
A burst of thunder and a storm open David Lowery’s narrative short, Pioneer — that, and a nightmare. The bed lamp flicks on. A father takes his young son into a gentle embrace. What does the son need to soothe the nightmare? Not water, he wants a story. A favorite children’s book? No, the nightmare’s antidote is an epic story the father has told before…one of search, and rescue, and […]

Lowery’s Pioneer and the Artist as Guide

Short Film
David Lowrey's superb filmcraft imbues a father-son moment with power and grace.