Saturday, December 15, 2018

"There Only Was One Choice"

S.T.H.O.L.T.B.I.D.
(songs to hear one last time before i die)
-by harry chapin
Am i just picking very longs songs to postpone the end? How can you ask? Is there anything more hypnotizing than a masterful magnum opus?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MI6HSICrE8

Monday, December 10, 2018

naked nurse 21

SOOTHING OUR SOCIAL/SEXUAL/SPIRITUAL STRIFE

Dear naked nurse,
How long does it take to grow out of shallow romantic superficiality? When do we stop caring about thin/fat, rich/poor, beautiful/ugly?
-shamed in Chicago

Dear shamed,
Some will achieve full non-shallow maturity...on our deathbed! Before that, lotsa luck. I wish i could be more encouraging, but selfishness is our core cultural value, scarcity is the societal status quo, and fear our primary motivation. All that was a crippling cocktail a century ago, but in the mass media age, it's devastating. By the time we're teenagers, the exponential, excremental, endless unfolding of unnatural, sexist, ageist beauty images burned into our brains is baggage we'll never unlearn.
In all fairness, a tiny percentage of us, after years of focused discipline, do come close to actual non-shallowness. But it's always a house of cards.
Of course, many others embody a surface (ha!) approximation of non-shallowness, simply due to limited options. Limited options, not love, makes the world go 'round.
How can we nudge ourselves onto the non-shallow path? It's a long, hard road of unflinching self-analysis. A great starter is this three-movie marathon: "Shallow Hal", Lovely & Amazing", and "Fat Girl". Watch, and let the internal (or external) dialogues begin.
unflinching understandings,
the naked nurse

Send queries to nakednursing@yahoo.com!

Thursday, December 6, 2018

"The Secret Handshake of Fate"

S.T.H.O.L.T.B.I.D
(songs to hear one last time before i die)
-by j.d. souther
After some beautiful youthful artistic achievements, he came into his fullest flower at sixty. Ain't that a kick?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UyHtuIb99Y

Sunday, December 2, 2018

Fleetwood Mac

Brits and yanks. Female and male. More rebirths than a fundamentalist flophouse. Not just retoolings, but reinventions. Born in England, but eventually ignored there so utterly they gave up trying. A legendary implosion as they first tasted stardom (but if you listen to what green was saying, he was right). Years spent back in the nether land of the quasi-famous. Revilement from purists. Then when stardom beckoned a second time, a beyond-perverse refusal to quit despite internal tensions that would choke an apatosaurus. An object lesson in how far people will degrade themselves for ego and cash? A never-ending soap opera of defections, rejections, divorce, loathings, reconciliations, reunions, retirings, re-hirings, assault and battery, drug casualties...
A long, strange trip? Fleetwood Mac might be a truer embodiment of those words than the band that wrote them...or any band ever.
Despite all that, the music was often brilliant, in the way that can only happen when a band clicks. When personalities and talents mesh to create something that pops. It's only rock and roll, but...
I never meant to write a Mac tribute. I listened to their catalogue almost by accident. If it's possible for a band this huge to be underestimated though, they are. The welch years are better than you think, the nicks era has more musical merit than you'll care to admit, and green and buckingham might both deserve the overtaxed label "genius".
So here's the concert! An illogical hodgepodge from lineups that never performed together, plus a few non-Mac tracks? Ah, just play on...
DREAM SET LIST
-The Green Manalishi
-And That's Saying a Lot
-Come
-Rhiannon
-Black Magic Woman
-Gold Dust Woman
-Bleed to Love Her
-Blood on the Floor
-Hypnotized
-Over My Head
-So Excited
-Gypsy
-Landslide
-Big Love
-Albatross
-Go Insane
-As Long as You Follow
-Edge of Seventeen
-Tusk
-Something Inside of Me
-You Make Loving Fun
-The Chain

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

"Three Views of a Secret"

S.T.H.O.L.T.B.I.D.
(songs to hear one last time before i die)
-by jaco pastorius
How to express how this pulls my heart out of my chest...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R7eR1s9sjQ

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

"Untrue"

(Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free)
-by wednesday martin
2018
Sometimes, when a subtitle is so spot-on, a review can feel almost superfluous. What else needs be said?
I tend to prefer science books by scientists, but occasionally there's a brilliant exception - step right up, wednesday (author of "Primates of Park Avenue")! She synthesizes the newest research, and offers interviews of both researchers and ordinary (mostly female) people caught up the struggle of trying to be free, self-determined sexual humyn beings. She mines nuggets from her own life, and renders all in beautiful prose. In short, this is THE book to give to anyone eager (or willing) to question the ancient scripts we keep teaching ourselves about wimyn's "natural" sexuality. Wimyn are passive, shy, and highly selective, seeking only that one "perfect" mate to be true to?
Well...
We keep trying to contort ourselves into that model...an easier task for men, for whom it grants infinitely more sexual freedom and variety. Wimyn who would claim their own sexual autonomy face enormous censure at best - and at worst, unending economic obstacles or punishments plus violent, even fatal retribution.
Martin shows how wimyn have always embraced the opportunity to pursue sexual variety when cultural conditions shift to give them more freedom. She shows the wild worlds of female "promiscuity" which can be found in pre-agricultural (or pre-plow) cultures. She rolls out a parade of statistics which have been glacial in surfacing, because few secrets are more destructive than sexual truth...but new studies show that men and wimyn cheat at roughly the same rates. She explores the realities of non-binary people, and people of color. She offers the latest research on the sex lives of other primates. She describes cultures where monogamy is an option, but considered "stingy". She investigates the ever-increasing numbers of polyandrous families and consensually non-mongamous couples. She attends a Skirt Club party, where wimyn go to socialize, network, and have casual canoodlings. She explores the flourishing online worlds where wimyn seek sexual satisfaction outside their mated unions, plus cuckoldry sites where men encourage, facilitate, and participate in their wives being "untrue". She invokes MHC studies, which show that sex is all about smell, and smell is about perceiving which mate would be best for offspring. She shows studies which show that wimyn may have greater sex drives than men. And she ultimately offers the largest truth, that we all basically want the same things - great sex and deep connection. The sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we step out of the shadows of hypocrisy, double standards, and life-crushing repression.
A fantastic book for awkward teens, exhausted geriatrics, and everyone in between.

Monday, November 5, 2018

miles' smilestones in the sky

How did a player of middling range and precision become the greatest trumpeter ever? Sorry louis and maynard...but miles (or in Europe, kilometers davis) knew how to shape the sound like no one else. He experimented, he reinvented, he redefined jazz (oops, i mean "social music") over and over. Has anyone else ever done so more than once? Where he went, the rest followed (though sometimes not for years). Rick wright was copying miles on "Dark Side of the Moon". The Grateful Dead were mortified to be on the same bill. He would have collaborated with hendrix, had jimi not died.
A sterling composer as well, though arranging may have been his greatest genius.
And i heard him live.
If you know how unhip i was as a teenager, you'll appreciate my incredible good fortune. I didn't seek it out, it fell into my lap. I'd been a schoolboy trumpeter who peaked at fifteen, and ran out of steam post-braces when i failed to make the high school jazz band. I turned to acting, and didn't look back. But even though i knew of miles, i'd never owned or heard a full album (we suburban trumpet geeks were more hip to maynard ferguson and chuck mangione). So perhaps the greatest gift my father ever gave me, was that day in 1989 he said we were going to the Mellon Jazz Festival in Philadelphia. There are few things in this world as good as advertised, and even less that are greater.
Miles was greater.
The music did things to me i'd never experienced before, and only once since. It took me to a place outside space and time.
And now, i've finally heard the entire davis discography. Here are the masterpieces, the nearly-so, and essential strays.  A friend who grew up in the city told me there were only two things in every black household - the bible and "Kind of Blue". Insanity, and its antidote?
THE BEST
1959 - Kind of Blue
1969 - In a Silent Way
1970 - Bitches Brew
1975 - Agharta
1989 - Amandla
ALMOST...
1955 - Blue Moods
1968 - Miles in the Sky
1970 - Tanglewood Live
1971 - Live-Evil
1977 - Dark Magus
1986 - Tutu
1993 - Miles! Miles! Miles!
1995 - Avignon - The Last Concert
STRAYS
"Milestones"
"Mood"
"Autumn Leaves" (for cannonball adderley)
"Go Ahead John"
"He Loved Him Madly"
"Calypso Frelimo"
"Ascent"

Saturday, October 27, 2018

"1491"

(a re-imagining of prince's "1999")

I was dreamin' when i wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray
But when i woke up this mornin', could've sworn it was judgment day
America on trial by a jury of buffalo
shouting genocide and rape, you know i didn't want to know
Say say nuke away KKK climate change, oops, party done
So tonight we're gonna party like it's 1491
I was dreamin' when i wrote this, so sue me if it ain't too clear
But when i woke up this mornin' could've sworn it was judgment year
Humanity on trial by a jury of dodo birds
Deforestation and dead oceans, was all i really heard
Say say nuke away KKK climate change, oops, party done
So tonight we're gonna party like it's 1491
If you won't get naked, don't bother knockin' on my door
I got a goddess in my pocket and baby she's ready to roar
Everybody's got a gun, we could all die any day
But before we let that happen, let's dance the night away
Say say nuke away KKK climate change, oops, party done
So tonight we're gonna party like it's 1491
1491
Don't you wanna go, 1491? (repeat)

Saturday, October 20, 2018

quandary

You're sitting in a park alone, on a beautiful afternoon. Perhaps making a little music for the world.
Someone wanders along and sits. Their energy is light, airy, and thoroughly entranced. They listen to you, chattering and singing with joy.
You quickly realize that their ecstatic state was not facilitated by oxygen alone. They're tripping. You're no pharmacology expert, but you suspect either mushrooms or acid.
They ask for pot, which you give them. But you have no paper or fire. They ask for water, which you give them. This person makes your heart swell, freed as they are from the utter meanness of what we call "normal life". You feel instantly protective, especially as no one else comes along looking for them.
Then the moral quandary begins. They get up and wander away. Should you follow, to make sure they're shepherded and safe? That could take many hours. Surely others will care for her, as you're in the epicenter of the mind-expanding culture, in Golden Gate Park by Hippie Hill?
Well...not necessarily. There is a dark side to that reality, as we're all pretty much incapable of not acting like shit when we come down (and even when we're high, the violence this society teaches us may manifest). There's also a large homeless contingent that calls this green space home. Some of that can be lovely - interactions with people who have a broader, more free perspective. But the homeless are treated horrifically by society, and horrible input will always rebound. There's also mental imbalance. Acts of violence both subtle and gross, are all too common.
To make this quandary more acute, this person is the epitome of predatory vulnerability. A fifteenish female.
What would you do if it were your child?
But following her presents problems. If she's moved on from you in her trip state, your continued presence could become a dark thing to her. You've been meaning for a while to get a new jacket. Your current one, which you got for free, has a dour feel to it, as it's of military color and design. I need a colorful jacket with turtles all over it! I decide that should be the new benchmark for any clothing i wear - something that a tripping person would find happy fun.
If you follow her, you could also invite the ire of those who might react unfavorably to a lone man following a female teenager around. There's so much paranoia in this world...justifiably so, sadly.
You decide that she's in a safe place, in the bright light of day with happy folk around. You continue playing your songs.
A few minutes later, you realize she left a purse and phone. There seems to be a wallet inside. Maybe she'll wander back...
An hour later, she hasn't returned. The shadows are lengthening, and you're feeling ill at ease over what's happened. You shoulder her purse, and set off in the direction she went. You spend the next twenty minutes biking every trail in a half-mile radius, talking to strangers. No one's seen her. A couple of teenagers think i should leave her purse where we were, but that just feels like begging for it to be stolen.
She'd told you that her phone was dead. Should you take her purse home, to search for contact information or get the phone working? A little voice inside you whispers "DON'T GET INVOLVED". If something horrible has happened, and you show up saying "Here's her purse!", all sorts of life-shattering ugliness could befall you. Should you find the nearest police station, to drop off the purse and tell what you know? Being rounded up (or just sought) by the police could turn her trip into a nightmare...if not immediately, then in repercussions from her parents or guardians, who may react harshly. Parental hypocrisy can know no bounds.
Home is nearby, so you go there. You plug in her dead phone, but quickly realize a flaw there - you don't have her password. You open the wallet, but there's only cash and a lone credit card. In retrospect, i didn't even look at the card to see her name. I go back to the phone, and get a break - i find a way to make the most recent calls appear without the password. I see a number with which she had multiple contacts, and call. I'm soon talking to someone who seems to be a housemate. She says that the mother can't come to the phone, as her english is broken, but that someone is coming for the purse. A couple hours later, an uncle arrives. We have a warm chat for five minutes. She's in the hospital being treated for dehydration, but his energy tells me she's fine. I hold back from saying that i knew she was tripping, only saying that she seemed "out of it".
It's funny...the fact that she asked for water tells me that on some level maybe she knew exactly what was happening. And her happy attitude makes me think the trip wasn't accidental. If those things were true, WHY was she alone?
How would i act if it happened again? A friend says i should have called the police...which is probably the most pragmatic path toward insuring her safety and my own irreproachability. But that choice feels a bit inhumyn, to say nothing of the bureaucratic disruption it would bring upon everyone involved, plus the increased anger and blame that might fall upon this teen. Should i have tried to find some teenagers willing to adopt her?
Another day in this strange world of alienation and escapism. There are all sorts of darknesses i'll never be able to protect her from, but i hope her trip had a happy come-down...

Sunday, October 14, 2018

"Catching Fire"

(How Cooking Made Us Human)
-by richard wrangham
2009
A fascinating argument for how crucial the development of fire and cooking was for our species. Indeed, much of wrangham's case can be boiled down (ha!) to this - we are the animal who cooks. Mind you, i'm not impressed by "sets us apart" arguments. They're generally self-serving rationalizations, and are almost always (or just always) wrong. But richard's most coherent contribution to our understanding of humyn nature seems to be a de-pantsing of the standoff between meat-eaters and vegetarians. He shows that the caloric intake between those two groups is essentially identical, and that the only genuine dietary divide is between cookers and raw-foodists. With incomplete and occasionally contradictory evidence that's compelling nonetheless, he shows that a raw diet is a ticket to oblivion, and that we're entirely adapted to cooked food, and the much higher caloric intake it provides. He argues that cooking was the gateway to our large brains, as cooking frees up time and energy for intricate, brain-building social activities (indeed, it demands such, as surplus resources and differentiated social roles require much higher social sophistication). Other apes spend hours a day simply chewing, and digesting raw food requires higher amounts of energy. Ergo, cooking is the key to more time and energy. Wrangham also negates the theory that sex is the basis of our mating system (wimyn get resources/protection/status, while men get a guarantee of paternity). He argues that food is what drives mating. In virtually every humyn society, wimyn are the ones who prepare the reliable daily calories without which we would perish. In return, wimyn get a male's protection. He takes some leaps of intuition regarding gender roles and brain growth, but his essential point, that mating is about economics rather than sex, seems unassailable.
Wrangham, a biological anthropologist, also dives into the flaws in our nutritional-labeling system, and how those approximations ignore the higher metabolic costs of raw food. He contributes to the obesity discussion, proposing that our innate preference for high-calorie foods is our downfall when surplus becomes too great. Fat has the lowest digestive cost of any food, so we're particularly susceptible to too much fat. Thin people tend to burn more energy during digestion - there's a chicken/egg relationship there we don't yet understand, but in any case there seems to be a level on which thinness and obesity are both self-maintaining.
He offers fascinating particulars along the way. He says that bread is one of the few cooked foods that chemically reverts to a harder-to-digest state, which explains our preference for fresh (or freshly-toasted) bread. It turns out that's not just taste preference.
Wrangham's writing flows seamlessly, and this book is a necessary addition to our understanding of humyn nature.

Sunday, October 7, 2018

"Doctor Who"

Oh, the curious, cornucopic conglomeration that is DOCTOR WHO. The most enduring TV sci fi franchise (edging out TREK by three years), yet almost entirely unknown to many on this side of the pond. And for good reason - across the incarnations, there is a singular absence of intelligence or vision. It's mainly just the high-spirited skewerings of scary monsters. But if your expectations are low it can be good fun, especially after the 2005 rebirth - still not smart, but they found creative writers who could do dialogue with a vengeance.
The best thing about the franchise is the doctor's presence on the list of action icons who do not (and will not!) use a gun - just a wealth of wit and pluck (plus a good sonic screwdriver), even against alien armadas. Pip pip! Eventually, they found a way to embrace the silliness of the product, yet layer it in a cocoon of sharp dialogue and resonant characterizations. The show takes itself entirely seriously...and yet not at all (no mean feat). The most iconic WHO villains are the daleks, little green aliens encased in clumsy-looking battle turrets who shout "Exterminate! Exterminate!!" Ah, the lighter side of genocide...
There have been thirteen doctors (give or take), all the same character, a trick pulled off by having the doctor be a last-of-his-kind (give or take) alien who lives for centuries and can "reincarnate" into a new version of themself (a self-serving boon for producers faced with an actor ready to "move on", or desirous of a salary bump?). There have also been a parade of "companions", usually humyn (and often, ahem, female and dewy), who travel with the doctor through time and space in a quaint little ship shaped like a police call box, which is larger inside than out. The companions are a lens with which the audience can identify, patriarchal eye candy, and plot device requiring the doctor's exposition...they often however, rose above that (though it must also be mentioned, the very occasional episodes with no companion at all were usually fantastic). The franchise can be divided into three eras: the 60s-70s in which the doctors were faintly sinister, the writing quaint and plodding, and the sexism rampant, the 80s which showed more heart and glimmers of feminist enlightenment, and the 00s-present which are tight and bright and perhaps finally over the sexist hump. If you want to see the show at its occasionally-breathtaking best, view the modern-era christmas episodes.
This review is based on incomplete knowledge...indeed, how could it be otherwise when the BBC in the 60s often threw away episodes once they'd aired? Of the classic doctors, i've seen only a handful of episodes...but enough to offer this guide.
DOCTORS
#1 (1963-66)
William hartnell (THE MOUSE THAT ROARED, HEAVEN'S ABOVE!) is a cranky old oh-so-british fusspot, with fine presence.
#2 (1966-69)
Patrick troughton (TREASURE ISLAND, SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER) is twee and droll, but oh that deadly-slow writing the brits could crank out...
#3 (1970-74)
John pertwee (A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, WORZEL GUMMIDGE) - rock-solid.
#4 (1974-81)
Tom baker (THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD, THE ZANY ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD) is thoroughly earnest and smarter-than-you. Why has history chosen him as the most iconic doctor? The vagaries of chemistry. He's also he longest-tenured doctor, at seven seasons.
#5 (1982-84)
Peter davison (ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL, THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY) is likable, but a bit wooden and vanilla.
#6 (1984-1986)
Colin baker (THE BROTHERS, DOCTORS) - serviceable, yet dull.
#7 (1987-1989)
Sylvester mccoy (DRACULA, THE HOBBIT 1-3) is the first doctor with a puckish glint...yet the writing still feels faintly forced.
#8 (1996)
Paul mcgann (EMPIRE OF THE SUN, ALIEN 3) is brilliant...and wasted on an abortive reboot (with eric roberts and will sasso!). If we're going to acknowledge one-offs, john hurt turned in a gem in 2013, and a couple of peter cushing telefilms supposedly exist too.
#9 (2005)
Christopher eccleston (EXISTENZ, AMELIA), my first doctor...a bias which makes him shine undeservedly bright? Or is he the actor the franchise had been looking for for four decades? Objectively, i know it was the writing which made a quantum leap...yet my golly did they get the right guy. After one stellar season (the shortest-tenured doctor), he moved on, alas.
#10 (2005-10)
David tennant (NATIVITY! 2: DANGER IN THE MANGER, THE SARAH JANE ADVENTURES) slipped in seamlessly and owned the character for three superlative seasons.
#11 (2010-13)
Matt smith (CHRISTOPHER AND HIS KIND, MAPPELTHORPE) toppled the seemingly-insurmountable baker and eccleston. The bar had become ridiculously high, yet he pirouettes over with a twinkle in his eye. Combining frankensteinian facial features with sad puppy eyes, even when he's serious he's so very, very fun. The greatest doctor ever.
#12 (2014-17)
Peter capaldi (LOCAL HERO, DANGEROUS LIAISONS) - um...an old white guy? Not that there's anything wrong with old, but paired with one of the aforementioned dewy females?? A resounding clomp in the wrong direction. In all fairness, he's perfectly lovely, but why didn't he have the integrity to stand up to the producers and say, "I am entirely wrong for this part. Science fiction is supposed to spur social progress, not follow it, and you've been sitting on your asses for decades now"?
#13 (2017-present)
Jodie whitaker (VENUS, GET SANTA) - review pending...but about bloody time.
COMPANIONS
There were often (and sometimes only) subsidiary, part-time companions, which makes it hard to compile a best-of list. Here's my attempt (though my unfamiliarity with the full history may short-change deserving entries):
SARAH JANE SMITH (86 episodes, pertwee/baker, 1973-2010)
Elisabeth sladen (TAKE MY WIFE, THE SARAH JANE ADVENTURES) eventually did fifty-five spin-off episodes as well. Smart and no-nonsense.
LEELA (40 episodes, baker, 1977-78)
Okay, i confess, i've never seen a single louise jameson (EASTENDERS, FACE VALUE) episode. But they might fall into that transcendent "so-bad-it's-brilliant" category. She's a primitive female who wears animal skins and kills with abandon, while the doctor tries to "civilize" her. Patriarchally noxious? Absolutely. But if you're going to be awful, let's be awful all the way, i say.
PERI BROWN (34 episodes, davison/c. baker, 1984-1993)
Ah, nicola bryant (BLACKADDER'S CHRISTMAS CAROL, PARTING SHOTS)...is it possible to rail against sexist eye candyism, yet also enjoy it? Apparently, yes.
ACE (31 episodes, mccoy, 1987-1989)
The final companion of the classic era, sophie aldred (TREE FU TOM, BOB THE BUILDER) puts the spark in spark plug.
ROSE TYLER (35 episodes, eccleston/tennant, 2005-13)
With saucy pluck, billie piper (SECRET DIARY OF A CALL GIRL, PENNY DREADFUL) was the perfect reboot companion...without her, it might have been 1996 all over again.
MARTHA JONES (20 episodes, tennant, 2006-10)
Freema agyeman (SENSE8, TORCHWOOD) is so unself-consciously rock-solid that future generations will entirely miss the significance of her pigmentation.
AMY POND (36 episodes, smith, 2008-13)
Karen gillan (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 1-2, JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE) has delightful chemistry with the doctor...but with her fiance/husband rory, not so much.
CLARA OSWALD (40 episodes, smith/capaldi, 2012-17)
Jenna coleman (VICTORIA, ME BEFORE YOU), probably the only companion perfect for any doctor of any era.
AND DON'T FORGET...
Who else took a spin on the WHO wheel? Why, bill kerr, john cleese, burt kwouk, simon pegg, anthony head, kylie minogue, alex kingston, james corden, michael gambon, meredith vieira, richard e. grant, david warner, diana rigg, warwick davis, and ian mckellan!

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

"Sunflowers"

S.T.H.O.L.T.B.I.D.
(songs to hear one last time before i die)
-Wynton Marsalis Septet
I apologize for any disparaging thing i've ever said about wynton. Maybe i'd always been disinclined to favor him, because he came off as a poseur seeking miles' "greatest trumpeter" mantle. That perception may have zero basis in reality. Still, it always seemed there wasn't much soul beneath his technical wizardry.
I apologize...because of this song he wrote and performed. It's a full expression of music's magic...it lifts and transports you and drops you down, then flies you away again...once or twice you may even find yourself upside-down, laughing. The intricacies of rhythm, the interplay of instruments in his arrangement...just breathtaking. One can only cry at being alive to appreciate this. Thank you, wynton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaGA-lZ7Jlk

Thursday, September 27, 2018

i, wrobot

People born into a culture of alienation, fear, or repression express their humynity in bizarre ways.
Displacement behaviors, misplaced aggression...compensating for inner pains they're only hazily aware of, if at all. You know the words - commitment-phobe, pathological liar, eating disorder, anger issues, control issues, addictive personality, abuser, energy vampire, suicidal, cutter, anhedonist...and on and on and on...
If a dysfunctional culture's institutions of socialization are strong enough, suppressed trauma can stay deeply buried. Fifty years ago, our cultural institutions were much stronger. The growth of freedom since then is a beautiful thing...but also destabilizing and occasionally terrifying.
Men are still taught to direct their aggression outward, and women inward. Of course, women are becoming more like men. There may be good in that; there certainly is bad.
And me?
When i was young, i would have laughed at the notion that i had any "displacement behaviors". I was the happiest person in the world, and you couldn't have told me otherwise. If you'd suggested that i were afraid or insecure, i'd have laughed. If you'd told me i was touch- or sex-deprived, i might have agreed, but assured you that my day was coming. Ah, the power of positive thinking...or rationalization and denial, for you can make a compelling case that my entire life was one walking displacement behavior. An alienation intimacy-deprived identity crisis gone steroidal, melding seamlessly with a savior complex.
Having long pursued the path of self-awareness, it's rare when any new realization startles me. But yesterday i stepped into a biggie.
I've never told someone they're hurting me.
Not in all contexts, mind you! In less intimate relationships, even family, i've made such declarations. But in romance, this society's most intimate arena, i've never told someone they're hurting me.
Astounding.
Mind you, it's not like i've been disconnected from my pain. In many ways, i've been more in touch than most. But that's on an impersonal level...understanding how as a baby and child, this culture of fear (and circumcision) crippled my capacity to trust. Then, from adolescence, how being unfucked and untouched for months or years will damage anyone irreparably. And finally, how an almost total lack of daily, unconditional communal nurturing turns all of us into hollowed-out caricatures of humyn beings.
I've never told a lover she's hurting me.
The reasons are myriad. My pathologically-happy teenage transformation. Then as a young adult, i began a process of collecting ever-larger perspectives that make one realize how most of the things we all get upset about, are nonsense. I became one of the "strong ones", a rock of reliability. I don't wish to disparage those qualities out of hand; they've made me who i am, and there is good in them. Somewhere along my quixotic path, i also began to embody asimov's First Law of Robotics, the one that prohibits allowing any humyn to come to harm. Not that i imagined myself some sort of robot...but when i read those words, they subconsciously affirmed something in me. That trait melded with my feminism, which longed to make right (or make amends) for the thousands of years of incomprehensibly brutal dehumynization of wimyn, and created in me a very giving attitude in matters of the heart. It made me content, even eager, to take more than my share of sacrifice or hurt. Yet i also became (never by choice) more loner than lothario. My singular ways have pushed me far enough from the mainstream, that i've had only three deeply intimate romances. All of which has contributed to me never...
...tell a lover she's hurting me.
And i know that's not even the right way to say it! It's better to say "I'm hurt when such and such blah blah..." Heck, i'm fairly sure i figured that one out even before it made its way into popular consciousness. But i realized this week that when someone's actions are hurting you, it can feel insincere to deflect the blame off them. Even if you realize that blame isn't appropriate or productive, it still can be HARD to not shout, "You're hurting me!!"
It turns out that i, like everyone else, have spent much of my life as little more than a robot, emotionally. If you're not out in the street once a day, screaming your outrage to the moon or dog or postal carrier, then part of you isn't quite alive.
You're hurting me!
Not you, reader. Like everyone, you're doing your best.
I wish i could tell you that's enough.
But if we're going to save this playful, loving species of ours, we're all probably going to have to start doing better than our best.
That's not unrealistic, is it?
I love you all.

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

"The Humans Who Went Extinct"

(Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived)
-by clive finlayson
2009
How would you like to meet a humynoid species bigger-brained, sturdier of build, and more enduring than our own?
Yikes!
Say hello, neanderthals.
Clive is a professor, museum director, and evolutionary ecologist, and the greatest accomplishment of his wonderful book is deflating a goodly portion of humyn arrogance. We have long fancied ourselves the pinnacle of life, more awesome than any creature ever, an unstoppable force of nature. Even when we talk about the unfolding planetary ecological apocalypse we've caused, there's an unspoken element of perverse pride for many. Come on, you know it's true.
We be the baddest of the bad, dad?
Well, no. Oh to be sure, we dominate this planet like no species ever before, but the image of us as irresistible conquistadors from time immemorial is horse hockey, sayeth clive. He rolls out a compelling case, painting a picture of primate prehistory which is far less monolithic and inevitable than the one to which we cling. And the archaeological/ecological evidence supports him. He shows a world in which many humynoid species and sub-species lived concurrently...and all too often died out, not because they weren't successful, but sometimes because they were too successful, such that they couldn't survive the immense changes of the past hundred thousand years, as ice ages came and went. He shows us how technologies and art arose, then died out, then arose again (and again and again?), with neanderthals, proto-ancestors, and ancestors not conquering each other, but probably just copying each other. We eradicated the neanderthals? Not bloody likely. And we now have proof that other hominids survived as recently as four thousand years ago. The 300,000 years that neanderthals roamed makes our 100,000 a bit puny...
Much of this is about the difference between conservatives and innovators. Conservatives are beautifully adapted, while innovators live on the edge, in a more scrambling, tenuous existence. But even with that, there's nothing inevitable about innovators surviving when you understand how grand ecological change can be. It happened to be us who survived, but it could have gone any one of a thousand other ways (including of course, no primate survival at all). Clive embraces the theory that our brain growth is an offshoot of the complicated social behaviors needed for group hunting. Much of his argument focuses on our development as meat-eaters...perhaps too much so, for as he admits, meat-eating habits survive in the archaeological record far more profusely than other behaviors. Most of the later middle chapters get bogged down in detail, so if your patience wanes, reading the first few chapters and the last will provide all the big-picture understanding you might want.
A fantastic, necessary read.

Friday, September 7, 2018

termiNation

I never expected i'd review the Terminator franchise, as the sequels seemed resolutely determined to break no new ground. And each iteration goes one step further in exposing the flaw at the heart of the franchise - the concept that humanity is "like, totally special and soooooo worth saving", a conceit that's embarrassing coming out of the mouth of anyone over fourteen. But having finally seen the TV series, a change of mind is merited.
THE TERMINATOR (1984)
A frankensteinian vision that taps into our paranoia over the potential for our genius creations to outsmart and destroy us, the film is a stunning synthesis of acting, dialogue, and visuals that grasp you from the first second and never let go. As close to cinematic perfection as one can expect.
TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)
Writer/director james cameron, schwarzenegger, and linda hamilton (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, HILL STREET BLUES) return. This one vies for a top-five spot on the list of greatest sequels ever...which is all the more amazing, as the plot is largely a recycle of the original. This should have been the franchise's "Return of the Jedi"...but the brilliance is again unrelenting, and it touches the heartstrings better than the original.
TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003)
Great acting (yay, claire danes!), competent writing, and dandy visuals, but...for what?
TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES (2008-2009)
This one had failure written all over it. How do you move a franchise this profoundly visual to the small screen? Why even try?? Yet, with episodes on PTSD and a terminator's befriending a wheelchair-bound library aide, this one goes where no other sequel has gone - new ground. One or two clunkers aside, it is stupefying that it got cancelled. Well done, lena headey (GAME OF THRONES), summer glau (FIREFLY), and thomas dekker (HEROES).
TERMINATOR SALVATION (2009)
So meandering, i look at the trailer and swear i've never seen the film, even though i KNOW i have. Yes mr. bale, you should have played the terminator.
TERMINATOR GENESYS (2015)
Truly not bad. It might have even been good, had they not cast a piece of wood as kyle reese. I cried for emilia clarke (GAME OF THRONES, ME BEFORE YOU), having to act off this meathead-lite.
TERMINATOR 6 (2019)
Original star hamilton (the series "...was perfect with two films...but there will always be those who will try to milk the cow") is slated to return! Moo tu, linda?

Sunday, September 2, 2018

everything's comin' up neurosis

I've been awash in mental illness the past two years.
Not my own (though i have been touched by minor depression and PTSD).
No, i've been coping with the mental illness of others...a parade of close associations with very unbalanced folk . Moreso than at any time in my life, by far.
But when talking about mental illness, i have a different understanding. In this culture of fear, alienation, and touch deprivation, mental illness is the norm. You never have, and never will, meet a humyn untouched by some form of depression. Every one of us is, to some degree, a sociopath. Even the medical/psychiatric establishment fails to grasp the fullness of this. I was recently reading a study about how stress affects sleep patterns. The baseline comparisons assume the existence of sleepers who experience no abnormal levels of stress.
I assure you, such people are mythological as unicorns.
Science's inability to grasp the fullness of this means that most of our clinical understandings of "normal" humyn behavior are a little (or a lot) off. We are all damaged...but most of us manage to rationalize or deny it, for what other choice is there?
Many, however, stumble over that line where we're able to control or hide how broken we are. And when we slip, we often go FAR.
It started with a tree-trimming client, who lived alone. I worked for her several days a week for a couple of years, eventually doing all sorts of handiwork. I became her largest source of humyn contact, something we all need to keep us sane...but this culture makes us all so damaged and needy, that the very thing we require to live (love and unconditional support) is corrupted. As a result, the obvious cure for loneliness can be a pill as poisonous as staying alone. In our last year, i became more and more aware of a bipolar disorder in her. There were weeks when she was a joy to be around, but other times a darkness would descend. She would become paranoid and condemning. Some days, i knew that nothing i'd do would be right. I abided it, because i knew how much less caring and understanding my replacement might be...but those of you who have known such people, will probably understand what i mean when i talk of stomach-hollowing stress.
Then i had an almost-romance with a womyn who had PTSD (and was well-aware of it). Her mother, sister, and the love of her life (and his replacement) had all died within a few years of each other. Even though she was aware of her condition, she couldn't control it, of course. Fortunately (or tragically?) i held back from consummating our intimacy. I feared her demons, and knew we didn't have deep compatibility. Yet even with that, she became unhinged and wrathful, so much that i feared she might try to hurt me, or worse. One night there was a fire across the canal, and i awoke with a nightmare, fearing she had set my home ablaze.
After that, my first (temporary) home in CA was with an obsessive/compulsive, bipolar live-in landlord. The first condition can be tolerable or even amusing, but in conjunction with the second, it's a horror show. You quickly learn that it's not the outbursts that kill you, it's the holding one's breath, knowing an outburst could come any moment. I lived like that for three months, in a shared situation where i couldn't even retreat to the privacy of my own room. I wanted to stay in touch with him after i got out, to be a support and friend...but my own wounds are too raw, my walls too thin.
A month after i arrived in San Francisco, i became entangled with an open mic MC who has anger issues, compounded by paranoia. I became a demon to him, someone who was perhaps responsible for everything that was wrong in his life. The most irrational hatred could pour out of him...and again, i wanted to be a support and friend, because i understand what he's going through far better than most, and underneath it he's brilliant and well-meaning. But i couldn't escape the terror over what he might be capable of, and how his outbursts shredded me, so my only goal became to extricate myself with my life intact. Hopefully, i've done so.
My point in sharing all this isn't "boo-hoo for me". My point is that these people are US...and though most of us may fancy that there's a huge gulf between such obviously damaged people and ourselves, i assure you that's not the case. With just a few unexpected turns, you could find your life spinning into darknesses you can neither comprehend nor control. Or maybe NOT you personally! Maybe your own walls are so impenetrable that you'll never fall prey to such "weakness" (i was like that for a long time myself). But if that's the case, i submit that you have no idea what dehumynizing price you've paid to stay "healthy".
We're all sick in one way or another. What else could we be? We're products of a sick society.
A century or two from now (on the unlikely chance that humyns are still around), we may finally understand how we existed so cut off from the love and security we need to live.
Keep pushing toward that day.
In the meantime, do your best to fill everyone around you with forgiveness and love.
Especially yourself.
I love you all.

Sunday, August 26, 2018

"Amusing Ourselves to Death"

(Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)
-by neil postman
1985
In the first lincoln/douglas debate, abe had ninety minutes to respond to douglas's hour-long opening speech. Then stephen got to speak again. Any points they made were specific, contextualized, and comprehensive. By their standards, the event was short; an earlier debate had lasted seven hours. Any chance politics might return to that format?
Postman's book, about the degradation of public discourse in the television age, is not exactly what you might expect. Neil's point is not that cheesy sitcoms and mindless dramas are sucking our brains out, but rather that in an age when television has become the essential conduit of our interaction with the world, everything becomes entertainment. TV has to look good for ninety seconds, while leaving our minds clear for the next segment. It's not junk TV that's killing us, it's news programs, Sesame Street, and commercials. It's Jeopardy (and its moron cousin, Trivial Pursuit). It's religious programs - at least in the past, their leaders were people of deep study and earnest intent. Now, they're teflon talking heads angling for a guest spot on SNL. Have you heard of the Dunkers? Their one commandment, had they been immodest enough to declare it, would have been "Thou shalt not print thy principles, lest thee be entrapped by them". Gee, i wonder why they died out?
Postman analyzes the history of mass communication, to deconstruct how each revolution changed not only how we disseminate information, but how we think. The telegraph laid the foundation for our all-encompassing "what's next?" mindset.
Neil compares the dystopian visions of orwell and huxley, and argues that "Brave New World" was much more prescient for a species moving into the "information age" (a conclusion huxley himself came to in "Brave New World Revisited").
A point neil might make were he around today - is it possible that the much-lamented decline of America's schools is not simply about budgetary neglect or the world catching up, but also the inevitable fruits of America's charge into the television age? Are we first in dumbing ourselves down?
And what would neil make of the "golden" era of reality television? Oy.
I'm almost embarrassed it took me this long to get around to reading this book, even with roger waters' subtle exhortation. It's scathing, and deserving of a spot on any list of books every thinking humyn must read.

Sunday, August 12, 2018

In the Meadow

(I was cleaning out old files yesterday, and came across this piece i wrote in my twenties, as an attempt to deal with the loss of the first real romance of my life. It's pure navel-gazing, and overwritten - nothing you need read, unless you're patient. I've resisted the temptation to edit. It's filled with alienation and the nigh-impossibility of rising above selfishness in this society, but there's also a sweetness in my quixotic younger self...and even back then my dedication to nakedness, no matter how unflattering, was apparent. And i set it in a meadow! Perhaps when i named this site, i was subconsciously tapping this memory? I also love how i made one of my alter-egos female - pretty radical for a product of a culture of chauvinist machismo. The characters are classic freudian archetypes - the intellect, the unrestrained impulsive, and "me" in the middle. I've risen above most of the shallowness that tormented me here, but that ticket leads nowhere when everyone else is still playing the objectification game. I'm at least much more forgiving of myself now...the present "me" understands how dysfunctional our society is, especially over anything to do with romance or sex. This younger me still believed there was some way to to get it "right". It's easy to read this and think the relationship must have been a crashing failure, but it wasn't...we loved each other very well. Reading this was painful. Such sadness and longing...)

IN THE MEADOW
-a drama by rob shineyoung, 1997
CHARACTERS
William Fudd
Worthington Freely
Wonker Fangdripper

(a meadow)
Wonker: (to William) What the hell are you moonin' about?
Worthington: Let him be, let him be.
Wonker: He's pissin' me off, he's draggin' me down.
Worthington: So maybe he is.
Wonker: Fucking dumbass. Fuck this, let's party.
Worthington: So party.
Wonker: Ahh, don't yank my fuckin' chain, you lousy blastopore. Ain't much of a party with Dopey sittin' over there. (to William) Hey, mope-ass, how 'bout I pop you in the head a few times, will that pry your head out of your ass, or the world's ass, or whatever-the-fuck-her-name-is ass?
William: I don't know.
Worthington: Wonk, let it be. Maybe you start popping him in the head, and maybe he gets up and forgets. Maybe he joins that tango that you're about to weave, because he loves you, and he loves being that dance. And then what? The dance stops, and he ends up exactly where he is. And why so? Because you took him there once already today, and what did it accomplish? It brought him right back where he was. So let him be there. It's where he is.
Wonker: Ahh, don't even try to sell any end/means justification crap. The very premise your point is built upon, your idea that the dance must begin and end, shows that at best you compartmentalize the dance, and that at worst you view it as some sort of "other", maybe real, but definitely not essentially you. You wet yourself at the idea that the dance may be the only real there is. Well, the dance didn't put him where he is, and it for sure ain't looking for any blessings from a pinhead like you!
Worthington: I would not presume to give it one. I want the dance, my respect...my desire for it grows.
Wonker: Bullshit. You fear it.
Worthington: How can you say that?
Wonker: You may take a hundred thousand steps in a desert toward a distant ocean. But unless you take the step that drops you into that ocean, you will always and ever be firmly in your desert.
Worthington: Wonk, you're a ball buster.
Wonker: Yeah. Ain't it a beautiful thing?
Worthington: All I'm saying is that if he is resisting leaving where he is, then maybe that's all the reason we need to let him be there.
William: Hi, guys.
Wonker: It speaks!
William: Feeling frisky today, Wonk?
Wonker: You bet yer sweet ass, bwana.
William: Wonk, Buddy? I gotta ask, because I'm probably just imagining things here. It sounded an awful lot like there was a voice in this meadow discussing "compartmentalizing" and "premises".
Wonker: Ahh, bite me, bwana. I been hanging out with a bunch of pinhead wankers.
William: Wonker and the Wankers. Wasn't that an early rhythm and blues group?
Worthington: Jazz quintet, I believe.
Wonker: Ahh, bite me, you wankers.
Worthington: I was going to mention it myself, but I was just so damn proud.
Wonker: Well then, William, he'll be even more proud that I...no, I'll not say it now, as it might be interpreted as a sour grapes of some sort, as though you little pinheads might actually be capable of getting under my skin.
Worthington: I can hardly wait. (pause)
William: Okay, lets talk about pregnant pauses. Raise your hand if you love em'. That's what I thought.
Wonker: Well, the pause to get pregnant is rather invigorating... (pause)
William: Okay, there it is again!
Worthington: William, who talks? One who is not at peace with their thoughts? We're all aware of it, we all feel it, but the unrest is something that you bring here. Why?
William: I am sad.
Wonker: Oh, a breakthrough.
Worthington: What did you think? That she would walk right in, and announce that henceforth all her mail was being forwarded here?
William: No...I didn't think that.
Worthington: What, then?
William: I didn't expect this feeling of wondering if it all was a lie. Or of being a "bad guy" when all I'm doing is busting my ass trying to care for her.
Worthington: Oh, you're so fucking noble. So you're sad because you think she's running away from everything you thought you ever had in common, that she never believed any of that stuff in the first place? You want to talk about lies? Okay, let's talk. Let's talk about the things you never told her, right from the very beginning, Mr. "if-you-don't-reveal-your-deepest-thoughts-you-haven't-got-anything". Let's talk about these things. Do you remember when you met, how you had been wanting for awhile to find a lover or friend to make out your will with? Because doing so would be such a sweet opportunity for someone to learn about you, and about things and people that are important to you? Whatever happened to that? She was there, and you thought about it a few times, but never moved on it.
William: The right time never came up.
Worthington: Excuse me, how many months did you spend together? You wouldn't be bullshitting me, would you, William? Was it maybe because deep inside you were holding out for someone better?
William: I...maybe.
Worthington: Uh-huh. What about the stories, what about William Fudd the storyteller? The poems and stories that have long been such an important part of your life. Hadn't you longed for a lover to tell whispered tales to in quiet moments?
William: I...often thought about it, and did some of those things a few times, but it was her. I never really felt that she was as excited about listening to such things as I was in telling them. So I told myself that your lover doesn't have to respond to all of your passions just as you do, and I moved on. Which is healthy!
Worthington: Quite right, but not the issue at all. The issue is lies, and the truth is that you never really told her just how disappointed you were that the two of you did not share that aspect of your life more. Even if you didn't love her the less for that disappointment-
William: Okay, you're right.
Worthington: Yes, perhaps I am. What else, William?
Wonker: Massages, good Worthington, massages.
Worthington: Oh my yes, what about those? How can you possibly explain that in all the time you were together, you never showed her your passion, your skill in the beauty of giving to another through massage, anywhere even remotely near it's fullest expression? A few measly rubs here and there, when your hands and arms are the contact point of a tool that has lovingly taken many on hour-plus journeys to undreamt-of planes of relaxation and body awareness? How did that possibly happen, or rather not happen? Did she not deserve it? Did she not want it?
William: To this day, I'm really not sure.
Wonker: Is that a cop-out I smell?
William: It was the ticklish thing, at first. She was so ticklish. And the feet thing. It was hard to relate to someone who wasn't comfortable with being touched. And her ass, she seemed truly unhappy with it. She never seemed comfortable with all of her body, and that was hard to relate to. I decided that maybe she just needed time, to get more comfortable with herself.
Worthington: But time went by, and...nothing?
William: I don't know...I lost...
Worthington: What?
Wonker: What he's trying so hard not to say is that she didn't do it for him, that she didn't inspire the necessary passion.
William: No, that's not true...I would have been ready at many a point, but...
Worthington: But what, she "lost out" because she never demanded your best? For someone who claims to be as giving as you, that seems a strange thing to say.
William: I know. The whole thing just seemed to sit there, and I'm not quite sure why.
Wonker: Cop-out!
Worthington: Well, the issue here is lies, and whatever the reasons, the fact that it "just sat there" doesn't seem quite in synch with full disclosure, does it?
William: No.
Worthington: Alright, then, what else?
Wonker: Ooh, get to the sex.
Worthington: Oh yes. One of my favorite lies of yours, William. I love that charming little story you tell about how the sex after the breakup was just bad, an insult to a beautiful act. Well, you always neglect to mention that the selling sex short went back a little further than that. Like, to the beginning, basically? You've got your little "sex is about communication" trumpet, but...didn't you kind of gloss over the oral sex part, her pleasure a little, and yours a lot? You were curious about what more you could do for her, ways to make oral sex more than just fun foreplay. It occasionally was, but that was a bit accidental, wasn't it? And then what about yours? There you had a sweet, eager lover on your hands, and she was trying to figure out why her efforts took so long to get you off (the few times that they did), and why it could have taken gosh knows how much longer if you hadn't finally made a real effort to reach that peak. What helpful hints or suggestions did you give? You didn't understand the reasons yourself, but you gave her damn little to work with. You solved that question by not asking for it, and focusing on her pleasure more. Which may give you a point or two for generosity, but so much for communication and two-way streets, right? Alright, what else. I also loved how you never quite told her how really mystified you were with how quickly you often came, in intercourse with her. And, as a result, the two of you never really explored why that was, as much as you could have, right? Oh, you told her about your liking to be underneath, but she simply didn't like it so much that way. And so the two of you avoided that position, which you didn't mind so much, again because you were a giver, but perhaps to a fault, eh? And, Mr. great sexual communicator, since you yourself have said that avoiding the truth is just as destructive as any outright lie, you were guilty of cheapening your sexual relationship pretty much from the start, correct?
William: There is truth in what you say. But if I may say so...I had been learning to enter a sexual relationship with the attitude "Tell me...tell me what, where, how long, what not, why, how many...teach me what you like." And then she comes along, and her answer to these questions is "I really have no idea." That kind of throws my game plan out the window, you know? So maybe it can be understood if I focused on the things that somehow, amazingly, seemed to actually be successful, and kind of shoved other things aside.
Worthington: Your point is taken. But for a person who has almost no frame of reference for the feelings and sensations she is experiencing, wouldn't that make full communication more, not less, important?
William: Your point is taken.
Worthington: And there's more to it than your explanation gives, more going on that you kept to yourself. Wasn't there? Somehow, on some level, you seemed to be willing to hold back, to keep your very best from the sex you shared. Why? Wasn't she worth it, weren't both of you worth it?
Wonker: That's it, Bubba. He was saving his best for someone who really got his rocks off.
William: Now wait, now just...slow down.
Wonker: No bullshit, buddy, no cop-out.
William: If you want a simple answer-
Wonker: Yes.
William: Look, the element of keeping it simple, focusing on the things that did seem to be working, some of that's legitimate. Not only was she nearly a complete stranger to what we were sharing, but so much of what she had experienced was just wrong and bad, in ways that people should never have to deal with. There was so much to overcome, such a long way to go.
Worthington: And you were the one who was going to descend from heaven, and lead this poor, lost sheep to your promised land.
William: To her land. I never claimed to have all the answers. I always wanted to learn from her as well.
Worthington: Well, that's very nice, and possibly true, but are you going to say that you didn't have the attitude of saving her, of lifting her out of her emotional and physical wasteland with your healing love?
William: Yes, in a way, but I needed saving, too, a shelter of love in this world.
Worthington: The same kind of saving she needed?
William: No.
Worthington: Then you've got to admit to an essential inequality in your relationship right from the very start.
William: Yes.
Wonker: And so, St. William, you're going to pretend to be perplexed that she walks away from a relationship which was founded on inequality?
William: An inequality which was dictated by the circumstances, and could even out with growth over time.
Worthington: But which was there! Why are you fighting it? What's more, it didn't even out, because growth does not flourish amidst lies.
William: No, in the time we had, it didn't.
Worthington: You like the lost ones, don't you, William. Do you fear the ones that aren't lost?
William: That's not fair.
Worthington: I withdraw it. And I wait. For that which is unsaid. Is it your own shallowness you fear?
Wonker: Well, I'm glad somebody finally said it! For cryin' out loud, William, her body just didn't do it for you!
William: That's not true! Her body did plenty for me.
Worthington: So it did, William. Your love for her, your regard for all that she was, strong these were. And truly, never did you fake the desire for union with her. But acknowledge things for what they are.
Wonker: And acknowledge her ass for what it ain't.
William: But...dammit, that started with her. I wanted to love her ass, but she was all "hands off" and "let's just pretend it's not there". You try to get excited about an ass that you suspect the owner would probably trade in, in a heartbeat. Anyway, it didn't become so much a turnoff for me, more of a non-thing.
Worthington: Which is a little true, but also not, because you know that your passion demands loving all of that which you embrace.
Wonker: Including the area of the body from the hips to the knees, Willy. You sure didn't need any prompting from her to be turned off there, did you? Cellulite, anyone? Willy, have you let go yet of that silly idea of yours that you can love and desire someone purely on the basis of the person inside?
William: The idea may have been rocked a bit by experience, but it's not dead.
Wonker: Well, air your sins, buddy boy. Tell us about the night of that party.
Worthington: The six of you kids, having fun at your friend's place. The games. "I can make you smile." The sleepover.
William: It was the first time, the first time I really took notice of the shape that she was, or rather wasn't in. And found that I was turned off by it. When we carried her through the hall, I looked down and noticed that she wasn't just a little soft, she also had a little extra weight hangin' around. Not of the muscle variety, y'know? Of course, it probably didn't help that she was drunk. That's never been real attractive. And at any particular moment when you find a lover unattractive, there's almost always more to it than the primary, obvious reason. I defy either one of you to listen me in the ear and tell me that's not true. Anyway, she was laughing as we carried her, and I felt guilty to be having these thoughts. She had made my love and acceptance important in her life, and here she was this laughing, drunken girl, basically clueless to these thoughts of mine which would have trampled her security and happiness. Yes, I felt guilty.
Wonker: And this from the one who says he's "got no time for guilt", that "life's too short" for it.
Worthington: Even if there was more to your unattraction reaction, William, the issue here is sex.
Wonker: And your fact, William, is that then, just as right now, the prospect of bringing down a sexual earthquake, or a sexual infinity of tranquility, with a lithe woman, one like yourself, one whose spirit exults in the passion of raw physicality, one whose muscles tremble and respond like yours, one whose body explodes, runs, pushes, and persists like yours, this prospect arouses your passion and inspiration in ways that the body you carried down that hallway never possibly could. Even now, these mere words I speak have stirred something in you.
William: Yeah, a little.
Worthington: Don't feel bad, buddy. Hell, I'm a little turned on.
Wonker: So tell me that sharing love with the type of woman I've just described wouldn't add an intensity to your lovemaking that was never there with her. You won't, because you can't.
William: I reject the notion that I could never reach my full sexual intensity with a woman who didn't fit the description you've given. I reject it. I...but as for her...and remembering that these things you mention are only a small part of the complexity that is a sexual love relationship...as for her, you are right. She knew some of the truth of what you speak, but not all. All right, any other lies?
Worthington: How about...and this is possibly the most insidious of all your behaviors with her...how about the fact that you were never as proud of your relationship with her as you maybe let her think you were. Certain things there were that she probably always sensed were not there, things that would have opened her up to you in ways that could have been wondrous to behold. The picture of her that never appeared by your nightstand?
William: Nightstands.
Worthington: Nightstands. The eagerness to show her off, to have her meet all of your friends, where was that? Throwing her on the phone with your faraway friends she couldn't meet? And when you were out with her in the world, with her friends or your friends or strangers, where was the talking up of how beautiful a person and lover she was?
William: Stop. Up until now, the truth has been strong in your words, but you have just dived into an ocean of grey, and the leap that you took to get there was so huge that the shore is but a distant memory. Not once, never once did I ever tell her that she was the center of my life, the thing that completes me, or any other type of ridiculous thing like that. Never once did I ever tell her that I wanted these things, either. And Vishnu, you make it seem as though she were some dirty little secret of mine!
Worthington: I can only strive to be as good a friend for you, William Fudd, as in truth you do tirelessly strive to be for me. I do not claim that you were not proud of her, nor do I claim that you never showed to others the pride you had in her. Above all, never would I seek to deny the strong love, the true caring you had and still have for her. I, too, remember the time just a few months ago when you told Jude, one of the most precious people in your life, that part of the change Jude was noticing in you was due to the fact that, for the first time in your life, you had been part of a sexual love relationship that was healthy, caring, and mutually healing on deep levels. But the fact that this lover of yours was not there to meet Jude, tell me that was not, on some level, in some way, liberating. Again, William, this is simply about lies. And just as you would do for me, I can do no less for you than to tell you simply to smell me in the nose, as you might say, and tell me that "dirty little secret" did not in some way, no matter how small, describe a part of the feeling you had for her. (William is silent) Wonker! Where've you been?
Wonker: Oh, I just...went out and had it all.
Worthington: Did you?
William: Is there any left?
Wonker: Oh yeah.
William: Anything else?
Wonker: I met your friend.
William: You met her?
Wonker: Oh yeah. She's sure...um...well, she's...she's kind of contradictory, y'know? I mean, kind of cute, but kind of contradictory.
William: I know. Most people are, you know.
Wonker: Yeah. I knew there was a reason I was glad I wasn't one of them.
Worthington: So, what were your other complaints about her? Oh yes, you feel unjustly vilified in your efforts to care about her. Really though, William, I would think you might be very glad to be vilified in her nostrils. If your protests are valid, about her choosing fear over love, and whatnot, then I would think you would at least be honored that she cares enough to vilify you. If she's got the passion to vilify you, it could either mean that there might be a truth in your words that she would rather ignore, or that at the very least, she does care about you. In either case, you or the things you stand for are a real part of her life, something that no amount of vilification will ever take away.
William: Worthington, you say the sweetest things.
Worthington: Anything else bothering you?
William: Not much.
Wonker: (offstage) Hey, guys! I see her! Here she comes, Willy! Boy, does she look happy...oh, ah, well, it's actually not her. Just a U.F.O., or a weather balloon, or somethin'. Sorry, little buddy, false alarm! My bad!
William: Wonker, your momma wears combat boots.
Wonker: Yeah, I hear she's one rip-roaring, sheet-burning fuck, too! What's your point?
William: There are things I wish I could say to her.
Worthington: To Wonker's mother?
William: Like when she would say that a friend's job is to be supportive, and understanding, and that I was failing her as a "friend", I would say that a friend is also one who understands when the person they love is messing up, and doesn't just sit by quietly. At times, I am still literally stunned by some of what she's done. Her insistence that I am never to be allowed to meet this new lover she's got...is so atrociously childish, so unbelievably third grade, that I somehow am still waiting for the punch line which has never come. I begin to wonder if he even exists. There were moments in our relationship that reached into me deeply...moments of connection when she truly seemed to start to understand some of who I was, and so much more than that, that she saw some of these parts of me as being beautiful, as being worth struggling for...and now, her actions seem to scream "I was never actually too damn impressed with these things that you were...it was fun to pretend that I was, but that doesn't interest me anymore."
Worthington: Are you sure that you're not just incensed that she didn't become your apostle of "St. William's Truth", adoringly giving up her spirit and thirstful young body to the altar of your benevolent brilliance?
William: You know, that's just like you, to take a point I am about to make, and turn it right back onto me. I did not want to own her-
Worthington: Didn't you? If she had, bit by bit, become more like you, embracing with passion all of your mental, emotional, physical, sexual, psychological, and whatever views you have, you would have rejected her?
William: I'll admit that, on a deep level that most of us are only dimly aware of, we do spend our lives in a largely unfulfilled searching of the world, yearning to find ourselves in something or someone else. And if she had embraced my essences, made them hers, not because they were my ideas, but rather because she believed in the ideas themselves, I'll admit that the attraction would be powerful. But she seems to be taking the search for commonality too far, her new beliefs seem so suddenly to be so far from who she seemed to be. I know that we all must search, and try different things, to answer or raise questions about ourselves, but her changes are so sudden that it seems her search does not concern other people at all, that all she searches for is a mirror to gaze into, to admire her reflection, and now she's found a replacement mirror, one that is easier and less challenging.
Worthington: And you are saddened because you know that some of what you say is mere speculation, because she has shut you out.
William: Yes. It seems that, once upon a time when she sought my love, that it must have been something else she wanted. Because my caring for her is as strong today as ever it was, but it seems now that her caring for me was merely contingent on our being lovers, an "I'll love you if"-type of love.
Worthington: Love given, but at a price; again, a person stands before the twin paths of love and fear, and fear is embraced.
Wonker: What's fear?
William: Nothing, Wonk. Not a thing, buddy.
Worthington: You've been rather quiet, Wonker. Any thoughts?
Wonker: What, are you two still yadda-yaddaing about all that mopey stuff?
Worthington: Yes. Any other thoughts for William?
Wonker: Oh, I've got something for William, but it's certainly not a thought.
William: Am I good enough for it?
Wonker: You show some potential. Oh, and Worthington, why you fail in any attempt to understand the dance, is that you insist on understanding the dance as an "it". Understanding will only come when you realize that the dance will never be an “it”. The dance, my friend, is you.
Worthington: I was wondering when you'd get around to that.
Wonker: And William?
William: Yes?
Wonker: Words bore me just now, but I'll toss out just a little bit more. Wouldn't it actually be a bit ridiculous to be surprised if your friend starts acting like a typical eighteen-year old American female? I mean, that's what she is, right?
Worthington: Actually, Wonk, somebody told me she was nineteen.
Wonker: Close enough. Near as I can recall, the peak maturity level that the average American female reaches is about eighteen years old, anyway, right?
Worthington: Well, the divorce rate is pretty high these days, which has boosted that maturity level a bit, but you're still basically right.
Wonker: So. And, if Freely here will recall some earlier advice, then Freely will most certainly have to back me up here. If, William, this is where your friend is at just now, then make your point, which you have, and let her be there.
Worthington: What's that deafening noise? The sound of peaceful thoughts?
William: What do you say we get out of here, guys?
Wonker: A primo idea. What the hell is this place, anyway?
William: It's sort of a poetic image, I guess.
Wonker: Well that's precious. Nothing against poetic images, but what do you say we head some place a little more...
Worthington: Intense, Wonker?
Wonker: You know it, Bubba. (Wonker and Worthington head off) Well, Fudd?
William: I'll be right by your side in a couple of minutes.
Wonker: We'll be waiting.
Worthington: We'll be easy to find. She'll be the one chewing my head off, probably. Wonk, is your last name really Fangdripper?
Wonker: In this poetic image, I guess so. But don't worry, Freely old boy. Where we're headed, it probably won't be nearly so tame.
Worthington: I can hardly wait. (They go. William remains, examining this place. He reaches out with goodbye and love. He goes.)

Sunday, August 5, 2018

naked nurse 20

SOOTHING OUR SOCIAL/SEXUAL/SPIRITUAL STRIFE

Dear naked nurse,
Any tips for new lovers?
-smitten in Smyrna

Lovers are made of head, heart, and hormone (though head and "heart" are physiologically non-discrete, they FEEL different). In loving, all that matters is heart and hormone! By the time we're adults, our heads are pretty much useless - broken, neurotic, selfish messes. Nothing good will arise, when heads enter the loving bed.
When a new lover enters our life, we heap all our baggage and expectations upon them. Half of that is inevitable - we don't control our baggage, it controls us. With decades of spiritual practice, you may learn to diminish (or not project) said baggage...but that's no use to your new lover today.
Expectations are all you control...which almost no one does.
All of the aforementioned will make your loving better, though not necessarily your living. On that, it might have the opposite effect.
unburdened ungulations,
the naked nurse

Send queries to nakednursing@yahoo.com!

Thursday, July 26, 2018

"Let Em' In"

I've added mccartney's "Let 'Em In" to my ex-Beatle medley, and replaced huge sections of lyric, making it socially relevant. I like to think this is how the song might have turned out had paul and john still been writing together in the 70s...

Single mommies, dirty commies
The non-binary, the Tea Party
The convicts and the kissin' cousins
Open the door, let 'em in

The refugees and the hemp trees
The pacifists and the homeless
The veterans and the Vatican
Open the door, let 'em in

The KKK, the WNBA
Pedophiles, crocodiles
CEOs, jews and muslims
Open the door, let 'em in

Sunday, July 22, 2018

thievery

Have i been a victim of theft?
More than i can ever say. That applies to us all, though. Every day of my life, my security, my sexuality, my very humynity have been stolen right out from under my nose. Gone.
In the interpersonal/material picture, not so much. Someone once pickpocketed my wallet. A landlord stole my security deposit. A real estate agent stole my refund.
Nowhere is our culture more purely hypocritical than when it comes to stealing. On the surface we condemn it, but then we set up our institutions so that theft is tolerated, encouraged, even lauded. Capitalism is all about maximizing your pile at the expense of someone else's. Corners are cut, the system is worked, "grey" areas abound, and short-sighted self-absorption reigns. In the big picture, what HASN'T humynity stolen from each other, from other societies, or other species? A corrupt system produces corrupt individuals. End of story.
My reaction to all this has been pretty quixotic. Even in my earliest memories, the thought of stealing was anathema. Not that i was revolted, but i just knew that such behavior had nothing to do with me. Ah, the purity of youthful naivete. As an adult, i've had to (at least marginally) play the games, so of course i've stolen other people's dignity. I've done my best to avoid that, but in the big picture, who am i kidding?
My idealistic tendencies were no doubt enforced by the cultural cesspool that i perceived as a child. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark, and rising above it seemed the only option. Not that this was a conscious decision, it just unfolded over time.
Which is why my first theft was utterly unforgettable.
I was nine when Star Wars came out. My action figures were the pride of my materialistic life, and i took great care of them. I mean, i was still a kid, i PLAYED with them - i wasn't OC, and it never would have occurred to me to keep them "in the box", so i had to replace my original luke, and i wore the silver off blue snaggletooth's boots. But i played gently, and always kept each figure with its correct accessories.
Which is why i was mortified when, at the age of ten, i...lost princess leia's gun. I had a brown/tan/black shag carpet, which may have been the culprit. I gently agonized over the loss.
Then one day, my mom took me to a department store. I was wandering the Star Wars aisle when i saw it...
Someone had ripped open a princess leia box, and stolen the figure. But that rank (or nervous) amateur had left...the gun! There it was, taped to the dangling, clear plastic case. My eyes boggled (at least internally).
It was the first moral crisis of my life.
I knew that at that point, nobody would care about the gun. The damage had been done, and a 1.5cm piece of plastic had no value to the store.
But still, i was pondering....THEFT.
I thought about my tragically incomplete figure. Having my own money to replace lost items was still years away. I thought and thought, and my hand reached out. I touched the box, glancing all around.
I pocketed the gun, and made my getaway.
In the aftermath, i was not wracked with guilt. But did the experience reinforce the notion of never wanting to steal? Probably.
So i didn't...for another twenty years.
I was a working actor on Sanibel Island. The theater, the company, the plays, everything was just wonderful. I grew very attached to a backstage robe, which i wore to keep warm or protect my costume during breaks. This robe was classic - a melange of jungle creatures on a samurai design, complete with metal buckle and a flowing shoulder attachment.
I was underpaid...which perhaps goes without saying. Ah rationalization, i hear your siren call...
But seriously, at one point the wage of actors at my level had been slashed, and we told them we'd rather quit. Solidarity, brother!
After the last performance of a season in which i'd done four or five amazing shows, and made quite a bond with this robe, i walked out to my car, opened the trunk, and made a deposit.
Episode V, Return of the Wrobber? I suppose so.
And now...in some ways, i know i'm not the absolutist i once was. Living in a corporate world leaves one very cynical, materialistically. If there's no clear humyn victim, like if i saw that hypothetical bag of money on the street...
Plus, it's been a long time since i even believed in private property. The quixotic part of me won't let me extend that to its logical conclusion, but i'd have a hard time condemning anyone who did.
Ah, the felon's life for me...
How about you?

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

A trip and a dream

Yesterday, i was busking in the park when two pairs of people came along, and one from each group sat down. The first pair were drunk, and the second tripping on crystal meth. The drunk fellow gregariously slapped a $20 into my ukulele case, and said that should be good for a song. I played for forty-five minutes. He and the tripping womyn were very chatty - it was nice to see that there was no language (or chemical) barrier. When he left, the womyn with the powdery lips curled up on my leg. I still had a few songs to practice, so i just went with the flow until i was done. It seemed a safe place to leave her, but she didn't want me to go, and followed me after i got on my bike.
Another day on planet Earth...
Then last night, i had the strangest dream. I was a teacher's aide in an elementary school on the beach, a stone's throw from the surf. Our classroom was on the fourth floor, and there was some kind of commotion below. I saw two indescribably immense creatures emerging from the water, killing as many humyns as they could. All i could make out clearly at first were enormous tails thrashing and displacing staggering amounts of water. Finally i realized they were whales, but far larger than any i'd ever imagined. The bigger one was more angry, and eating and crushing people with abandon. Our teacher decided we should move to a safer part of the school. I thought we were fine, and stayed put. Then i decided i should be with the class, and got ready to follow them. But i wasn't dressed properly. Not quite naked, but close. I had pants and socks and found my sweater, but no coat or shoes. I set off searching for my class, and discovered that the lowest level of the building had several feet of water in it already. I passed a group of adults sitting in a hallway, and realized they were a vocal group who had been booked to entertain the kids. One of them was my sister, and she reached up to grasp my hand. She was so happy, and didn't care about the emergency. We chatted, then i resumed the search for my class. I found them...

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

two miracles

My father grouses about the fact that people don't pick up street pennies anymore. But it's just mental calculus. Without thinking, we all calculate how much a penny will enhance our life, compared to the time spent bending over, retrieving, and storing. If we see someone grabbing a street penny, it's a curiosity, isn't it?
And the calculus extends...most people who become well-off reach a point where they don't bend over for coins of any sort. Having been a self-sufficient non-materialist all my life, i've always danced on the balance between knowing what i need to make to live, set against how much of my life i'm willing to sacrifice on the wage-earning altar. I've been very aware of my mental calculus lately. In cities, street coins are common, but when you're a biker, the calculus changes. Stopping for a coin can take time, even minutes if you factor in traffic lights. If i'm walking, i'll snap up anything silver. But i've realized that a quarter is the only guaranteed stop for me as a biker. Dimes depend on my mood. Nickels, forget it.
And the calculus extends...most people who become rich reach a point where they don't even bend over for a stray bill. They know how much their time is worth, and snapping up dollar bills, even if they did it all day, would be a bottom line loss.
And the calculus extends...hypothetically, there are the ultra-rich who wouldn't even bend over for a thousand-dollar bill. In terms of their ledgers, that nine seconds would be utterly wasted. For others, that bill represents a week's labor. Or a month's. Or a year's...
My point is not merely the insanity of our market economy, which absolutely requires that there be poor people. There is no "ideal capitalism" in which everyone gets what they need. It has never, and can never, happen. If you want to be rich, someone has to be poor. Corporate capitalism goes further, and requires not just inequity, but horrific deprivation.
My point is how this turns us all into instinctive commodifiers. We make these calculations over street money, with zero conscious thought - a precise mirror for how we treat people. When a new person comes into our life, we instantly size them up as potential friend, lover, or associate. And we proceed to court or ignore them, based on those largely subconscious, surface calculations. How will a given person enhance our status, security, or happiness? It becomes a metric of trade-offs. Potential reward versus possible rejection. Exciting versus annoying. Societal approval versus personal growth. Libidinous satisfaction versus social censure. Brilliance by association versus being second (or fifth) banana.
We commodify everything and everyone around us.
Are you comfortable with your worth being both random (based on fad or fashion) and tenuous, with all sorts of valuations (aging, illness/injury, the behavior of those you associate with) entirely out of your control? Of course not. No sane person is comfortable having their life reduced to their surface characteristics. And everyone knows that sting of rejection which feels howlingly unfair.
Even though deep down we all know you CAN judge a book (or person) by its cover with at least 99% accuracy, that 1% is a mindfuck in which all sorts of traumatic, life-altering shit swirls.
In theory, some of this sounds like it shouldn't be so bad. It almost sounds like it makes sense. With sex, and our constant search for "the one", it's almost tempting to think that eventually people who are perfect for each other will FIND each other. And then all the rejecting and sacrifice will make sense. Never mind the unending alleys of loneliness and false hope. Eventually, all systems tend toward equilibrium, and people, whether in friendship or love or business, will find those who balance them?
It's so tempting to think that's true.
But it's not. At any moment in our life we might be more happy or less happy, but in this culture, fear of loss is our only guaranteed lifetime companion.
And deep down, we hate that, we don't understand it, we cannot make it MAKE SENSE.
Is it all capitalism's fault?
Yeah, pretty much. Or on a deeper level, it's the fault of a poison which got into humyn consciousness around the time that agriculture gave us something we'd never known before - surplus stuff. Valuables (in this case, food) in piles larger than we could possibly need at the time.
In response, someone stood up and said, "That pile is MINE."
Humynity has been a descending shit spiral ever since.
Is it too late to spiral back up? I sure hope not. The feelers among us, those who don't get crushed or go insane or kill themselves, they do keep trying, don't they? Even the non-feelers are not so thoroughly mercenary as i've described. Our basic humyn nature is social. Our basic nature understands that to help others is to help ourselves. At heart, we are silly, sharing monkeys, and even the worst of us never dreamed of becoming selfish adults. Most of us, even in the most disastrous moments of our lives, try to not hurt others.
But the calculus of how much we've destroyed our world, and other animals, and the essentially playful, loving spirit of every humyn traveler on this rock, went way past apocalyptic a long, long time ago. If our grandchildren are to survive at all, we're going to need two kinds of miracle - technological and moral. By our standards, the first should actually be easy. The second, we've never seen.
But i'm not about to give up.
I love you all.

Thursday, July 5, 2018

brian wilson

Ah, the Beach Boys...
Didn't care for 'em as a kid.
Not that i didn't appreciate some of their songs - undeniably infectious. But their vibe hit me as hollow. When i found out as an adult that their musical visionary didn't write their lyrics, it made sense. In an era when the singer/songwriter was reborn and popular music tapped into a youth movement wanting to change the world with peace and free love, the Beach Boys ran in the other direction. Could "When I Grow Up to be a Man" have been made by anyone NOT abused as a child? And those inane fucking car songs! I could handle the beach songs, but even without hearing any full album, those car songs made me cringe. When it was revealed that almost none of the Beach Boys actually surfed, it all (again) made sense. An empire built on pandering, indeed.
Is that a bit unfair? Sure.
But then a funny thing happened. In 1988, a friend gave me a tape of brian wilson's solo debut. I reluctantly listened...then did so again. And again. And again and again and again and again, and it was just purely brilliant. Knowing what i do now about his mental illness, and the horrific mind control he was enduring, it's tempting to question my passion for that album. But let's just embrace beauty wherever we find it, shall we? And is it just my own hopeless subjectivity, or is "Brian Wilson" head and shoulders above any other solo effort he did?
It's also tempting to ponder what he could have created, had he gotten the help he needed when he needed it, or had the band not dragged him to the middle of the road (Is there a more quease-inducing pop song ever, with a preciously patronizing message that only pampered millionaires could have created, than "Kokomo"?). But again, those things mostly miss the point. Brian heard amazing beauty, and was able to share it with the world. And even if he didn't write most of his lyrics, he always oversaw their creation, and the fact that the first line of one of the most famous love songs ever is "i may not always love you", is a stunning slice of reality. Or has pop music ever offered a more haunting portrayal of our intimacy failures than "Lay Down Burden"? And somehow, improbably but undeniably, the following set list reveals a personal journey a thousand times more intimate than anything macca or dylan could offer. If the audience isn't sated by two encores, have him come back out and toss off "Rio Grande". If that doesn't do the trick, unleash "Smart Girls". Thank you, brian.
DREAM SET LIST
Surfer Girl
Wouldn't It Be Nice
I Get Around
Meet Me in My Dreams Tonight
The Warmth of the Sun
Let It Shine
Let the Wind Blow
In My Room
Surf's Up
Til I Die
Don't Worry Baby
You Are So Beautiful
Lay Down Burden
Cry
Walkin' the Line
Love and Mercy
Do It Again
Night Time
Your Imagination (a capella)
Summer's Gone
Melt Away
Good Vibrations
(encore)
Sail On Sailor
God Only Knows

Sunday, July 1, 2018

bond, burroughs, and militaraphilia (pt. 3)

(a follow-up to https://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2018/06/bond-burroughs-and-milataraphilia-pt-2.html)

Sigh.
Now we come to the part of the essay that actually causes me a little cringe of genuine embarrassment. If you understand the value i place on self-acceptance, you'll know how huge that is.
I was...a james bond fan.
For a long time.
Not brashly or publicly. Nor that i misunderstood how infantile it was. Nonetheless, something there gnaws...
I saw my first bond at...fourteen? Was it moore or connery? Probably moore. Within a few years i'd seen many, and started reading all the books by ian fleming. By my twenties, i'd seen all the films (including "Casino Royale"). I had my favorites (connery, brosnan, "Dr. No") and least favorites (moore, "Octopussy"). I defended dalton and lazenby, and even had a soft spot for "Never Say Never Again". I had one or two glossy movie guidebooks, plus a well-played cd of the theme songs (Coolest bond sample ever? George michael's "Please Send Me Someone to Love"). One of the few drive-in movies of my life was "For Your Eyes Only"...a memory with magic in it. James was smooth, cheeky, and he got the wimyn. Even though i probably would have denied it, i suppose i wished that were true of me too.
Nonetheless, bond was also sexist, emotionally void, and an icon of glamorized violence. Though "A View to a Kill" is objectively worse, "Octopussy" is the first time i remember being genuinely annoyed by the precious flippancy, the utter disregard for life, and the undeniable misogyny. The movies also deified the paradigm of "bad guy/good guy" - an ethos i'd rejected by my twenties. But i kept coming back. Just harmless. stupid, escapist release?
It wasn't until my forties that i'd pretty much put james behind me. Curse you, john cleese and judy dench, for lending your credibility to such swill (don't think it's not tempting to offer a comprehensive shout-out to all the well-established actors, financially set and professionally secure MANY times over, who made the morally questionable choice of accepting a 007 villain or "bond girl" paycheck). I haven't seen most of the craig entries...though i can't swear i won't. Nor can i swear i'll never again watch for old times' sake, particularly with a brother whose 007 enthusiasm hasn't waned one iota. He revels in the pleasures, with no apparent irony or guilt.
I've pretty much always seen through the idiocy of patriarchy. So was my enduring affection for bond simply a reflection of my need to stay in touch with what i was rejecting? BRAAAAP! I'm sorry, that sounds like bullshit, try again. Um...did i need the sense of community being a fan of any public entity entails, plus a way to defend myself against the male culture i was trying to subvert, by being able to say "Hey, look...i'm one of you, i can speak your language"? HALF-BRAAAAP! That might hold a little water, though it's a leaky vessel. Did my love for james tap into my rejection of monogamy, a view that science would validate? Uhhh...sure. Am i reaching? Probably.
Sigh.
Let's move on.

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

bond, burroughs, and militaraphilia (pt. 2)

(a follow-up to https://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2018/06/bond-burroughs-and-miltaraphilia.html)

What would you do if your first love, who taught you everything and against whom no other love has ever felt so intense and pure, turned out to be...
...an idiot?
You might spend the rest of your life NOT telling people about that first love.
Which may not be an altogether bad thing, but...
...welcome to my literary life.
The writer who taught me to be a reader, who inflamed a passion in me i'd never imagined, whom i thought i'd hold aloft for the rest of my life, has become a bit of a...
...dirty secret.
Not literally - i'd never avoid the topic if it came up. But since my teen years, i've almost never shared my reminisces of the amazing worlds of edgar rice burroughs in polite (or any) company.
I don't recall how my first burroughs came into my hands. It was one of the tarzan novels, maybe #7 or 8. When i'd read the last word, i'm sure i knew i wasn't done. There were twenty-seven others, all in print. I gobbled them up, stopping when i finished the penultimate (i decided i'd save the last one for the last year of my life). I can't remember whether i read my first non-tarzan burroughs, "A Princess of Mars", before i finished the tarzans. But i'm pretty sure that's when it became concretized that i would have to read everything he ever wrote. A quest i came damn close to consummating, consuming the Mars novels, the Venus novels, the Pellucidar novels, the Caspak novels...everything that was still in print, and a fair amount that wasn't. My hunger branched out to burroughs' genre stablemates - howard, norman...
I was fourteen when i read that first novel, and eighteen when i hit college and ran out of steam (but still figuring i'd finish the quest someday). Earlier this year, i was cleaning out my storage, and most of my burroughs books went to donation, but i took that last tarzan novel, and read it on the long bus ride home. It was surprisingly satisfying, and so easy to fall back under his narrative spell. Whatever else one can say about him, few have equaled the tightness and fluidity of his prose.
I'm not sure how old i was when i gave my first interior eye roll at my burroughs passion. My thirties? Of course, by my late teens i already had an awareness that he wasn't as sophisticated as the more "serious" sci fi to which i was graduating - heinlein, niven, clarke...but it wasn't until many years later that i'd processed the moral flaws inherent in the burroughs worldview. A touch of the bullshit macho "hemingway" code, with all the institutional violence and emotional negation that entails. A victorian, self-loathing prudery. Racist overtones, with the way whites were portrayed in comparison to the natives. Rampant speciesism, with many other animals portrayed as "evil" or disposable...this despite the ennobling of "natural" man, and a disparagement of "civilization". A disquieting sexism, with men the prime motivators and wimyn ineffective and overemotional (Though perhaps that charge is unfair, as he clearly took delight in writing an occasional dynamic, capable female character...the exceptions that proved the sexist rule, or stabs at a nascent feminism? It can be so hard to judge someone from an era gone by. Perhaps even the racist charge is unfair.)
Still, such joy i took in those books so scrupulously lined up on my teenage shelves. And the greater point is the literary universes that my burroughs passion opened up. There have been a handful of other writers whose discovery prompted a similar need to read EVERYTHING the writer wrote - o'neill, stoppard, vonnegut, dawkins...so if it hadn't been burroughs, would it have been some other writer? It's almost impossible to imagine that not happening, given my personality and the fertile ground that was my brain. Yet some people say they became serious readers long before thirteen. It's disquieting to think of myself as a lesser reader than i am, but who knows? Yet maybe even, had some other writer been the one to ignite my passion, might my moral growth might have raced ahead more quickly?
And perhaps there are ways in which burroughs changed me for the good? Made me a smidgen more romantic? Reinforced ever so slightly my sense of "me against the world"?
Whatever the case, my burroughs burst was clearly an alignment of innumerable psychological and cultural forces. It gave me joy, and profound escape from a world whose dysfunctionality i could only begin to imagine when i was thirteen.
So if you're ever tempted to say to some youth, "Stop reading that crap! Let me get you something GOOD", well...a more circumspect approach might serve them better. Offer your allegedly "better" book, but take joy in the fact that they're reading at all. Heck, in this day and age, can you even be certain that captain underpants isn't better for a child than dickens or bronte?
But yes - to this day, i know edgar rice a thousand times better than william s.
Ah, the shame...

(coming soon - pt. 3!)