SPECIALITY SONGS
My December roster...
Showing posts with label wrob. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wrob. Show all posts
Monday, December 16, 2024
Sunday, December 8, 2024
Sunday, December 1, 2024
Monday, November 25, 2024
Monday, March 8, 2021
Lady V's "Not Only Acoustic" Show
A concert i played this week. My set starts at the twelve-minute mark.
Thursday, December 31, 2020
covidesolation
How am i holding up under quarantine? Inshelteration, shall we say?
Cracks are starting to show.
I live alone in a pandemic. Not literally true, but true enough, as i have almost no contact with my housemates that could be described as humyn. An overstatement, perhaps...but i haven't touched another humyn for the better part of a year.
At first, i observed that things weren't so very different from normal life in this culture of alienation, in which i hadn't had sex or serious cuddling in two years. The main difference was psychological - feeling cut off from possibility was a punishing weight. Where there's life, there's hope, but that was suddenly in short supply.
At least in the old days, i got the occasional hug. Has it affected my health deleteriously, to be without even that? Maybe.
My energy was fine for many months. My creativity was bursting, as i tore through projects i'd put off. It was, however, easy to grow weary of online calls and events. The two-dimensionality almost made me feel worse, not better. To say nothing of seeing others with loved ones (or at least tolerated ones).
How often have my thoughts turned to the holocaust of irreparable trauma in our culture's prison system, where we casually inflict far worse on millions of humyns every single day?
After a few months, the insomnia i'd had touches of in recent years, returned. It came and went, for weeks at a time. Yesterday was the worst, as my after-lunch nap stretched to two hours, and once i awoke couldn't recover from fuzzy-headed inertia. It was the first time i've ever been almost incapable of motivating myself to do my daily music practice. I pushed myself outside and ran. It didn't help.
I've been able to observe my own impatience with others. There's an edge, a curtness that i don't seem quite able to control. It's slight enough that perhaps no one's noticed...but it's there.
Have i embraced escapist behavior? Not as obviously as for many, but yes. I haven't added new behaviors, nor relapsed into sweet sugar surrender, but...there's been the occasional salt/fat chip indulgence in the middle of the night.
My indulgence in movies and shows has increased a bit. An extra episode at the end of the day...maybe two, on insomniacal nights.
My strongest escapist response has been the hunting behavior that came to life when retail stores re-opened. I've spent a few hundred dollars chasing CDs.
Am i sliding into depression? It's hard to say...my fuzzy-headed inertia would certainly be a by-product of insomnia, but it's probably foolish to think that's the whole reason (or that insomnia and depression can be separated cleanly).
I need to get some genuine humyn contact, some love and physical intimacy, into my bubble. If i can't, i'm flirting with significant health degradation. Ghost headaches, a sickened response to stress...these are my occasional companions already.
Calling the universe...
Calling the universe...
Help?
And the crickets chirp...
Thursday, June 11, 2020
schizophrenEEK!
(or, the two wrobs)
What an inauspicious start...invoking the false factoid definition of a famous term. But "multiple personality disorder" or "dissociative identity disorder" are crappy titles. And neither are true either, as the two wrobs have always been integrated. So well in fact, that it's only in middle age that i've pondered the duality.
But it's always been there.
In personality and physicality, there is a duality in me that seems more pronounced than for most. I was once described by someone as the most diplomatic person they'd ever met...and by another, the most tactless. The most easygoing and open-minded...and most stubborn or self-righteous? The most tolerant...and harshest critic?
Somehow, all true.
Being an unimpeachably trustworthy nurturer has always been at the core of my self-image. And often the reality. Several wimyn have made me the first person they've told they were raped. Other people have shared their most troubling secret. I've been trusted, profoundly and humblingly.
Yet others might tell you of an insensitive, creepy, or narcissistic wrob. I've rubbed some the wrong way, because i've always had a minor (or not so minor) savior complex, and have almost no fear of being misunderstood. That's brilliant, yet tragic.
I spent decades chasing radical humility, because i was far too aware of the arrogance lurking in us all. In my case, i might have called it justified arrogance, and we could lose hours debating whether such a thing exists.
To all that, you might respond that many of us are complex, and most of us contradictory.
Agreed.
But still, what the hell am i? College standout kissed by the hottest coed? Teetotaler who had my retainer tossed in a toilet by drunken floormates? On-call back-rubber for every womyn in my dorm (literally hearing my name shouted in summons down the hall, almost every night)? Outcast who had makeup applied to my sleeping face by smirking comrades? High school star of the play? Loner who didn't go to the prom because "he wouldn't have wanted to go with anyone who would have wanted to go with him"? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
That last choice was a bit of a martyrish pose, reflecting both unacknowledged snobbery and my determination to have a womyn whose "hotness" was perhaps unconventional, but indisputable. That's not quite fair to me though - i also sensed that prom was bullshit capitalistic show and tell. And even at that tender age, i had to be subconsciously aware that i'd met no female who was a pea for my offbeat pod (three decades on, same story). But still, wimyn weren't flocking to me as i thought they should, so my subconscious dealt with it in a way that kept my self-worth bulletproof.
Am i simply an embodiment of our culture of psycho-sexual alienation, in which we forever struggle to come to terms with that person in the mirror? There is a disconnect in us all, between the way we see ourselves and the way others do.
All true...yet for me, it feels like there's more to it. More than anyone i know, it feels like a fair response to my life is "What the hell is that guy?"
For instance, i've no idea whether i'm handsome or ugly.
Okay, that's not true. I'm either.
I'm not talking about bad hair or lighting. Some days, i look in the mirror and am struck by model good looks. Other days...as a friend said, "yechhh". I promise, this isn't some manifestation of the crippled self-worth we all share. I had to have my occasional ugliness pointed out, as i'd always seen myself as the most attractive person on the planet. Much of that stemmed from a teenage defense mechanism. I built my emotional walls so high, they took years (decades?) to deconstruct.
But i recently came face-to-face with this changeability, undertaking a six-week music project, recording a new video almost every day, in the same place with the same camera. I received a more profound tutorial in THIS IS YOU than most people ever do. And what i discovered was looks so inconstant, one might almost wonder whether it's the same person.
It leaves me envying all those who are simply one or the other. Attractive. Ugly. Somewhere on that spectrum.
I know, i know, the grass is greener, and being indisputably one quality or the other is its own prison. Yet mine seems the crueler torment...wondering whether my life might have gone in different directions, receiving (or being denied) love or opportunities, simply through random timing. One might think it would all balance out, but i suspect that in the long-term, it's more disadvantageous. I've not had many long-term romances...is this part of the reason?
I truly have no idea.
Personality seems inextricably tied to physicality, as our assessments of others are profoundly bound to how "attractive" they are...or how attractive we think others think they are. We all bullshit ourselves into thinking we're not so shallow.
I truly have to ponder whether a weaker personality would have succumbed to genuine schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder long ago. Some have been quite intimidated by my intelligence or attractiveness - yet i've also had striking feedback in the other direction. I know that if any of us came face to face with total truth...with what everyone we've known has actually thought about us, mental breakdowns would result. Few grasp just how tenuous and fragile our self-images are.
I would love that raw honesty. Even if it contained a thousand gut-punches, and only a few gems of affirmation. I promise you, there are a handful of hopeless crushes from all our pasts, who were pining for us just as much. Life-changers that never happened.
Who am i, we all want to know...we strive to label it, yearning for the comfort of certainty. Am i who i THINK i am? Am i what others think? How will i ever know?
Even for the strongest, this culture provides enough disconnects to keep anyone in perpetual therapy.
We trudge on, constantly trying to get the world to agree with our self-serving self-image.
Who am i?
Who are you?
Who are we??
What an inauspicious start...invoking the false factoid definition of a famous term. But "multiple personality disorder" or "dissociative identity disorder" are crappy titles. And neither are true either, as the two wrobs have always been integrated. So well in fact, that it's only in middle age that i've pondered the duality.
But it's always been there.
In personality and physicality, there is a duality in me that seems more pronounced than for most. I was once described by someone as the most diplomatic person they'd ever met...and by another, the most tactless. The most easygoing and open-minded...and most stubborn or self-righteous? The most tolerant...and harshest critic?
Somehow, all true.
Being an unimpeachably trustworthy nurturer has always been at the core of my self-image. And often the reality. Several wimyn have made me the first person they've told they were raped. Other people have shared their most troubling secret. I've been trusted, profoundly and humblingly.
Yet others might tell you of an insensitive, creepy, or narcissistic wrob. I've rubbed some the wrong way, because i've always had a minor (or not so minor) savior complex, and have almost no fear of being misunderstood. That's brilliant, yet tragic.
I spent decades chasing radical humility, because i was far too aware of the arrogance lurking in us all. In my case, i might have called it justified arrogance, and we could lose hours debating whether such a thing exists.
To all that, you might respond that many of us are complex, and most of us contradictory.
Agreed.
But still, what the hell am i? College standout kissed by the hottest coed? Teetotaler who had my retainer tossed in a toilet by drunken floormates? On-call back-rubber for every womyn in my dorm (literally hearing my name shouted in summons down the hall, almost every night)? Outcast who had makeup applied to my sleeping face by smirking comrades? High school star of the play? Loner who didn't go to the prom because "he wouldn't have wanted to go with anyone who would have wanted to go with him"? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
That last choice was a bit of a martyrish pose, reflecting both unacknowledged snobbery and my determination to have a womyn whose "hotness" was perhaps unconventional, but indisputable. That's not quite fair to me though - i also sensed that prom was bullshit capitalistic show and tell. And even at that tender age, i had to be subconsciously aware that i'd met no female who was a pea for my offbeat pod (three decades on, same story). But still, wimyn weren't flocking to me as i thought they should, so my subconscious dealt with it in a way that kept my self-worth bulletproof.
Am i simply an embodiment of our culture of psycho-sexual alienation, in which we forever struggle to come to terms with that person in the mirror? There is a disconnect in us all, between the way we see ourselves and the way others do.
All true...yet for me, it feels like there's more to it. More than anyone i know, it feels like a fair response to my life is "What the hell is that guy?"
For instance, i've no idea whether i'm handsome or ugly.
Okay, that's not true. I'm either.
I'm not talking about bad hair or lighting. Some days, i look in the mirror and am struck by model good looks. Other days...as a friend said, "yechhh". I promise, this isn't some manifestation of the crippled self-worth we all share. I had to have my occasional ugliness pointed out, as i'd always seen myself as the most attractive person on the planet. Much of that stemmed from a teenage defense mechanism. I built my emotional walls so high, they took years (decades?) to deconstruct.
But i recently came face-to-face with this changeability, undertaking a six-week music project, recording a new video almost every day, in the same place with the same camera. I received a more profound tutorial in THIS IS YOU than most people ever do. And what i discovered was looks so inconstant, one might almost wonder whether it's the same person.
It leaves me envying all those who are simply one or the other. Attractive. Ugly. Somewhere on that spectrum.
I know, i know, the grass is greener, and being indisputably one quality or the other is its own prison. Yet mine seems the crueler torment...wondering whether my life might have gone in different directions, receiving (or being denied) love or opportunities, simply through random timing. One might think it would all balance out, but i suspect that in the long-term, it's more disadvantageous. I've not had many long-term romances...is this part of the reason?
I truly have no idea.
Personality seems inextricably tied to physicality, as our assessments of others are profoundly bound to how "attractive" they are...or how attractive we think others think they are. We all bullshit ourselves into thinking we're not so shallow.
I truly have to ponder whether a weaker personality would have succumbed to genuine schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder long ago. Some have been quite intimidated by my intelligence or attractiveness - yet i've also had striking feedback in the other direction. I know that if any of us came face to face with total truth...with what everyone we've known has actually thought about us, mental breakdowns would result. Few grasp just how tenuous and fragile our self-images are.
I would love that raw honesty. Even if it contained a thousand gut-punches, and only a few gems of affirmation. I promise you, there are a handful of hopeless crushes from all our pasts, who were pining for us just as much. Life-changers that never happened.
Who am i, we all want to know...we strive to label it, yearning for the comfort of certainty. Am i who i THINK i am? Am i what others think? How will i ever know?
Even for the strongest, this culture provides enough disconnects to keep anyone in perpetual therapy.
We trudge on, constantly trying to get the world to agree with our self-serving self-image.
Who am i?
Who are you?
Who are we??
Sunday, April 12, 2020
skipping-touchstone ripples
(a follow-up to https://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2020/04/touchstones-of-not-mined.html)
To deeper delve into the impregnation fantasies touched upon in "Touchstones"...they exist alongside more rational impulses, like the wish to find a womyn who is serenely assured that having children is no part of her future. To meet such a one, and have her desire me for a season or always...that's a beautiful dream, too. Probably one infinitely more sensible than fertility fantasies. I suspect it's not specifically a baby that is the embodiment of my primal desire. I think it's rather the moment of being inside a fecund (and feral) womyn who wants my seed with every fiber of her being...to be in that moment and claim it with purest exultation...
That must be so, because one of my mental wanderings the past year has been the thought that i might be infertile, as i've never gotten a womyn pregnant. Which could mean nothing, as i've never tried, yet it's an interesting possibility, one that would have mortified me once, but now i think i could fully embrace it. Low motility/count? Partay!
Which is not to say there's no babylust left. It's always been there, in a hazy, remorseful way, and it seems to be simmering ever more searingly, for biological-clock reasons.
I suppose there's a nugget of perverse truth in the Idiocracy-aphorism that the people who shouldn't, do, and the people who should, don't.
So much feeling squelched in this culture of alienation. So many desires blunted, connections denied, tears uncried...you can see it in the eyes, all the half-lives we live...
Find me, oh sensible womyn peacefully past the prospect of parentage. Save me!
To deeper delve into the impregnation fantasies touched upon in "Touchstones"...they exist alongside more rational impulses, like the wish to find a womyn who is serenely assured that having children is no part of her future. To meet such a one, and have her desire me for a season or always...that's a beautiful dream, too. Probably one infinitely more sensible than fertility fantasies. I suspect it's not specifically a baby that is the embodiment of my primal desire. I think it's rather the moment of being inside a fecund (and feral) womyn who wants my seed with every fiber of her being...to be in that moment and claim it with purest exultation...
That must be so, because one of my mental wanderings the past year has been the thought that i might be infertile, as i've never gotten a womyn pregnant. Which could mean nothing, as i've never tried, yet it's an interesting possibility, one that would have mortified me once, but now i think i could fully embrace it. Low motility/count? Partay!
Which is not to say there's no babylust left. It's always been there, in a hazy, remorseful way, and it seems to be simmering ever more searingly, for biological-clock reasons.
I suppose there's a nugget of perverse truth in the Idiocracy-aphorism that the people who shouldn't, do, and the people who should, don't.
So much feeling squelched in this culture of alienation. So many desires blunted, connections denied, tears uncried...you can see it in the eyes, all the half-lives we live...
Find me, oh sensible womyn peacefully past the prospect of parentage. Save me!
Sunday, March 15, 2020
rainy day blues
Not that rain makes me sad.
Often, quite the opposite. Perhaps especially so today, as the three months of rain we usually get was only three days this year, and waiting for California to catch fire seems to be just another spring ritual now.
It happens to be rainy today though, and i'm lonely, a feeling slightly amplified by coronavirus isolation. My social life is being cancelled pell mell. So shouldn't i be making a coronobaby, instead of contemplating a day on Earth almost entirely alone?
I hate that it always comes back to sex for me, this alienation we feel...that filter feeds into the notion that if we just get our romantic life in line, all will be well! Which is seven kinds of dysfictional. But sex is by far my greatest wound.
Nor is virus-induced solitude an entirely bleak prospect. Before the library shuttered, i loaded up on cds, books, and dvds...and you could easily argue that alone time is saner than trying to maintain some semblance of a relationship with one of the damaged, codependent wastes walking around out here impersonating a person.
Anyway, let's check my (non) options...
My neighbor A is the most scraping ponderment. We've exchanged social pleasantries for six months. She keeps offering to make me curtains, she's hinted that i can call her whenever, and she's expressed an inebriated interest in knowing me better. She's intellectual, older, independent, and perhaps very analytical/practical, which might make a relationship easy. She also might be a bit cold or detached. Am i attracted? I'm not sure. I've never felt any particular spark, which should be a warning sign...though i've started fantasizing about her regularly. Hardly a surprise. I find her agreeable to talk with and look at, but her heavy smoking (and perhaps drinking) should perhaps be BIG warning signs. But it's hard to say, "Hey, would you like a beautiful friend-with-benefits relationship, with no expectation on where it might or mightn't lead?" I see her almost everyday, and if things turned sour...should i ask her whether she's found her friend for the end of the world? Something so blatant might come across as creepy, but perhaps self-sabotage is the way to go.
There's N, a clerk at my grocery store. I've given her my card. She's never called, but still gives me a megawatt smile from far across a room. Her intellectual horizons might be limited. There are predatory romantic realities we're all taught, which i've been fighting forever but never go away. I hate being aware that she's gained weight, which might make her self-worth and cultural value decrease. I feel ready to not care about such things, but i don't know how to lose that AWARENESS. Physically i feel a strong pull, but our differences would probably sabotage any conventional relationship. My non-sexual fantasy is that she stops by my place after every work shift, for a foot rub and conversation with a friend she can tell anything.
There's D, a friend of a friend i met once, and was blown away with desire. Smart, foreign-born, with gentle energy...it's so easy to project a million beautiful fantasies (even insane, baby-making ones). My friend wants to match us up, but those plans have been shelved, as that friend has a bad cold, and in this coronaclimate...
So with almost no healthy options, my anguished loneliness has nowhere to go. The balance and equanimity we should all feel, is a dream. I was just "friended" online by a womyn who's heard me perform, and thinks i'm hilarious. She seems dynamic and dedicated, and i just want to pour my battered spirit into her, like a drowning man grasping at a bubble of air...an almost-total stranger, yet i want her to read this, and ask, "Wait, you want a sexual connection between us??", so i can reply "NO! Probably not." But when you're broken and off-balance, you go where the wound is deepest.
Just relax, wisdom tells me...
But for those of us trying to de-anesthetize our feelings, this world is where wisdom goes to die. This should be the time of my life when my achievements in inner stillness ought make me a beacon of peace and healing...but the lowered emotional walls that are part of my spiritual journey have made me relentlessly vulnerable to the pains and fears inside and all around.
I just wrote a song called "The Walkalone Blues"...
Often, quite the opposite. Perhaps especially so today, as the three months of rain we usually get was only three days this year, and waiting for California to catch fire seems to be just another spring ritual now.
It happens to be rainy today though, and i'm lonely, a feeling slightly amplified by coronavirus isolation. My social life is being cancelled pell mell. So shouldn't i be making a coronobaby, instead of contemplating a day on Earth almost entirely alone?
I hate that it always comes back to sex for me, this alienation we feel...that filter feeds into the notion that if we just get our romantic life in line, all will be well! Which is seven kinds of dysfictional. But sex is by far my greatest wound.
Nor is virus-induced solitude an entirely bleak prospect. Before the library shuttered, i loaded up on cds, books, and dvds...and you could easily argue that alone time is saner than trying to maintain some semblance of a relationship with one of the damaged, codependent wastes walking around out here impersonating a person.
Anyway, let's check my (non) options...
My neighbor A is the most scraping ponderment. We've exchanged social pleasantries for six months. She keeps offering to make me curtains, she's hinted that i can call her whenever, and she's expressed an inebriated interest in knowing me better. She's intellectual, older, independent, and perhaps very analytical/practical, which might make a relationship easy. She also might be a bit cold or detached. Am i attracted? I'm not sure. I've never felt any particular spark, which should be a warning sign...though i've started fantasizing about her regularly. Hardly a surprise. I find her agreeable to talk with and look at, but her heavy smoking (and perhaps drinking) should perhaps be BIG warning signs. But it's hard to say, "Hey, would you like a beautiful friend-with-benefits relationship, with no expectation on where it might or mightn't lead?" I see her almost everyday, and if things turned sour...should i ask her whether she's found her friend for the end of the world? Something so blatant might come across as creepy, but perhaps self-sabotage is the way to go.
There's N, a clerk at my grocery store. I've given her my card. She's never called, but still gives me a megawatt smile from far across a room. Her intellectual horizons might be limited. There are predatory romantic realities we're all taught, which i've been fighting forever but never go away. I hate being aware that she's gained weight, which might make her self-worth and cultural value decrease. I feel ready to not care about such things, but i don't know how to lose that AWARENESS. Physically i feel a strong pull, but our differences would probably sabotage any conventional relationship. My non-sexual fantasy is that she stops by my place after every work shift, for a foot rub and conversation with a friend she can tell anything.
There's D, a friend of a friend i met once, and was blown away with desire. Smart, foreign-born, with gentle energy...it's so easy to project a million beautiful fantasies (even insane, baby-making ones). My friend wants to match us up, but those plans have been shelved, as that friend has a bad cold, and in this coronaclimate...
So with almost no healthy options, my anguished loneliness has nowhere to go. The balance and equanimity we should all feel, is a dream. I was just "friended" online by a womyn who's heard me perform, and thinks i'm hilarious. She seems dynamic and dedicated, and i just want to pour my battered spirit into her, like a drowning man grasping at a bubble of air...an almost-total stranger, yet i want her to read this, and ask, "Wait, you want a sexual connection between us??", so i can reply "NO! Probably not." But when you're broken and off-balance, you go where the wound is deepest.
Just relax, wisdom tells me...
But for those of us trying to de-anesthetize our feelings, this world is where wisdom goes to die. This should be the time of my life when my achievements in inner stillness ought make me a beacon of peace and healing...but the lowered emotional walls that are part of my spiritual journey have made me relentlessly vulnerable to the pains and fears inside and all around.
I just wrote a song called "The Walkalone Blues"...
Friday, February 1, 2019
mission statement
(or, the abnormality of normalcy)
We live in a culture of desensitization, touch deprivation, and psycho-sexual alienation. The average child witnesses over 200,000 TV acts of violence or murder, instilling in us a normative attitude toward physical or emotional brutality. Desensitization is far older and deeper than cathode ray tubes, but that's the glaring tip of the iceberg in which natural humyn compassion is anesthetized.
Around the age of two, the ample touch infants enjoy is replaced by strict delineations of "personal space". We eventually learn that the only arena in which this society allows us return to that level of copious, unmeasured physical intimacy is romance - as a result, its importance is forever inflated exponentially (and destructive relationships less easily abandoned). At puberty, our bodies need a new kind of touch, but instead of teaching our youth safe and loving sexual associations, we deny them any outlet.
We indoctrinate them into a culture where love and security are never guaranteed, the only person you can count on is yourself, and the price for "losing" is deprivation or far worse. Over the most basic necessities, our children learn only paranoia, fear, and merciless competition.
The resultant swirl of escapist behaviors, control/commitment issues, maladaptions/fetishes, projection/compensation, and outward (or inward)-directed violence are a cocktail that could never be unraveled by a million therapists. By adulthood, the damage done to the average person is so profound that you never have (and never will) meet a healthy humyn...and few of us can even imagine how such a person might look and act.
Pushing our species back toward sanity and health thus becomes the primary goal of any thinking, feeling person.
(I've chosen writing as the method by which i might best help. I've written hundreds of essays, and a collection of fairy tales that might one day be your favorite book. And most recently i've turned to songwriting...trying to maintain my artistic goals while being first and foremost an entertainer. So far, the results are promising. In my dreams, this struggle wouldn't dominate my life. I just want to receive all the love, security, and community that any humyn needs, and simply live in the wonder of existence. But that doesn't seem likely to happen soon. I love you all.)
We live in a culture of desensitization, touch deprivation, and psycho-sexual alienation. The average child witnesses over 200,000 TV acts of violence or murder, instilling in us a normative attitude toward physical or emotional brutality. Desensitization is far older and deeper than cathode ray tubes, but that's the glaring tip of the iceberg in which natural humyn compassion is anesthetized.
Around the age of two, the ample touch infants enjoy is replaced by strict delineations of "personal space". We eventually learn that the only arena in which this society allows us return to that level of copious, unmeasured physical intimacy is romance - as a result, its importance is forever inflated exponentially (and destructive relationships less easily abandoned). At puberty, our bodies need a new kind of touch, but instead of teaching our youth safe and loving sexual associations, we deny them any outlet.
We indoctrinate them into a culture where love and security are never guaranteed, the only person you can count on is yourself, and the price for "losing" is deprivation or far worse. Over the most basic necessities, our children learn only paranoia, fear, and merciless competition.
The resultant swirl of escapist behaviors, control/commitment issues, maladaptions/fetishes, projection/compensation, and outward (or inward)-directed violence are a cocktail that could never be unraveled by a million therapists. By adulthood, the damage done to the average person is so profound that you never have (and never will) meet a healthy humyn...and few of us can even imagine how such a person might look and act.
Pushing our species back toward sanity and health thus becomes the primary goal of any thinking, feeling person.
(I've chosen writing as the method by which i might best help. I've written hundreds of essays, and a collection of fairy tales that might one day be your favorite book. And most recently i've turned to songwriting...trying to maintain my artistic goals while being first and foremost an entertainer. So far, the results are promising. In my dreams, this struggle wouldn't dominate my life. I just want to receive all the love, security, and community that any humyn needs, and simply live in the wonder of existence. But that doesn't seem likely to happen soon. I love you all.)
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.
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.
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.
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 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...)
-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.
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.)
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, 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?
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?
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.
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!)
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!)
Thursday, April 19, 2018
radio WROB 2
An ex-Beatles medley, and a new Earth Day story. The fingerings are still a bit rough, but i was so excited i couldn't resist. My segment comes thirty minutes in...
http://podcasts.pcrcollective.org/CommonThreadCollective/CommonThreadCollective-20180413.mp3
http://podcasts.pcrcollective.org/CommonThreadCollective/CommonThreadCollective-20180413.mp3
Sunday, April 15, 2018
radio WROB
This is me performing songs on Mutiny Radio's Common Thread, with diamond dave and val! Move that blue dot to thirty-seven minutes in...
http://podcasts.pcrcollective.org/CommonThreadCollective/CommonThreadCollective-20180330.mp3
http://podcasts.pcrcollective.org/CommonThreadCollective/CommonThreadCollective-20180330.mp3
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
open mic-rocosm
I've spent the past few months immersing myself in the San Francisco open mic scene, as a storyteller, musician, essayist, and poet.
It's a strange and wonderful world. It's art free of the corruptions of commerce, and at its best fosters a spirit of community that is jarringly absent from most "professional" art. Applause and love rain down, even (and sometimes especially) on failure. Open mics are also a reminder that those who "succeed" in the arts are often not superior to those who don't, just luckier (or more willing to compromise). At almost any open mic, there's usually one act that's as good as anything professional, and in big cities, sometimes even several.
Showing appreciation can be tricky, though. Talking with a performer that same night can lead to obligatory or insincere praise. I try to get around that by saving my compliments for the following week. Any praise someone remembers to say a week later, i know comes from a more sincere place. Yet that solution has a flaw - receiving immediate open mic affirmation of any sort can be such a gift. For the insecure, a single encouraging word can be indescribably healing. I would hazard to guess that few speakers feel no stage fright...and some are no doubt almost overwhelmed. For the first time in my life, i can relate. As an actor, i was able to perform in front of thousands with nary a hint of insecurity, or do one-person shows without any trace of fright. But at open mics...the combination of my emotional walls being so decimated and the nakedness of performing your own words, has given me genuine stage fright. Apparently i cover it well, but it's not easy. Truly, my mild depression and PTSD push my brain into thinking i'm talentless and people loathe me, even when there's ample evidence to the contrary. I'm also vaguely uncomfortable with any flattery or attention, because i want my performances to be about the words, not ME (in this culture of individualism, such hopes are doomed to failure). I've performed long enough that i can laugh at myself as i feel all these things, but most don't have the luxury of my experience. So more and more, i err on the side of giving others immediate affirmation.
It might also surprise many to know that i feel competitive. There's a part of me that considers ANY night a failure if i'm not clearly the most brilliant act. Perverse self-absorption? Yes...and bear in mind that i've spent my adulthood pursuing spiritual humility - and succeeding. No, really! For years, constantly manifesting the thought that i'm no better or more worthy than anyone, ever shifting attention away from myself (perhaps even embracing those attitudes to a fault). Yet the ego-glorification that plagues our culture is so pervasive, and the insecurity this society pounds into our heads is just hellaciously powerful. The notion that we're forever writing the "story" of our lives, always measuring ourselves against everyone else...in this predatory world, i can't keep those demons entirely at bay (even monastery inmates probably fall short: "I can meditate on one foot WAY longer than you slackers!" - maybe hermits...).
Not that i feel competitive in the front of my mind - just in the back, in those places nobody talks about.
It's also funny to realize how many spoken word artists are at kind of awful at delivering their own words! The truth is that some poetry is better read than heard, plus a lot of poets can be monotone or too rapid, which can lead to audiences showing intent faces, but not actually following a damn thing! The funniest example of this was when a poet in the middle of eight short pieces started reciting one he'd already done...and most people had no idea! I wasn't sure for a few seconds, myself. So yes, i too can be guilty of nodding my head and snapping my fingers, while having no clue what the speaker was talking about.
And sometimes the length of the events gets a little oppressive, because i hate the thought of time lost when i could be creating something new, or just doing something more intensely personal or enjoyable. There are performers who do their bit and then skedaddle, but i've got too much devotion to community to take such a mercenary attitude. It's a fine line...there are occasions when extenuating circumstances can prompt an early exit from me, and those circumstances aren't always urgent, or even anywhere close. But i do my best to support all the other performers any time i ask them to listen to me. That's not always a sacrifice...although there is a level (slightly misanthropic, artistically unimpressed, hyper-aware of my own mortality, sex-starved) on which i'm bored by just about anyone. The social aspect can be nice, though - right now these folk are pretty much the only "family" i have.
Here then, my weekly cycle of mics. There are a handful of once-a-month events too, but this is the heart of it.
SUNDAY - Madrone Bar, a music-only venue, which is where my stage fright is most acute, because i'm adding the element of singing and playing an instrument simultaneously - i had NO idea how stupifyingly hard that is! All i'm aiming for as a ukulele-plucker is "adequate" - i don't kid myself, if i win crowds, it will be because of my words and voice. For now it just feels like i'm hitting auto-pilot, and hoping to not wreck. It's exciting to think of how my songs might one day kill, when i'm totally relaxed...
WEDNESDAY - Sacred Grounds, the oldest poetry open mic in the city. Poetry is probably the least of my writerly talents, at least when measured against its most elaborate intricacies. My stuff can be searing and naked, or just funny and entertaining (which makes it relateable to non-poets)...but some poetry snobs might justifiably poo-poo me. I sometimes wonder why i attend poetry-only events at all, as it's never going to take the lead in my "success" as a writer. But there's something beautiful and pure about poets, they're generally more open and interesting than other artists. I come off as quite young in this crowd, which i've learned to live with. Sacred Grounds has the greatest family feeling of any open mic i know.
THURSDAY - Bazaar Cafe, which is mostly music. I do stories and songs. There's no mic, nor any need for one. The energy combines the youthfulness of International Cafe with the reverence of Sacred Grounds. There is no small satisfaction knowing that my stories have been one of the few spoken acts here to resonate with the musicians as much as their own.
FRIDAY AFTERNOON - Mutiny Radio Common Thread, which features music, interviews, and spoken word of political/social relevance. This is where i do my essays, and the affirmation has been wonderful. I've started to do songs too, because my songs will have more resonance in the world at large. Wasn't leonard cohen just a poet who got tired of poverty?
FRIDAY EVENING - International Cafe, the most unruly (yet sometimes most beautiful) beast of all. The crowd is huge, with many non-performers, some of whom are well-lubricated. I do stories and songs, avoiding all but the most juicy essays or poems. In a venue where spoken word can get its ass kicked, being able to hold an audience spellbound, is so sweet. Having an ADD-prone crowd hang on your every word...there might be no better social feeling in the world.
It's a strange and wonderful world. It's art free of the corruptions of commerce, and at its best fosters a spirit of community that is jarringly absent from most "professional" art. Applause and love rain down, even (and sometimes especially) on failure. Open mics are also a reminder that those who "succeed" in the arts are often not superior to those who don't, just luckier (or more willing to compromise). At almost any open mic, there's usually one act that's as good as anything professional, and in big cities, sometimes even several.
Showing appreciation can be tricky, though. Talking with a performer that same night can lead to obligatory or insincere praise. I try to get around that by saving my compliments for the following week. Any praise someone remembers to say a week later, i know comes from a more sincere place. Yet that solution has a flaw - receiving immediate open mic affirmation of any sort can be such a gift. For the insecure, a single encouraging word can be indescribably healing. I would hazard to guess that few speakers feel no stage fright...and some are no doubt almost overwhelmed. For the first time in my life, i can relate. As an actor, i was able to perform in front of thousands with nary a hint of insecurity, or do one-person shows without any trace of fright. But at open mics...the combination of my emotional walls being so decimated and the nakedness of performing your own words, has given me genuine stage fright. Apparently i cover it well, but it's not easy. Truly, my mild depression and PTSD push my brain into thinking i'm talentless and people loathe me, even when there's ample evidence to the contrary. I'm also vaguely uncomfortable with any flattery or attention, because i want my performances to be about the words, not ME (in this culture of individualism, such hopes are doomed to failure). I've performed long enough that i can laugh at myself as i feel all these things, but most don't have the luxury of my experience. So more and more, i err on the side of giving others immediate affirmation.
It might also surprise many to know that i feel competitive. There's a part of me that considers ANY night a failure if i'm not clearly the most brilliant act. Perverse self-absorption? Yes...and bear in mind that i've spent my adulthood pursuing spiritual humility - and succeeding. No, really! For years, constantly manifesting the thought that i'm no better or more worthy than anyone, ever shifting attention away from myself (perhaps even embracing those attitudes to a fault). Yet the ego-glorification that plagues our culture is so pervasive, and the insecurity this society pounds into our heads is just hellaciously powerful. The notion that we're forever writing the "story" of our lives, always measuring ourselves against everyone else...in this predatory world, i can't keep those demons entirely at bay (even monastery inmates probably fall short: "I can meditate on one foot WAY longer than you slackers!" - maybe hermits...).
Not that i feel competitive in the front of my mind - just in the back, in those places nobody talks about.
It's also funny to realize how many spoken word artists are at kind of awful at delivering their own words! The truth is that some poetry is better read than heard, plus a lot of poets can be monotone or too rapid, which can lead to audiences showing intent faces, but not actually following a damn thing! The funniest example of this was when a poet in the middle of eight short pieces started reciting one he'd already done...and most people had no idea! I wasn't sure for a few seconds, myself. So yes, i too can be guilty of nodding my head and snapping my fingers, while having no clue what the speaker was talking about.
And sometimes the length of the events gets a little oppressive, because i hate the thought of time lost when i could be creating something new, or just doing something more intensely personal or enjoyable. There are performers who do their bit and then skedaddle, but i've got too much devotion to community to take such a mercenary attitude. It's a fine line...there are occasions when extenuating circumstances can prompt an early exit from me, and those circumstances aren't always urgent, or even anywhere close. But i do my best to support all the other performers any time i ask them to listen to me. That's not always a sacrifice...although there is a level (slightly misanthropic, artistically unimpressed, hyper-aware of my own mortality, sex-starved) on which i'm bored by just about anyone. The social aspect can be nice, though - right now these folk are pretty much the only "family" i have.
Here then, my weekly cycle of mics. There are a handful of once-a-month events too, but this is the heart of it.
SUNDAY - Madrone Bar, a music-only venue, which is where my stage fright is most acute, because i'm adding the element of singing and playing an instrument simultaneously - i had NO idea how stupifyingly hard that is! All i'm aiming for as a ukulele-plucker is "adequate" - i don't kid myself, if i win crowds, it will be because of my words and voice. For now it just feels like i'm hitting auto-pilot, and hoping to not wreck. It's exciting to think of how my songs might one day kill, when i'm totally relaxed...
WEDNESDAY - Sacred Grounds, the oldest poetry open mic in the city. Poetry is probably the least of my writerly talents, at least when measured against its most elaborate intricacies. My stuff can be searing and naked, or just funny and entertaining (which makes it relateable to non-poets)...but some poetry snobs might justifiably poo-poo me. I sometimes wonder why i attend poetry-only events at all, as it's never going to take the lead in my "success" as a writer. But there's something beautiful and pure about poets, they're generally more open and interesting than other artists. I come off as quite young in this crowd, which i've learned to live with. Sacred Grounds has the greatest family feeling of any open mic i know.
THURSDAY - Bazaar Cafe, which is mostly music. I do stories and songs. There's no mic, nor any need for one. The energy combines the youthfulness of International Cafe with the reverence of Sacred Grounds. There is no small satisfaction knowing that my stories have been one of the few spoken acts here to resonate with the musicians as much as their own.
FRIDAY AFTERNOON - Mutiny Radio Common Thread, which features music, interviews, and spoken word of political/social relevance. This is where i do my essays, and the affirmation has been wonderful. I've started to do songs too, because my songs will have more resonance in the world at large. Wasn't leonard cohen just a poet who got tired of poverty?
FRIDAY EVENING - International Cafe, the most unruly (yet sometimes most beautiful) beast of all. The crowd is huge, with many non-performers, some of whom are well-lubricated. I do stories and songs, avoiding all but the most juicy essays or poems. In a venue where spoken word can get its ass kicked, being able to hold an audience spellbound, is so sweet. Having an ADD-prone crowd hang on your every word...there might be no better social feeling in the world.
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
hug
Who here remembers the best hug of your life?
If you have to think about it, don't bother - you haven't had it. I would say "yet", but that presumes that everyone will have a best hug of their life. As counter-intuitive as this sounds, i don't think that's true. I think a "greatest hug ever" is a combination of so many factors, few of which are easy to measure or track, that a good many people will live their entire lives without ever having one.
There are also some people who will experience two or more. There's nothing fair about that.
My first greatest hug came in college. I was smitten with a vivacious sprite named laura. In my own gentle way, i chased her for a year or two. I gave her attention and affirmation. We got along well, and i became a regular visitor at her dorm. Despite one or two moments of seeming possibility, we never did connect in love. Sometimes when i would stop by her room, she would be out, so i would chat with her roommate, who i think was amused by my pathetic forlornness...and we shared ever longer visits, as the months went by. She wrote sonnets, and had a brimming heart, despite having lived through some horrible darkness. Of course i had eyes only for laura, so i didn't think anything of it when this roommate started to give me very sweet goodbye hugs. These hugs grew longer and longer, and began to feel like being bathed in a half-drunk warmth. Finally one day, we held a hug for around twenty minutes. I even got a classic henry miller erection (a piece of lead with wings). Yet even then, i couldn't see what was in front of me! Was it just an overblown sense of loyalty to a woman who had never wanted me? Maybe it's just that i used to be a little slow. Too slow, as it turned out. Some family emergency forced her to drop out of college - i found out second-hand. We'd never exchanged phone numbers, and when i tried to look her up years later, i'd forgotten her last name.
The second greatest hug of my life (not second-greatest, but second greatest) came when i was working as a mascot for a peanut butter company. I was a baby monkey. We had a booth every year at the New York Chocolate Show. I would wander alone in costume all over the convention center leaving a trail of amazed and delighted kids and adults (particularly asian wimyn - i have no idea what was going on with that, but it was nice). One day, a vendor from another company left her booth to hug me. It was obvious she was a little sad, and then the most amazing thing happened. Through about seven layers of costume, i could feel her heart beating against mine. It was possibly the most startling feeling i've ever felt. She cried out "Omigosh, i can feel his heartbeat!" We let that monkey hug last as long as we could (stay with me...this isn't even the hug yet). It was the last day of the show, and when i finally got out of costume, she was gone. I spent a year hoping she would be there again...and she was! When i introduced myself out of costume, she knew who i was before i said it, and we started sharing out-of-costume hugs. On the last day of the show, the costume put away, we came together in the aisle near my booth. Even though this hug was probably only ten minutes, that drunken feeling may have been even more acute than the first time. She said it was like melting into the floor.
Over the following months, it became apparent that we had profoundly different core values. She was a born-again, with strong opinions concerning romantic possessiveness. I was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and too my credit (or not), i told her i would meet her halfway. I clearly wasn't going to start praying to any invisible rabbits, or whatever it is, but i told her i would marry her if that's what it took for her to feel comfortable with being held by me every day. Hormone-induced temporary insanity? Did her ability to walk away, keep me from the worst decision of my life? I don't know. I just knew what it felt like to have that feeling, and then lose it. Call it wisdom or stupidity (it's probably both), but i'd vowed to never let my ego get in the way of keeping that feeling, if i ever found it again.
And now, foolish me, in a new city, i shamelessly, greedily hope that the lightning strike of hug perfection will find me yet again.
If it comes, i hope i won't have to sell my soul to keep it. But given the semi-insanity of loneliness and alienation that comes with living in this society, i wouldn't put anything stupid past me.
Next week's question - do you remember the greatest sex of your life?
If you have to think about it, don't bother - you haven't had it. I would say "yet", but that presumes that everyone will have a best hug of their life. As counter-intuitive as this sounds, i don't think that's true. I think a "greatest hug ever" is a combination of so many factors, few of which are easy to measure or track, that a good many people will live their entire lives without ever having one.
There are also some people who will experience two or more. There's nothing fair about that.
My first greatest hug came in college. I was smitten with a vivacious sprite named laura. In my own gentle way, i chased her for a year or two. I gave her attention and affirmation. We got along well, and i became a regular visitor at her dorm. Despite one or two moments of seeming possibility, we never did connect in love. Sometimes when i would stop by her room, she would be out, so i would chat with her roommate, who i think was amused by my pathetic forlornness...and we shared ever longer visits, as the months went by. She wrote sonnets, and had a brimming heart, despite having lived through some horrible darkness. Of course i had eyes only for laura, so i didn't think anything of it when this roommate started to give me very sweet goodbye hugs. These hugs grew longer and longer, and began to feel like being bathed in a half-drunk warmth. Finally one day, we held a hug for around twenty minutes. I even got a classic henry miller erection (a piece of lead with wings). Yet even then, i couldn't see what was in front of me! Was it just an overblown sense of loyalty to a woman who had never wanted me? Maybe it's just that i used to be a little slow. Too slow, as it turned out. Some family emergency forced her to drop out of college - i found out second-hand. We'd never exchanged phone numbers, and when i tried to look her up years later, i'd forgotten her last name.
The second greatest hug of my life (not second-greatest, but second greatest) came when i was working as a mascot for a peanut butter company. I was a baby monkey. We had a booth every year at the New York Chocolate Show. I would wander alone in costume all over the convention center leaving a trail of amazed and delighted kids and adults (particularly asian wimyn - i have no idea what was going on with that, but it was nice). One day, a vendor from another company left her booth to hug me. It was obvious she was a little sad, and then the most amazing thing happened. Through about seven layers of costume, i could feel her heart beating against mine. It was possibly the most startling feeling i've ever felt. She cried out "Omigosh, i can feel his heartbeat!" We let that monkey hug last as long as we could (stay with me...this isn't even the hug yet). It was the last day of the show, and when i finally got out of costume, she was gone. I spent a year hoping she would be there again...and she was! When i introduced myself out of costume, she knew who i was before i said it, and we started sharing out-of-costume hugs. On the last day of the show, the costume put away, we came together in the aisle near my booth. Even though this hug was probably only ten minutes, that drunken feeling may have been even more acute than the first time. She said it was like melting into the floor.
Over the following months, it became apparent that we had profoundly different core values. She was a born-again, with strong opinions concerning romantic possessiveness. I was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and too my credit (or not), i told her i would meet her halfway. I clearly wasn't going to start praying to any invisible rabbits, or whatever it is, but i told her i would marry her if that's what it took for her to feel comfortable with being held by me every day. Hormone-induced temporary insanity? Did her ability to walk away, keep me from the worst decision of my life? I don't know. I just knew what it felt like to have that feeling, and then lose it. Call it wisdom or stupidity (it's probably both), but i'd vowed to never let my ego get in the way of keeping that feeling, if i ever found it again.
And now, foolish me, in a new city, i shamelessly, greedily hope that the lightning strike of hug perfection will find me yet again.
If it comes, i hope i won't have to sell my soul to keep it. But given the semi-insanity of loneliness and alienation that comes with living in this society, i wouldn't put anything stupid past me.
Next week's question - do you remember the greatest sex of your life?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)