Relational Animals

In these) pages you will find blog articles that comprise the book "Postmodern Pensees" ("Pensees" is the French word for thoughts and often associated with the philosopher Blaise Pascal and his book. Happy reading. All content is copyrighted and owned by Christopher C. MacDonald.

The Blood of Eden

"Blood Of Eden"

I caught sight of my reflection
I caught it in the window
I saw the darkness in my heart
I saw the signs of my undoing
They had been there from the start
And the darkness still has work to do
The knotted chord's untying
They're heated and they're holy
Oh they're sitting there on high
So secure with everything they're buying

[Chorus:]
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
With the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
We wanted the union
Oh the union of the woman
The woman and the man

My grip is surely slipping
I think I've lost my hold
Yes, I think I've lost my hold
I cannot get insurance anymore
They don't take credit, only gold
Is that a dagger or a crucifix I see
You hold so tightly in your hand
And all the while the distance grows between you and me
I do not understand

[Chorus]

At my request, you take me in
In that tenderness, I am floating away
No certainty, nothing to rely on
Holding still for a moment
What a moment this is
Oh for a moment of forgetting, a moment of bliss
Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

I can hear the distant thunder
Of a million unheard souls
Of a million unheard souls
Watch each one reach for creature comfort
For the filling of their holes

In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
With the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
In the blood of Eden
We wanted the union
Of the woman and the man

In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
I feel the man in the woman
And the woman in the man

In the blood of Eden
Lie the woman and the man
I feel the man in the woman
And the woman in the man

In the blood of Eden
We've done everything we can
In the blood of Eden
Saw the end as we began
With the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
It was all for the union
Oh, the union of the woman, the woman and the man.

[extra lyrics from the "film mix"]

The blood of eden keeps running through me
running through my veins
the blood of eden keeps rushing through me
when I'm sure there's none that remains
the blood of eden keeps running through me
I can feel it in my bones
that blood of eden keeps rushing through me
taking back what it owns

God, Sex, Love and everything else

I do have a fundamental belief in God, and I always have. It's difficult for me to discuss or defend. For me it is disorganized religion. In a way, I wish I could subscribe to some systematized belief. But I don't. ~Nick Cave

I don't date "Christian" women even though I am a Christian myself (ugh). Yeah I had a Jesus experience in 1975 and experience Jesus pretty much every day. I can and have studied the texts in their original language. I am ridiculously educated in theology, ancient history and the Bible.

So why don't I date "good Christian women"? Well first they are not good, and rarely honest...and are typically horrible in bed because someone suggested the opposite of what the Bible teaches: that the body is bad and to be denied. Which means that the God-given grace and intimacy of sex is often denied and that is justified by some quasi, even anti-biblical notions inspired by preachers who are angry, or repressed. or perhaps even sexually conflicted themselves.

Well that is all bullshit. When Jesus, the Son of God had a physical body after gestating in a woman for nine months was his flesh bad? When the warm blood of God spilled on the ground 30 years later at Golgotha was that bad blood? When my sons and daughter were born was their flesh bad?

C'mon. Extract cranium from rectum and read on.

And who do you think thought up the orgasm? Did you know the clitoris is the only female organ that serves only one purpose? Pleasure.

I don't date Christian women because they are boring, know less about life and theology and what it is to be fully human than a good Pagan woman or an agnostic (who by definition simply admit they don't know...their gut just tells them organized religion is, for the most part a sham). Give me a woman who has a healthy distrust of religion any day. Because she is right to feel and think so.

A woman I dated years ago, and who was a devout Pagan asked me "Your being a Christian, what would you do with a Pagan woman?"

"Oh the things I would do..." was my reply.

Now note there is a clear demarcation between organized religion and God. In fact, if you read the Old Testament and also note how the "religious ones" of the day treated Jesus (in the New Testament) the picture is pretty clear that "Religion" is always the enemy.

Now Nick Cave is an amazing lyricist and one of the three artists I am gonna draw from in this article. The other two are Bono and Madonna. But I start with Nick Cave (Of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) because this guy has a rawness and honesty that makes him godly in a grounded and real sense.

Cave's sense of the rawness of Gospel (he was asked to do the intro to the Gospel of Mark, just as Bono was the Psalms a few years back in a new edition of each separate book). Madonna was not asked, but I'd love to read her intro to the Song of Solomon).

Here is Cave's She's Nobody's Baby Now:

I've searched the holy books
I tried to unravel the mystery of Jesus Christ, the saviour
I've read the poets and the analysts
Searched through the books on human behaviour
I travelled this world around
For an answer that refused to be found
I don't know why and I don't know how
But she's nobody's baby now

I loved her then and I guess I love her still
Hers is the face I see when a certain mood moves in
She lives in my blood and skin
Her wild feral stare, her dark hair
Her winter lips as cold as stone
Yeah, I was her man
But there are some things love won't allow
I held her hand but I don't hold it now
I don't know why and I don't know how
But she's nobody's baby now

This is her dress that I loved best
With the blue quilted violets across the breast
And these are my many letters
Torn to pieces by her long-fingered hand
I was her cruel-hearted man
And though I've tried to lay her ghost down
She's moving through me, even now
I don't know why and I don't know how
But she's nobody's baby now
She's nobody's baby now
Nobody's baby now
She's nobody's baby now

Cave gets the incomprehensibility of God, just as it is with male -female relationships. It is not cynical. It's a chronicle. Love songs and poem reflect the same...heartbreak, disappointment, expectations, joy, sadness, loss, connection, longing, intimacy, hunger...the list goes on but fits both relationships.

So, I write articles like this one and the women I date eventually ask or predict that there is gonna be some problem over this with me. They are not seeing me then. They are seeing them in me.

I am not them.

I do not join those who create the artificial and fantasy of a "we-they" dichotomy and are not capable of making love at 3 a.m. and then (at her request) talking about Jesus or God because she feels open, loved and safe.

Plus they are pretty sure I am not a moralistic judgmental asshole. Hypocrisy using takes some distance in time and situation to fester. And when you are laying naked in bed and spent it;s hard to entertain such.

Some assume that being relational with God is a narrowing, when in fact, it is quite the opposite. Show me a person who believes in nothing and I'll show you narrow. I can see the image of God in the broken down man asleep and drunk in the park. In fact, my life was once saved by a homeless man in Bolinas. But that's another story. Even if he had just watched, it would not have changed the reality of his beauty. (Still I appreciated his intervention).

One of my good friends, a beautiful woman I dated for a couple of years, admitted that after discussions (which she brought up) that her intellectual questions had been answered sufficiently, but that it was in a sense "irrelevant until she got that tap on the shoulder" from God. I quite agree and also that it is out of my jurisdiction. Which is why it is never a problem for me. I value honesty, kindness, intelligence and someone comfortable enough in their own skin to want you and to be intimate should real relationship develop.

Yes, I get my cues from God in a sense...but again in a very relational way, never in a list of rules. And most all of us from any tradition value and hunger for these same things (or as one bumper sticker in town says "There is a lot more that unites us than divides us").

It is hard enough to find the above traits without laying down some conditions on agreeing theologically, or even experiencing God in the same way. And it certainly takes all the fun out of everything. Again, Nick Cave on heroin and drugs "I started taking them because they made me feel good. I stopped taking them because they started to make me feel bad."

So Madonna sings:

"Nothing Fails"

I'm in love with you, you silly thing
Anyone can see
What is it with you, you silly thing
Just take it from me

It was not a chance meeting
Feel my heart beating
You're the one

You could take all this, take it away
I'd still have it all
'Cause I've climbed the tree of life
And that is why, no longer scared if I fall

When I get lost in space
I can return to this place
'Cause, you're the one

Nothing fails
No more fears
Nothing fails
You washed away my tears
Nothing fails
No more fears
Nothing fails
Nothing fails

I'm not religious
But I feel so moved
Makes me want to pray
Pray you'll always be here

I'm not religious
But I feel such love
Makes me want to pray

When I get lost in space
I can return to this place
'Cause you're the one

I'm not religious
But I feel so moved
I'm not religious
Makes me wanna pray
I'm not religious
But I feel so moved
I'm not religious
Makes me want to pray

Nothing fails
No more fears
Nothing fails
You washed away my tears
Nothing fails
No more fears
Nothing fails

The line between love for God and the love between a man and a woman has always been understood by musicians, artists and poets. It's primordial and innate and not theological in the scholarly sense (believe me...all they can do is tell you where love has gone horribly "awry"). Want bad sex, date a theologian or a fundamentalist.

Prayer is better and we all pray. It may not be traditional...and best not to be in my opinion.

The next time you are making love to the man or woman you love it more likely you will pray in the throes of passion "Oh God..oh God!!!" than "Oh mistake of nature! Oh cold universe doomed to dissapate with entropy!! Oh Yes...Entropy!!! Oh Entropy and dissolution yes yes!!!"

Well I am not religious, but life makes me wanna pray and I make no apologies for either.

Sure, Madonna has made a lot of money playing off the religious/spiritual longings of people and how it is bound up with sex. She is, on some level, totally manipulative in this way. But at a certain point, when you have your $134 million deal and everything you do is watched by some part of the world what else is there?

My own guess (and it is truly that) is even her choosing her name was some sort of attempt to both exploit her broken Catholicism and save it at the same time. I feel the same way often about Protestantism. I feel the need to uncover the nakedness of faith and love and hope and joy that is masked by the religious impulse that always mutes or distorts these things.

I was once attending a service. I was raw from a battle with alcohol..like a man without an immune system in a room that is far from sterile. The young preacher, a man I respected and love, was simply reading from the Psalms, and with no defenses left I started to weep at it's beauty. I had to leave the room and clean up (God forbid anyone see a big strong Scot like myself weeping like a baby). Came back and heard more of the Word. I started crying again and had to leave...again.

Later in the week I talked the pastor. Told him I left because I was not sure such a young congregation would understand how natural it is to have the beauty and truth of the Word hit like the beauty of Pacific ocean waves as they slam into your body on thae way out. It also is salty like tears, and powerful, old yet young, just like the Word.

Understand. I was not crying for sadness or remorse. No, this is one little church where I am never judged. To be sure as I was living with my girlfriend at the time there was a raised eyebrow ot two. But if they feel I am a better sinner than they are they get to explain to Jesus how His sacrifice is not good enough for my sins.

Good luck with that one dude.

And I cry at beauty in a good way. I cry at the beauty of the ocean and its throbbing beat, crash and pullback. Like the Psalmist in the 98th:

4 Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth;
Break forth and sing for joy and sing praises.
5 Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre,
With the lyre and the sound of melody.
6 With trumpets and the sound of the horn
Shout joyfully before the King, the LORD.
7 Let the sea roar and all it contains,
The world and those who dwell in it.
8 Let the rivers clap their hands,
Let the mountains sing together for joy

All of which nature does. And I think why people often see God more clearly in nature than in the pews of a church.

Which beings us to Bono, a man who early on saw that there was no distance or divide between the secular and spiritual. Who understands what I call the "running argument with God" whether you believe or not.

In the Rolling Stone interview with Jann Wenner, he says:

Look at the people who have formed my imagination. Bob Dylan. Nineteen seventy-six — he’s going through similar stuff. You buy Patti Smith: Horses — “Jesus died for somebody’s sins/But not mine . . .” And she turns Van Morrison’s “Gloria” into liturgy. She’s wrestling with these demons — Catholicism in her case. Right the way through to Wave, where she’s talking to the pope.

The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt. So the blues, on one hand — running away; gospel, the Mighty Clouds of Joy — running towards. And later you came to analyze it and figure it out.

The blues are like the Psalms of David. Here was this character, living in a cave, whose outbursts were as much criticism as praise. There’s David singing, “Oh, God — where are you when I need you?/You call yourself God?” And you go, this is the blues.

Rock and Roll, the Blues, Gospel music (which has been at the core) has always been about sex and love at the core. Love for a man or woman, love for or questioning God (which from David we see are the same).

It's probably why "Religion" has mostly been against such music..."the Devil's Music" and why current "Christian" Music is so awful. It is fear based and refuses to take on the full range of human existence. You won't find Nick Cage, or U2, or Bruce Springsteen, or Sting, or Bruce Cockburn, or B.B. King, or even Madonna averting the obvious matrix.

Epilogue:

I am not proud to be a Christian at all. I find the label embarassing and off.

The first use of the term was derisive (in the only reference in the New Testament). I will admit it now and always follow it up with "but not the asshole type". Sure I am an asshole in other ways...just regular human ways, but I don't hide behind any fake piety. And I don't judge the faith or non-faith of anyone else.

I will Join Bono and the lads in the defiant (but personal) I will follow (from Boy) which is about grace. I will actively love my neighbors. I will own my own bullshit and ask forgiveness of those I wrong. A will believe in beauty and don't care a whit if it came through some far off "creation" millions of years ago, or through the long process of evolution.

I don't care about that. I care personally about how faith, hope and love are at the core of my being (just as St. Paul suggests). I am not surprised when this is a common experience under the layers with the people I meet, if I take the time to listen long enough. I don't go search for it...I don't really have much of an agenda except perhaps that if a relationship does not work out that in parting the other person is better for having been loved by me.

I care about the truth and speaking it. Which is why I use the terms fuck and shit (and some choice others) to describe obvious reality.

And as for sex, I would find it meaningless and boring without love accompanying my decided lust. We are like dogs, but also like gods. So a woman can take my breath away for a moment and ruin it with ten minutes of blathering on (usually about themselves..which is my territory...but at least I know it).

There is an old saying "A man who enters a whorehouse is looking for God". Of course, he won't often find God there or recognize God. It's all a setup for anti-love and commerce.

Better to live in the tension, so I leave you with I Will Follow

I will Follow...

I was on the outside when you said
You said you needed me
I was looking at myself
I was blind, I could not see

A boy tries hard to be a man
His mother takes him by his hand
If he stops to think he starts to cry
Oh why

If you walkaway, walkaway
I walkaway, walkaway...I will follow

If you walkaway, walkaway
I walkaway, walkaway...I will follow

I was on the inside
When they pulled the four walls down
I was looking through the window
I was lost, I am found

Walkaway, walkaway
I walkaway, walkaway...I will follow
If you walkaway, walkaway,
I walkaway, walkaway...I will follow
I will follow
Your eyes make a circle
I see you when I go in there
Your eyes, your eyes...

If you walkaway, walkaway
I walkaway, walkaway..I will follow

If you walkaway, walkaway
I walkaway, walkaway...I will follow

I will follow

I will follow...

Is it about God or a woman. Maybe both?

Theme

Sex & Love 1

I started biological and innocent but was then re-shaped by commerce. The icons swirling around in the most eroticized world culture ever.

So I was programmed to be drawn to women who were shapely and high-cheek-boned. Oh sure, I few of them were not...but most...sigh...yeah.

There is love and there is sex and then, just maybe the two, though this seems rare of late.

My current girlfreind loves me better than any other. But there is no sex or strong desire (except on my part from time to time...the desire part...not the consummation). So there is definite love, respect and care. But it's not a very sexual relationship. And men are built to pursue that way. And it is not just biological because I have to take a half a blue pill to get the physical going. The mental was going long before that.

My girlfriend before her had the sex drive of a man. But the love thing was sketchy. She turned quickly.

A quick affair a few months ago was the most torrid and tender lovemaking I have ever known...all in one night. I did not know women could be that utterly responsive. She had the drive of two men, maybe three. Now I know, and I am ruined in just one more way because I could see she would come to despise me for other reasons. It would have been remarkable sex for six months, maybe nine. Then would come the poison.

So I chose the open loving woman over the overtly sexual cat who would grab my ass three times a night and say "faster...harder" in my ear.

I have mixed emotions about this.

The woman I live with is far more beautiful and honest, funny and kind.

But like many men, I burn. I may have made a mistake.

*******

The above picture is Alexandra Bastidos. She was the one who first ruined me with her...well everything.

But strangely I keep picking her opposite number.

Sex & Love 2

Let's start with beauty.

There is no woman on the planet who is probably as beautiful as Jennifer Connelly. Been so for like 20 years.

She is an icon. There are others...you can name yours and they can be male or female (like Adrian Paul, Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp are all too pretty to live...just kidding).

We all have an IDEA of beauty that "sets" in our brains at some early age. It may be malleable, but it is how we get together.

But it is just one the precursors. We might, actually, come to find the love of our life to be someone utterly unexpected. Sometimes this works better.

Beauty desired is born of narcissistic desire. The other person does not yet exist. Sometimes they never do... or maybe later you realize this was the last person for you.

Either way, of the levels of love, lust, sex, desire, friendship, companionship, and loyalty, beauty is the thin film on the top of your layered cake.

First taste and tantalizing.

Sex & Love Part 3

My girlfriend is this beautiful and we live together. It's excruciating at times.

She comes to bed late and snuggles inbehind me and I get very hard and throbby. I am supposed to. I am a male who lives and loves a beautiful and sexy woman. I was built that way by God who shows no mercy in these things.

It's not all lust either, or animal desire. Some of it is relational connection. I enjoy her. She has amazing eyes and curves and she makes me happy just sitting next to her. She laughs easy and her dark hair is beguiling. I am in love.

I take her hand and guide it down to my hardness and place her hand over it hoping the feel of it will get the message across. She lets it lay there for a good five minutes. When I start to move it a little bit, she rolls over and away to get some sleep.

Two hours later she inadvertantly whacks me upside the head as she shifts.

Not the headshot I was hoping for.

*******

"Oh I am so sorry darling," she coos.

Not as sorry as I am.

I am sorry I am alive right then. You see ladies, we cannot turn it off the way you can.

It is now 2:13 a.m. I will be awake here utterly aroused for...oh...let's see...just an hour or two.

Throbbing.

And make no mistake. God made me this way.

Now it is not a viable excuse, but the reason good men have affairs is because they are unsatisfied at home (which we shall get to because media adds to this). Women too have affairs, but less often by a large degree and it is often because they are lonely.

I am not lonely.

No, I was built by God to pursue and my girlfriend feels pursued. She likes this but does not understand what it means.

*******

At first there is no problem. You meet, the charge is there...you have sex a lot. It is, of course, not just about sex. That is just one part of it.

Later, when the sex becomes more and more infrequent...THAT is when the man begins to suspect that he is doomed.

He is doomed because all the while he has been pursuing he has also been drawn in. In the beginning he had some control. Now he is gut-hooked and she can have no mercy because it makes no sense to her.

She is simply tired.

*******

It is not sexist to suggest that men are more visually stimulated than women sexually.

We all know this is true. If you do not agree then you are as dumb as a bag of hammers.

The long hair, the full lips, and oh God...the curves. Breasts are a silly concept unless you are a man.

The 5th Avenue Ad men are not confused at all. Watch the ads, look at the magazines. Nonstop sexual images. If this was a war, and it is in some ways, we would be being carpet-bombed at least 10 hours a day with only short breaks.

Now I am a good man...a saint. Not in the Catholic sense, but in the chivalrous sense. I am a one woman man, or at least wish to be. I am not a predator with an immature need to conquer women sexually to feel alive.

I could be if I chose. Only once has a less than beautiful woman seduced me, and not a few men have wondered "how does he do it?"

I do it because I understand what women want, but they do not understand me at all.

What do I understand?

I understand that a woman wants to be ADORED and appreciated in an utterly singular and loyal way. She wants her unique femininity and beauty to be prized above all others (it's okay to look, but adoration is another matter). She wants this sweet adoration to come in many ways, and it is not narcissistic at all. She wants to be touched that way and JUST for her, not for you until she is half insane. It is just what God or nature intended...that her beauty and the glory of God which is female (not just male) is drawn out.

That simple.

That is why they are destroyed when a man betrays them with another woman. That is why they live, often, in fear.

*******

Men do not live in fear unless they live with an angry woman.

If they do then it is as Proverbs says "better to live in the attic alone" than in the house. I know, I have done this and it left my three-quarters dead. I am still trying to recover. I give myself a 50-50 chance.

My girlfriend is not an angry woman unless given real cause.

That's fair.

In fact, she is quite loving, sweet and gracious. I cannot think of the last time she had a harsh word for me. She treates me with love, care and respect.

I am a lucky man, or blessed depending on your worldview.

So she lives with some fear. It's why she checks my websites and the dating personals often. It is why I am going to show her this site because she will find it anyway.

She cannot help it. She has been burned by men again and again, and, while not "technically"...she has been burned by me.

Thus the fear.

But I do not have the fear. I have the "frustration".

My girlfriend will not leave me for another man. She may leave for other reasons, but not that.

No. She knows, in the words of Flannery O'Conner, that a "good man is hard to find."

I am a good man.

I am also a hard man, and I am in love with a very beautiful woman.

I am doomed to a life of frustration even though my sex/pursuit drive has mellowed.

Doomed.

********

To be sure, it has been worse, but if I have any "fear" at all, it comes from that time.

You see I was once married and there is an old saying that "the person who loves the least has the power".

I loved alot.

So I often went three, four...six months deprived of intimacy from a woman I dearly loved.

It's, I guess, a sensitive issue for me still.

Biology
A lot has been made of biology. This makes sense since none of us would exist without it.

So let's move on.

I am, as a male, hard-wired to spread my seed. God has complicated matters by tying love, devotion, fidelity and the whole yin/yang mascaline/feminine reflected "created them male/female" glory thing into the mix.

Thanks God. Nice Job (hehe).

There is No Way for anyone to win unless they cross the street.

You have to cross the street.

And it is best if you invite each other over across the street.

I have to listen to her, and when she invites, cross the street into her world. When I come back I have to keep that world with me so I am still with her.

I have to protect that street...that world.

But I cannot do it for her. So, for now, I get the innocent headshot in the middle of the night.

Sex & Love 4

Biology is biology and it rarely lies.

Woody Allen says this in Annie Hall "yes, but the body does not lie" as he tries to take off her brassiere.

She shucks and shirks him off (Janet Margolin) and says "My God Alvy what would people think!?"

This is what males go through.

WE are half the PEOPLE.

This is what we think. And we do not wish to think badly. We are basically good...so many of us. Really good.

We just want you. That is all.

We do not care what people think (because half of them are us and agree with us).

We just want you. And if you would wise up and want us back we would not be the pricks we are and would not whore after other women and be tempted and all manner of other things that you complain about.

No.

We would just love you and desire you.

(I may be a Saint, but I have my dark frustrated side).

Sex & Love Part Five...why Spongebob gets all the girls

I have always lost out to other guys...eventually.

I mean I have never had a problem meeting and hooking up with beautiful intelligent women. In fact, not so long ago my step-uncle approached me at a wedding party and laughingly said "How do you do it? You always show up with the most amazing women. It boggles my mind."

Of course he failed to note that they are usually different every year or so.

So you have to factor that in as part of the paradigm.

I can get them, but cannot keep them.

This morning I hit a new low when I lost out to Spongebob Squarepants.

I have to seriously find a new paradigm.

I lost several women because I drank too much. That's a fact. I lost another, well because there never was any real connection. I lost a few to other men who were more, oh...lets just say, economically viable than I often am. There were a few women who were just plain mean and no man could withstand their wrath.

Then there is bad timing. For some odd reason often women show up in twos. I'm serious.

I always pick the wrong one.

(Of course, given our thesis, it really would not matter eventually). Had I chosen D over K eventually D would have found an escape hatch. Had I chosen T or L she would have put up with me for the same decade then jumped ship.

It's kinda of a nautical thing.

The common denominator is obvious: It's all their fault for lack of vision.

(Just kidding.)

No, the common denominator is always me.

_____________________


But it's a curious thing to be beat out by a spongy yellow cartoon character. I admit, he is a lot more jolly than me, makes more money, is always upbeat (hence revealing my more broodish side and depressed Swedish side), and his friends are pretty entertaining.

Damn. I wish I had a goofy pink starfish friend about now. Either that or I could live under his rock.

______________________

Some of it must just be age.

I'm 47 and, well, while still "cute" I lack that godlike character that I had 15 to 20 years ago that, of course, I was unaware of and never used...then.

Life can be so cruel, and timing is highly under-rated.

So now I have to rely on humor, intelligence and astonishing sexual technique. All of which I have in abundance, and you would think that would be enough.

Naw.

Because there are other things (and I know several of my Ex's read these posts and are enjoying this. Enjoy ladies.)

Yeah...I hack, and spit at inappropriate times...and I try and start long theological conversations in the middle of the night. And I am an affection whore and plagued by personal demons. I also listen to the same 3 CDs all day long and I often drink too much and then whine about it.

Worse, I make 10k one month then nothing for the next three. I'm obviously bi-polar as I can be charming and sweet one day and an utter ass the next.

All of which is why I have always lost these good and fine women to Bill and Mike, Jim, Harold, Ron, Sven, Rudy and now, finally, er, Spongebob.

_______________________

Okay, okay, my approach was not smooth.

On the weekends, she likes to get up and watch Spongebob in the morning while having her coffee.

I think that's reasonable.

But I had, in my own defense, warned her the night before (after she woke up most of the neighbors with delighted moanings and cries of utter satisfaction) that come daylight I might want to have my own turn.

So I was dismayed when my advances were shunned in favor of a cup of Columbian Roast and a new episode of Spongebob.

What kind of loser loses out to Java (which can be, after all, still sipped in bed) and a cartoon character (especially since there is a fresh VHS tape in the machine)?

What a loser.

__________________


Now admittedly, it was a new episode.

Second, we all know men and women are hard-wired differentely for sex.

Men are often like Samurai. Once the blade (or the idea of the blade) has been unsheathed, it must, er...well you get the point. Days later, the guy is still walking around muttering..."omigod...something has to be done...". Sometimes he just takes matters into his own hands. Other times this is not enough. Especially if he is in love and his woman is very beautiful.

Lucky me. True on both counts.

______________________

So I lost today to a new sponge. That use to have a different meaning in which you actually "won".

But it is really not about sex. It's about connection, not contraception or anything otherwise.

I can prove this even though I am a passionate male built to pursue.

Because I really love this woman.

I know every man is not this way, but when I wake up and look over at my woman I note how her dark hair slides over her soft shoulders. I note how she smells and the the wonderful curves of her body feel good and real.

I reslish these things...right then.

She just wants to sleep. She even snores while I think these things.

When she wakes up she does not look over at me and fawn over me in similar fashion.

She might, once a week, go "ahhh..he's kinda cute". But that would be that, then roll over and go back to sleep.

No it's me who wakes up at 6:32 a.m. with full bonophone ("Hey..how you doin?") on and next to a beauty that I have every ability to fully appreciate. And I am tortured.

________________________

It's been no different in the past. Is it just me? Are other men like this?

Yes and no.

Some are...there are a bunch of us out there and you women largely ignore us because you are use to the other men who objectify, use and then reject you.

Word.

I know these men, the good ones...a lot of them. They are beautiful and fine.

But no, you choose the Neanderthals...the Users , the Shallowmen, the Players.

Why?

I have no fucking idea.

But you do.

(Splain it to me Lucy....")

Please splain.

______________________________

all for today..more manana

Sex & Love Part 6

Well after I lost out to Spongebob I was really depressed. I even yelled out the door of the bedroom "I cannot believe I am losing out to a cartoon character!"

But Mr. Krabs was barking out orders to Squidward on the TV (we have surround sound) so all she heard was a muffled "To gofba belfiore Ma ta chunka boorna ganhripple!"

Which she promptly disregarded.

So I just lay there in utter defeat hoping that my depression would drift into the silence that is sleep.

Which it eventually did until she came in and reminded me we had a party to go to and I had 15 minutes to get ready.

"I'm not going," I said hugging the pillows tight.

"Why?"

"Because I am miserable, depressed and I don't want to see people," I said selfishly.

_____________________

Later I would realize this was a variation of an earlier story for it had the same cadence... the same "ring" to it.

In that story I was 17 years old and sitting in my 63 Impala outside my semi-girlfriend's house. She was telling me to leave and she was angry. I said I was not leaving. She angrily shouted "You are behaving like a baby!"

I began to bang on my little 12 inch pimp steering wheel (I had a low-rider, but that's another story) and yell "I am not a baby, I am not a baby!"

At which point we both stopped...there was silence....then both burst into hysterical laughter.

We "sensitive" men are such the babies.

30 years later I am still a baby.

Baby.

_______________________

So she left for the party without me.

One thing I always note about her is she is truly WSIWYG. She threw no fit, did not try and manipulate me in any way to get her way. She just let me know she was honestly disappointed and said "You'll be missed" and left.

I was still hurt/pissed/depressed after she left. They all kinda run together when it comes to these types of things. I'm not an angry man so I tend toward the hurt/depressed angle with some residual passive aggressive expressions.

Like not going.

Baby.

_______________________

She came back in the door 40 minutes later.

This I had not expected.

We talked. I have some pretty glaring faults but not listening, caring or being harsh are not among them. There were tears and consolation and then more talk.

Later we were laughing in the bed, and then not laughing as her beautiful hair came down on my face and I grabbed her ass and we moved the bed a good three feet away from the wall by the time we were done.

Spongebob can kiss my ass.

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Now I know what some of you are thinking.

Perhaps that I manipulated the situation?

I didn't.

It's like Bono's line off the recent album.

For love and faith and sex and fear.
And all the things that keep us here
In the mysterious distance
Between a man and a woman

There is a "mysterious distance" that exists between a man and a woman. Two ways of being, two angles of approach. Add to that family histories, past mistakes and all the mysteries of human existence that present themselves on a regular basis, and that is what makes up the bulk of that "mysterious distance".

Still it is worth doing. Love is worth doing.

Maybe in light of the above issues...love, faith, sex, and fear, we could add another one.

Humility.

Maybe, along with love, faith, sex and fear, humility is what bridges the mysterious gap between a man and a woman.

Sex & Love Part 7

"All you need is love" ~ John Lennon

__________________________

Ghandi said the same thing as did Jesus. Everyone knows it is pretty much about love. The love of a man and woman, or of any two people, the pack or posse you run with, the love for money or cars or hobbies, or movies or food, or friends, or family, or God or a million others things.

At the core we are relational beings. If we do not receive relationship and touch as infants we flat out die even if we have food and water. We were, most of us, spawned in some version of love, even if it was lust.

All our loves are a scramble and they cross over each other like the damned Oakland freeway where it is actually true that there are places "you cannot get to from here".

Which is a fitting metaphor because some loves "get there from here" and some don't.

We all have experienced that.

Some dead-end. Actually a lot of them do. Some collapse under their own weight like those same Oakland freeways did in the earthquake.

Even though I was in Sacramento getting ready to watch my beloved Giants get dispatched by the Oakland A's, being from the Bay Area I remember screaming at the screen as they showed pictures in Oakland because I knew what every local did and the national media did not.

There were PEOPLE under that freeway. People who were already dead, crushed, or dying.

How could they not know? How could a national media machine not plainly see that it was a tiered freeway that had utterly collapsed?

Fuck. For the love of God, why could they not see?

And where was the love of God that day anyway?

Where is God when the walls come down?

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Sex & Love Part 8

The Overview of Sex and Love.

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Please excuse the first fairly suggestive piece of art in above for this series. Up until now I have been tame.

Just making a point.

We basically have one word in English for love.

The kooky-nutting crazy Greeks had a bunch of them because they knew how to distinguish between things. Things like leftt and right, East and West...the kind things the architects of the Oakland freeway system never considered. They just kept building ramps, then more ramps.

Ramp happy.

They have some dead ones in SF too.

As such, the Ancient Greeks had at least five words related to love, perhaps more like 9. But we are gonna just do the five main ones.

Understand...they cannot often be separated. Where one leaves off and the other begins is as mysterious and the love between a man and a woman...times about, well, I'm guessing, but five?

So it is like a maddening freeway of overcrossings and underpasses and counter-intuitives curves and turns and off-ramps and roadways that sometimes have three labels, then two, then five, then one.

And you wanted to go South and you are headed to Berkeley all of the sudden.

What are these loves the Greeks talked of?

I will tell you them one by one next. Just keep the freeway in mind and buckle your seatbelt.

Sex & Love Part 9: Venus

I suppose the female equivalent would be either the abs and face of Brad Pitt, or the beautiful face of Johnny Depp, or the guy down at the bagel shop who is just hot.

We are animals and attraction is a strange and animal thing when it comes to Venus love.

We like to fuck when we are attracted.

Venus love is for fucking.

But it's like the bass line in a great rock opera because, by itself and alone, it is more often than not ultimately hollow and lost.

Not always, do not get me wrong...but night after night, Venus on it own sinks down into a monotony that dusts down by the tracks while other cars scream along over head in all directions.

It's a dead end by itself.

Still most of us would not exist without it.

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So guys, look at the picture above (and some of you girls).

Would you not wanna "do" this beauty?

I would , until I met her. Then the other "loves" would raise their voices and I would have to get very drunk (which I really try not to do and really is very telling if you think about it).

If I was alone, we would talk, and somewhere the other "loves" would rise up and speak to me.

What are these other loves that would keep me from this voluptuous woman with a Mona Lisa smile?

Ah...next chapter...

But for now you have Venus under your belt (so to speak).

Sex & Love Part 10: Eros

Eros is another matter. It is related in a strong way with Venus. No doubt.

But it is time for me to name the five Greek words for love to help build a roadmap vastly superior to the Oakland Freeway system.

Venus: Sexual love
Eros: Romantic love
Phileo: Freindship love
Storge: Family love
Agape: Spiritual love

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I note Jennifer Connelly above because as any woman who has ever loved me with any of the beforementioend loves, they know I have a "thing" for her.

It's not hard to see why (insert shudder).

I have a certain penchant for dark-haired beauties, and it would not surprise you that my girlfriend is just such.

She knocks me out.

But that is just Venus and we already agreed that is short-lived at best.

So what of the other loves?

What else do we share? Are we dust under the tracks or can we find a way to blaze over the bridge in the free air with the top down and feel grateful?

_____________________


I watched Jennifer Connelly on The Actor's Studio last night. It's a long and personal interview and I have to say I did not find her very interesting at all.

I respect her and what she has done, and the chances she has taken. I think she is luminous in outward beauty, but then so does half the planet.

I found her, frankly boring. My girl is ten times more interesting and fun. I relish her. I cherish her.

If Jennifer invited ne to the top of the SF Hilton, with caviar, Dom Perignon, oysters and her in a slinky red dress?

Tempted? Yes. Flattered? Ultimately. But Nope.

"Tell me about your kids" would come out of my mouth.

I'd like her shy smile back. But that would be that.

________________

Why?

It's the other loves...which is why we are here. and they do oversect and intersect and swirl around each other in a dance like a freeway system that we have little idea how to navigate.

Not any of us.

_______________

Eros is the love of desire. Pure desire. It is utterly selfish even though it pretends not to be. It HUNGERS.

Unlike Venus it's hunger is not for the body primarily (note that). That is secondary, a spoil.

No, it hungers for BEING.

By it's very nature Eros-love recognizes value in others and seeks to possess them as objects of perceived value. It is, in the words of Nygren and DeRougemont, "acquisitive".

Surely you can seen this in the erotic love of ever movie or book or series you have ever seen or read.

Do the relational math.

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Sex & Love 11: Phileo

I did not say "fellatio"...that would be covered under the last two post and I've been far too oral in both regards.

Phileo is friendship love.

It's an even larger category that the hotness that comes with Eros and Venus.

They flame, then die down to cold and dusty and lost embers most often if left soley to themselves.

This is where the other "loves" come in, if they do at all.

Maybe they all may become the drive home if we allow it? Eros, Venus, Phileo?

But we have two more.

Just know that that Narnian author C.S. Lewis was dead on when he said said that eros made a man and woman look "face to face" but that phelio love made thewm stand sholder to shoulder...side by side "seeing the same truth".

That's what "Peachy" and "Danny" end up doing in The Man Who Would be King. Friends to the end, however bitter or disappointing it it might be or become. Loyalty, love, devotion, care and "seeing the same truth."

Friendship is proved in the commonality of vision and in the fires of adversity that prove real love.

I fucking said that.

Sex & Love Part 12: Storge

Daughter of The Saint.

One of the natural results of both Venus and Eros is children. Offspring who we love in a different way.

This is what the Greeks called "Storge" love. It is family love and can be something extended beyond that also to one's neighbors.

Storge love is, in its own way even more grounded and natural a love than the ones with more passion. It is simple.

It's the sort of love that reaches out to others when disaster strikes. It's the sort of love that stays up all night with a sick child, or lets them curl up in your arms and cry because they are afraid or sick.

Storge love also exists within the family wounds.

It's where and why children keeping trying to meet or forgive their parents who have not done so very well. It's why those same parents call even though they might still get an earfull if they are not careful.

When Jesus talked about loving your neighbor, I think he may have been talking storge.

It's a simple love, but the one that maybe carries us along a lot more than we know.

________________

I know the names of the folks in the store across the street. It comes slowly. At first they are anonymous functionaries. The process you and vice-versa.

But in time you start to note their names. They also note you.

A couple of them are worried about me. I can tell. A few others judge me.

They see I drink too much. Thus the reactions.

But that too is storge love. Neighbor/family love.

I always treat them with the utmost of respect. I have learned their names. I look them in the eyes and ask them how they are. And I mean it. With one or two of them we have some private jokes.

One woman looks at me with concern. Someone in her family...her own circle of storge love...was destroyed by alcohol. She bears the wounds of it. I have seen it so often. This disease has ravaged millions. It's a killer.

I do not bear her any ill will for her looking at me the way she does.

In it's own way, it is storge love.

And my respect for her is, ironically, the same.

Storge.

It's love.

____________________

Well this series is on love and sex. So how does Storge love figure in?

Well it is the backbone. It's the rareest of things because passion and lust (eros and venus) come easy. Friendship may also come alongside it some order if you have a common vision.

But Storge is where someome who is not your family becomes your family. If they are a neighbor it may be slight. If your Love, then they may become flesh of your flesh and you may learn, in time to watch her, and she you, like animals watch their own offspring. Always watching for a threat, always trying to provide for them.

I use to say that all I ever wanted was a woman who would gladly put her butt up against mine in a knife fight. Because life brings it on until we die. You need a woman, a mate like that.

It is rare to find that in a woman. I suppose it is rare to find a man who is utterly loyal to the death.

Funny that.

Sex & Love 13: Agape

Writer Anne Lamott, who goes to the church I would attend if I went, hardly ever, but she writes a lot about Grace and also Love.

She is my favorite author, but I still don't often go to church.

She has a vibrant spirit in Church, acting like an unofficial pastor of sorts (though she would hate that designation). The official pastor is a brilliant woman of expansive vision. The congregation is delightfully mixed. Old and new, black and white and every beautiful color inbetween.

We'll figure out later why I do not go. It isn't them, I assure you. It's me.

In Bird by Bird, Lamott writes about seeing her first baseball game.

We are about the same sage so I had the same picture in my head and rolled it over my tongue when she wrote the same thing I had tasted at 14.

Willie Mays like Jesus out in centerfield.

Bingo.

What's my point (and why is there not enough sex in this series suddenly?)

Grace.

Grace.

And the distance between love, grace and sex is very small.

Oh ye of little faith.

_______________________

Agape love is the last of our loves we want to examione, then we wanna see how they swish and intertwine with each other, join, dance and swirl around your world.

Okay?

Gift love. Agape.

Like dropping Jesus or Willie Mays or Ghandi down in our miserable mess.

Or Bono.

Sometimes people God just loves us. God has God's own reasons for doing this, but we cannot say God is disinterested, only that God does not act as we would in a timely fashion.

That's fair.

Agape Love: It loves the unloveable. It creates value and truth in the unloveable; it pours itself into the abyss which is human lostness. It is the unshakebale force the binds the universe together in all its madness and waits for a better day.

A day of Pure Love.

___________

Oh and yes, if you are a man and you want to ...er foretsall....thinking about Willie Mays will help...for awhile. Might buy you three minutes.

Sex & Love 14: Interdependence and overlapping

Betty Blue
__________________

Regular reader and contributer "Grace" says this...

Hopefully when you are all rested, you will write us how the loves all work, twirl and dance together.

I have already added "Humility" to the mix. A humility that is not the least bit averse or shy of the animal lust, desire, friendship, family-closeness or even the love of God in all its mysterious ways.

It's a humility born out of basic animality.

We are "angels in armor". Do the math anyway you like, but we are godlike and doglike all at once.

I do not wish to be flippant but I just wanna make the point.

Others have done so more eloquently than I ever could.

Jonathan Swift wrote about the discrepancy between his ideal depiction of his lover and the fact that she was also just an animal.

"Oh how I nearly lost my wits,
oh Calea, Calea Calea shits."

We are godlike and doglike.
____________________

In Betty Blue, the film opens with two actors having real sex on camera.

It is not porno, which makes it all the more sexy and, for many people, one of the sexiest scenes in cinema.

Why?

Relationship, and the loves overlapping, and washing over each other as the loves do.

Porno is never about love. It's just about pounding well-sculpted flesh. It's boring and leads to impotence.

I am no moralist.

It just is what it isn't.

____________________

So Grace wants to know how the five loves (and that is just one paradigm) dance and twirl and wash over each other.

Who wouldn't?

[Okay, I'll give you my best guess, and that is all it is and you f-ing lurkers could chime in anytime and ask questions, comment and get off the fucking bench]

We all want an answer to this question.

One factor is unrepression. Let's admit what we are and what we want.

In the Bible (yeah I'm gonna go there) God created Humanity in God's own image...Male and Female.

Note that. The glory of God is reflected "male and female" if you buy into that grand myth.

Various loves, various sexes that are co-drawn, various Dieties who exist in some kinda Threesome.

And it's all about Love.

________________________

Sex & Love 15: Orgasm

Men and women think different about orgasms. And, as usual it is a matrix of many of the loves tumbling over each other, at least if you have any depth at all.

Venus (lust), Eros, (desire), Storge (the one commandment we obey...to "be fruitful and multiply"), Phileo (when you are not at all in the mood but you satisfy your partner) and agape (at times a mystical union which we shall explore later) all come into play from here to there in varying degrees.

But before I unpack some of this, and we will, let's admit that there is a certain ridiculous element to the orgasm.

At least for men. And I can only give a man's perspective and that is all I will do below.

__________________________

Women actually look and sound incredibly beautiful as they shudder and moan and cry out in orgasm.

A good man who knows what he is doing can feel it coming about ten minutes out. He let's it linger, he invites, he dances around it...stops...then comes back.

And by this, let's be clear we are talking about the clitoris. A few women occasionally have a vaginal orgasm, but it is rare and may have more to do with the technique of penetration. It's a bit of a mystery and everyone is different.

Both have their rewards. I once gave oral so good the woman had an out of body experience...but she still wanted me to pound her into the sheets later.

When a woman comes there is an exchange that is hard to describe. The best lovers know that all sex is about pleasing the woman you love (at best, or are at least with).

The dipshits never get that. They think it is about them.

Idiots.

But life has it's ironic revenge because while women are their most beautiful in orgasm, we men just look plain stupid.

We look just fine until we suddenly just seize up like Han Solo in the Carbon Freeze chamber and grunt repeatedly like cheap swine.

Then we shrink, roll off, and often sleep.

It's amazing the whole planet has not been driven to be utterly Lesbo.

(No Homo/No Lesbo).

______________________

Venus and Men.

These men live for sexual conquest and orgasm. Then they slink away. They will say and do anything just to hump like dogs. The orgasm..their orgasm, is the sole goal with the finest beotch they can find. It's a Dog humps Dog world.

I hate to get graphic...but these are the same guys who think it is fun to spray their seed in a woman's face, like marking their new territory.

It makes me ashamed to be associated by gender.

She is just fresh meat and her beauty is utterly missed or ignored.

No love. Just dead-end lust. "Luv-yah luv-yah baby...call ya".

Darkness and hollowness surrounds them.

Often money changes hands which seals all I have said above in a hermetically sealed bag.

_______________________

In our popular movies and books the moment of climax is spiritual.

Well that runs the gamut.

From humping like dogs to being like gods.

In most cases it is somewhere well in the middle. With one exception (It was 1987 and I was very drunk) I can honestly say I have never been intimate with any woman that I did not love. Sure, some in a more far-reaching way than others...but love was always involved.

Love, respect, care, some actual communion.

There is something very intimate about an orgasm no matter how ridiculous a man looks at that moment.

Some more than others.

The night my daughter was conceived I remember laughing out loud after I came.

I knew life had been created and I loved the woman and the little girl to come nine months later.

It was beautiful and still is.

(Even though she and I are no longer married. Still love is there, and my daughter is amazing.)

_______________________

Why did God create the orgasm?

Great question because people assume God is so against sex.

Nope. God loves it. Created it. Made it core. A drive and yet attached to love...all the loves

Attached to lust, desire, freindship, family and grace.

This God is devious. Clever. A subversive.

This is not the God of the Fundamentalists who decry sexual union in almost all forms except for strict procreation and ignore all the biblical and physiological facts to the contrary.

For them it is about power and not any of the loves (except when Jimmy-D gets horny and subjects his inert Christian wife to yet another unwelcome assault. That's just biology.)

________________________

Well their is more beauty and truth available in this grand wide-world than what exists in their dumbed-down and unbiblical philosophy. We can leave them to their own devices and hope they will leave us the hell alone as we search out real love and connection.

Sex & Love 16: Disclosure

On of the things I love about blogging is both the anonymity and also the disclosure and open discussion.

I had not posted about orgasms but within 30 minutes I had two responses from two folk I read every day and respect.

Jelly says I lost him when I statrted to talk about God.

I sure understand that. It's risky and like walking through an old North Korean minefield.

I'll admit that and respect Jelly for his opinion and concern.

______________________


Second we have a woman called Grace who often comments on my many sites. She says:

oh yeah i forgot to say that the loves cover Spirit, Mind and Body which are so much part of the mix with sex and love, when they are all working it, that is when it is the most breathtaking.

Which just takes us a little further in.

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But let me take a slde-light on blogging first.

I have, or do, correspond with some of the best bloggers online. Lindsey, Meems, Lara, Jelly, Nic, Rick, Harleyrider, Talluelah, Greg, Geekbird, Sex, and Grace (and others...you know who you are).

They are all very different except they share one thing...they are all very good writers and they tend to tell the truth in their own ways. Some do it through satire (sometimes viscious satire), others through quiet introspection. others through naked prose or sheer farce or fiction.

It varies kinda like an all-star team.

Anyway, I value their (your) comments whether they agree or not and what they write in response advances the discussions about life.

__________________________

Now to Jelly I just wanna reiterate my reply comment (and this is meant in good fun but like many jokes has a kernal of truth). When a woman is in ecstacy she will cry out to God "Oh God!! Oh Jeeeesus!!!...Oh Fuck... Fuck me...Fuck me...Oh GOD! Oh GODDDD!"

It's maybe the opposite of the thing about atheists and foxholes (No Boutros).

God I crack myself up. (No Fundie).

________________________

No Grace calls us back to a reality we are not used to.

I hate to admit it but my only accredited degree is in psychology.

Idiot! (read Napolean dynamite and Lewis Blaqck yet once again)

But when i studied deeper new queastions came up and the old Greek notions of easy dichotomies began to thin out quickly.

This intersects with the series on "Perception" that I was working so hard on until I got re-railed into this.

Paradigms of perception. Are we dichotimous, trichoctimus or hippopotimus?

(Sorry I am a silly man).

_____________________

I also studied theology (yeah, no duh...). One thing I found was that biblical literature (ya think? ) is basically Hebraic.

Not Capitalistic American, or Colonial English, or Constantinian Aggression, or even the Councils of the 300's.

No long before there was just the Hebrew Deity who has some crazy ass ideas.

One was that instead on being a dichotomy of opposites we are actually utterly Wholistic. That where spirit and body and mindfulness meet and blend is a mystery. You cannot divide them.

There is a Trinity alive inside our very beings.

We all know this. We all have experienced the spirit and mind doing their own dance within us while our body tries to sleep or walk down the street.

Who talks to the "other" voice inside you when it happens.

Who in you yells at your own mind when it keeps playing the annoying same song over and over in your head, or play old tapes that you do not wanna watch or hear? Who do you argue with inside?

C'mon. Let's get real.

________________________

Now that we have that out of the way...we may deal with Grace's question....er , I think....

Sex & Love 17: Harmony

Evolution , Creation, Clitoris, Penis, a jumped chromosome that turns in the womb of our Natality, the five Greek loves, or Hebraic Wholism, or the naked Nativity. Different epistemologies and angles of expression and perception...being Godlike and Doglike at the same time. Lust and love, desire and Hope and love and Gift, Friendship and Good Humor.

We are clearly in over our heads and perhaps the last item is in good order...humor.

No wonder we seek diversion.

It's not easy being human unless you have found a way to shut yourself down.

I never have.

_____________________________

I have always thought evolution was true until tonight.

For 3 decades of study I always believed it true and made adjustments.

But my girlfriend convinced me otherwise tonight.

Nope.

You are no accidents and neither are your longings, orgasms, hopes, dreams and the way you want to love. Nor the quest for meaning or the offense that is death or loss.

Not an accident. Not just biology or dead-end psychology.

Human nature and consciousness and so much of what we are is a mystery.

She finally convinced me tonight. And all she wanted to do was do the opposite.

Life.

That is not to say that evolution does not occur. It plainly and clearly does. Natural Selection is demonstratible as are many other aspects of evotutionary theory.

(Let's make that clear)

Let's also make it clear that if I speak about God I am really talking about spirituality, and one which exists all around us. Some may choose to believe, or have claimed to experience a personal diety. But that in no way excludes all manner of spirituality any more than we want to hem in love itself.

For some God is love. That is what Ghandi said, and it echoes back to St. John and Jesus.

But love, spirituality and sexuality can exist in many ways.

The "God Squad" as Grace likes to put it, are very "anti-body" (which I find poetic and fitting in a wholistic picture) and judgmental and full of anger. They are the new Inquisition (suddenly I hear "POOOOWANG!! NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!! Our chief weapon is ...).

These folks are to be avoided at all cost.

So often now, in our culture, if we bring up God in any context it is these turds that come to mind. Pay them no heed. They have their dead religion and each other to bicker with.

So now...can we move on?

While M's Away The Saint Will Play

On assignment in Cabo until the 25th. All very "hush hush and whoosh whoosh".

Anti-dream...or is it?

With the encouragement of a friend I fell asleep listening to Thomas Newton. The soundtrack quietly warped and woofed through the developing fabric of my dreaming.

It was dark outside on a warm summer night as I approached the small bungalow. She was waiting outside in a long cotton gown. She seemed to be having fun, taking care somehow.

When I saw her and walked up she turned and smiled.

"What are you going?"

She crinkled her little nose and said "I'm just taking care of the last."

"Okay," I said and went inside past the screen and regular door.

I could hear Newton's Mauve Antartica in the background, twinkling, dancing, a little sweep here. Beautiful. Like delicate cat paws on new carpet.

But the room was empty. I turned on the air conditioner but it made no sound. Just the music.

I lay down on simple soft bedding. The dark yellow glow of the lighting warmed the room. I felt at peace.

She did not come into the room. The dream was too short. But she didn't need to. I knew in her time she would, and lay down next to me. I would smell her hair, and enjoy the line of her jaw in the light, and she would stretch out and just want to be held.

And I felt happy. A room with nothing but a bed. A woman to trust. Crickets outside, and a winsome soundtrack.

Ah...if life were only like this.

But it can be, in a dream..or if we choose it...sometimes.

Darkness

It's not a place you wanna go to.

Unrequited love that becomes like a spell.

Its dark and grusome. You wait for it to end but it goes on.

It's a sadness that prevails and overlooks.

Few can fathom it.

Unrequited Love Part 1

She looks happy, huh?
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Pepe Le Pew is instructive of many a male female catastrophe. He goes by outward appearances and falls for a feline of a different species.

She is not amused or enamored by his constant advances, which do not deter him in the least.

But his "love" for her is unrequited...unanswered, or if so, the answer is "no". Yet he continues on unwavering to pursue.

Napoleon Dynamite took lessons from Pepe, which is probably why he took Pedro under his wing.

Unlike our cartoon friend, most of us have experienced unrequited love at one time or another. Perhaps even many times and it begs a number of questions.

First, why would you want to be with anyone who would not truly desire to be with you?

That is the reverse of the old Groucho Marx joke that he would never "want to belong to any club that would have me as a member," which answers why some people abide years of unrequited love. They do not believe they deserve love from someone they admire and find beautiful.

Nonsense, I say.

Second, it often happens by mis-timing like the constant backfiring of your neighbors car which was last tuned in 1974. When she is ready you are not. When you become ready she is not. When it is corrected you are out of gas. It becomes something like Bunuel attempting to film Madame Butterfly or George Bush responding to New Orleans.

I know this from first hand knowledge. It's a little like the sketch in Woody Allen's Love and Death between Natasha and Sonya where Natasha spills her guts about unrequited love in Tolstoy's Russia:

Natasha: "I'm in love with Alexi
He loves Elisha
Elisha is having an affair with Leiv
Leiv loves Tatana
Tatana loves Simkin
Simkin loves me
I love Simkin but in a different way than Alexi
Alexi loves Tatana like a sister
Tatana's sister love Tregoran like a brother
Tregoran's brother is having an affair with my sister
who he likes physically, but not spiritually."

Sonya: "Natasha! It's getting a little late."

Natasha: "The firm of Mishkin and Mishkin is sleeping with the firm of Tuskoff and Tuskoff"

Sonya: "Natasha...to love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love, but then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore to be happy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness."

"I hope you are getting this down."
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God have mercy on us all in Part 2...

Unrequited Love Part 2

Part of the issue is the "romantic myth" grounded in the literature and song of 12th Century Europe...most specifically the province of "roman".

So we see here that the world has been conquered twice by the same word.

But where one held the sword in "Pax Romana" (peace at any cost) the other is a conqueror of hearts and minds in an almost upward viral way.

From the Medieval troubadours the virus of romantic love took Western civilization from the near primordial stories of Tristan and Iseult. With King Mark, this triad morphs later into Camelot, Shakespeare, and feeds a near Middle Eastern pipeline of energy into modern romanticism. Every television show, novel, film...or shitty magazine on the shelf at Safeway is informed by this romantic myth.

It is always a triad. That triad can be and man and woman and danger. That triad can be a man and woman and another woman, or man. That triad can be a man and a man and a disease. It can be Brad, Jen and Angelina, or it can be Scott, Lacey and the judicial system.

It sells. It attracts. There is drama in the triad.

And drama is what we want...and get.

But we do not necessarily get love. That's the trick.

And maybe why the divorce rate in California is like 60 percent, with another 25 percent just opting out entirely.

Maybe the myth is at fault?

Isn't it interesting that at the core of the romantic myth is unrequited love?
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Hmnnnn...

Unrequited Love Part 3

Some days it's best to stay on shore.
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Surfing will be my new metaphor for awhile. Usually it's baseball, but I am studying surfing.

What do you think went through this surfer's mind when he saw that?

Yet he wants to catch a wave. Needs to catch one.

A lot like love in a postmodern world.

And I am not being cynical.

The Hummingbird Tolls For Me, Part 1

"To see hummingbirds in your dream, suggests that small ideas/concepts may possess much potential and power. Alternatively, it indicates your flighty thoughts and frivolous ideas. It may be a metaphor for your inability to commit to a relationship."
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Dreams are sometimes funny and at other times decidely not.

I was laying in bed and it was starting to get light out. I looked over at the wall and a hummingbird was perched on a small stand. When it saw me it flew straight over and landed on my head.

"Oh great," I said. "I'm dreaming again and there is a hummingbird on my head..."

I got up on the side of the bed and tried to decide if I was going to go for an early morning run. Then I woke up in my actual bedroom and started recollecting the various aspects of the dream. Unlike the dream I wrote about recently, this one had a different feel to it and I did not like it one bit.

But what are dreams? What are their aboriginal function in our lives? And when people give "interpretations" (like above...got that one online) how do they know?

I did some background research, which given my encyclopedic mind took the usual three to five minutes. More than long enough to reconstruct my dream and get a solid interpretation.

And this was, while not a nightmare, still a disturbing dream.

First, the hummingbird.

I'm gonna go with the latter interpreation. I have also been experiencing, lately, an increased ability to write and form longer projects and a much faster rate. What use to take me weeks to write now takes a matter of hours. This little series will be done before breakfast. They almost writes themselves.

But there are side effects to whatever is happening in my brainpan. When I awake I have way too many thoughts and images swirling around me brain and a general lack of clarity until I get up, sometimes throw up, have a drink and settle in at the computer.

From there things quiet down. But the Hummingbird felt like a warning.

"Flighty thoughts and frivilous feelings"...hmnn. Let's have a look at the rest of the dream.
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More Hummingbirds...