Interested in long term romantic relationships? Marriage? Sexual satisfaction? Sexual adventure?
Give a listen to this TED Talk by Psychotherapist Esther Perel, the author of Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic. I think she’s on the right track.
I’ve been thinking, of late, about apologies.
Saying “I’m sorry” is an act of humility, and of strength. But it can also just be a tool used, insincerely, to alleviate conflict and evade direct responsibility for one’s actions.
Interestingly, this week I had someone pull out an apology I had made to them months ago and try to use it as a bludgeon against me. She pointed to the fact that I had apologized to her, for whatever part I had in the collapse of our friendship, as proof that I was not only fully at fault but downright malicious. That’s right: by apologizing, I had apparently admitted to complete culpability and that culpability proves that I’m a vicious bastard.
Had I not apologized for anything, like her, I’d presumably have the high ground. I’d be free of all guilt. I’d be the victim.
For the record, if I sat down with you and tried to tell you what the hell happened, what I did that was worth throwing a friendship away for, I couldn’t do it. I’m as perplexed now as I was then. And ultimately it doesn’t matter, because clearly a friendship so cagey and fragile is no friendship at all, and its demise is to be celebrated, not mourned.
She was the one who turned hostile. She was the one who literally refused to discuss whatever was happening. She was the one who responded to my apology by blocking me on Facebook. She was the one who then wrote a lengthy blog post that wasn’t about me, but in which she defined herself by listing things she doesn’t like, which happened to be things I like (pulp fiction, comics, Bruce Springsteen) which she had apparently been pretending interest in to get close to me for months.
So, if I say I’m not sure what I did to enrage her so much, and that she acted with such unreasoning hostility, why did I apologize in the first place? Continue reading
I’m usually annoyed when someone pulls out the “male gaze” concept in a discussion of art and culture. While the idea has undeniable merit, it is often wielded as a bludgeon of ABSOLUTE TRUTH. In other words, men like looking at sexy women and it ruins the world, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
I happen to think that much of this sort of thing has its roots in the innate differences in men’s and women’s cognitive wiring. That doesn’t mean we should just accept the baseline set by our neurology as the sole standard to consider, but it does mean that there’s probably nothing wrong with men liking to look at sexy women, or vice versa, or even having art that caters to such desire.
Still, just as we aspire to more than simple orgasm in our relationships, we should aspire to higher levels of cultural relationship as well. At the very least, we should think about these things, and consider how the ways that we think and create impact the way we relate to each other.
Author Kate Elliott has written a very balanced, thoughtful post considering the male gaze (and other gazes) in fiction, and I recommend it for everyone, but particularly for writers. She avoids the fanatic’s tendency to use the concept as a blanket condemnation of men and their wicked staring eyes, which I appreciate as a man with a finely tuned male gaze of my own, and shares some insights I’ve never considered. I’m a better person, and likely a better writer, for having read it.
You can read it here.
O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song…Make the tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse… –Homer, The Odyssey
Happy is he whom the Muses love… –Hesiod, Theogony
The ancient lass pictured above is Calliope, daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne (the goddess of memory), and the Muse of epic poetry and writers. She was mother to the great lyre player and singer Orpheus, and creative inspiration to Homer.
Now, thanks to the loving craft of my sweet friend Nydia Macedo in Brazil, Calliope has come to live with me in the Byrdcave, to inspire me in my daily writing. Nydia, whose work you can see (and purchase!) on Facebook under the name “Carioca Witch,” specializes in handcrafting poppets and ornaments based in spiritual and mythological symbology. She researches her topics, finding appropriate colors and design elements to incorporate and herbs to use for scents, then brings her own artistry to the task of playfully evoking these ancient resonances through beautiful stitching. Each piece is a labor of love, and photos don’t capture just how cool they really are. I encourage you to visit the Facebook page linked to above and surf through her albums to see the variety of things she creates, from gods and goddesses to Christmas and Halloween ornaments to superheroes…
Yesterday, I received the poppet of Calliope that Nydia made for me:
She’s beautiful and will have a permanent place of honor in my home.
As tribute to sweet Calliope, and sweet Nydia, I offer this Song of the Week from Django Reinhardt, “La Mer (Beyond The Sea)”…
So I lost another friend on Facebook.
He’s a writer, and a fellow pulp fan, and I’d enjoyed knowing and occasionally interacting with him. I liked seeing what he had to say, and what he had going on.
I knew he was a conservative, while I am not. The fact that he holds to certain ideas didn’t make me think less of him as a person, it just made me wonder how he could reconcile those ideas with observable reality. But we all have our filters and our failings and our blindnesses, and I hoped that he, and the many other right-wing friends I have, wouldn’t allow disagreement with ideas to lead to discord between us as people. That has happened, of course, and people have fled my friends list over such issues, and even issues more trivial. The game writer S. John Ross unfriended me and actually blocked me on Facebook for a single polite comment disagreeing with his opinion of Johnny Cash. Talk about the courage of your convictions.
My attitude is usually that a friend lost in this way is no friend worth having, and I tend to operate on the principle of “If I offend you, that probably just makes us even.”
But anyway, I hadn’t seen anything from this friend for a while, and I grew concerned that maybe he was having health problems or something. So I visited his page, where I found that we were no longer friends. I naturally suspected the reasons for this, but I sent him a message and asked why he’d unfriended me, telling him that if I had offended him it hadn’t been because I intended to.
This was his response: Continue reading
I just read “The problem with slut-bashing (or: I was a teenage dinner whore. kidding.),” a wonderful blog post by Justine Musk on sexual politics and language. You should check it out.
Here’s a piece:
In her book THE ART OF WAR FOR WOMEN, Chin-ning Chu writes:
“Women seem to have fallen prey to something I call the crabs-in-the-pot syndrome. When you cook crabs, you don’t have to place the lid on the boiling pot because the crabs keep one another from getting out. As one crab gets near the top and attempts to climb over the edge, another crab will naturally put it down in its own attempt to escape. As a result, all the crabs go to their collective doom.”
This is the problem whenever a woman defends herself by saying “I am not a slut.”
By declaring that you are not a slut, you are saying that some women are sluts; you are drawing a line between yourself and them. Except it’s a line that can’t actually exist, because all it does is reinforce the very idea that you’re trying to fight.
As soon as you buy into a reality that brands any woman a ‘slut’, you buy into a belief system that attacks femalehood itself. This includes you. You sacrifice someone else in your effort to escape the boiling water, but you can’t get out of the pot.
Need a little perspective today? Want to get a sense of where you really are in the fullness of reality? Interested in learning all kinds of cool things?
The app I link to below, which allows you to zoom in to the teeny tiniest bit of quantum foam or out to the fullness of the entire universe is one of the most astonishingly elegant scientific gizmos I’ve ever seen. It’s worth spending some time with.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson offers his “most astounding fact” about us and the universe. In it are the roots of a true spirituality, a spirituality that isn’t blind to the sheer scope and wonder of life and nature and the universe itself, a spirituality that recognizes the importance of all things and a true understanding of their interconnections: science.
As above, so below.
This is my final “good memory” from last year, and I’m going to tell you about the two women who dominated my time and attention, who touched me and thrilled me and inspired me, who gave me delight with their presence, then despair at their loss.
I’m going to call them Witchcraft and Prose. My relationship with one is no secret, but what I shared with the other is, and I like the poetry in these noms de cœur. I’m not going to say much about them, but I can’t write about my good memories of last year without writing about them, because they were responsible for most of them.
◊
Witchcraft may well have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.
Her hair is a wild mane of copper and fire.
She moves in the world with confidence and strength, but has a fragility about her, a softness and wariness betrayed in the shyness of her smile.
As 2011 began, we were falling in love, and when we committed to each other, I was happier than I’d been for many years.
She’s a very smart, very wise woman. We shared a worldview, spiritually and politically, and a passionate, physical romanticism. We played. We laughed. We shared our darknesses.
We were forever. But not really.
I won’t go into our downfall. I’ve done that before. It may have been that we were simply, ultimately, unsuited for each other. It may have been that we came together at a bad time. I certainly was having a rough time, and reacted to the stages of our collapse in ways I regret, ways that hurt her. I failed her, and I failed myself.
I have tried to salve the wounds. Apparently they are too deep. And so, she is not in my life, and my life is the poorer. We were lovers, but more than that, we were friends, and I wish that was still so.
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Prose is a beautiful, dark-haired woman with beautiful, dark eyes and a ready smile. She’s trim and athletic, and sultry in a teasing, playful way that can turn instantly to smoldering intensity. I loved being the focus of her gaze. I loved gazing upon her. I loved her carnality.
I loved thinking of showering with her in waterfalls, out in the wilds, just her, just me…
I’m calling her Prose because she’s a professional writer. She’s gifted, and the tales she spins mix deep emotion with a wry sense of human fallibility.
She is funny and smart as hell, and the many hours we spent in each other’s company were filled with repartee and laughter. I can honestly say that I have met few people in my life who I just simply like as much as I like her. Our relationship lasted about three months, and she became one of the best friends I’ve ever had.
We spent a lot of time together.
Unfortunately, she had to end things. She was married, in a separation of sorts brought on by the deadening of passion, the dissipation of shared interests, which kills so many marriages. But she has kids. She opted to return to the hard work of trying to reel in the widening gyre, of getting the centre to hold, of making her marriage work.
There was no place for me, or what we shared, in that life. So she drew away. And I gave her my blessing. I spent years working a lifeless marriage myself, for my son’s sake, so I’ve been there. And I want her to be happy, so if making her marriage work again is what she wants, I hope it works out for her. I hope she finds happiness.
I’m rooting for her.
◊
I miss Witchcraft and Prose, and I have regrets. But I don’t regret what I shared with either of them. I’m better for having known them. I will always be here for them, even if it’s just as a loving friend. Even if it’s just as a memory. And there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for either of them.
Brilliant.
Happy Holidays to everyone, whatever their faith or lack thereof. Let’s be nice to each other out there, okay?
I’ve been having a bit of fun, joking around about the wave of Veterans’ Day posts that we see every year on this day, and I know not everyone appreciates the humor. I get that, and I’m sympathetic. But I don’t apologize.
I’m a veteran. I’ve had blood on my hands. I’ve lost friends. And to me, though I realize how sincere most people are, Veterans’ Day is a day of jingoism and platitudes, particularly in a time when we send our soldiers to die in wars we do not need to fight, and when we don’t take care of them when they come home.
Yes, we should honor the soldiers who are fighting and dying in our name, but we should do that by making sure they are doing so ONLY when necessary, otherwise we are wasting their efforts and their lives. Honor them by doing all you can to bring them home. Let their spouses curl up with them every night, their parents be able to sleep in peace, and their children grow up with fathers and mothers.
Yes, we should honor the veterans who have fought in our name when ordered, whether misused by their leaders or not. And to do that best, we should make sure they are given the medical and psychological attention they need when they’re back home, and we should make sure they’re given the benefits they’ve been promised (the VA screwed me out of over 80% of my College Fund, and I’m not alone), we should make sure their homes haven’t been stolen by bankers, and we should do all we can to help them find security in our lousy economy.
So yeah, wave the flag if you want to, tell everyone how important it is to honor our warriors, but if that’s the extent of it, it’s meaningless. If you want to thank me for my service, do something that’s going to help those who need help because they volunteered.
Live. Love. Breathe. Dance. Sing. Create. Follow your heart. And be there for people.
It’s too easy to lose each other. And time is always short.
In this video, an 18 year old woman tells us her story, and it is a very moving story indeed.
What is the heart and soul of Christianity in America?
If you pay attention to most of the news related to Christianity, what you see is hatred and intolerance, militarism and fascism, a lockjawed embrace of ignorance, and a blind adherence to principles which seem to actually fly in the face of those presented by Christ himself.
Last week I was fortunate (blessed?) to have the opportunity to see the two extremes of Christian behavior, and while the first was disheartening, the second was wonderful.
First, the suck. Continue reading
I don’t know the source of this tale, but it’s one I needed to read and it found its way to me.
Grandson, why are you so full of hateful words?
Grandmother, because I am angry and I feel like saying what I want and who cares anyway, they are just words!
Grandson, here is a box of nails and a hammer. Go and every time you abuse someone or tease or say other hurtful things hit a nail into the fence.
Grandmother, I have used all the nails in your box what now?
Grandson, every time you say something nice to someone you have spoken badly to or even apologise for your words take a nail out of the fence.
Grandmother, I am finished but it took a lot longer to take them out then to hit them all in.
Yes, Grandson, and you see all these holes left behind from the nails?
Grandmother, of course I can see them..why do you ask?
Grandson, every time you hurt someone with words or deeds you make a hole in their hearts and leave scars you can’t see… so even when you apologize or do good deeds later, you remove the nails but a scar or hole remains and takes a lot more time to heal…
It is a wonderful world. I hope to have a lot more time to experience its magic with those I love.
A toast to Kate…I loved her because she was magic. May she be healthy and happy and live in a world of continuous delight.
Fuck Yoda.
We all know his words of wisdom, right?
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
That’s all well and good if you’re a super-monk toad-midget with a glowy sword, living in an imaginary swamp, created by a man who’s getting closer by the minute to exhausting every good idea he’ll ever have. But in real life, sometimes trying is all we’ve got.
No one is perfect. Not all actions, no matter how resolutely performed, will be successful. The nature of the scientific method is all about trying, trying this and trying that, seeing what works, seeing what doesn’t. And life is pretty much the same.
You want to “Do or do not, there is no try?” Then only act on simple things, don’t aspire. Stay in your safety zone.
Trying is good. Trying is noble. If you try and fail, learn from it and keep going. That is wisdom.
