Yoga for bloggers

Well, for this blogger in particular. And it's not so much yoga as it is what I hear so often in yoga class. A precept, if you will. A general rule of action. And that precept is:

Don't compare yourself to those around you.

I read so many blogs, and there are times that I catch myself longing for what others seem to have. One writer who triggers these longings with almost clockwork regularity is Ms. Inconspicuous. It starts with the way she writes, which is elegantly, fluidly, and sensually. And then there is her physical reality (as evidenced by the photographs she has posted of herself) -- young, lithe, clearly aware that she has the sort of body that ignites desire and lust (as evidenced by the comments on said photographs). The real longing, though, hits me when I read about her relationships with the men she sees. The operative word being "relationships," you see. While I am certainly friendly with a number of the men I've slept with this year, I want at least one of them to hunger for me the way all her men seem to hunger for her. I want some romance, goddammit.

Along those lines, whenever I read Eileen or maymay's blogs, I find myself craving the sort of connection they have with each other. The love there is palpable. The fact that the love is sometimes tender, sometimes fierce, is indescribably arousing to me. Yeah, who wouldn't want that . . . you know?

And of course the trouble with comparing yourself to people who are so unlike you (besides the colossal waste of time it represents) is that you will inevitably find yourself wanting. Not young enough, not pretty enough, not scintillating enough, not inspiring enough. I want to be someone's muse, I wail to myself. I want to inspire poetry. "I want, I want, I want." There I am at the center of the universe. And that way, I have to discover over and over again, lies only misery.

Inspire yourself, I tell myself (once I can make myself heard over the whinging). Think about what you truly love in other people. Is it their youth? Is it their beauty? Of course it isn't. It never has been, nor will it ever be. Why (this is me still talking to myself, understand) can't you allow yourself the same standard? Be the kind of person you love? Turn your gaze away from the mirror and delight in others?

I can do that, I realize.

And I can breathe again, and I don't feel hopeless. And it is then that I appreciate those who have what I don't for who they truly are -- beyond the superficialities. Because the truth is that if these people who inspire such longing in me didn't have the depths of soul and intellect -- those qualities I truly love -- that they do indeed have, I wouldn't be reading their blogs in the first place.

“To love is to stop comparing.” - Bernard Grasset

Cela est bien dit, répondit Candide, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.

Pinter on truth

Harold Pinter died of cancer yesterday at the age of 78. Below are excerpts from his acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 1958 I wrote the following: "There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false."

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

* * *

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, "the American people", as in the sentence, "I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people".

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words "the American people" provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

* * *

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.

Crimble

Have a merry one, whatever you should celebrate, and I'll see you on the other side (if you promise to miss me just a little).

xoxo

N.

The Graduate

I arranged to work only half a day today so I could take advantage of an opportunity to rendezvous with a fresh-faced lad I had managed to sift out of the Craigslist ads (I'm getting pretty good at that--is it ridiculous of me to be somehow proud of that skill?). We had met last week for lunch and there had been a promising spark of the physical variety.

It might not be fair to skip ahead, but that's what I'm doing. My blog, my rules. We were lying in bed, and somehow the conversation turned to superheroes. He was . . . a little too knowledgeable on the topic. And enthusiastic. And suddenly he seemed very, VERY young. I ventured to ask his age.

26?

26?!?

"What?" burst from my lips, as I raised myself on my forearms to look at him, the single interrogative syllable rising to end on an inflection at the upper register of my speaking voice. "I thought . . . I thought you were at least . . . older!" At the shake of his head I slumped back to his chest, moaning about Mrs. Robinson.

"Ch-yah, not quite," he ventured. He was faintly puzzled, grinning, torn between amusement and worry that I was seriously distressed.

"You're the Graduate," I groaned.

"Aw, come on," he said with a laugh. "No, I'm not."

Well . . . maybe not. But on this blog you will be.

Panic

I have never depended on the kindness of strangers.

Let me clarify --

When people are kind to me or compliment me, my chest tightens, my throat constricts, and tears instantly threaten to spill . Over the years I've learned how to disguise the panic (although I've never learned how to keep my face from flushing) and say "thank you" or return the sentiment, but the It isn't false modesty or even seemly humility. It's genuinely fucked up is what it is, and I know that I will have to find a way past it.

The best part

What I've enjoyed most about these past months, this stage, this phase, this transformation, whatever you want to call it -- what I've enjoyed most are the people I have met and the stories I have heard.

The Encounter by Serge Sunne

Far from being an interior exploration of my life and desires, this has been more than anything else an exploration of what a vast array of experiences different people have. I find myself fascinated more than ever with the divine comedy. I'll never tire of it. It is in others that I find myself -- it's when I forget myself that I find myself most fulfilled.

I'm learning. That means I'm living.

I lied

The next thing I post won't be mine at all. Rather, it's a poem by Denise Levertov that struck a chord.


The Mutes

Those groans men use
passing a woman on the street
or on the steps of the subway

to tell her she is a female
and their flesh knows it,

are they a sort of tune,
an ugly enough song, sung
by a bird with a slit tongue

but meant for music?

Or are they the muffled roaring
of deafmutes trapped in a building that is
slowly filling with smoke?

Perhaps both.

Such men most often
look as if groan were all they could do,
yet a woman, in spite of herself,

knows it's a tribute:
if she were lacking all grace
they'd pass her in silence:

so it's not only to say she's
a warm hole. It's a word

in grief-language, nothing to do with
primitive, not an ur-language;
language stricken, sickened, cast down

in decrepitude. She wants to
throw the tribute away, dis-
gusted, and can't,

it goes on buzzing in her ear,
it changes the pace of her walk,
the torn posters in echoing corridors

spell it out, it
quakes and gnashes as the train comes in.
Her pulse sullenly

had picked up speed,
but the cars slow down and
jar to a stop while her understanding

keeps on translating:
'Life after life after life goes by

without poetry,
without seemliness,
without love.'

This is what it's like to live among those who care mostly about appearances. "You're beautiful, so I want to fuck you." "You're hot, so I want all my friends to see me with you." "Wear this so I'll be more attracted to you."

It's life without poetry; it's an inferior and sickened language.

Undersharing

"Oversharing" is something I can't be accused of lately, which is a good thing, because who wants to be accused of a neologism? Up until just the other day, I had planned to write an entry titled "Sex Takes a Holiday," because it certainly had for me. It seems to be the case in general around the end of the year for people who, like me, aren't currently in any kind of defined relationship. I am neither family nor friend to my sexual partners in a season that places emphasis on spending time with both. But then the man from New York saved me from going without, and I decided that I've got it pretty good, considering.

However, since that intense couple of hours a fortnight or so ago, I have spent a lot of time being (and feeling) somewhat reclusive. Not for any particular reason -- it's just how I've been. I'm not unhappy.

But, like Eileen, who wrote about this recently on her own excellent blog, I don't like letting so much go unwritten. I feel an obligation to the part of myself that is represented here. I have a habit of thinking out long entries in my head and then letting go of the ideas, and I don't like it. It's lazy. So even if I'm not currently sexually active, I'd like to keep writing . . . that is if you, my dear imaginary readers, wouldn't mind. (Hearing no protest from the imaginary readership, the author proceeds.)

Now that I've said that, I will proceed to post more links to things other people have written! A sense of Irony. I has it.

This post by Figleaf (as well as the posts it refers to) have laid the groundwork in my mind for a rant I have tentatively titled "In Defense of Adultery." Whether I ever end up writing it or not, this is a topic well worth wrestling with (and if you could pin it to the mat and break its arm, I would cheer you on).

I don't know what to say about this post from the magnificent Bitchy Jones except that every word of it resonates with me. Every fucking word. I live on the other side of the fence when it comes to sadism, but I don't know that it matters in this context. This is how I would like to write when I grow up, by the way. She is fearless. Read her whole blog, and you will see what I mean.

And here is another fearless writer, Peridot Ash, who beautifully and succinctly addresses the issue of guilt from the perspective of a sex worker.

And next time, I promise to post something of my own.

Fur

My grandmother had a mink stole from Sakowitz. I never saw her wear it, but when she died, it was given to me. I have a hard enough time wearing leather, so fur is, as you might imagine, out of the question. Now grandmother's stole lives in my my closet, beautiful, outdated, and unpopular--but oh, how soft it is against the skin. . . .

North wind

Today it was nearly 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and tonight there are needles of sleet pelting the window behind me while I write. I love the sudden change.


I didn't sleep last night -- it just didn't come. I felt unsettled all day today, and grew more and more distracted and effusive and uncharacteristically . . . oh, I don't know, flighty until this afternoon when it hit me what was going on. This is the second week of December. In another few days, it will be the day my younger sister was killed on an icy road on her way home from Christmas caroling -- thrown through the rear windshield of the car in which she was a passenger. It was a long time ago, when I was only 22, and I'll make my way through the anniversary, as all the other people all over the world do with the losses they suffer. What continues to astound me is how thoroughly I can forget the actual reason for my mood, and how insistently my body pulls me back to that place and demands that I pay attention. It usually takes me a few days of struggling with strange bouts of nerves, regrets, floating off to take stock of my life, impulsiveness, and (I'm sorry to say after all these years) anger--fierce, fierce anger--before I realize what the underlying reason is; what the upcoming day is. Once I do, and this happens every year, every year like clockwork, mind you, I feel the shock all over again. I cry -- again, angry tears, unfair, unfair, she was the best of us. And then, inevitably and gracefully, like a merciful benefaction, my mind and my body are back together, and relief and something more akin to acceptance and natural sorrow sweeps through me. And then I try to remember what her voice sounded like and what her hair smelled like, and I look at my own hands because her hands looked just like mine.

It's remarkable how often this anniversary coincides with an ice storm or the first hard freeze of the year. I suppose it's natural. It all makes sense.

The door closed on a lot of things -- or perhaps I shut it myself -- as a result of her death. There was no more writing, no more sex, no more music for a long time. Now I try to share these pleasures and delights of life with her as best I can by allowing myself to experience them. I think that this year, finally, I'm doing a damn good job of it. What there is of her in me, what earthly material we had in common, I'll have that forever. She used to say, half-laughing, half in despair, "I'll die a virgin!" She did, at 16. So she's along for the ride, no matter what I do or who I'm with. Alors, allons-y!

A SLUMBER did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

Captured

He took pictures the last time he was in town, too, remember? The pictures he took this Wednesday are better. More intimate. More explicit. I keep going back to one in particular -- he had held the camera down close to my face while I knelt before him, lost in the act of sucking his cock, occasionally leaning into his thighs to keep my balance, my hands cuffed behind me. No, I didn't notice the flash this time.

My eyes are closed, lashes dark against my pale skin; my hair lies in Medusa streaks across my face, upon my shoulders -- there are even some tendrils clinging to his wet shaft. His worn jeans are pushed down. He has a tattoo on his thigh. The picture was taken at the moment I have only the head of his penis in my mouth, the moment between up stroke and down stroke, my cheeks hollow. I can see the blue veins in his cock and the light freckles scattered across my bare shoulder.

It's a very good picture.

I want to write about the way he came into the room and steered me straight to a chair, settling me into it and pulling my arms behind me, cuffing my wrists, kneeling to bind my legs to the chair, all done wordlessly, deliberately, purposefully. Then he stood close behind me and when I tried to turn my head to see him, he turned it back to face frontward.

I want to write about later, when I probably should have said something about the wrenching pain in my shoulder, and the metal cuffs digging into my back where I laid upon them while he fucked me, my legs over his shoulders, but didn't, because I didn't want him to stop.

Maybe I will. Maybe I'll write about it in detail, trying in vain to capture every image, every sensation, every fleeting thought. Maybe I'll even admit that I cried a little afterward while I laid on the bed next to him, my head turned away in a vain attempt to hide my vulnerability. I hadn't ever done that -- cried as an immediate reaction to sex. It frightened and thrilled me to let it happen.