Or something. This short article about making female masturbation “bad behavior” on par with cutting and low self-esteem, diddles around a bit before a great eye-opening climax:
Sexuality is more like a muscle, and if you don’t use it, you lose it. One reason many women have trouble orgasming in a sexual relationship is they don’t masturbate enough, and they have trouble knowing what works and what doesn’t. Indeed, the research links losing your virginity later in life to experiencing more sexual dysfunction. And anecdotally, most of us can think of times when we’ve been so busy that we don’t have time to think about sex (i.e., experiencing those lustful thoughts so condemned by Christians fundies), and so when we get home and are expected to perform, we have trouble getting aroused. Following the fundamentalist list of sex rules seems like the quickest way possible to drain a marriage of any passion, which strikes me as a bad idea if you want to hold those marriages together.”
Let him (the White Man) be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless.
Please remind me to write about Chief Seattle, a celebrated environmentalist, whose words we never heeded. A speech I read solidified my desire and effort and mindset to care for the land, even without the religious baggage of having “dominion over all.”
I have a booklet I bought or was given when I lived in Seattle and I think this was the speech it contained. Sadly the account here makes it seem that some of it might have been rhetorical floursh added decades after the occurrence, much like accounts of Jesus that have warped and shaped the Western world and the Manifest Destiny destruction of so many of the the Native American peoples, and some of their ways of living with and as a part of nature.
Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them. … Ever part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch.
This morning a man on a bus was struggling to find change to get on the bus. A man in a ice shirt, pants, but young, giving off the air of first big job, first ay at work. I doubt that was true, but still, he was turning his pockets, taking to the driver.
As i looked up again, he asked if anyone had change for a $10. “I don’t but I have a couple of bucks,” I said. The under my breath, muttering after the first pocket came up empty, “I think.”
I found them. Two dollar bills. He paid, passed me said thanks. I nodded. I thought about engaging him i conversation, but I really just wanted to read, so did the less selfish thing and did what I wanted. We didn’t exchange another word, but I know how my day would have been completely effed up to discover I’d be late for the reason of such a small triviality as not having the right change.
I had a work day. I left. took bus. Got off at Central and Camelback light rail station, and some people were obviously paying attention as they started jogging toward the tracks from the busstop. I walked, fast, but as I got right to the front of the train, the doors started closing. I sighed.
Then they stopped closing and reopened. I saw a Shamorck Farms strawberry m,ilk plastic bottle right in the way iof the doors, I walked on and kicked it out of the way.
We were underway.
KARMAI immediately thought of the morning and karma. Karma to me is ephemeral. It was actually part of my (thankfully) limited religious upbringing. My mom spent more time attending Theosophy Lodges (the Theosophy Lodge?) than any other religious institution I can think of.
And checking it up on Google, my interest is renewed. Wihout going into any of that, I’ve thought of karma as an energy. Power, electricity, thoughts, radio, come at you in negative and positive energies. I’m not sure how to define positive and negative at the moment, but you create good around you and good will come back to you. In decidedly unpredictable ways. As a building volume of energy it can attract other good energy. Electircity needs both positive and negaticve ions to exist, so the energy I’m thinking of works at a lower wavelength that can sometimes travel without reference to time. sometimes it’ll be months, years, sometimes instantaneous. Over time it may be counterbalanced by interveaning negative ripples.
Hard to explain, considering I just riffed the paragraph above.
(Notes of a beginning)
“With every kiss I love you more, whether on my cheek or theirs.”
That one made me tear up in a big way. Took my breath away.
The lead up. A Saturday spent together, with a SAVORLife HIV/AIDS fundraiser and four hours at the Sidebar, with the end of the Blood Mission challenege to drink only water as my only beverage for 40 days.
Stayed the night. Carrie’s kids came by in the evening of Easter, to say hi, to play.
Carrie said they got on tyhe highway from her father’s place (where her sister Nancy lives too) and Eddie said, “I thought we were going to see my friend, Temple.”
“We are, Carrie says.
“Oh, OK.” big smile.
And Carrie had txted me, now a good time to drop by? Which I missed and she called instead. I saw the text right after they left – 19:06 on Sunday) and I replied, “Yes, drop by again – you’re not too far away :D Hope Eddie had a good time.:
New text: Xxx
New Text: One x for each person in your SUV.
Carrie’s text: “With every kiss I love you more, whether on my cheek or theirs.”
I teared up. That is such a perfect thing to say. It hit me hard in a very good way.”
And I read that AFTER I called mom, to wish her a happy Easter. I ended up on speakerphone, where I wished, Mikayla, Michael, mom, Melissa and Jen, wished them all a happy easter – and then told them about Carrie, about her being my girlfriend (which was the first time I had used that word, she already seems so much more) being over here, and Eddie and Jack being over here, too.
Second time, Eddie has said, as we kissed lightly in front of him, “mom, is he for your pleasure?” Classic.
At about 9:45 I heard a knock at my door on a Saturday. As we’d established on my Twitterline just a couple hours before I was up earlier, having fallen asleep in my chair from having not slept the night before. It’s a thing I do. I’m about as anxious as man with a brick and a scorpion at his feet. (Not very)
With “Treat Him Good” by the Love Me Nots ringing quietly in the background (I’d turned it down after I heard the knock) I looked through the glass seeing two men in black suits, with thin literature in their hands. I thought they were Mormons having completely forgotten about Jehovah’s Witnesses. My roommate had met them last time they came a few months ago and I’m sure talked to them with more Godly knowledge than I.
My relationship with religion goes as deep as my fascination with the people who believe and how they live.
I said I probably didn’t have much time to talk. The older guy, Larry, opened the gambit (is that an appropriate phrase here?) pointing to The Watchtower, page 4, saying he wondered why people abused alcohol. He pointed to the scripture there showing that indeed Jesus didn’t eschew alcohol having served it at a wedding. But he also pointed to the scripture about not getting drunk.
As he was talking about the benefits of wine (“to make us happy”) accorded to us by God (don’t want to push people to hard to stop drinking or anything), the phrase “and doctors say a glass of wine is beneficial, too” came to mind and reached my lips – but not my tongue.
Read the rest of this entry »
Since I am spending way too much time thinking about love I should write about hate. Hate is less painful to me now, ironically.
Raw hate. It’s a strong word; many people recoil when you say it sounds like they hate something. “I don’t hate anything,” they say, in what is assumed to be a good Christian posture to love thy neighbor and thy enemy – doubly so if they’re the same.
Others just don’t like people to believe something can dig into their heart, their brain that much to illicit such a strong, dark, murky, burdensome feeling.
Hate.
It’s easy to hate evil. It’s harder to hate the smaller things of life that others might call peeves. If you add up your peeves though, you can get a good dose of hate together. Small things can and do grow from their bitter seeds to bitter hate.
It is best, I’ve found, to let hate go through rage. To let violence in your head dissipate through action. But only at the inanimate, which can absorb feeling because whatever it is has none of its own. To let violence transfer to the animate, to the living, is to weigh further your burden with the disease of cowardice. That is unforgivable and needs a cure much more than hate, which just needs a direction and an outlet and can be a force for good as its exiting suction pulls the evil out.
Kids say, “I hate you” to their parents. Yet kids are often deemed the epitome of innocence. Which I would agree with. So their feelings of hate are just as valid as their feelings of confusion, love, greed and pouting self-pity. In fact when we say they’re innocent we are usually saying they have a disregard for sin because they do not know what is sinful. (Truly though, the Bible says the Lord hateth these things (“sin” Proverbs 6:16–19) so where does that put the conundrum?)
I resolve this day
To do all in my power to resist evil and to do good.
To fulfill all the responsibilities of my state in life faithfully.
To observe kindness and honesty in all contacts with my fellowmen.
To preserve complete purity of soul.
If I should be tempted to evil, I will repeat in my heart the words, “Do what is right; Be right; Be cheerful!”
I kinda don’t like that quote. But I sure don’t hate it.
OK, lunch break over.
