tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71780281687703396522024-03-13T10:44:28.372-07:00Mental Musings and Meltdownsformerly: leaving caLi(forniA)Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.comBlogger94125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-4375597149326489862023-02-12T10:33:00.005-08:002023-05-29T06:29:15.711-07:00The Book Of Love<p> </p><p><br /></p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlijfjPDcrSM6iBOjcJ-2020gnGIrSL8qvmNrTvgLuNnxDkAM71E5BKUyjXXSpLwAdme_LKcZCphnI_9D8pg7r12xuzQWnzaIdUj2lz7J6q2eRosR-MJbveiIshCxgCnjtrtydRxFvhbD_dtIloJdtvHjhv3oxxROwcCnEqls3EzGO0bupZ8yCwy7_oQ/s556/love-book-22412-4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="556" data-original-width="556" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlijfjPDcrSM6iBOjcJ-2020gnGIrSL8qvmNrTvgLuNnxDkAM71E5BKUyjXXSpLwAdme_LKcZCphnI_9D8pg7r12xuzQWnzaIdUj2lz7J6q2eRosR-MJbveiIshCxgCnjtrtydRxFvhbD_dtIloJdtvHjhv3oxxROwcCnEqls3EzGO0bupZ8yCwy7_oQ/s320/love-book-22412-4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><i></i></p><blockquote style="text-align: center;"><i>"Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." -James Baldwin</i></blockquote><p></p><p>Weddings don't really celebrate marriage, per say. I suspect that is by design because, if they did, nobody would want to go to them. Marriage, as a stand-alone, is not something to be celebrated--it is something to be endured, tolerated, survived, and re-created, over and over again. Weddings, I propose, celebrate the couple, and the accomplishment that they got this far without killing one another. </p><p>Incidentally, I am getting married in a little over a year, and we intend to have a wedding. We have made it this far, after all, without killing one another.</p><p>Weddings should be spectacular! Marriages, on the other hand, can be pleasant, but they are primarily <i>not</i> spectacular, overall. Surprisingly, this should be one of the reasons they appeal to us, though we don't usually know that at the beginning of them. At the beginning, we think they will be something else entirely, something extraordinary. Sex will always be hot and we will both spontaneously want it at the same time, beauty will never fade and neither will our desire for each other. Look how far we are above the huddled masses who have yet to find their person! Young married couples have an intoxicating yet relatable arrogance about them that springs from the sincere belief that they have it all figured out. You can see it in the way they hold hands while walking on the sidewalk, seeing only each other, claiming space for themselves that belongs to everyone.</p><p>But then they start living their marriage. One to five years later is when they usually first come to see me in my office for help.</p><p>***</p><p>There is a theory suggesting that we have a natural tendency to "get used to" something over time as it goes from unfamiliar to familiar. As I understand it, our brains need to conserve energy and direct attention to things that could be a threat, so we pay less attention to things that feel safe. The familiar is seldom a threat, whereas the new and novel can be, at least until we assess the danger. This is one of the reasons that dating someone new is so exciting--it has elements of danger to it. Danger and threat turn up our attention in the moment, bringing us into the present. This is where the spark of life is, and it can be a heady feeling, which is why we love to be with our new lovers as much as possible. </p><p>We love to be in love, don't we? The anticipation, the sexual tension, the excitement of getting to know someone new, the feeling that we are "special". Love makes the world go 'round, isn't that what they say? But the reality is that all of these feelings are in the service of an essential human bonding process, without which we would not continue to survive. The biology of this is functional and not very romantic, so we have assigned meaning to it elevating it to something profound and sacred, and we call it <span style="color: red;">Love.</span></p><p><i>Big</i> mistake. </p><p>As intoxicating as it can be to have sex with someone new who we feel attracted to and connected with, <i>it ain't love</i>. As much as we are sure that we have found our soulmate because they seem interested in everything we say, <i>it ain't love</i>. As much as we share similar values, as much as we love the same foods, as much as we both want the same number of children, as much as it feels unlike any other feeling we have ever had, <i>it ain't love</i>. </p><p><b>But it is <i>something</i>. </b></p><p>It is the start of a process that builds trust, safety, and security. It is the start of what may end up being the best friendship you have ever had. It is the beginning of a foundation for raising children (or dogs, let's face it). It is the start of a journey of ins and outs that maybe, if you know what you are doing, lead to <i>real love</i>. Unfortunately, most couples have not yet arrived there on the day they celebrate their wedding. </p><p>***</p><p>I always find it amusing when stand-up comedians get applause <i>before</i> they do their set--it's as if the audience is already celebrating a great show, even before it happens. Isn't this what we do at weddings? We talk about how great the couple is together, how it was "meant to be", how happy they will make each other, how their love for one another is immense--sometimes before they have had the chance to actually be a couple for very long. </p><p>In the wonderful book, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Wedding-Toasts-Ill-Never-Give/dp/0393356000/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=" target="_blank">Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give</a></i>, Ada Calhoun gives the reason why she does not offer toasts at weddings: "...because I'd probably end up saying that even good marriages sometimes involve flinging a remote control at the wall". How can you both celebrate a couple joining together <i>and</i> remind them that at times they won't be able to get away from each other fast enough? <i>You don't</i>, at least not at their wedding. But these are the things that can be most helpful to hear, rather than the cliched platitudes of loving one another forever or always having each others backs (you will, and you won't). </p><p>You might think that I am not a romantic, but you would be wrong. To me, there is nothing <i>more</i> romantic than recognizing that as much as you love someone, <i>that love will not be enough to keep you together.</i> What is romantic to me is recognizing that there will be days when I won't want to be with my partner, and yet I will keep my promise to him and stay. What <i>is</i> romantic is knowing that there will be times when he will not like me, and yet he will keep his promise to me and stay. What is romantic is acknowledging that he is just as interesting to me when he is boring as when he is captivating. </p><p>Romance does not negate duality, <i>it acknowledges, accepts, and celebrates it.</i> It is the decision to embrace all of it, even parts you don't like or agree with, because <i>that</i> is what it looks like to have someone's back. It is thinking they are sexy even though they just farted, it is seeing them as strong even though they have just broken down in tears, it is seeing them as your best friend even though they have just taken the last piece of bacon. </p><p>Real love does not live only where it feels good, it lives in being interested in another's well-being, <i>at all times; </i>real love lives in putting your relationship first, <i>at all times;</i> real love lives in the feeling that even though you may fail with your partner a thousand times in one day, you wake up the next morning wanting to do better,<i> at all times</i>. Real love means that you <i>both </i>win, not one or the other. It means that when you are at your worst, the value you get from the relationship pushes you to be your best, or at the very least, vulnerable. Real love means that boredom with your partner is not a sign that you have lost interest, just a reminder that you may not be paying attention. Real love means that even though sex may change or diminish, affection does not have to. Real love means that, barring dangerous circumstances, <i>you stay</i>. Not because it feels good all the time, but because you <i>promised </i>to; and though it <i>doesn't</i> always feel good, these experiences can increase the closeness you feel to each other. </p><p>***</p><p>I am fond of telling people that "on paper", my fiancée and I should not work. I like saying this because they know we are very different people and may wonder why we choose each other. But my love for him is not the result of all my relationship boxes being checked. Though some of the boxes are indeed checked, my love for him is primarily based upon the realization that <i>he gives me purpose</i>, he allows me to focus my significant skills of care-taking upon him--not because he can't take care of himself, but because I help him do it better sometimes, and I love to do this. He allows me to practice with him the kindness, patience, and acceptance I have struggled for years to practice with myself, with the result being that I continue to get better--with both of us. My caring for him heals my hurts; my protection of him brings me joy and pride, knowing that I am sparing him even a portion of the pain the world can inflict. </p><p>I am committed to him not because we love the same things, but because he eats the food I make, even when it is unfamiliar to him, being respectful when he needs to decline something. His innocence reminds me of myself when I was younger, before I felt betrayed by the world and those who were supposed to love and protect me, and his silliness invites me to explore what innocence might look like now, as a 60 year-old. </p><p>***</p><p>He has asked that we use the song <i>The Book of Love, b</i>y Stephin Merritt, as our first dance at the wedding. I will be honest with you, the thought of slow dancing under the gaze of our guests is something that makes me want to run screaming from the room, not because I can't dance, but because I am so private these days. But when I heard this song, or more specifically Peter Gabriel's interpretation of it, I knew we had found the song that I would not only want to be our first dance, but also that I would want to be witnessed by cherished friends and family. </p><blockquote><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 12px;"><i><span jsname="YS01Ge">The book of love is long and boring</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">No one can lift the damn thing</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">It's full of charts and facts, and figures</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And instructions for dancing</span></i></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 12px;"><i><span jsname="YS01Ge">But I</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">I love it when you read to me.</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And you</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">You can read me anything.</span></i></div></blockquote><p>It is not your usual love song, because it is about r<i>eal love</i>, not romantic love. It is a song that celebrates the in-betweens, the quiets, the stillnesses, the sheer dumbness of relationship. What elevates it above all the romantic songs I have ever heard is the way it takes these very ordinary moments, then describes how they transform into something extraordinary when experienced between people who love one another. Real love can be loud, but it is loveliest in the silent moments--your partner sleeping, missing them when they are away, the lull of remorse and repair after a fight, the sharing of sadness, the hushed tingle of a shared secret. It is less about finding someone you can talk with and more about finding someone you can be quiet with. Real love make silence transcendent. Those silences help a marriage thrive. </p><blockquote><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 12px;"><i><span jsname="YS01Ge">The book of love has music in it</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">In fact that's where music comes from</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Some of it's just transcendental</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Some of it's just really dumb</span></i></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 12px;"><i><span jsname="YS01Ge">But I</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">I love it when you sing to me</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And you</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">You can sing me anything</span></i></div></blockquote><p>Our wedding next year will be a celebration of the ordinariness of marriage, it will be a toast to the quiet in-betweens. These are the spaces where we stepped into love, where we risked vulnerability, and where we learned that we could be still together. We have been together for nearly eight years, and though the fire is cooler, the coals keep us plenty warm. Our first dance together as a married couple will be an homage to what made us commit to one another--the gradual realization that <i>we are better together</i>, and our intention and commitment to continue in that direction. </p><blockquote><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 12px;"><i><span jsname="YS01Ge">The book of love is long and boring</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And written very long ago</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And things we're all too young to know</span></i></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 12px;"><i><span jsname="YS01Ge">But I</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">I love it when you give me things</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And you</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">You ought to give me wedding rings</span></i></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 12px;"><i><span jsname="YS01Ge">And I</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">I love it when you give me things</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And you</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">You ought to give me wedding rings</span></i></div><div class="ujudUb WRZytc" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><i><span jsname="YS01Ge">You ought to give me</span><br aria-hidden="true" /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Wedding rings</span></i></div></blockquote><p>Fair warning for those who will be at our wedding: our first dance may be boring to watch. At my age, I would rather not put on a show. It will just be two men, softly holding one another, moving and swaying to a gentle rhythm. There will not be any surprise choreography, no backup dancers, no cartwheels, no remakes of Bollywood musical numbers. Our first dance will represent the best part of our relationship: the quiet interdependence, trust, respect, and mutual reliance we have between us. The subtle movements will be an expression of how these qualities are constantly shifting, never static, and that they require a bit of vigilance and care to keep from toppling over; that love, like most of life, is a never-ending dance, where one shifts around on their feet searching for balance and trusting they will find it. </p><p>You may notice me leading him a bit more than he is leading me, but don't worry, he regularly leads me back to my best self. That is how we are writing our book of love. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FmnDXRJ7btE" width="320" youtube-src-id="FmnDXRJ7btE"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-14288875658559788852023-01-29T16:49:00.005-08:002023-01-29T16:49:41.963-08:00The New Age<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMwX78zgHiJEkdFXbj6iMddzoEf9DM3Ma4C-jqtK7-hobZfg9PG6HcwGekKbRytzKdfpWfb21KWEqlHu3NVKnkz1IRGXRcY8S7D3bBWEheSvBNMLaMjQ0OB3S84hl_0fAkMivzIwsRTy73U2aqTcZIwy_RX-UvB8_qBmVNtQJxskKniaiharq8sm_13A/s480/8e0b4094b8e8ea6cf9be75873263e64a.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMwX78zgHiJEkdFXbj6iMddzoEf9DM3Ma4C-jqtK7-hobZfg9PG6HcwGekKbRytzKdfpWfb21KWEqlHu3NVKnkz1IRGXRcY8S7D3bBWEheSvBNMLaMjQ0OB3S84hl_0fAkMivzIwsRTy73U2aqTcZIwy_RX-UvB8_qBmVNtQJxskKniaiharq8sm_13A/s320/8e0b4094b8e8ea6cf9be75873263e64a.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p><b>What is a new age? </b></p><p>I turned 60 on August 21, 2022. As I begin to write this I have now been in my sixties for one week. So far, so good, This time last year, right after turning 59, it was significantly <i>less</i> than so far, so good. I had just recovered from a mild case of COVID, my partner and I had just moved from a situation that was <a href="https://leavingcaliblog.blogspot.com/2021/10/leaving-hudson-avenue-in-five-parts.html" target="_blank">not sustainable</a>. I had a new two-bedroom apartment to put together, and I had discovered that I had an inguinal hernia that fortunately was not painful, but was bothersome and unsightly nonetheless. </p><p>Fast forward to now: the apartment is nicely set up and we love the space, the hernia has been repaired with surgery, and I have been able to avoid getting another case of COVID. </p><p>And now I am in my sixties. </p><p><b>What is a new age?</b> The word "new" usually refers to anything that has, until recently, <i>not</i> been in our possession or has been unfamiliar to us. It can also apply to experiences and people. It may not actually be new, but it may be new to us. The word "age" can refer to how young or old something or someone is, but it can also apply to a period of time, as in "The Golden Age of Movies". </p><p>The new age I speak of is <i>this period of time</i> (my sixties) that has, until recently, been unfamiliar to me. To be honest, it is still unfamiliar, in the same way a new home or frock could remain unfamiliar after only a week. But here is what I know about it so far:</p><p></p><ul><li>It is better than the first week of being 59. </li><li>It feels very much like the <i>last </i>week of being 59. </li><li>I prefer being at the beginning of a decade rather than at the end, because I get to make a "10 year plan". </li><li>It is more obvious now that I am 30 years older than my boyfriend, who is 30. </li><li>There are some changes to my body that I have absolutely no control over. </li></ul><div>***</div><div><b>What is a new age?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I was at a pool party in the summer with men "around my age", and I observed how some are faring better than others, whatever that means. In Los Angeles, aging well means only that you <i>look </i>good, that you are aging well on the outside (but not necessarily on the inside). Of course, it is reasonable to conclude that the outside reflects the inside, yes? At least when the outside has not been, uh, repaired cosmetically. </div><div><br /></div><div>Some of it is, of course, genetics. For instance, George Clooney and Brad Pitt will look good as they continue to age--becoming burnished versions of their younger selves. This is quite different from someone like Al Pacino, who is barely recognizable from his handsome younger self. </div><div><br /></div><div>For some of us, the environment and our behavior factor into how we age more than genetics. The world can take a toll on a person's face and body! But so can sugar, alcohol, drugs, lack of exercise, and bad relationships. Stress can take a toll. So can racism, homophobia, isolation, poverty, sun-tanning, and war. </div><div><br /></div><div>At this pool party, I observed how men of my age behaved together. I don't think any of us, myself included, "acted our age": we ate foods that we should not eat, drank more alcohol than we should drink, in some cases wore swimsuits we should not be wearing (or took them off completely). None of these behaviors were crimes, but it did start me wondering what behaviors I might want to review for myself, as a 60 year-old. For instance, is it, perhaps, time to get rid of some of my speedos? </div><div><br /></div><div>When we are young, we don't think about age because <i>we usually don't have to</i>. It is something that is so far in the future that we don't regularly make decisions based on how they will impact our golden years. Youth is one of those things that deceives us; and perhaps unintentionally sells us on the durability of smooth flesh and hard muscles. When we are young and strong, we can't imagine <i>not </i>being young and strong--that is how ignorant we are! But it would be helpful to imagine it, and even to care about it. Because there is a difference between not caring about when the Earth will be swallowed by the Sun (billions of years from now) and not caring about 40 years from now in our lives and bodies. For 20 year-olds, 40 years might as well be a billion. </div><div><br /></div><div>***</div><div><b>What is a new age?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Today, in <i>my</i> new age, I am definitely thinking about the next 40 years. I am also thinking about the next 5 years, and I am even thinking about tomorrow. That is the main difference--when I was young, I thought about the current moment more than the future--today it is reversed. But don't make the mistake of thinking that I don't enjoy today because my head is in tomorrow. My tomorrow is influenced by how I think about today--the two are connected now, not separate; my thinking of the future affects not only the choices I make today, but also <i>how I experience</i> those choices. I may choose to drink less so that I avoid a hangover, but that allows me to focus more on conversation with others who may be sharing the space around me. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the new age, my priorities are health, relationship, work, peace of mind, and community. I read once that, as we get older, priorities shift from status to connection to security. That makes sense. At 60. I don't have as much time to repair things in my life if I fuck up. Security provides a buffer against the inevitable threats that come with age, ensuring that I can respond with as many resources as possible. </div><div><br /></div><div>As I continue into this decade, I will no doubt experiment with different ways of expressing myself in the world (less Speedos?), hopefully settling somewhere that makes sense to both me and to others in my life. And while I navigate this road, I will also no doubt be thinking about turning 70. But I might be better off thinking less about how I want to be and more about just <i>being</i>. My hesitation with that is the concern that I am less likely to succeed at spontaneous expression now than I was as a younger man. </div><div><br /></div><div>Spontaneity, when young, is cool. It is sexy. It is hip. It inspires. In old age, spontaneity can look sloppy, inspiring ridicule. Why is that? Maybe older bodies don't move as smoothly as younger ones, but does that mean they should not move? </div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps the path forward, for me, is to pay attention to the world and the people who surround me during the day, and let that stimulate my response. If I am paying attention, would my response not be both spontaneous and authentic? Authenticity does not age since it is of the moment, and I suspect that my attention to the moment, and what it offers, will shift the conversation from what is appropriate to what is authentic, and what is authentic is rarely ever inappropriate. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>I really don't want to be laughed at.</i> </div><div><br /></div><div>***</div><div><b>What is a new age? </b></div><div><br /></div><div>There is no one template for me to follow regarding being 60. Everybody is doing it differently, it seems to me (not all of them are doing it "well"). Some are accepting the effects of age, as well as both the new limitations and opportunities, by making necessary adjustments, while others are denying the same with every dollar in their wallet. Shouldn't we feel good about reaching 60, or any age for that matter? I do, so far. But more and more it seems that the markers of age: wrinkles and wisdom, insight and patience, silence and contemplation, humor and compassion, are rarely seen, valued, or respected. Respect is at times a response to respectful behaviors--is it not? Are older folks behaving "respectfully" these days?</div><div><br /></div><div>If you are wondering how I define respect, I lean towards a <a href="https://youtu.be/nsgAsw4XGvU" target="_blank">Kantian</a> view of it: respect means not treating yourself or any other as a means, only as an end. Translation: you don't use yourself or others as a way to get something else. </div><div><br /></div><div>If one wonders why nobody values old folks, you might tell them it is because <i>nobody values being old</i>. There is little value today in being older because young people do not want what older folks have to offer, at least that is what I notice in Los Angeles. Wisdom? No thank you! Money is valued more. Patience? Fuck that! I want what I want and I want it now (it doesn't help that we can usually get it right away). Insight? Too painful, expensive, and time-consuming--why spend time in therapy when we can instead do ayahuasca and feel more enlightened the next morning?</div><div><br /></div><div>There used to be purpose in growing older--we were the "elders", guiding the youth, caring for the young while the parents hunted or worked in the village. It is so different now, obviously, because we are no longer hunter-gatherers as we once were, at least most of us are not. We now hunt and gather money, and since youth is where the money is, that is valued more. Experienced folks are seen as "out-of-date", with nothing to offer. </div><div><br /></div><div>If only they knew what we had to offer. </div><div><br /></div><div>***</div><div>In my psychotherapy practice, clients come to me for what I have to offer them, and I am grateful to have chosen a career that grows in value with my age. And yet, I am still figuring out what value my age has for me, even though I suspect I may be going about it the wrong way. I would like my new age to be similar to David Byrne's life, who, at the age of 70, still rides his bicycle around Manhattan and performs music with younger musicians in a way that lifts the spirit. (I highly encourage you to watch "American Utopia" on Netflix if you have not already done so.) This demonstrates that as people get older, they can "be authentic" to their age and continue to be vital; inspire and be inspired by younger generations, being true to oneself AND being influenced by what is new. </div><div><br /></div><div>Many of the elders I admire are (or were, some are gone now) musicians or actors, mostly because they are the most visible: Annie Lennox, Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, David Bowie, Barack and Michelle Obama, Lenny Kravitz, Pema Chodron, the 14th Dalai Lama, Jimmy Carter, and so on. I admire folks who have not just kept themselves healthy and fit as they age, but also those who remain engaged with the world in meaningful ways--you could say that they have an <i>enduring curiosity</i> about life. </div><div><br /></div><div>If there is one common denominator between all of these people I have named, it is that <i>nobody is laughing at them</i>. That is my gauge. </div><div><br /></div><div>I don't want anyone to ever look at me, as an older man in the world, and laugh at how I am acting or presenting myself. And while this may seem to be an objective gauge, measured by an outside observer, I would counter that the gauge is also internal--that I will know way before an outside observer will if I am being ridiculous. How will I know when I am acting/talking/dressing in a way that is laughable? Well, I will have to listen to my intuition, and pay attention when it signals that I am being inauthentic. </div><div><br /></div><div>There are a lot of people who talk to me about their desire to be "authentic". That can be a tricky ambition if they define authentic as a goal. In reality, it is a value, not a goal, meaning that it is a <i>direction</i> in which to head rather than a destination to get to. Let's break it down. Here is a list of descriptors--see if you can guess which ones are associated with authenticity and which are not:</div><div><ul><li>ridiculous</li><li>silly</li><li>mindful</li><li>genuine</li><li>deceptive</li><li>attentive</li><li>irrational</li><li>judgmental</li><li>compassionate</li><li>curious</li></ul><div>I won't bother to tell you which is which because it is better to sit with your own process of examination, but you may notice that the states you associate with authenticity all require a degree of <i>mindfulness</i>. In my view, mindfulness is not just being aware of what is happening inside of you, but also noticing what is happening outside of you--it is your inside world paying attention to the outside world and then noticing how the inside world feels about that--it is a response rather than a reaction, it is about the moment rather than the unknown future, it requires attention rather than distraction. Authenticity is less about who you are and more about who you are in the moment that you are in.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>True authenticity is rarely, if ever, laughed at. And this is my goal. </div><div><br /></div><div>***</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiNd1b4eoUnGlav0YGDri6_Q_3GWe8nAF334d_ADAE8A3yFGVgflfIRqN3mivjiE9fcNZgAeK-a1yGgSGYBTFlkm5dKFaefvJXVMUoszwoP0-7VKP8jy7Km7lHSnSKdK8V0yambXXPLgoTglqDrZmVmU4DpI3u4IYaANfuONDLBR_CTHUFxpW60YumLEQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="232" data-original-width="359" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiNd1b4eoUnGlav0YGDri6_Q_3GWe8nAF334d_ADAE8A3yFGVgflfIRqN3mivjiE9fcNZgAeK-a1yGgSGYBTFlkm5dKFaefvJXVMUoszwoP0-7VKP8jy7Km7lHSnSKdK8V0yambXXPLgoTglqDrZmVmU4DpI3u4IYaANfuONDLBR_CTHUFxpW60YumLEQ" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div>In many ways, my entire life has been both extraordinary and commonplace. When I think about it, getting married for the first time in my 60's could be extraordinary. Or commonplace. I am not sure which--what elements distinguish those categories? Maybe it depends not on how I look at it, but instead how others look at it. To me, the decision to get married now feels natural--there is nothing impulsive or spontaneous about it, but I can understand why others might look at me and think: Why now? Why him? Whereas I think, if you love someone that much: <i>Why not?</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Remember that poster you would see with poem about the lady who will wear purple everyday once she gets old? I am not even sure it was purple she wanted to wear, but that is how I remember it. The poster seemed to be saying that, ideally, <i>you stop giving a fuck when you get old</i>--you can do what you feel like doing and not care what others think (like wearing purple!). Sounds a little like becoming a child again, but without the supervision or carelessness. Think Ruth Gordon in <i>Harold and Maude</i>, and you will get the picture. She was <i>free</i>. She was even free to choose when she died. </div><div><br /></div><div>But remember that even with Maude's freedom, <i>she choose to enter into a relationship with Harold,</i> loving him dearly. Her relationship was not a cage, it was not a trap, it was an extension of the way she lived her life, an expression of her freedom to choose. True freedom does not mean that you go around doing whatever you want whenever you want, it means that you have the ability, resources, access, and willingness to make your own choices, whether it is to get an abortion, live alone in the woods, get married at 60, or wear purple when you are old, <i>while also accepting responsibility for the effect and consequences of those choices on yourself and others. </i></div><div><br /></div><div>It means that you find authenticity in attention to the moment--noticing not only what is happening around you, but also what is happening inside you, and then responding to that--or not. True freedom cannot exist for me without interdependence on others, because true freedom requires outside support and mutual reliance. I am not sure what freedom will look like for me in my new age, but I can know a bit about what it will look like today, so maybe I will just start there. This is how I want to do my 60's.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>This is my new age. </b></div>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-14255296255528477082021-10-10T12:28:00.002-07:002021-10-11T05:43:40.528-07:00Leaving Hudson Avenue, in Five Parts, With Some Pictures<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N5ufir_x-qs/YUVgeLSHaxI/AAAAAAAATOI/U7_2UVRhppcUIo9Jl2T_CGe7qydG5oh0wCNcBGAsYHQ/s979/51NA2FZ9MUL._AC_SY355_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="979" height="76" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N5ufir_x-qs/YUVgeLSHaxI/AAAAAAAATOI/U7_2UVRhppcUIo9Jl2T_CGe7qydG5oh0wCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/51NA2FZ9MUL._AC_SY355_.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><i><p><i><br /></i></p>This essay, which I expect few to have interest in, is a compilation of the thoughts that went through my head as I prepared to move from an apartment I have been in for 20 years. Initially I was going to publish each part separately, but then I decided to join them together. What the hell. Ultimately, this is a piece about change. I wrote it to sort thoughts in my head, but if it resonates with you then I am very glad.</i><p></p><p><b>Part 1: Madonna Released</b></p><p><b>June 2021</b></p><p>I am moving.</p><p>I have not moved in 20 years, so I don't remember much about <i>how</i> to move. I know that "moving" is involved, but what else other than that? How does one actually move? </p><p>The funny thing is that the move is less than a mile away from where I am now. So maybe I am really "budging" instead of moving. Nevertheless, <i>something </i>is happening that I have not done in a long time. </p><p>The other day, in preparation for the move, I gave away a large bin containing magazines with <a href="https://www.instagram.com/madonna/" target="_blank">Madonna</a> on the cover that I have been collecting for nearly 30 years, starting around 1985. I think I stopped doing so about 5 years ago, mostly because Madonna is on fewer magazine covers these days, but also because I think I care less than I used to. </p><p>In 1985, however, pretty much <i>all </i>I cared about was Madonna, and the magazines were a way to track her ascension in pop culture and as an influence in my life. In 1985, I was 23 years old, and I badly wanted what she had: looks, confidence, style, attitude, sex, talent. Who didn't? As a gay man navigating my identity and manhood amidst the collage of templates in 80's culture, Madonna offered the whole package, and then some. In fact she created many of the templates herself. I cared <i>very much</i> about all of that back then.</p><p>But in 2021, at 59 years of age, not so much. </p><p>If you happen to be over 50 yourself, I wonder if you notice <i>your</i> priorities shifting? I have with mine--not all at once--but slowly over time, like sand dunes manipulated by a gentle wind. Things that I used to care very much about don't mean so much to me anymore, and things that I did not value so much as a younger man are becoming more important. My Madonna magazines reside in the first category. </p><p>***</p><p>When I started collecting the covers, I was very much influenced, like many young folk, by pop culture. When Madonna hit, she was both in and out, hot and cold, master and servant, slut and virgin. With her as inspiration, I realized that I didn't have to settle for just one way of presenting, or experiencing, myself. She helped me to reconcile, accept, and ultimately celebrate the dualities within myself. </p><p>She offered so many variations of herself that it was dizzying at the time, but they were all pretty damn perfect and <i>so</i> believable that every time she morphed I would question whether the previous incarnation were in fact a false version the whole time. Magazines documented all of it, with great lighting, and I would buy and keep them as a sort of record, I suppose, of something happening during my time that had not happened before (and has not happened since, I would argue). She graced so many magazines, because Madonna on the cover guaranteed an audience. She was a goddess in our midst. She was both one of us, and above us, a much more appealing example of the divine than the catholic god I had grown up with (who was not one of us <i>at all, </i>despite, you know, Jesus). </p><p>***</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #073763; font-family: times;">The other day, a man who found my ad on Craigslist showed up in a truck and took the whole lot from me. It was over and done with in minutes--30 years of carting that bin everywhere I moved, and now they are in the custody of someone else, to be offered to those who currently care more than I do. And that is okay. I no longer need them to anchor or guide my identity. Let them go to those who do.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rsx3CvHzqEI/YPl3OLJT1EI/AAAAAAAAS7s/4REwgK4TcP4l1hNjHFwg7FrUnN9uI49uQCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/1985-1533833166-1533833167.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1533" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rsx3CvHzqEI/YPl3OLJT1EI/AAAAAAAAS7s/4REwgK4TcP4l1hNjHFwg7FrUnN9uI49uQCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/1985-1533833166-1533833167.jpeg" /></a></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>Part 2: Letting Go Of The Shoeboxes</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-iIh0FPnWl-Q/YRSPpMMrDpI/AAAAAAAATBw/u-1SxoBwYish9Bvspo44dzHNOppKnWdKACNcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="680" height="223" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-iIh0FPnWl-Q/YRSPpMMrDpI/AAAAAAAATBw/u-1SxoBwYish9Bvspo44dzHNOppKnWdKACNcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></div><p>In Part 1, I wrote about letting go of my collection of magazines that feature Madonna on the cover. If you read that part, you may have come to the conclusion (understandably) that it is "easy" for me to let things go. You would be wrong, of course, but don't feel badly--I think most would come to the same conclusion. Truth is, it's as difficult for me to let go of things as it is for many people. So when I need to do this, I simply extract the <i>emotional component</i> from the decision and allow myself to be guided by practicality and rationale. </p><p>We all do this whether we realize it or not. It's a crude example, but every time you flush the toilet you are letting go of something that was very recently a part of you. Most of us never even think about it, nor do we question the decision. It leads me to suspect that when it is difficult to let go of something, it has less to do with the <i>something</i>, and more to do with the <i>meaning </i>we have assigned to it. </p><p>***</p><p>I was talking with someone the other day who was had been going through old letters and pictures, deciding what to keep and what to toss. This person does not have children, which adds a particular emphasis to the deciding process. He was concerned that if he tossed something out, the memory might be lost forever. I think he may be right. If we discard our past or there is nobody to whom we can pass on the record of it, does it disappear? And if it disappears during our lifetime, what impact does that have on <i>present-day</i> us? In other words, how much of our present-day self is reliant on our past self? </p><p>Do you ever think back to a year of your childhood and wonder how much of it is lost to memory? We forget much of our lives, because there is really no reason to remember that much of it. Journaling or keeping a diary is no guarantee we will hold a memory, because I have read some of the journals from the past and cannot remember living through what I wrote about. This makes me wonder something else: is memory what makes a life, or is it something altogether different? </p><p>***</p><p>When I was in my 20's, I was trying rather hard to <i>not be gay</i>, or at least not to be thought of as gay, and a female friend of mine tried to help me with this doomed project. We decided that it would be best to discard any written evidence of the <i>gay</i> in my life: cards, letters, correspondence from men I had gone out with that I had kept as mementos (I think I wanted evidence of being loved). We gathered many of them up and threw them out a dressing room window in the dance studio where we both studied ballet (I know, right?). The window emptied into an alley that was closed off from the street. Anything that fell into that alley would probably stay there for eternity. </p><p>I remember watching the letters and cards of my love life float down to the ground, and wondering if I were making a mistake by throwing away my (gay) history, the written memories of my romances. At the time I (we) thought we were doing the right thing. Today, I can say in hindsight that it was a mistake, because those cards and letters would have meaning to me now--they were a record of my emotional and sexual past, a roadmap to my adulthood. At the time, they were a record of a past I was trying to forget. </p><p>The Madonna magazines were less a record of my past and more of a record of <i>the </i>past--a past that is accessible anywhere on the internet today. So letting go of them was really only letting go of a <i>physical </i>record. I can look up any of those magazine covers online at anytime. The magazines themselves have lost meaning to me--my identity is no longer influenced by how Madonna lives her life--I find meaning elsewhere these days. </p><p>***</p><p>My partner has more trouble than I with letting go of things. In preparation for our move, I told him that I would go through his closet and toss anything "unnecessary". Not things he needs and wants, mind you, but items such as empty shoeboxes, for example. He objected to this proposal, telling me that "You never know when you are going to need a shoebox." While this may be true, I responded, "When you need one, I am sure we can find one." Today I threw out several of them while he was out of the apartment, sparing him witnessing the carnage. I also changed out his mismatched clothes hangers for ones that match, because if there is one thing I can control, it is whether or not the clothes hangers match. </p><p>I take my wins where I can get them. </p><p>His challenge with letting go of things seems to be different than mine. He is less concerned with losing memories, and perhaps more worried about having future regrets. In this regard we are certainly cut from different cloths--I have confidence in my ability to pivot in the future. He would rather make the right decision in the present moment. I feel that my skill is more useful for the world we live in today, but of course I am biased...and also right. Fortunately, there is room for two perspectives in our household. </p><p>As long as I get to throw out the shoeboxes. </p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>Part 3: Keeping the IKEA shit</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEibpZt3xZpBtCD-CLl0vkmnBRe2pn8o4Gl7Ips3A231-3DswCuAdczG1Yq6rTrtOJNlaUyX38pBg3lNjzRUbMTCwvhVuVW6E31RXnjCCEkW4_fvO581CPgabKAnNsghr06lvBbrLO3d4YLDnaZTbPBQbuRuO39VhZyNjaQpEsmfdkOR9SydWXid9iV_Ag=s1200" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="1200" height="103" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEibpZt3xZpBtCD-CLl0vkmnBRe2pn8o4Gl7Ips3A231-3DswCuAdczG1Yq6rTrtOJNlaUyX38pBg3lNjzRUbMTCwvhVuVW6E31RXnjCCEkW4_fvO581CPgabKAnNsghr06lvBbrLO3d4YLDnaZTbPBQbuRuO39VhZyNjaQpEsmfdkOR9SydWXid9iV_Ag=w258-h103" width="258" /></a></div><p>Who has not bought IKEA furniture? The trick to doing so successfully is to know what to get, and what not to get. Trust me, there is more of the latter, so perhaps that is more important to know. Over the years I have purchased items from the store, but not too many. I am one of those people who can walk into IKEA, take a carry basket rather than a care, and not actually fill it up. But of course I can't <i>completely </i>live without their products. I currently have some furniture items from IKEA that have been in my apartment for 20 years, and they still hold up, perhaps better than I. </p><p>As my boyfriend and I prepare to move 3/4 of a mile away to a new and larger apartment, I decided that I would be taking the IKEA furniture I currently have <i>with</i> me: a large cube bookcase, and a dining room table with extensions and chairs. I decided that I want these items to last through one more apartment before I let them go. Our plan is to stay in this new place for a couple of years, then hopefully buy something in either San Diego or Portland. </p><p>I don't know if this is a rule or not, but I will <i>not</i> be taking the IKEA shit to the place we buy. </p><p>***</p><p>I know someone who has a few million dollars. Actually, I know a few people who have a few million dollars, but this is Los Angeles, so that is not unexpected. Anyway, one of the people I know who has a few million dollars told me that when he moves to his new home, he will not be furnishing it with anything from <i>Pottery Barn</i>. According to him, you cannot get good furniture at Pottery Barn, or at least not furniture good enough for a million-plus dollar home. If you want good furniture, you have to buy if from a custom store or from Europe. </p><p>I see his point.</p><p>I wonder what he would think of my IKEA cube bookshelf and dining table with extensions? I wonder what he would think of my desk made with pressed wood, the one where the pressed wood is already peeling on the edges? </p><p>I don't know what he would think about them, but I know what I think about them. They are what you buy when you don't have millions of dollars. They are what you buy when you are in an apartment instead of a million dollar house. </p><p>I don't take great pride in the furniture I have, but I did take some pride in it back when I first purchased it, because it was <i>mine</i>, and I bought it new as opposed to getting it at a thrift store. Buying new furniture, at one time, was as important to me perhaps as it is to some people to buy quality pieces from Europe. I don't blame either of us one bit, not one bit. Don't we all do our best to make ourselves feel good in our homes? And we do it within our means. </p><p>I am not ashamed of my long-lived IKEA pieces, because they represent the best I could do at the time, and they have served me well, and will continue to do so through one more apartment. Once we buy a place, I cannot promise that I will buy European furniture--I may in fact take a look at Pottery Barn, but you never know. What I do know is that it won't be a million dollar place, but that is just fine. For me, it is the same as I suspect it is with those who have a few million: we are both interested not in what it costs, but rather how well it will fit. </p><p>It would, however, be nice to have a desk that does not peel on the edges.</p><p>***</p><p>For the apartment we are going to, I am keeping the IKEA shit. In my book, IKEA is fine for an apartment, but not for a home. I am aware that it may be different in your book, and I respect that. We are all entitled to have our own books. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Part 4: Goodbye, cunt!</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R5cf5BEC3ks/YSUF26o_p3I/AAAAAAAATDs/Q3d0BB7aDZM3H0PWhVYt1gBk1uBVByDAACNcBGAsYHQ/s630/3701098_0.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="630" height="201" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R5cf5BEC3ks/YSUF26o_p3I/AAAAAAAATDs/Q3d0BB7aDZM3H0PWhVYt1gBk1uBVByDAACNcBGAsYHQ/w201-h201/3701098_0.jpg" width="201" /></a></div><p>Have you ever wanted to call someone a cunt? If you have, I would imagine that you thought <i>very carefully</i> about doing so, because once you call someone a cunt, you <i>cannot</i> take it back. There is no way to "accidentally" call someone a cunt--it is an intentional affront in every instance of usage. I have thought about calling others <i>cunt </i>much more than I have actually done so, which is a good sign or a bad one. I am undecided. But I do wonder what it says about my life that there are people I consider to be cunts, without a sliver of doubt, in my world. </p><p>What exactly makes someone a cunt? Well, they must be <i>mean</i>, and by mean I mean they don't care much about how others feel. But wait, there's more! To be a cunt, one must not only be mean, they must also feel <i>justified</i> in being so; in other words, they can't see their cuntiness because they are too busy playing <i>victim</i>. For these people there is no turning back from <i>cuntitude</i>, because they have already decided that <i>they</i> are right and <i>the other</i> is wrong, <u>end of story</u>. </p><p>I like this passage by Hannah Croft from <a href="https://thetab.com/uk/2019/03/08/why-are-people-so-offended-by-the-word-cunt-a-psychologist-explains-95115" target="_blank">this page</a> that defines cunt compared to other words used to describe female genitalia: </p><blockquote><p><i>"While vagina describes part of the interior sexual organ, and vulva describes the exterior, the word cunt encompasses the whole thing – it’s the only word that describes the whole shebang. More than this, vagina literally means “sword sheath”, in other words, a “dick-passage”, so you could say cunt is actually the nicer and more anatomically correct word to use.</i></p><p><i>Semantically speaking cunt is simply the female equivalent of dick, as both are signifies for a sexual organ, and when you look at it like that the whole hoo-hah surrounding the use of cunt in conversation does seem somewhat strange."</i></p></blockquote><p>It does seem strange, doesn't it? </p><p>What's the difference between calling someone a "dick" and calling someone a "cunt"? I guess it depends on what country you are in. In the UK, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQsHTW65F9o" target="_blank">cunt is used more frequently,</a> mostly to indicate that someone is being a jerk, whereas in the U.S. the word is seen as reprehensible and offensive primarily to women. Perhaps, beyond the meaning ascribed by the receiver, the aggressiveness is because of the hard "c", which practically <i>begs</i> the user to spit out the word. Americans have a hard time with hard consonants, I notice. They generally prefer soft consonants, words like <i>prayer, flower, and lasagna</i>. The one exception is the word <i>God</i>, which is practically <i>all </i>hard consonants, but that does not seem to bother the fussybutts. Strange. I suspect that the hard consonants are the reason that so many scream out <i>"Oh <b>G</b>o<b>d</b>!"</i> during sex--it is a primal utterance! </p><p>"Dick" has a hard "c", and is more acceptable in society, still I find it odd that so many insults are about labeling others as sexual organs. </p><p>***</p><p>My "neighbor soon to be ex-neighbor", who is also a "tenant soon to be ex-tenant", is definitely a cunt extremis. She is mean to the core, and only cares about others feelings when she is being treated well, or when she is playing with other <i>cunt-victims </i>like herself. When she is not getting what she wants, she turns on you, <i>fast</i>. And when you call her on this, she feigns shock, as though her wonky brain cannot fathom her own bad behavior. <i>She is a cunt. </i></p><p>She has been a cunt, off and on, for the 20 years I have known her. When I first started managing this building, I remember she came over and knocked on the door, and <i>demanded</i> that I unlock the electric meter panel for the power company. I asked her why this needed to be done, and she replied, "You don't need to know, <i>just do it!</i>" I laughed at her and slammed the door. And there you have the root of cuntiness: <i>entitlement</i>. <u>Entitlement is always, <i>always</i>, a coping mechanism enlisted in the task of protecting one against a fear of loss.</u></p><p>A couple years after the electric panel incident, the police were called on her when she dragged her then-boyfriend down the street a bit as he held onto the door of her car. He wisely flew the coop, never to be seen again. </p><p>The sad part is that, for much of the time, the cunt and I were able to achieve a sort of <i>détente </i>in our interactions. We greeted one another with pleasant words, and I did her favors like taking her packages in when she was away. But the civility was, in hindsight, condescending of her. She <i>tolerated </i>me because it worked for her to do so, until it didn't. </p><p>Fortunately, I will never have to see her again after I leave Hudson, and hopefully I will think of her less and less. There are too many people like her out there, the <i>funcional mentally disordered</i>, who act like toddlers throwing tantrums but in fact are <i>far more dangerous</i>. The neighbor hides her cuntiness behind the veil of "social justice warrior", which justifies her meanness, because, after all, she is fighting for the oppressed! The problem is, I don't think she really cares about anyone but herself. I suspect she only helps the oppressed as a way to validate her cunty ways. </p><p>There are so many things I would like to tell her, but I won't, because I am invested in my peace of mind at the moment more than I am invested in disturbing hers. But if I did tell her things, I most certainly would tell her that <i>she is a cunt</i>. The cuntiest of cunts. The Cunt Queen. Cuntilia of Cuntsville. A cunt through and through.</p><p>I am moving away and moving on. She will have to wake up to the reality of herself for the rest of her days, and I can't imagine that makes for many pleasant mornings. No matter. I am leaving Hudson, and her, behind. </p><p>Goodbye, cunt.</p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>Part 5: Hello Mansfield</b></p><p><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Ce66RcO3RJI/YVu6Pcqw5LI/AAAAAAAATV0/pJ2FgWvUTBIcWyZFdIFbheYg68hrGBNbACNcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="419" data-original-width="800" height="168" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Ce66RcO3RJI/YVu6Pcqw5LI/AAAAAAAATV0/pJ2FgWvUTBIcWyZFdIFbheYg68hrGBNbACNcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></b></div><b><br /></b>The grass is rarely "greener" on the other side, but one could not be faulted for hoping it is at least <i>green</i>. That is all I want with this move. Anything more will be "gravy", as they say. Green gravy. <p></p><p>The other day I had to speak with the manager of our new apartment because the electricity had not yet been turned on. A technician from the power company was there, and the manager called to assure me that all was good. <i>But wait.</i> He then handed the phone to the technician so that I could speak with him. "Hello", I said, "do we have juice?" (I was trying to sound cool.) He responded that there would be juice in about two minutes. </p><p><i>But wait.</i> The manager got back on and asked if they could go into the apartment to "test" the lights. I agreed to this plan. <i>But wait. </i>He called me back from inside the apartment and assured me that the lights were, in fact, now working when turned on. He then wanted to put me back on the phone with the technician to "thank him again". In the background, I heard the technician say, "Tell him that all is good and to have a nice weekend." That poor technician! </p><p><i>But wait.</i> The manager then proceeded to reiterate why it was the right decision for me to take the apartment, because with him as manager, I will be "safe" there. He then told me for the millionth time that he trusts me and I am a good guy and a "gentleman". He continued on until it started to wear on me, and I finally had to say to him that I had to go.</p><p><i>But wait.</i> Earlier in the week, I got a text from him that said, "Do you miss me?" I assumed he was thinking he had texted another person, but it concerned me nonetheless since it came to my phone. I responded, <i>"Excuse me?"</i>, after which he then called me to profusely apologize for sending it by mistake. I tried to ease his discomfort by joking, "You probably thought you were texting your girlfriend!", and we both had a good laugh. Ha ha ha!</p><p>New street, new apartment, new nonsense. At least the nonsense at the new place amuses me. I prefer amusement to annoyance.</p><p>***</p><p>I have never been a fan of "starting over". While I understand the romance of thinking that way, it's a fool's illusion. We can't start over! But we<i> can</i> change directions and head toward a new destination. Though I am only moving 3/4 mile away, I am hoping that it will be a huge change in direction for me. In fact, I am counting on it. There is no way I would have put myself though the difficulty of moving if I thought it would be otherwise. </p><p>One thing that eased the difficulty of the move was when I just pretended that instead of moving, I was doing a "deep cleaning". </p><p>***</p><p>I have always had a certain confidence about changing directions. I feel very fortunate in this regard. I have read that some people, especially those with certain types of <a href="https://add.org/" target="_blank">Attention Deficit Disorder,</a> have <i>no</i> confidence in changing directions. Where I see fresh possibilities and the ability to adjust course if needed, they often see only negative outcomes and the potential for regret. Had I been born with a mind that worked this way, there is little chance I would have had the life I've had, because my life has been all about changing directions with confidence. </p><p>Wherever I go, I find a way to make it work. And wherever I am, I will stay as long as I can make it work. Hudson has not been working for me for a long time. Mansfield Ave., you're up. </p><p>***</p><p>It is perfectly okay to walk away from a situation that is not serving you anymore. But walking away is only half of the action--<i>walking toward</i> is the other half. I have walked away from stress, walked away from judgement, from guilt, from disrespect, walked away from being treated as a means rather than an ends. I have walked toward <i>peace of mind</i> and <i>greater control over who takes up my time</i>. And all it took was three months of hard fucking work and a shift 3/4 of a mile northwest. </p><p>Sometimes the biggest moves are just 3/4 of a mile away. </p><p>I wonder, at times, if my desire to keep moving in some way is caused by a fear of death or a zest for life. As I write that, I realize that a true zest for life can only spring from a healthy fear of death. Fear of death does not have to mean a literal fear of dying--it could mean a <i>fear of not living anymore</i>. The difference is that the former is about avoidance, and likely rooted in the future, while the latter is about embracement, and rooted in the present moment. </p><p>When one is embracing the present, regardless of what is happening, why would you want life to end? Even in painful moments, there is an aliveness to present experience when experienced in the present. This cannot be done when one is dead, obviously. </p><p>Perhaps my desire to move from Hudson is a little bit of both fear and zest. Perhaps. Now that I think about it, maybe saying goodbye is always both fear and zest. Maybe. I don't mind a bit of fear as long as there is some zest in the mix. </p><p>Saying goodbye. I have done this before, and I will likely do it again. I have said goodbye to the Naval Academy, Starbucks, my brother Mark, my niece Summer, my cousin Patty, and others. It is perfectly okay to say goodbye when you are not treated well. Goodbye, Hudson. Goodbye, Madonna magazines. Goodbye, cunt. </p><p>Hello, Mansfield. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">ANTIDOTES TO FEAR OF DEATH</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">by Rebecca Elson</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Sometimes as an antidote</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">To fear of death,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I eat the stars.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Those nights, lying on my back,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I suck them from the quenching dark</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Til they are all, all inside me,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Pepper hot and sharp.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Sometimes, instead, I stir myself</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Into a universe still young,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Still warm as blood:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">No outer space, just space,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The light of all the not yet stars</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Drifting like a bright mist,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">And all of us, and everything</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Already there</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">But unconstrained by form.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">And sometime it’s enough</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">To lie down here on earth</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Beside our long ancestral bones:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">To walk across the cobble fields</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Of our discarded skulls,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Thinking: whatever left these husks</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Flew off on bright wings.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QdyVtS5vXgo/YVu6sZ2tg5I/AAAAAAAATWA/5cICyyCfQKU-7kRmNcVhz1PEx5sbUrGUQCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Dining%2BRoom.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QdyVtS5vXgo/YVu6sZ2tg5I/AAAAAAAATWA/5cICyyCfQKU-7kRmNcVhz1PEx5sbUrGUQCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/Dining%2BRoom.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Dining Room fit for dinner parties</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HarV1QdPiJk/YVu6u_9_JhI/AAAAAAAATWE/Kz9g703xyfkvWoFLD2j8QKX9QXEuYttJQCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Living%2BRoom%2Bfrom%2Bentry.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HarV1QdPiJk/YVu6u_9_JhI/AAAAAAAATWE/Kz9g703xyfkvWoFLD2j8QKX9QXEuYttJQCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/Living%2BRoom%2Bfrom%2Bentry.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Home.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-63142326754189850062021-05-02T11:07:00.022-07:002021-05-03T17:01:18.781-07:00Time After Time<p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jicUavHzI-w/YINVZbAfdgI/AAAAAAAASTU/lGwJcZBboOovH_HNrFETi8nYTzWbDxSBACNcBGAsYHQ/s500/artworks-000074905660-ima2nu-t500x500.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="237" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jicUavHzI-w/YINVZbAfdgI/AAAAAAAASTU/lGwJcZBboOovH_HNrFETi8nYTzWbDxSBACNcBGAsYHQ/w237-h237/artworks-000074905660-ima2nu-t500x500.jpg" width="237" /></a></div><p></p><p>In 1983, I was 22 years old, and living in San Diego, CA. I often think about times in the last century when I would have liked to have been 22 other than the time when I actually <i>was</i> 22, and it usually narrows down to the following years: 1922, 1950, 1960, and 1979. I have selected years where, at the age of 22, I would have avoided the drafts for wars that were occurring around those times, while still enjoying major cultural shifts. The exception to this of course is 1979 and the War with AIDS. There is no way to have reveled in the glorious glow of the Sexual Revolution/Gay Rights Movement/Disco Era without intersecting with that crisis, but I think, <i>I think,</i> that it would have been worth it. With COVID-19, most people who die have little to show for their suffering, whereas if you succumbed to AIDS in the early 80's, you could at least say that <i>you had danced like a motherfucker</i>. </p><p>1983 would have definitely been on the list even if I had not been 22 at the time. It was simply a banner year in many ways. For one thing, it was a bit easier to avoid AIDS in 1983 as a 22 year-old because I came of age late enough to adjust my sexual behavior in response to the horrors around me. Had I been born just a few years sooner, I doubt this would have been the case. </p><p>For this essay though, the main reason it was a banner year is because of the <i>music</i> that was released. In 1983 we enjoyed first albums by Madonna, REM, and Cyndi Lauper. I could stop right there, but in addition there were superb new albums by David Bowie, U2, R.E.M., The Police, The Talking Heads, Eurythmics, and <a href="http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2013/06/03/best-albums-of-1983/" target="_blank">so many more</a>. The previous year, 1982, was when pop music embraced New Wave so much that many feel that the 80's, at least how we think of them musically, did not actually begin until 1982. Though both disco and New Wave were danceable, the latter emerged from the punk scene of the 70's, while disco came from the black, gay, and European underground dance club scene. </p><p>While I was enamored by Madonna at the time (like everyone else), one could not ignore the impact and raw talent of Cyndi Lauper, who released her debut album <i>She's So Unusual</i>. Unlike Madonna, who was sexy and confident, Lauper played the other side of the hipness coin: <i>the freaky outsider</i>. She played it to perfection because she was not playing. Madonna was a freaky outsider as well, but her beauty and fashion sense won her entrance into the accepted crowd, so much so that she took over the room, changed it, and ruled it, whereas Lauper was forever the one screaming her head off in the parking lot. Her saving grace is that she screamed really, <i>really</i> well, so well that she drew a crowd, and along the way she showed them that she could also whisper. That whisper is well utilized on the ending of her iconic song "Time After Time", which became Lauper's very first number-one single. </p><p>Since 1983, "Time After Time" has never truly left pop culture, or the culture in general. A song added as an afterthought to the album has since become <i>unforgettable</i>, recognized all over the world as a soulful expression of patience, the yearning cry of one who has no choice but to watch their lover struggle, recognizing that the struggle is not theirs. What greater love is there than to attend to another's pain despite the pain one feels themselves? </p><p>I remember that when the song was first released, I did not think that much of it. I was much more into the quirky danceability of <i>She Bop</i> or the melodic romance of <i>All Through The Night. </i>To me these were masterpieces because they spoke of masturbation and in-the-moment romance, two of my favorite pastimes in 1983. But nobody is really singing either of these songs in 2021. What did I know? </p><p>***</p><p>Currently, my partner and I manage a small residential apartment building of 16 units. In the middle of March, one of our tenants, a kind elderly woman who has been a resident for over 30 years, committed suicide in her apartment. She turned on the gas from the stove, tied some plastic around her neck to constrict her airway, and then got into her filled bathtub, fully clothed, knowing that once she passed out from the gas she would slip under the water and quietly drown, ensuring her death. I was working offsite that day, and when alerted by another tenant that there was a smell of gas in the stairwell, I sent my partner over to investigate. He ended up breaking open the door to get past the chain lock, and that is when he and the other tenant found the body. </p><p>She was already dead by several hours. but that did not stop my partner, who is training to be a nurse, from checking her for a pulse and trying to lift her water-logged body out of the water. He could not do so, her body was already too saturated to lift easily. Eventually, the police and paramedics arrived, and they took over, and my partner frantically messaged me about what happened--messages I received in between client sessions. </p><p>I consoled him as best I could in the moment, put my own shock in a "container", and showed up for my clients for the rest of the day.</p><p>***</p><p>Death is never the end, at least not for those who are still living. It will be months before I, as the building manager, can even begin to deal with the apartment my tenant left behind, because I am required by law to wait until contacted by either family or an executor of her estate. In the event that neither happen, then we are required to store her belongings in the rare case that one of her family show up in the future to claim belongings. In the meantime, for the next three years I will have to inform any prospective tenants, if they ask, that someone died by suicide in the apartment. That should be a draw!</p><p>My partner, in the meantime, continues to experience the aftershocks of finding a bloated dead body in the middle of a Saturday morning right before his final exams week. I cannot even imagine what he is going through, or what it was like for him to find her cold, heavy corpse. He told me that he was glad that she was floating face down in the water so that he did not have to see her face. <i>I would take the experience from him in a fucking second</i>, because I have 30 years of resilience and life on him, and I would rather be the one holding the memory and the pain. But I can't do that, no matter how much I want to. He has to hold it himself, while I watch and get ready to catch him should he fall.</p><blockquote><p><i>"If you're lost you can look and you will find me,</i></p></blockquote><blockquote><p><i>Time after time.</i></p><p><i>If you fall, I will catch you, I will be waiting,</i></p><p><i>Time after time."</i></p></blockquote><p>"Time After Time" is a song about wanting to ease the suffering of a loved one. Who has not felt such a desire? It could be called "love" to take on the suffering of others, but it isn't really. It's selfish in a way--while also being a certain form of caring. <i>Real</i> love is about <i>trust</i>, and belief in the tenacity of the beloved. Real love knows that suffering is bearable because it is washed through the body by sadness: the emotion that kneads a heart into beating again. <i>Real love holds, it does not take.</i> Real love does not bear another's sadness, instead it bears witness. Real love has faith in the beloved's ability to move through pain; real love cushions, but does not stop, the fall. </p><p>Death comes to us all--this is not news to anyone (except those who live in Los Angeles), and yet when it comes it often feels like a poorly planned surprise to everyone involved. Surprise: life ends! (At least for the one who has died.) While many would rather not think about such things, it is the thinking about such things that makes life worth living in my book (and in the book of Existentialists, among others). </p><p>The concept of there being <i>time after time</i> seems to reference the present (time) and the past (after time). It says nothing about a future that is uncertain--merely the implication that time will continue on and on, repeating itself. But if the '80's taught me anything, it is that time rarely repeats itself; rather than time after time", more often it is "time, and new time, and more time, but different". This certainly would not make a good pop song title, and takes nothing away from Lauper's timeless tune, it simply differentiates between those who take their lives and those who choose to stay and live (and bear suffering). </p><p>Suicide is an example of the misguided interpretation of time after time--the belief that death will somehow "catch you if you fall". Newsflash: <i>it doesn't! </i>Life, on the other hand, is an example of time <i>and</i> time: the moments that ebb and flow from suffering to joy, dark to light, despair to love. Romantic notions may lead to great pop songs where relationship breakups are seen as the Hero's Journey, but they do not, in themselves, lead to a great life. </p><p><i>Suicide is a fake Hero's Journey</i>, the false conclusion that death will somehow redeem all, when in fact it just creates a bigger fucking mess. What my partner did that day was not courage but <i>love</i>--he acted, I suspect, from the knowledge that once you are dead there is no getting back up. You can only do that when you are still alive. He acted hoping that he could help the old woman get back up. He was, by no fault of his own, too late, and so he suffers now. And yet if anything was to be born from this death, it is my greater love for him as a result of his actions, and the knowledge and conviction that I will live to catch him if he falls. </p><p>Lest you think I have no compassion for the old woman, let me assure you that I do. She was always kind to me, and generous in her appreciation for what I did as building manager. I had no clue that she was suffering, if in fact she was. But I can be upset at those I care for when they do things that create a mess for me to clean up. And in case you need further proof that I am not a monster, cleaning up her mess is my continued caring for her despite my upset. </p><p>***</p><p>Cyndi Lauper does a surprising thing in her hit song--she cuts the title phrase short--twice, uttering "Time after..." rather than all three words. On first listen it is easy to dismiss this as artistic license, until you realize that she also <i>ends</i> the song this way. </p><p>As I write this essay, our world is on the verge of figuring out what the "time after" will look like, even though we are still in the suffering of a pandemic. As I said earlier, when one says "time after time", they are implying that something will repeat itself, over and over again. But in our current case, we cannot rely on this implication. The "time after" may look like nothing that has come before, so can we still call it "time after time"? </p><p>As I get older, I have fewer <i>time after times</i> than when I was a young man. I realize that death, when it comes, will introduce a whole new category of "time after", altering the meaning of time after time from "over and over" to "life after life". The time after my death may indeed be more time, but it will be time without me. That never really mattered that much to me until I got into a relationship I cherish. Now I think about what my partner's time after me will look like.</p><p>My dead tenant did not seem to give much thought to "time after", so now I have to give thought to it, unfortunately. I shouldn't have to do this, because her time (life) was not mine. And yet here we are. In my life today, I am focused on making choices for the time after so that my partner benefits from his time with me in the time after me. His time after me will still have plenty of me in it, if I have any say in the matter. </p><p>But...I am not there yet. I still have time after time, or so I suppose. I still have time. Time after...</p>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-50093472379808680342020-05-17T11:08:00.002-07:002021-05-09T13:16:46.674-07:00Milkshake<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QdcnTvVnJJI/XrDRWwFQ4pI/AAAAAAAAP-8/VXX0-DQJkNsbHUJg9LCu27Qcb6nme--iQCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/NY-CK578_LUNCHB_DV_20130624174252.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="262" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QdcnTvVnJJI/XrDRWwFQ4pI/AAAAAAAAP-8/VXX0-DQJkNsbHUJg9LCu27Qcb6nme--iQCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/NY-CK578_LUNCHB_DV_20130624174252.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
<i><br /></i><i>This post was written about activities and thoughts that occurred on 5/3/2020.</i><br />
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The boyfriend wanted to get a Cookies and Cream milkshake from Fatburger today, so that was the plan. I thought that as long as we were going there, I might as well get one too, but I decided on "Banana" flavor. Call me crazy.<br />
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These are the days when it takes just one activity to complete our "to-do" list, especially on Sundays. I will admit that, on occasion, the Sunday "to-do" list has no activities at all; this admission comes without guilt, because, well, Sunday. So this Sunday I was <i>excited </i>to have a activity on the list, even if that activity consisted of only one mission.<br />
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What is it about milkshakes that make them so appealing? Do I even need to explain it to you? Give me anything with ice cream and all discernment is tossed out the window. Milkshakes are a treats you can enjoy either with a meal, or on their own. If you choose to have a meal with it, the contents are <i>not</i> up for discussion. It must be either a hamburger or a hot dog (preferably a hamburger!), and if you respect tradition, french fries. Milkshake appeal does not migrate beyond these items for good reason--once you find the perfect match, don't fuck with it.<br />
***<br />
Milkshakes are often tied to one's childhood--they carry a nostalgic element in that many happy memories either began or ended with a milkshake. When I think of my childhood, milkshakes were like a kid's version of an orgasm; they were the best thing in the world at the time, and each time you had one it was like your first. Not that they were sexual, they were just perfect, <i>every time</i>, like a mother's hug after you fall down or running naked in a warm summer rain.<br />
<br />
Perhaps we all have nostalgia for treats from childhood. Isn't childhood best viewed through nostalgia's lens? In reality, being a child is <i>not that great</i>--though we may remember it as a time of unfettered freedom, the truth is that our enjoyment was often cut off at the knees, and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it. This is because our freedom, if you could call it that, was without responsibility--that was held by our parents. Our freedom was not free. So maybe it wasn't actually freedom at all then?<br />
<br />
***<br />
Freedom is a firecracker topic these days, and for good reason. I notice that many of those fighting for it have no real idea what it is. They <i>think</i> they do, but what they really imagine it to be is the child's version of freedom: <i>without responsibility. </i>This country was supposedly founded on the idea of freedom of expression, but when you read between the lines, it was more like freedom of <i>approved</i> expression, or freedom of <i>my</i> expression but not yours. We see this going on today on both the left and the right, sadly, so it is not a partisan issue.<br />
<br />
The truth is that freedom of expression means exactly that--whether you agree with or like what is being expressed or not. As long as the expression is not threatening to anyone, the sky's the limit! I find it interesting that the only time one is held responsible for the effects of their expression is when the expression is a threat in some way--otherwise you have to clean your own wounds. The bigger problem is that the ones doing the expressing rarely take any responsibility for their words, even when threatening, while holding others responsible for theirs. <i>Conditional freedom</i>.<br />
<br />
In a world where the norm is to let yourself off the hook, I have to ask myself: <i>Why I have spent a lifetime feeling guilty?</i><br />
<br />
***<br />
The founders of the country were trying to escape tyranny, which is admirable, but there really is no perfect system of government, is there? That's because governments are created and run by people. The Constitution is a groundbreaking document is because its writers <i>knew this </i>about governments, and about people, and necessary checks and balances were put into place to keep any one person from having too much power. It was a bold experiment back then and continues to be so--can we let the people have personal freedom while safeguarding them with laws that limit the same?<br />
<br />
Ideally, yes. But the problem today is that this idea assumes that the people being governed are <i>adults</i>, not children. Children, on the other hand, are to be governed by the adults. What could go wrong?<br />
<br />
Here is what went wrong. The people who run the government became more interested in their own well-being than the well-being of the people, leaving the people to choose between parenting well and making a living. Children left without parenting have to parent themselves, and we all know what happens when that happens: no regulation, no limits, no boundaries, no restrictions. Children not only don't want those things, they also lack the ability to self-administer them until a certain age. And when they never get those things they grow into adults who continue to think and behave like children, wanting freedom without taking or holding responsibility for their actions.<br />
<br />
Today, adult children are having tantrums because they want to go to the beach in Southern California, which, by the way, I do understand. The weather is gorgeous. We have been cooped up for nearly two months due to COVID-19. We are an active society here, with fitness being more important than god (as it should be!). But the truth is that we can't go to the beach yet, because it is not safe. It is not safe for those who go or for the people they then are around. It is not safe--and the science backs this up.<br />
<br />
<i>Adults </i>can understand this. Adults, functional ones at least, understand that sometimes <i>we don't get to do what we want to do</i>, don't get to have what we want to have, don't get to say what we want to say. There are <i>no</i> restrictions on what you think, so go wild in that area if you want, but restrictions in the other areas are in place for one reason only: <u>we live among others</u>. And when you live among others, there is a <i>shared responsibility for one another</i>. Don't believe me? Try zipping through a red light next time you are driving and see what happens.<br />
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<br />
I have always wondered why traffic lights are one rare area where people <i>mostly</i> cooperate with each other, and I think the reason is because if you don't, the effects are immediate and potentially tragic. By contrast, going to the beach seems harmless, doesn't it? And yet the science of this virus tells us that a whole new cluster of COVID infections could result from just one infected person coming into contact with others on a leisurely walk on the boardwalk. It just doesn't happen in your immediate awareness, and you probably wouldn't know those who become infected. But what if the tables were turned, and you <i>did </i>know those who were affected by your behavior? What if they were <a href="https://www.alucinoconfeisbuk.com/2020/05/economia-y-coronavirus.html#.Xrh0Q7DgxBg.link" target="_blank"><i>your</i> family</a>? Would that be enough to make someone rethink their need to go to the beach?<br />
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It should, of course, but it shouldn't have to come to this. It should matter if other people become affected by our choices simply because <i>they are other people</i>. To adults, this should matter, not just because it is morally right, but because it is <i>right</i> right and how a civil society works. In a civil society, though there are differences in beliefs and opinions, people share responsibility for one another's well-being, since they see themselves as <i>part of a culture</i>, not just an individual taking what they can take. <i>This is </i>freedom <u><i>with</i></u> responsibility<i>,</i> and this is what the bozos wanting to go to the beach don't realize--that they are chasing a false form of freedom--<i>a freedom that exists at the cost of others'</i>. Sometimes, even children know that this is not a good way to behave--so what's our excuse?<br />
<br />
The excuse is not that people don't care (though some don't), but that our culture is dysfunctional (the reason some don't care), and for many the only way to win in the short term is as a lone individual; this is understandable (but sad) because it perpetuates the dysfunction. I am not interested in winning while others lose if I can help it (though I admit that sometimes I do, because I am white, male, educated, tall, and privileged), so I make an effort, with my own choices and behavior, to influence the culture to change. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but <i>I never lose sight of the world I want to live in, or the world I want to share with others.</i><br />
<br />
***<br />
My values are solid not because they are better than yours, but because they are internally rather than externally sourced--I occasionally veer from them because they <i>can</i> be externally <i>influenced</i>. This is why it is important to surround yourself with people who support your values. One of the reasons I am with my boyfriend is because we support each other's values (mostly) and each other's vision of a more functional society (completely). <i>We make each other better</i>. But when it comes to milkshakes, one could debate if we are aligning with our values or veering from them. Sometimes the answer is not so clear cut!<br />
<br />
Dairy products are controversial because of the effect of dairy farms on the environment. The plastic cups and straws our shakes came in, as well as the plastic lids, were thrown into the trashcan where they will likely go to a landfill and last forever. In this respect our choice to have milkshakes was not a <i>responsible </i>choice, or one we even had to be responsible for, and we knew this. We still chose to get them because we will not get milkshakes for the rest of the year, and because it is nearly impossible to not have a negative effect on something with every choice you make if you live in a city, and because we normally make sustainable choices, and, well, because we wanted them. In other words, even though we wanted a childhood treat, we choose as adults, aware of the pros and cons, accepting both, recognizing that the norm is more important than the exceptions. <i>We tried to choose responsibly, </i>given the choices available for those wanting milkshakes while out and about. I admit it was not perfect by a long shot.<br />
<br />
Sometimes this is the best we can do, isn't it? And sometimes we can do better. The goal is not perfection, but awareness, effort, and conscious choice. The goal is to be a functional adult. And functional adults realize that true freedom comes with responsibility, or it ain't freedom, it ain't freedom at all.<br />
<br />
***<br />
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<br />
This morning, on an early morning bike ride, I rode past a man in a wheelchair sweeping debris out of the curb on Figueroa Street in Highland Park. He was an older man, though I didn't get a clear look at his face, and he had a small kitchen broom and one of those handle dustpans that usually connect to the broom so that you don't lose either (or you lose both). Figueroa Street is a major artery, not a quiet residential street, and I wondered why he was "bothering" with this task. But as I passed by him I suddenly got it, or at least I think I did, and I shouted out "Looks good!" and gave him a thumbs up.<br />
<br />
What I "got" is that he was doing what he could to create a world he prefers to live in, one where the curbs are clean and where we all pitch in to keep them that way. I also suspect that, given his disability, this was something that he <i>could </i>do, and that it gave him a sense of purpose and importance, both of which can be elusive for older folks with disabilities. Regardless of whether his intention was along these lines or not, he has no way of knowing that he <i>influenced me</i>. He reminded me that anyone can choose to act as though their choices affect others (responsibly). He reminded me that when we create purpose for ourselves, others can benefit. He reminded me that small actions add up to big change. He reminded me that sometimes a clean curb is the best we can do, but also the beginnings of a larger culture shift. He didn't have to sweep the curb, but I suspect that he did it because he still recognizes that he is a part of a shared world, a shared world that includes other people.<br />
<br />
I rode on down Figueroa St., but could not stop thinking about the man in the wheelchair. I hope that if I ever find myself in the position of being older, possibly in a wheelchair, that I will make the choice of rolling out to the street and sweeping up the curb. I realize that the chances of that happening depend on my choosing freedom <i>with</i> responsibility, more often than not, starting <u>today</u>.<br />
<br />
The day after the boyfriend and I drank our milkshakes, he told me that his stomach was "messed up", and that he would not be having another milkshake for at least a year. I felt badly for him, but I also admired his willingness to have the milkshake and accept responsibility for the consequences and choose accordingly rather than pretending that a creamy sugary drink would be good for his stomach. But sometimes, the upside is worth the downside, isn't it? At least if you are willing to take personal responsibility for the downside. The next time we want a milkshake, though, I think I will make them at home, in the blender, and put them in frosty glasses, sans straws. It's a start, I suppose--a start toward making sure my curb is swept clean.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-68369477255633387462019-07-03T07:17:00.000-07:002019-07-03T07:17:10.297-07:00I TAKE PRIDE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
I should not be alive. The first time I should have died was when I was in the womb and only 8 months old. My four-year old sister had just tragically died of pneumonia and my mother went into shock, refusing to eat. If you don't already know this, the time to stop eating is NOT when you are eight months pregnant. It is amazing that I did not die as well at the time, leaving my family with not just one, but two horrible tragedies.<br />
<br />
I lived, and was born, and I found a way to thrive, against all odds as they say, by learning to "take care of myself". I probably had my first chance to build this skill on the day I was born.<br />
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The second time I should have died was when I was fifteen, and I realized that I was attracted to boys and not girls. Because of my Catholic upbringing, this realization was cause for panic rather than celebration, because being gay meant sure hellfire. I suffered from a depression that I could not talk to anyone about. Music is what got me through.<br />
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I lived, and I found a way to thrive, because when all was said and done I didn't want to die. I liked life, I just didn't like how others were defining it for me. So I decided to define it for myself.<br />
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Today, at the age of 56, I celebrate World Pride Day and Stonewall 50 by taking pride in who I have become. But I did not become me by myself. I found my people and they lifted me up, and continue to this day. Among them are Carla Stephens, Melani Lust, Eric Rosenblatt, Barry Schwartz, Andrew Tee, David P Organisak, Teresa Onstott, Marta Garza, Zuniga Gloria, and of course Keshav Tyagi. Without them and many others I have lost touch with (Michael, Connie, that Protestant minister at the Naval Academy who understood why I needed to leave), I am not sure I would feel very proud of who I am.<br />
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So for a little boy who learned to rely on nobody for anything, I take pride in allowing others in. I take pride in opening the door to them, even if they had to knock for days sometimes. I take pride in pushing against the beliefs of my childhood in order to forge a value system that is real to me, not a relic. I take pride in not destroying the lives of those who have loved me. I take pride in completing graduate school with my own money and my own determination. I take pride in being gay in my own way, by being a man who can cry but also fight for what he believes in. I take pride in loving those who still live in fear. I take pride in surviving an epidemic. I take pride in my beautiful queer community who have offered me multiple examples of how to celebrate my differences. I take pride in loving a man today who refused to give up on me. I take pride in what I do and what I do for others.<br />
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I make things beautiful--those who know me know this. It is my way of feeling safe in the world and my way of showing love. I did get this from my mother, who, in the midst of crushing grief and guilt, was still able to create a beautiful home for her tiny queer baby boy. That is what she was capable of doing at the time. It is perhaps the greatest gift she gave me--she showed me a way to love when it seemed there was no reason to do so.<br />
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Happy World Pride, Mom. Happy World Pride, everyone. We are all a little bit queer. Fall in love with that this summer. Take pride.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-2611280844189562392019-05-25T14:40:00.000-07:002019-05-25T14:40:22.014-07:00"You Ruin Everything"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
"You ruin everything".<br />
<br />
I was told this time and time again as a teenager. This accusation continues to influence my approach to life to this day.<br />
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***<br />
In his book, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitive/dp/0062457713" target="_blank">The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck</a></i>, Mark Manson specifies that an <i>unhealthy relationship boundary</i> exists if <u>one person holds another person responsible for how they feel</u>. Conversely, it is also an unhealthy boundary if we take responsibility for another's feelings. Why might this be a cornerstone of his book? Because when there is an unhealthy boundary in a relationship, <i>it always results in disaster.</i> There is no more self-defeating exercise than to hold ourselves accountable for what we have little to no control over, or when we insist that another is responsible for what they have no control over. Trust me on this--I have been testing this theory over the last 40 years of my life.<br />
<br />
Here is the thing about feelings--are you ready? <i>We choose our goddamn feelings</i>. Nobody can make us feeling anything, no matter how important a role they have in our lives. It looks like this: someone does something, we have a thought about it, and a feeling follows. Notice that the middle-man of the process is <i>how we think about what happens. </i>Our thoughts drive our feelings, unless, of course, someone punches you in the face. In that case pain drives our feelings. But the majority of the time nobody is punching us in the face. Instead, they are saying or doing things that cause us to think poorly about ourselves.<br />
<br />
***<br />
I was labeled "emotional" and "sensitive" as a kid. Mind you, those labels were not complimentary at the time. In my therapy practice, I see couples come in where the woman is often labeled "over-emotional", and I am quick to tell the man that a woman is NEVER over-emotional--she is in fact feeling <i>appropriate feelings regarding what has been triggered in her</i>. My emotionalism as a teenager was rooted in a fear of abandonment--I thought that if my parents knew who I really was (gay) they would not love me anymore. I was wrong, of course, they would always love me, but they certainly were disappointed in how I "turned out". Isn't that a laugh?<br />
<br />
Conditional love is still love, unless the conditions are about who the other person is instead of what you can or can't live with.<br />
<br />
As a teen, I felt lost and scared. My homosexuality went against everything I was taught about how be loved and how to get into Heaven. It went against everything I learned about how to live a good life and be a good person. I had such a hard time understanding why I was cursed with this perversion--and I had <i>nobody</i> to talk to about it. This led to depression and acting out--as a teenager sex with men made me feel, for a short while, like I was in fact lovable. But when my family found out that (gasp) I was attracted to men, the shit hit the fan. I was emotionally abandoned by both my parents. My father escaped into alcoholism (for which I was blamed), and my mother escaped into denial. My brother just escaped, and he continues to escape reality to this day with his embrace of Mormonism (he would not agree with this assessment, which is just another form of escape).<br />
<br />
I specifically remember a phone conversation with my brother when I was 18 years old and in my first year at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. He told me that I was to blame for the family's problems, including my father's drinking; he told me that <i>I had ruined everything</i>. And I believed him, because I had been taught that my desires were selfish and unnatural, evil and predatory, and that the only way to honor my family was to deny who I was (resist the Devil).<br />
<br />
My brother was wrong about me, he was wrong about my father's drinking, and he was wrong about life.<br />
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***<br />
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<i>Gay men like sucking dick.</i> Sometimes they like fucking ass, or being fucked. What is the problem with that? Seriously? In this world, there is so little pleasure to be found at times--mostly because our economy depends on us feeling shitty about ourselves, so who could fault anyone for trying to feeling good? Don't <i>you</i> want to feel good?<br />
<br />
The problem with religion is that it has criminalized feeling good, labeling pleasure as the "devil's work". What is wrong with wanting to feel good? Religion has flourished by turning suffering into a virtue, at the expense of, well, nearly everything. Pleasure is not the devil's work, y'all. You know what is? <b>Fear</b>.<br />
<br />
Fear is what keeps us from making bad decisions at times, but it is also what keeps us from realizing our full potential as humans. I know many good people who are religious, but their goodness is limited by a forced value system that is archaic and juvenile. <i>What is wrong with sucking a dick?</i> I implore you to convince me of the wrongness of that. Certainly the men who are on the receiving end of a dick sucking would be hard pressed to argue against it. While we need fear, we also need to <i>choose despite fear</i> at times, as these choices can lead us to transformation.<br />
<br />
When I was a teenager, I just wanted to love and be loved, but fear told me that if I acted on these impulses, I would <i>ruin everything.</i><br />
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***<br />
I was making a pizza with my boyfriend recently, using a pizza peel I had just purchased. I put flour on the peel so that the pizza would slide onto the pizza stone easily, or so I thought. But it didn't slide easily. In fact, it didn't move at all. I found myself in a panic, not knowing how to get a BBQ Chicken Pizza from the wood peel onto the stone, and I was triggered into feeling that I had "ruined everything". In other words, I started to lose it. Fortunately, my boyfriend sensed my distress and came to the rescue, helping me move the pizza onto a sheet pan where it would bake into a crunchy goodness, and I was able to return to the present moment and ease my upset.<br />
<br />
I have to do things perfectly--many of my friends know this. Fortunately, there are many things that I do nearly perfectly, but in the rare case where I am challenged in my perfectionism, I am triggered into feeling that I have "ruined everything".<br />
<br />
I am tired of feeling that way. I do not have the power to ruin everything. <i>I never did.</i><br />
<br />
***<br />
My parents, as loving as they were, failed me in many ways. I never ruined things--I was simply becoming myself in a way that <i>they </i>were not familiar with. What was being "ruined" was the way they were brought up to think about parenting--that it is an activity undertaken <i>to reinforce prevailing values</i>. I got news for you--it is so not that! Parenting is a noble act in that it is an opportunity to foster a blooming individual into a world that is constantly changing.<br />
<br />
You know what I love about tulips? You never know in what direction they are going to reach. I love putting them in a vase and watching them stretch and strive for the sun--wherever it is. Children are like that--we never know in what direction they will thrive, but with our guidance they will find their way to the sun. The role of parents is to protect and shepard, not to proscribe. Shame on you parents who proscribe! You are serving yourself and not your children!<br />
<br />
I found my way to the sun, but not without many attempts by the world to cut me down. My parents didn't try to cut me down, they just stopped watering me. They had an unhealthy boundary with me, holding me responsible for their fear. So I found sustenance in other wayward tulips.<br />
<br />
I am still reaching toward the sun.<br />
<br />
***<br />
It is time I put to bed the notion that I can ruin everything, because I want to be <i>human </i>in the world and with my boyfriend. I do not wish to take responsibility for how he feels, nor hold him responsible for how I feel. I want, instead, to take responsibility for my choices and feelings, with the hope that I will be motivated by respect and love, knowing that at times I will choose, appropriately, myself over him.<br />
<br />
We will get the pizza onto the stone, together, and it will be crunchy and delicious, if not perfectly shaped. Sometimes it will stick to the peel, and that is okay. It is okay. <i>It is okay</i>. It will still be wonderful, not ruined at all. Even if it is not perfect.<br />
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-76327563718999064202019-05-04T07:02:00.001-07:002019-05-04T07:02:29.007-07:0021 More Observations1. You cannot claim "getting married and having children" as an accomplishment if efforts toward those goals are limited to fucking someone.<br />
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2. If I can get through the day on only three Ibuprofen, I consider myself to be faring rather well.<br />
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3. Being "up to" a relationship is just fine, but not fine in itself.<br />
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4. I suspect that reblogging is not as productive an activity as some would like to think.<br />
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5. Talking about sex is unsexy only if you are not actually talking about sex.<br />
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6. My problem with the general public is that it is both general, and public.<br />
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7. The problem with living such long lives is that we have short-life thinking.<br />
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8. I refuse to let anyone with an addiction to food tell me what I can and cannot put in my mouth during sex.<br />
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9. I am convinced that a sign of maturity is knowing when the story you have to tell is of no interest to anyone else in the room.<br />
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10. I worry about people whose range of expressive emotions is limited to "frustration".<br />
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11. More often than not I actually buy it when Jennifer Lopez plays "regular women" in films.<br />
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12. I shudder to think of the day when "being an asshole" is the only reasonable response to modern culture.<br />
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13. The way I see it, in a cost-benefit analysis, veganism is sorely lacking in the latter.<br />
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14. Any attempt to reason with toddlers, the fervently religious, or those who are mentally unstable is likely doomed to fail for the exact same reason.<br />
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15. I would like to think that my giving up on <i>The Walking Dead</i> is a demonstration of healthy boundaries.<br />
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16. When I judge people it is often the result of knowing both too much and too little about them.<br />
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17. Wearing a crown on my head doesn't make me a king, but that is of little consequence.<br />
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18. Becoming an "entertainer" requires more than just talent.<br />
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19. When you buy a $4.99 bottle of wine, you get a $4.99 bottle of wine.<br />
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20. I think I may be more attractive in theory than in context.<br />
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21. The benefits of religion are like the benefits of red wine; they can all be found elsewhere in places where damage to self and others does not occur.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-4301538474742809672019-02-07T10:16:00.000-08:002019-02-07T10:16:14.198-08:00Ruth Margie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Ruth Margie, or my mom, was born nearly 100 years ago in 1922. Were she still alive, she would be 97 years old today, February 7th, 2019. She is not alive, however, she died 10 years ago at the age of 86 from complications caused by Alzheimer's Disease. I missed her death at the time by two days, but it may as well have been 1000 days, because when your mother dies, time both stops <i>and</i> turns into an eternity.<br />
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She was born in Pocatello, Idaho, a city I may have been to--it is not the kind of city you would remember had you ever passed through, despite its size. The city I grew up in, Chula Vista, could be described in the same way. A lot of people know of it, they just don't have much to say about it.<br />
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From what I know, my mother did not grow up in the city portion--the family was poor and probably lived on the outskirts, but I remember Mom telling me that she did not know they were poor (does a fish know it is in water?). She reported feeling loved by her parents and tended to--her mother was crafty with the sewing machine--a talent my mother picked up, and I suppose that back "in those days" kids did not need quite as much as they do now.<br />
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They also <i>worked</i>. If not formally, then certainly at home. Child labor laws had yet to take effect in many states, but to be honest, I don't know much about what little Ruth Margie did in her childhood. I just know that she looked like this:<br />
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As you can see, they called her "Ruthie", a nickname that her sister Edith continued to use with her well into adulthood. Some things just never change!<br />
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My mother married four times, with my father being the fourth, and last, husband. The story of those marriages differs depending on who you are talking to, but this is the one I like the best: she first married young to a man who, like many men in those days, knew little about what goes into a marriage, leading to a hasty divorce shortly after he returned from the war. Mom moved to California with her young daughter soon afterward to live with one of her sisters in the Bay Area, and according to my sister, she married the next two husbands because they were "nice enough" and allowed her to appease the family back home, none of whom were too happy about having a divorced daughter with a child roaming about.<br />
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She met my father in San Diego, where they both worked for Safeway grocery stores, and as luck would have it, she fell in love. I have written about their marriage before, and I stick to the story that in the early days they were great together--two mature, intelligent adults who loved to dance and have fun. By the time I came around, Mom was already 40 years old. Can you imagine that in 1962? It was almost unheard of back then, unlike today where women are having their first child at much later ages. I was the last of her children--after me she was forced to undergo a hysterectomy because she was told, at the time, that it was "for the best".<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mom on her 60th birthday</td></tr>
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There are pluses and minuses associated with being the child of an older parent. The plus is that they usually know what the hell they are doing by that time, and the family life is established and stable. The minus is that you don't often get to have them around as you get older. I never thought of my mom as older, she was just "Mom". I suppose it is the same for most kids. She was 50 when I was 10, and 60 by the time I reached 20, and yet she did not really begin to age until she neared 80. But when it came, it came fast--I remember once wondering, during a visit after I had been living in Los Angeles for a number of years, how she had become an old woman all of a sudden.<br />
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Of course little did we know that the acceleration of the Alzheimers was starting to take its toll on her vitality and health.<br />
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She died in the middle of the night, alone in a care home, two days before I was scheduled to fly in to be with her, but it may as well have been 1000 days before. When I found out that she died, I went to work to take care of some orders that had to be done because I was not ready to face it. I then left work at lunchtime and came home, where I drew the curtains and proceeded to wail for nearly three hours straight. If anyone is capable of corraling extreme grief, it would be me. I grieved alone that day, much as my mother died.<br />
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***<br />
These days, my missing of her is like mood--it comes and goes, sometimes loudly and sometimes softly. That's a lie, actually, it never really "goes", it just gets really quiet, or else the world gets louder--not sure which it is. I do not seek "closure" around my grief--it is the one thing that keeps her present for me--that and the lock of her red hair that I asked for before her cremation. As impractical as it is, I can certainly understand why people want to bury their dead in a coffin. It is hard enough to process a loved one dying, it is harder still to grasp the idea that their physical body is actually "gone". I suppose this is why it is torture to lose someone in a plane crash or in war when you don't even get to see the body--those left behind must live in a limbo where a part of them suspects that their beloved is not really dead. I was not that unfortunate--I did see my mother's body, despite being two days late, and while it did not give me solace, it did move me toward acceptance.<br />
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I wish she were around, but not as a 97 year-old woman. I wish she were around as, say, a 76 year-old woman, which she would have been had I been born when she was 20. I would like her to see my life now, to know what I have become, who I have become, to meet Keshav, to see how it all "worked out after all". Some have said that she acted out of fear when she married all those men one after another--that she caved in to family and societal pressure to "do the right thing" and preserve her reputation. But don't agree with their assessment.<br />
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Were she alive today, I would tell her that I think she was brave. Like many mothers, she usually made choices based not on what was best for her, but what was best for her child. She had the courage to leave marriages once they stopped being good (except for my father, but she gets a pass on that one because by then she felt she was "too old" to start over). In reality, she acted both out of courage <i>and</i> fear, because courage cannot exist without fear--it is by definition a response to fear. Throughout the rest of her life she played tug-of-war with both. But most of us do, let's face it. It does not make us any less of a person as it did not make her any less of a mother.<br />
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This is why I continue to honor her with my life and my words. She earned it with her love for me, which, by the way, was unwavering even if her understanding of me was shaky. She earned my love by showing me firsthand an example of what it is to be human, farts and all.<br />
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So on the tenth anniversary of her death and the 97th anniversary of her birth, I write to say, "Happy Birthday, Ruth Margie. Happy Birthday, Mom." It all turned out okay after all.<br />
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-45196992976572416092018-12-30T08:06:00.001-08:002018-12-30T08:06:09.111-08:00The Heart of Resolution<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It might surprise you to hear that words don't mean a lot to me. And, at the same time, they mean <i>everything</i>. Let me explain.<br />
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In the new year, it is customary to reflect back on one's previous twelve months and consider areas of improvement. We all love fresh starts, don't we? But the thing about fresh starts is that, well, it is just that: <i>the start</i>. The start is the place from which you then <i>move;</i> I would be hard pressed to call a start without movement a start at all! This is where the importance of words comes into play. </div>
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Starts are defined by words, but that is all that the words do. The next step is, of course, <i>action</i>. This is where most people get tripped up. Action requires more than just words, it also requires <i>commitment</i>. Commitment can be sticky in that it asks that we be willing to drive forward with our intention despite any obstacles in the way. And kids, let me tell you--there are <i>always</i> obstacles!</div>
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Quacks like <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/love-inc/201102/dr-phils-very-bad-advice" target="_blank">Dr. Phil</a> will have us believe that change is easy, but it ain't most of the time, though that message does sell books and TV shows. I heard that most of the couples he works with revert right back into the problems that brought them to the show! It is not a surprise to me that one interaction fails to result in lasting change, but I can understand why we all wish it were that easy. I don't have anything against Dr. Phil necessarily. Well, that's not true--I think he is a hack. And I think that he does a disservice to the mental health field by making it appear as if change is as easy as deciding to do something different (it is, and it isn't!). This creates shame in anyone who has a different experience with change, for example most of us!<i> </i><br />
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This reminds me of an exchange I once had with a prominent couples therapist who was presenting at a conference I was attending. After his presentation there was a "meet and greet" in the lobby with the presenters, and I approched him to ask this question:<br />
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"Would you ever ask a couple if the problem was not them, but instead the <i>type of relationship</i> they had chosen to be in? Could it be that sometimes couples try to fit themselves into the wrong box?"</blockquote>
To which he answered:<br />
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"I would <i>never</i> ask them that. I would just tell them that <i>they need to grow up</i>."</blockquote>
Wow. And this guy claims to know about relationships?<br />
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I may not have a PsyD or 20 years of working with couples under my belt, but I have enough experience to know for certain that most couples who come for therapy are <i>in pain</i> and are <i>not</i> lazy, and that they feel absolutely stuck in their current version of marriage without a clue of how to initiate change. The last thing they need me to tell them is to "grow up". Rather, I need to offer them compassion, support, and understanding for the challenge they are taking on--not just changing their relationship and their own behavior, but also changing <i>how they think about relatinships and their own behavior</i>. This is not easy, and it is not an effect of immaturity. Those couples rarely come into the therapy office. They go to divorce court or to jail.</div>
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Change is hard simply because <i>the status quo wants to maintain itself,</i> <i>even when it is painful</i>. Don't believe me? Just ask yourself how many times you have tried to change your eating habits or your exercise patterns. Change can be even harder in relationships. Every day I work with clients who know that criticism and defensiveness <i>never</i> work, and yet it can take up to three years for them to get out of the habit of doing this with each other. Change is often hard because we are making (sometimes unconsciously) something else more important than change. The good news? Change can also be <i>easy</i> in relationship, if both of you are on the same page regarding the change.<br />
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At its heart, resolution is about change. Most resolutions fail because they are missing two key ingredients that I mention above: <i>commitment and relationship</i>. One might even say that these two elements feed each other--relationship strengthens commitment and commitment encourages relationship. So why are they often left out of the planning?<br />
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I have a hunch that it is not because people are stupid or lazy, but instead that they are misled into thinking that <i>we can do it all on our own, that we are better off being independent, and that to ask for help is a weakness</i>. You know what I'm talking about--the whole notion of <b>rugged individualism</b> that supposedly "built" this country, when it is more likely the reason that it is currently crumbling. Individualism is a romantic notion, to be sure, but then we all know that romance is only the icing on the cake. Individualism is a sham in itself, because it can only exist in reference to community. An individual is defined as a<i> person who is part of a community</i>, so from this perspective true individualism cannot exist--it is always defined as an element of, or a reaction to, the community it is a part of!<br />
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The concept of individualism makes sense when you consider the origins of this country as an adverse reaction to collective thinking. The U.S. was built on rebellion: from mandates, laws, restrictive thinking, and lack of imagination. But just as I have written about how the <a href="http://leavingcaliblog.blogspot.com/2017/12/23-on-borderline.html" target="_blank">hippie culture in the late 60's quickly became the new mainstream</a>, I suspect the individual in the early U.S. found himself eventually absorbed into a new version of the collective--more subtle, perhaps, but a collective nonetheless. Without the collective, the new country could not have developed.<br />
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***<br />
What does this have to do with resolution? I do hope to reward your patience, but if you have read me at all, you know that I like to meander my way to the point. Forgive me if I require you to smell the literary flowers along the way, but they <i>are</i> pretty, no?<br />
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I notice that many resolutions are founded on the principle of individualism--they are about <i>individual change</i>, how we can become better than we were before. I don't think that there is anything wrong with this, other than the fact that it, um, rarely works. But I do wonder what the motivation for "becoming better" is. Better than what? When are we better enough? Who says that we are supposed to improve anyway? The concept of "better", like most concepts, can only be considered in reference to something that is "worse" (in the same way that individualism is in reference to community). This means that a value judgement has to be involved, and I confess to being wary of value judgements that are rooted in, say, social media, as many of them are these days. My wariness is due to the impermanence of pop culture values--to shoot for a "better" that is determined and reflected in these values is akin to chasing one's tail, and about as fruitful.<br />
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Rather, I suggest seeking change that brings us back to the fold, so to speak; I suggest change that is a return to form instead of an "improvement". What is that form? I am so glad you asked! That form is <b>community</b>.<br />
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Resolutions rooted in community have a better chance of including <i>commitment and relationship</i>, because they are usually <i>witnessed and supported</i>. They are not just scribbled on a Post-It note buried on your desk or pasted on the mirror. They are <b>declared and affirmed, and they are acted out amongst others</b>. Community-based resolutions are a <i>response </i>rather than a reaction, and in my book responses create change, while reactions create distance, separation, and isolation. Community-based resolutions ignite change on a macro level, and it is my opinion that we would all benefit more from <i>changing the culture</i> than just changing ourselves. The rub is, of course, that cultural change <i>does </i>require individual change--only the target of intent is different: with cultural change the intent is to change the system so that <i>everyone </i>benefits, as opposed to just improving your individual experience.<br />
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Why is this preferred to what most of us do in the new year? Well, call me crazy, but most individual resolutions are just <i>community resolutions light</i>. When we seek to lose weight, as an example, are we not really wishing to feel more accepted in society? Are we not hoping, as we lose weight, to find ourselves more frequently invited into the human game of living and loving? Ask anyone who wants to lose weight, and they will probably tell you that they want to be healthier and more attractive so that they can live longer, have more relationships, and feel better about themselves in relation to the world. There is a stronger chance of achieving this <a href="https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/Group-Fitness-Classes-Better-Than-Working-Out-Alone-44530171" target="_blank">if we do it with others</a>. When we involve others in our quest for change, we are having a broad impact that can actually support the sustainability of the change!<br />
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With this in mind, let's get to the nitty-gritty. I want to offer you just a couple of proposed Community-Based Resolutions for 2019 (or any new year for that matter). Don't just take my word for it--check them out and try them on and see how they fit. See if they spark in your body when you read them, if you find yourself nodding your head in agreement, if they speak to a world you have imagined from time to time. Imagine if everybody embraced only these two resolutions, how different the world might be...<br />
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<b>TONY'S FANTASTIC LIST OF JUST TWO COMMUNITY-BASED RESOLUTIONS:</b><br />
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<b>1. <i>GET OFF THE PHONE. </i></b><br />
Oh god, am I really going to talk about this? Yes, I am. Even though practically nobody will listen to me.<br />
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There was a time about 15 years ago when I noticed that all the cash registers were becoming automated, in that they would calculate not only what the total was, but also what change was due based on what the customer gave to the checker. Convenient, right? Well, I did not think so. It seemed that checkers would give me my change, but not count it back--they would just hand me a lump of money and I would have to assume that they had counted it out right. This would infuriate me! I would ask them to count it back and be responded to with blank and paniced stares; they literally did not know how to count back change! Then it made sense--the automation of cash registers was not about convenience, but about accuracy in the face of a workforce who no longer had basic math skills.<br />
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Good gracious. Things were changing, and it made me uncomfortable. I rebelled against this change for a period of months, until I realized that the tide had turned and I was sadly left behind in my rebellion. I decided that this was no longer an area where it made sense for me to "<a href="https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck" target="_blank">give a fuck</a>", and I accepted the change and moved on.<br />
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One might wonder why I don't do the same when it comes to our culture and smartphones.<br />
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Every moment that you spend looking at your phone is a moment that you are NOT in the world-at-large. What is so great about the world-at-large, you ask? Well, not so much these days, since everyone is avoiding everyone else, and also because not enough people are doing <i>Resolution #2</i>. But if more of us were to look up rather than down, there is a chance--a chance worth taking--that <i>we would create connections</i>. At the very least, we would <b>acknowledge one another</b>. If I can do this from time to time in the fuckhole that is Los Angeles, then you can do it wherever you are!<br />
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Why in the hell would we want to do this, you ask? The benefits of this cannot be overstated. Our society suffers greatly from <i>isolationism and depression</i>. Sometimes the slightest acknowledgement can make the difference between feeling alone and feeling a part of the world. You don't have to forge a whole relationship, just look at one another if you pass by, and say one of the following:<br />
<ul>
<li><i>Hello.</i></li>
<li><i>Good morning.</i></li>
<li><i>How are you?</i></li>
<li><i>How goes it?</i></li>
<li><i>Hey!</i></li>
<li><i>How goes it?</i></li>
<li><i>Hey man!</i></li>
<li><i>What's up!</i></li>
<li><i>How you doin'?</i></li>
<li><i>Hi.</i></li>
</ul>
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If you can't say any of those things, you can just nod. </div>
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I try this when I can in Los Angeles, one of the toughest cities in the world to connect in, and I admit that I often lose my courage, especially when my gaze is met by a hostile look. There is really not that much risk for me, however, mostly because nearly everyone is plugged into earphones so they can't hear me anyway, and since most are <i>not</i> looking up, they don't even see me trying to engage. But when I don't lose my courage, every once in a while a suspicious face becomes open, just for a moment, perhaps grateful to be released from defending itself. This can be done even with a non-verbal acknowledgement of the other.<br />
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Have you ever passed anyone and wondered to yourself: "If only A were with C instead of B, I might be best friends with this person"? Well, I think about this all the time. We all really are just six degrees of separation away from another, and yet we act as though we are not connected at all.<br />
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I suspect that this has been going on for awile, not just since the introduction of the smartphone. Seventy years ago we would stake out our privacy by hiding behind a newspaper. By nature, we protect ourselves from those whom we do not know--it is our ancient <i>reptilian brain</i> that still bristles when confronted with strangers. Perhaps one of the reasons that Los Angeles is such a fuckhole at times is because it is populated with about 10 million people, many of whom are strangers to one another! That has the reptilian brain working overtime, for sure! <i>But,</i> we can override the system if we make the choice to do so. We simply have to settle on a good reason to do that.<br />
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For me, it comes down to my own experience in the world, and the desire to improve another's experience along the way, so...hero. But not really. My reason is self-serving, so how is that hero? Well, turns out that early hunters and gatherers were not community-based and selfless for the reasons we think. Turns out, they were community-based and selfless because if they weren't they would be <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Dawn-Stray-Modern-Relationships/dp/1491512407" target="_blank">totally fucked</a>. Their lives depended on them having a good reputation in the community, because otherwise they would be thrown out of the community, and back then, you were pretty much dead as an individual. The reality, I suspect, lies somewhere between minding our own best interests and having concern for the community. This is because, and this point is important, <i>you can't separate the two! </i>However, damned if smartphones are not trying to do just that. We may not realize it now in the short run, but in the long run this will work against our own well-being. It already is--just look around for a second. It requires that you put your short-term pleasure aside to strengthen the long term health of the individual/community relationship.<br />
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Now I will admit to having and using a smartphone, and not intending to get rid of it. But I do my best to be in the world when I am out in it, mostly because I like what I see. I have always been a curious person, and when I take the train or bus or walk in the city I see things that I never noticed before--I wonder what is behind that fence or who lives in that dilapitated Craftsman house. Smartphones are not the problem, our use of them is, and if we used the technology to connect to one another more in the world and less online then it might be interesting to see what would happen. So if the world I am interested in is appealing to you, then there is only one suggestion I offer to you:<br />
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<i><b>Get off the phone. </b></i><br />
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Since absolutely nobody will do this one, I direct you to explore the second resolution.<br />
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<b>2. <i>CLEAN UP YOUR MESS.</i></b><br />
It is hard to focus on just two resolutions to discuss, but I figure that these are the biggies. Besides, if you are looking for resolutions now as we approach the middle of the year, you haven't got time for an overambitious list. These two, if experimented with, will keep you busy for a while.<br />
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Number two is to <i>clean up your mess</i>. Why does this even need to be said? Who cares? Well, I do, obviously, but I suspect that you do too. I don't remember the specific time I learned to flush my own poo down the toilet, but I have a hunch that it was pretty early on, when I was, say, three years old. This means that I have been flushing my own toilets for over 50 years. It would make no sense for me to stop doing that now.<br />
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And yet that is just what is happening in the world--people are not flushing their own poo, literally <i>and</i> figuratively. How is that acceptable in any context other than a child under the age of three?<br />
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It seems that there was a time, not long ago, when the private became public. Some like to say that it happened when reality television came into being. Others blame it on the Kardashians, to which I say, why the hell not? I have to admit that I contributed to it back in the 80's when I first strapped on a Walkman to listen to music that nobody else could hear. The truth is that we <i>all</i> chose this, but no matter who or what is responsible, we are where we are, meaning that what was once private behavior is now done in public, and even celebrated in public.<br />
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Why is this a concern? Because when the private becomes public, shared spaces are no longer shared; they are broken up and claimed by any individual who chooses to stake a claim. Suddenly, walking in public feels, to me, like I am an intruder in other peoples lives and homes--a stranger walking by while others are taking a shit, so to speak. I feel shamed for some reason, as if I don't belong there, and yet I also can't help but wonder what world <i>they </i>are inhabiting--I crane my neck to see what is on their phone. It feels at times that I have stumbled upon people while they are on the toilet.<br />
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This cultural change discards the idea that we are in a <i>shared world</i>. And yet in a shared world we are, whether you want to admit it or not. This means that what I do affects you, and what you do affects me. This has always been the case, but I notice that the world today is a rebellion to this, which makes me wonder what is being satiated, natually. So here is the nutshell--are you ready?<br />
<b><br /></b>
<i>The current isolation and separation from others is due to an economy that prospers on needs that arise from <u>lack of community</u>; and since lack of community is <u>unnatural</u> we turn to <b>products and online connections</b> to fill the void we feel. We are falsely led to believe that the solution to this "lack" is to perfect <b>our bubble</b> at the cost of others' well-being (my tribe vs. your tribe). This fosters separation and division, and strengthens the behaviors that shut us off from one another(but also protect us from one another). As a result we no longer see our messes as "our messes", they are other's messes and no longer our responsibility, since <b>we no longer feel connected to community</b> or the effect of our actions. Instead we see the outside community as something to master, claim, dominate, or use to our liking, and then discard.</i><br />
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It's time for a new story, y'all. Don't you feel it? If you do feel it, my suggestion is simple and something that you can implement immediately:<br />
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<b><i>Clean up your mess. </i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
In my work with couples, I tell them that the most important element of successful relationships is <b><i>RESPECT</i></b>. Respect means that I am aware of you and your needs and even though they may be different than mine, I see them as just as important. Burning Man has this down, or at least <a href="https://burningman.org/culture/philosophical-center/10-principles/" target="_blank">it strives</a> to have this down. They have a creed that states that everyone is allowed to have their own experience as long <i>as it does not impose on anyone else's experience</i>. In other words, be respectful! Can you imagine what our world would look like if that was the universal creed? All it takes is an awareness of your enviroment--leaving "no trace" as it were--cleaning up your mess, being respectful of others and the shared surroundings, being a community rather than competitors. Are you with me?<br />
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***<br />
Change is not easy, but it <i>is</i> possible.<br />
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If you have resolutions this year, realize that it is up to you to see them through, but I suggest that you look at them and decide if they are about improving your life or about <i>improving life</i>--the latter includes the former, by the way. This current culture can be turned around, but it will take a million <i>individual </i>actions for that to happen. If you are happy with the way things are, then do nothing (and keep away from me, please). If you are not happy with how things are, then try my two suggestions and see what happens. I will be working on them myself, trust me. Perhaps we will meet in the new world we create.<br />
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-82668201249831034912018-12-16T08:33:00.000-08:002018-12-16T09:03:04.091-08:00Twenty-One Observations1. I find myself less interested in music these days, either because the music is less interesting, or because I am.<br />
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2. I am not above hurting someone I love in order to protect myself, but I am not happy about this, and it never goes well.<br />
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3. I do suspect that, with further ado, nobody would ever get introduced.<br />
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4. Soda pop holds little appeal for me as either a beverage or an approach to happiness.<br />
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5. "Morning Sex" is a term to describe activities taking place all the way up to 3pm, on occasion.<br />
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6. Patience used to be a virtue, today it is no more than a side effect.<br />
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7. I sometimes suspect we suffer more than we need to because our ideas about chaos are uninformed.<br />
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8. It seems that, since the 2000's, the internet has muddied up any sense of "decade identity".<br />
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9. If goals were attacked with the fervor used to push "Walk" signal buttons, a lot would probably get accomplished.<br />
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10. The escalating usage of Twitter parrallels the de-escalation of individual emotional development.<br />
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11. I suspect that a healthy ratio of attention to real-life vs. social media relationships might be in the range of ten to one.<br />
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12. I am all for comfort, but when it looks like someone just does not give a shit, a line must be drawn.<br />
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13. Those who once said, "Never grow up!", could not have been suggesting the behavior I see around me everyday--but I still hold them responsible for it.<br />
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14. For me, winning feels good only when I don't care about the loser.<br />
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15. I am not a brand.<br />
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16. The person who named "Hot Sticky Buns" most likely knew, from a marketing perspective, <i>exactly</i> what they were doing.<br />
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17. If the most interesting thing about you is your Instagram, then most likely you are not.<br />
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18. My desire for privacy has become, in the current culture, an act of rebellion.<br />
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19. Los Angeles runs on anxiety and sleeps with depression.<br />
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20. I often wonder if people's personalities extend beyond their playlists.<br />
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21. I recognize that my addiction to control is both the best and the worst thing about me.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-13588506781580877912018-09-15T12:17:00.000-07:002018-09-23T13:23:51.999-07:00Hell Is Hella Silly<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When I was a child, I used to fear that in the middle of the night the devil would reach up from Hell and pull my toes. Although this may not sound terribly threatening, the thought of it completely terrified me.<br />
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I am not sure why <i>this </i>particular fear developed during my childhood, or why the suffering was centered on my toes instead of more vulnerable appendages, but that is just how it was. At the time, I slept in a twin bed in the family home, and I remember the left side of the bed as being up against the wall. But not completely--there was a <i>gap</i>. And it was this gap that was, of course, the <i>portal to hell </i>through which the devil had access to my toes.<br />
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And people wonder why I struggle with anxiety at times.<br />
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I actually do have an idea of where my fear came from. I was raised Catholic, though that is a laughable combination of words--"raised Catholic"--because anyone who is brought up in the teachings of the Church risks remaining a child, developmentally, in certain ways. You can't "grow up" as a Catholic, because to do so would be to declare that you can make moral decisions on your own--without the guidance of the Church (this is not exclusive to the Catholics, by the way). Fortunately, many choose to forego the moral teachings of the Catholicism and just stick to the ceremonies, which at times can offer both community and comfort. As they say, you don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater!<br />
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But this essay is not about the many failures of the Catholic Church. It is about the silliness of Hell--an idea that perhaps many more can agree upon.<br />
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***<br />
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I was <i>terrified</i> of <span style="color: red;">Satan</span> as a child, and I had every right to be. From a very early age on I was told that <i>being good</i> would get me to Heaven, and <i>being bad</i> would get me to Hell. Good: Heaven. Bad: Hell. I was told this many, many times by many, many people. What was expressed less clearly was what exactly constitued being bad or good. There were the basics, of course, but the act of living is the opposite of basic, isn't it? Black and white clarifications rarely apply to lives lived in the grey.<br />
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Nevertheless, I was such an impressionable youth that I did my best to be absolutely good absolutely all the time. This was easier than you might think for a boy raised in the 60's and 70's in Chula Vista, California. There just weren't a lot of bad influences around me at the time, or if there were, I rarely noticed them. Life did get greyer for me as I got older, and I found that I was more conflicted by my inner influences than the outer. Specifically, I began to think about sex.<br />
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***<br />
Sex is the true definer of men, isn't it? I suspect that no other activity has a greater impact on the way a man feels about himself. I see this in the therapy room and I see it on the streets. I see it on the T.V. and I hear it in the whispers of the wind. The point is that it is <i>everywhere</i>. Is it any wonder that sex is front and center in the conversation about bad and good, right and wrong?<br />
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Have you ever noticed that our society criminalizes "feeling great"? Sex and drugs, two things that can result in <i>great </i>feelings, are condoned <i>only if the indulgence of them stays within acceptable limits of pleasure.</i> Is it not <i>completely ridiculous</i> that some cultures frown on sex for pleasure--that its only purpose is to cause a pregnancy? This is as silly as saying that you should only eat ice cream to get your calcium intake--but don't dare enjoy it!<br />
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In the same way, you might have observed that drugs, at least the ones that are legal, are promoted to make us feel "good", but if they are <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ondrugs/drugs-for-fun-why-do-we-feel-so-bad-about-feeling-good-1.4240366" target="_blank">used to feel "great"</a>, then they are either being abused, or declared illegal. Who makes up these fucking rules? Well, I suspect that it is the same group of people who created the concept of Hell. Why did they do this? The answer is pretty simple: CONTROL.<br />
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As a child, the concept of Hell kept me in line, and keeping in line was given upmost importance in my family. It was one thing to fear a spanking if I misbehaved, it was a whole other thing to fear burning for eternity (or having my toes pulled in the night!). As motivators go, Hell is a pretty effective one, especially if you have a house with two rambunctious little boys. It let my parents off the hook--it turned them into my protectors rather than my punishers--they were simply looking out for my eternal soul when they told me to behave!<br />
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What my parents did not do (or did not know how to do) I did for myself as I grew up. What I did for myself is <i>I taught myself how to think critically</i>. This was not a natural skill, believe me. It is a skill that developed to survive a culture that deemed me broken, perverted, deviant, and sinful. The only way for me to make it out alive from under the teachings I had received early on was to hold them up for inspection and test their validity in the real world. Want to know something? Not many of them held up under inspection.<br />
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See, the thing about the real world, as I alluded to earlier, is that it is not black and white. <i>It is all the shades of grey</i>. Right and wrong, bad or good, these are value judgements that are assigned by people depending on their particular value system. Masturbation, for example, can only be wrong if <i>pleasure</i> is considered to be dangerous, as it is in the Catholic Church, among others. The Catholic Church values suffering above pleasure, because if people truly knew how to enjoy themselves <i>responsibly</i>, they would not need the Church, or <i>any</i> church for that matter. Also, if people knew how to be responsible for their hurtful behavior, then the Church would have no purpose. <i>The criminalization of pleasure is nothing more than a business strategy;</i> however it works because as humans we can't avoid seeking pleasure. It is in our DNA, and we would not have survived all these years without it.<br />
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***<br />
These days, the churches are losing the masses, well, except for the Mormon Churce. It is succeeding because it has a different message than the Catholics: it sells "Heaven" as something that is waiting for you if you accept it (with behavioral conditions, naturally), as opposed to it being something that we are in constant danger of losing with the slightest fuck up. Mormonism, for those who buy into it, makes you feel good, whereas Catholicism mostly makes you feel bad. It operates by offering hope instead of guilt. The Mormon Church may be smarter than the Catholic Church, but that does not mean it is less dangerous.<br />
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The danger is to those of us who can only live in the greys (most of us!). Those of us who are non-conforming through our sexuality, our gender expression, our queer and trans brothers and sisters and others, those in non-traditional relationships, or anyone who dares to think for themselves. The danger is that our differences are criminalized--not by the law, but by opinion. The danger is in suppression for those who are included, and oppression for those who are excluded. The danger is in replacing what is real with the artificial--exacerbating the juicy difficulties in life by pretending they don't exist. The danger is real, whether you believe it or not.<br />
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You know I once asked my brother (who is Mormon) why he will not watch R-rated movies, while a PG-rated movie with horrific violence towards others is okay. I knew that the church did not allow him to do so, but I was truly curious about this policy, because I couldn't understand why he was not deciding on his own, <i>based on his values</i>, what movies were appropriate for him and his family to watch. You know what he said to me when I asked him this question? He said, "Tony, knock if off!". He simply would not have the conversation! Wanna know how the story ends? I told him to <i>fuck off</i> , he told me to leave, and I left his house. We have not spoken to each other in nearly five years.<br />
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What is the crime with thinking for yourself? Well, I have my theories. Foremost among them is the supposition that <b><i>critical thinking is theatening</i> <i>to those who seek power over others</i></b>, as opposed to <i>power with</i>. In order to have power over others, the others need to fear you, or at least be in a state of fear. The churches, no strangers to power grabs, knew early on that their best route to even more power was to generate more fear in the people than the government did. So what did they target? <i>The things we do for pleasure. </i>I am not talking about the <a href="https://www.dummies.com/religion/christianity/catholicism/catholicism-and-the-ten-commandments/" target="_blank">Ten Commandments</a>, all of which (except for the first two) are pretty good suggestions of how to behave respectfully and thoughfully towards others. I am referring to the concept of <i>sin</i>, and how it makes black and white (with little explanation or justification) what is good and what is bad.<br />
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The Catholic Church really knocked it out of the park when it comes to sin. Nobody gets out of this alive without their blessings. They even declared that <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s2c1a1.htm#1250" target="_blank">newborn babies must be babtized</a> within a few weeks of birth, because if they die without this happening their "soul" will not go to Heaven. <i>What the fuck is that??</i> What parent in their right mind would subscribe to a way of thinking that tells them that their newborn baby is not worthy? Well, many parents would subscribe to this, as it turns out. My parents did! You know who needs to be spashed with water? Those parents (and mine), not the baby! <b><i>Wake up, parents!</i></b><br />
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My dear friend Carla, many years ago, shared with me her definition of sin. She said that sin can be described as any "death-enhancing action", period. I can subscribe to that. By calling an action "death-enhancing", the value judgement is eliminated in deference to the facts. Want to drink alcohol? Great! Just be aware that it poisons your blood and damages your brain. Want to have sex with many partners? Great! Just be aware that you could catch an STD and compromise your health. Want to kill someone? Great! Just be aware that loss of life has an effect on both those who initiate it and those who experience it. No judgement on your decision or if these consequences occur, but just know that cause and effect don't cease to operate just because you want them to. By Carla'a definition, even sun-tanning is a "sin" if you do too much of it and get skin cancer. But the brilliance of Carla's reframing is that it is not a substitute definition, it is a <i>replacement </i>definition. You either are leaning <i>into death </i>or<i> into life</i> at every moment, and that choice is entirely up to you, void of value judgements.<br />
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There is your black and white.<br />
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***<br />
Face it, <i>there is no physical or scientific evidence that points to the existence of Satan</i>. "Hell", as it is fondly known, is not even possible in any of the ways it is described (and it follows that neither is "Heaven"). While we do know that there are other planets in the universe, we have yet to prove that there are other dimensions. (There are theories, but none proven.) Hence, one has to wonder how we came up with Hell in the first place. There was little actual proof of anything for a long long time, so we were forced to make up all kinds of stories to explain what we did not understand, especially if it was something we feared. Guess what tops the list of <i>Not Understood and Feared:</i> Death.<br />
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Ten years ago, my mother died. I did not witness her death, but I did see her body before it was cremated. Notice that I said "it", and not "she"? That is because she was not there in her body. I clearly remember leaning down and putting my ear by her nose to see if there were any breath coming out--I just needed to make sure that she was not still alive if she were going to be burned the next morning! There was no breath, of course, so I stood back and just looked at her still body for a long, long time. I touched her hands--they were cold. I got closer so that I could look at them. I <i>knew</i> these hands! I had known these hands from the moment that I was born. They held me, they dressed me, they washed me, they fed me. They spanked me, they nudged me, they wrapped presents for me, they opened presents from me. Looking at her lifeless hands felt to me like what it must be to visit a childhood home that is vacant and about to be demolished. We look for the life, the warmth, the sense of familiarity, and yet it evades us. We only see brick and mortor, because the life, the warmth, the sense of familiarity came from the family that used to live there, not the house. When I looked at my mother's hands, hands that I knew so well, they were no longer hers, because she was gone. They were just hands that I once knew, and knew no more. Her body was just the house, not the person.<br />
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Death is truly the Big Unknown, is it not? We do know more about it than we know about, say, conception, but death compels our attention more because we <i>know</i> what comes <i>after</i> conception, generally. Less so about what comes after death. What we do know is that the body is actually far from dead when we die, that any number of organic processes jump right into action as a way to make use of all that available matter. What is "dead" initially is our brain activity, but even that does not all stop at once. But without brain activity, the relationship between the brain/body/environment is ruptured, and the cost of that is consciousness. So "we" die, and bodies "live on" by becoming part of another life cycle. Matter is preserved, but not consciousness. You are free to <i>believe </i>otherwise, but I dare you to <i>prove</i> me otherwise.<br />
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Those who struggle with <b>the meaning of life</b><i> hate </i>these facts, because they threaten the meaning placed on <i>their</i> lives: meaning predicated on whether life leads to a desired afterlife. On the contrary, I have long felt that death, if viewed as final, <i>positively</i> affects meaning. I have found that one life, <i>and only one</i>, is a <b>grand opportunity</b>, and it becomes even more so if there are no available repeats! If you have only one dart with which to hit your target, you are going to aim ever so carefully, and do your best to not fuck it up. <i>The game is going to mean more.</i><br />
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***<br />
<i>The Moral Compass</i><br />
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So what if you only have one dart with which to hit a target? Doesn't that make it more possible to fail, given that we can only hit the target or not? Well, not really. See the thing about targets is that though they often show up just one at a time, there are a jillion billion available to us, and we always have a dart with which to try hitting the one that shows up. Just because one is in our sights one day does not mean that we won't have a different one vying for attention tomorrow. So how do we decide which one to aim for? <i>Critical thinking, that's how</i>. That is, unless you want someone else telling you which target to hit, and that is not very much fun, is it.<br />
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At least it would not be fun for me. I suppose it is, possibly, fun for those who don't trust their own thinking. I remember many many years ago when I was on tour with a Christian choir from Azuza College for a Disney traveling show. I was not with the choir, I was touring with them as a dancer. One day I was having lunch with one of the male choir members, and we were talking about faith, as one often does over a plate of french fries. I remember asking him what would guide him if he were to give up his faith, and he told me that he could never do that, because if he did he was sure <i>he would be a mass murderer.</i> Wow. That's a pretty fragile tether! I thought to myself: Does he really think that without the dictates of his church that he would run around <i>killing people</i>? And the sad answer that came back to me was: Yes, he does think this. His <i>targets</i>, if left to his own thinking, would be <i>other people's lives</i>, reduced to being victims of a supposedly Satanic acting-out. <i>Wow</i>. I realized then and there that the greatest opportunity I had ever received in life was my rejection from the Catholic Church.<br />
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Targets (as I understand them) are identified based on what we find important--and this is often defined by how we set our moral compass (or how it is set up <i>for</i> us). Compasses (as I understand them) are for showing us the "right direction". The "right" part of that is not determined by the compass, but by whomever is holding it. He or she decides, based on where it is they want to go. The targets we see before us are determined, hopefully, by the destination we have in mind for ourselves, which is reason enough to think about our lives. Don't be surprised if the targets and the destinations don't match up. I will admit that the self-determination of one's own destination is a responsibility that many would rather not take, because the choice requires accountability from the chooser.<br />
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When I was in my 20's and struggling to accept my sexuality, I made a choice to accept my attraction to men, but it was not without difficulties. I had always been shown where I was supposed to go, what I was supposed to want out of life, and what I should be prepared to give back. But homosexuality cut off access to the privileges of non-thinking. <i>When the path is taken away from you, you have to pick a direction on your own, otherwise you stay exactly where you are.</i> I took a tentative step into the unknown and, bit by bit, carved out a new path based on my thinking about the next step.<br />
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Thus I was uncomfortably introduced to critical thinking. I liken it to an arranged marriage, in that while initially suspicious of each other, my sexuality and I have grown over time to love one another in a way that far surpasses the fatuous rush of religious fervor. The thing about "rushes" is that they go by quickly, don't they? My relationship with critical thinking is not something that will pass me by in time, due to the fact that <i>it is a relationship with something that is a part of me, </i>rather than with something outside of me. In other words, my moral compass is self calibrated, which increases the chances that I will move toward a direction that is authentic rather than dictated. Call me crazy, but I would not have it any other way. And this is why my sole expression of gratitude toward the Catholic churce lay in its rejection of me.<br />
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“It’s your life — but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else … you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.” -Eleanor Roosevelt</blockquote>
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From a purely imaginative standpoint, hell is hella silly! It is silly because its existence relies on the concept that evil exists, <i>and it doesn't</i>. People sometimes behave very badly, either with intent or due to a brain abmormality (mental illness is not evil), but to label this behavior a <i>personality characteristic </i>is not only simplistic and reductive, but also dangerous. To do so allows everyone else to separate themselves from any connection to a damaged person, as if "damage" were an occurrence that happens less frequently than it actually does. How frequent does damage happen in individuals? Well, a conservative estimate would say that it happens <i>in every fucking human being</i>. Now, from that premise we can begin to see the problem with labeling another as evil as though it were a proprietary characteristic--it is denying what is <i>always</i> a possibility in ourselves; it is separating ourselves from the very real fact that we are always, <i>always</i> choosing.<br />
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Satan and God were created in order to relieve us of the task of choosing--<i>they became the choosers</i>. That is silly! This is why my choir friend felt that he would shoot the whole town up if he were to unleash himself from faith. I trust that were he to actually step away from his beliefs, that he would eventually start to think for himself, resulting in the conclusion that shooting up the town is indeed a very poor choice, and one that does not suit him at all! Unfortunately, he was never forced to confront this shift in thinking, as far as I know. But he doesn't have to--he is straight and white--the base components of complacency. If you are straight and white and male you don't have to change a goddamn thing, because all the rules work in your favor (including, not coincidentally, the rules about God and Satan). But I still pity him, as there is no way he can be at peace if he truly believes that a mass murderer lives within him.<br />
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What I find interesting about the <a href="https://www.christianity.com/theology/theological-faq/how-did-lucifer-fall-and-become-satan-11557519.html" target="_blank">story of Lucifer</a> (Satan) is that he is supposed to have once been a very perfect angel until he commited the sin of "pride" in himself. Gasp! Are you as shocked as I am? He dared to feel good about himself, and God could not handle that. It is actually said that sin originated in the <i>free will </i>of Lucifer--this was the offense of offenses--thinking for oneself, or critical thinking. Sounds to me like God is a bit of an insecure control freak douchbag. At least that is the conclusion I come to when I think for myself about it. My second thought is this: it is ALL bullshit.<br />
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You want to know what I think hell is? Hell is doing a hurtful thing to another and trying hard to believe that it is justified. That challenge to truth can tear a person apart. Emotional pain, in the here and now, is a form of suffering that matches up with the fictional Hell in that when you are in it you can't find a way out. Fortunately, there <i>is</i> a way out, and that is b<i>y going through it</i>. And the difference between the fictional Hell and emotional hell is that the latter has a payoff for us if we see it through. We will realize that we cannot deny the truth of our bodies when they tell us that we are choosing death over life. And if we reach this conclusion, we are better off for it. Hell, in this context, is a process that requires critical thinking. The fictional Hell is the exact opposite of that, and that is quite silly, when you sit down and think about it.<br />
<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-50577689801693341042018-05-11T17:49:00.005-07:002018-12-30T19:14:24.439-08:00Mom's Recipe Box<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Do we ever <i>really</i> know our mothers? I certainly didn’t, not
<i>really</i>. By the time I was born in 1962 she was already 40 years old—she lived a lifetime
before I ever showed up. In addition, she had been married three times before she
married my father, and had a 20 year-old daughter from her first marriage. I think that mothers' lives can be easily divided into two
categories: before our birth and after our birth. A simplification to be
sure; but it is not a reduction, just the establishment of a point
of reference. <o:p></o:p><br />
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I knew her, obviously, after my birth, and so I knew her as "Mom". While that is a title that contains a whole lot of context, it is still limiting as far as a definer. It wasn't until I became an adult that I got to move past her role designation and explore the woman behind the title. </div>
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Ruth, my mother, was born in 1922. Each decade of her life
would show her cultural changes she could not have possibly imagined, and yet she
seemed, at least to me, to adjust naturally into each period of change,
as though she were a product of the time rather than a precursor. The truth is
that she <i>was</i> a product of the times, as much as I am a product of not only the
70’s and the 80’s when I was growing up, but also a reflection of recent
years. With my mother, however, there were certain roles that did not change so
much over time. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Mom did the cooking in our household (just like moms did in
most households back then). I seem to remember that the only place where men could cook was
on a BBQ, involving meat. Mothers rarely were seen cooking outside, they were relegated to the
kitchen, and back in those days that is just the way it was. Nobody seemed to
mind much, but then I don’t recall anyone ever asking the mothers what they thought of it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When I think back on my mother’s cooking, I have an overall sense
of pleasantness. I liked her food, though truth be told she cooked from scratch only half
the time. These were the days when convenience foods showed up and came into vogue—the grocery frozen aisle held all kinds of modern miracles that simply required "heating
up". I remember with fondness the many nights of Swanson pot pie dinners—I could not
decide if I liked chicken or turkey the best—but I do remember that the beef
pies seemed “exotic” to me for some reason. For many years I only knew vegetables that came
thawed from a box or limp and pale from a can. Salads, a staple of my adult diet, were
universally made back then with iceberg lettuce and served with bottled dressings (I preferred 1000 Island--I never even knew that dressing could be made at home!). <o:p></o:p></div>
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When my mother did make something “from scratch”, it often
involved soup mix from an envelope or chunk pineapple from the can. My
favorite of her from scratch recipes was her tacos, for here she would go all out by frying the corn
tortillas herself to make them crisp/soft. The shredded beef was
from a can, but it was just the way things were done! She would put out shredded cheddar cheese and lettuce and pair them with canned refried beans. I loved it, and make my tacos similarly today, though I cook the meat myself and also add sour cream and taco sauce.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Imagine my surprise and delight when, after she died, I
discovered a <i>recipe box</i> among her things. I suppose I knew that she used recipes, but as a child I was so seldom involved in the act of preparing food that I never really thought much about it. When I opened the recipe box I found newspaper clippings, typed index cards, and hand written recipes all in a loose alphabetical order. Look! There is the <i>Two-Toned Fudge</i> she always made at Christmas (I have since continued the tradition). There is the <i>Hawaiian Chicken</i> she would make with rice on special occasions! <i>Boston Baked Beans!</i> <i>Upside Down Peach Cake</i> (when did she make that?)! <i>Macaroni 'Seafarer" Casserole</i> (what the hell?)!<o:p></o:p><br />
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I am not sure why, of all things, I decided to keep the recipe box, but I am glad I did. It is comforting to see her cursive handwriting on the cards--each section is a chance to explore what she thought might be an interesting family dish. There were certainly many other things of hers that we had to go through when she died, and for me I wanted to get through it as fast as I could. How do you dissemble a person's life? I still don't know the answer to that question. What I do know is that every item we agreed to discard felt like a slap to my mother's face. Does that resonate with you?<br />
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She had a bunch of condolence cards from 45 years ago when she lost her daughter Marla to pneumonia. I was born one month after Marla's death, so I never met her, but her life and the effect of her death were all around me growing up--in the photo album pictures, the home movies, in my father's alcoholism and my mother's over-protectiveness. As I read some of the cards, I realized that Mom had kept them all these years because she probably could not bring herself to throw them out. How could she? And now here I was holding them in my hands, trying to decide on whether to keep or toss these reminders of a child's tragic death. </div>
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I threw them out, and it <i>killed</i> me. I hate to even think about it. But they were my mother's sacred reminders, not mine. Now that she was gone, who needed to be reminded of what happened that day? I certainly didn't.<br />
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Have you ever had to throw away a loved one's valued keepsakes? I hope you never have to.<br />
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The recipe box was a part of my own memories and so I chose it, along with the wedding dress my mother made for when she married my dad. These items have her touch on them; they are reminders of two of the skills I most noticed about her when I was growing up: cooking and sewing. Though I am sure that whoever goes through my things when I die will discard both the recipe box and the wedding dress, I am okay with that, because the memories should end with me. Nobody else would care about them, I think.<br />
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This Mother's Day, I am making Mom's <i>Chicken Cacciatore</i> for a group of friends. As a kid, the very name of it was almost too much for me--it must be foreign! But I have fond memories of the dish and how it made me feel as though we were very cosmopolitan for eating it. I will add a few ingredients to snap it up, after all, I have moved past cooking with soup mix, and my friends and I will remember our mothers over shared food and drink. I think she would have approved, and she would have been happy to let someone else do the cooking for a change.<br />
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-7907866338151987522018-03-18T08:04:00.000-07:002018-03-18T11:33:06.124-07:00THIS IS MY BOYFRIEND<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"Can you please stop at Sunset to drop off my friend?"</i><br />
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***<br />
The other night I thought about wearing my blue hair wig to a <i><a href="https://fischerspooner.com/" target="_blank">Fisherspooner</a> </i>show here in Los Angeles, but I thought better of it. I have a bit of trouble showing my "freak" in mixed company, and I was not sure what crowd would be at the show.<br />
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I was right to be cautious. While <i>Fisherspooner </i>is rightly looked at as a queer act (based partly on the number of mostly naked mens who populated his stage show in versions of g-strings and harnesses), one can never be too careful about self-expression these days. Upon arriving, I noticed that the majority of the crowd was indeed queer, but also quite "normie" in that they easily could have fit in at the local Target without getting a single double-take. There were, of course, a couple of dolled up drag queens and one or two <i>who-gives-a-shit</i> fashion boys who bravely carried the torch for the rest of us closet freaks. But that was okay. At 55, I don't need to wave my flag for all to see anymore.<br />
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I was dressed, nevertheless, in a way that some might call "stretching it", were it not for my level of fitness and good skin. If you aren't sure of what you can pull off and what you can't, what <i>can</i> you be sure of? So despite my outfit I was confident of my safety on the stretch of Hollywood Blvd. that houses the Fonda Theater. I was queer, but not uncomfortably so. This is how I prefer to walk through the world.<br />
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***<br />
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I have written before about how <a href="https://leavingcaliblog.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-personal-is-political-unlike-coq-au.html" target="_blank">my personal becomes political</a> merely by being a gay atheist. I mean, I am pretty much a target for half the nation from the time I walk out the door by virtue of those aspects alone. Fortunately, the half of the nation that has it out for me is not too sharp in the skill of decoding subtlety, so most days I return home unscathed and unthreatened, just another white guy returning home from the world.<br />
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I like it this way. I prefer to wage war with actions taken within the confines of my apartment; actions that are effective despite being less demonstrative than, say, marching in the streets. Have I ever mentioned that marching in the streets strikes me more as individual empowerment than as a tool for systemic change? No matter--to each his or her own. But if you have not picked up on this yet, these days I would rather fly "under the radar". This is out of respect to both my safety as well as the well-being of those who care about me. (Don't they say that true war is not waged in the battlefield, but rather in the boardrooms?) In other words, if I am going to fight, I am going to fight smart. I have no intention of getting hit by a stray bullet or an errant bayonet. That's no way to go, I say. I still have way to much to do.<br />
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***<br />
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So the night of the concert, after I had left the theater, I found myself in an unanticipated situation when my boyfriend asked to ride with me in the LYFT to Sunset Blvd., where he could then easily walk back to his place. It wasn't his presence in the car that was unsettling, it was the fact that now I had to let the driver know that we were dropping someone off on the way to my place. I did it sort of like this:<br />
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<i>"Can you please stop at Sunset to drop off my friend?"</i></blockquote>
You may have spotted the gaffe, but if not please allow me to point it out to you. I had just publicly referred to my boyfriend, <i>my gay boyfriend</i>, as my <u>friend</u>.<br />
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Believe me, it was noticed, not so much by the driver, but certainly by my boyfriend. He proceeded to repeat back to me, "Your friend? Your <i><b>friend</b></i><b>?</b>", until it became obvious to me that it must also be obvious to the driver that we were, in fact, gay boyfriends, and that I had just referred to my gay boyfriend as my friend.<br />
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Oh the pain.<br />
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Despite my best efforts to fly "under the radar" long enough to get safely home, I had now been outed by my own best efforts to stay in the closet with this LYFT driver.<br />
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I cannot and will not blame my boyfriend. He was 100% right in pointing out the mistake, and I can only thank him for doing it with a sense of humor instead of outrage. But the question lingers in my mind: "What the hell was going on with me to say such a thing?"<br />
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***<br />
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I have lived thus far without too much overt damage from the effects of homophobia. All in all, I would say that I have fared far better than most. Oh, I have had my share of indignities, to be sure. In grade school I was teased because of my "sensitive voice", my close friendships with girls, and for wearing V-neck sweaters as shirts (it was a look, dammit!). I suffered the self-loathing that results from my Catholic teachings that homosexuality is a sin <i>just a smidge</i> less evil than, say, murder. I recall to this day the feeling of my stomach nearly turning in on itself as my 17-year-old self reluctantly answered my mother's question of whether I was a homosexual with a shaky <i>I think so</i>, followed by wanting to throw up. I came of age during the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, when my 20-year-old sex drive was forcibly smashed into submission by the utter terror at possibily catching a deadly and horrible disease that the government did not care about and nobody yet knew anything about, including how it was spread. I was openly told by my brother, while struggling through my first year at the U.S. Naval Academy, that my being gay <i>was the cause of my father's alcoholism </i>and the reason the family was falling apart. I was once lectured by my sister, who informed me that my "need" for family acceptance was not nearly as important as our mother's peace of mind, because, well, I was smart and could take care of myself (she was half right). I remember standing, after a show, outside the Celebration Theater in Hollywood when a passing driver threw glass bottles at me and my friends while yelling <i>"Faggots!"</i> (fortunately, their aim was as off as their intellect, and they missed us). I remember being verbally assaulted and physically threatened by a passerby while discreetly leaning against my then-boyfriend in front of his apartment building one night in Hollywood. But still, I have fared better than most.<br />
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Those are just the overt examples. The covert homophobia is not so situational. It is, rather, systemic, affecting gay men and women everyday in a variety of ways, even if it is affecting them from within their own emotional lives.<br />
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When I referred to my gay boyfriend as my <i>friend</i>, in my mind I tried to tell myself that I did it to protect him, that I was keeping him out of harm's way in case our LYFT driver was not as progressive as I might hope. But that is not the truth of why I said it. The truth is that I was motivated by shame--the same shame that I felt over 40 years ago when my voice was ridiculed for being senstive, the very shame that caused me, years later, to manipulate my speaking voice into a more masculine tone. It was the same shame the made me re-think the blue hair wig on the night I went to see <i>Fisherspooner</i>, despite how great I look in it. It was shame that influenced me to put my boyfriend's feelings second to my fear of being judged. I wanted to avoid seeing the driver's eyes checking out his <i>gay passengers </i>in his rear-view mirror. I wanted to avoid whatever I thought he would think. I wanted to be just two passengers--like any passengers he might drive that evening--I didn't want to be political simply because we are gay and my boyfriend needed to be dropped off on Sunset Blvd. on the way to my place.<br />
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I wasn't protecting my boyfriend. I was protecting myself.<br />
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***<br />
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I decided to write this essay because, though I am not proud of what I did, I want to be proud of what I do now. I love my boyfriend. I love being gay. I love that he is 30 years younger than I because there is nothing like his 20-something-year-old lips. I love how he accidentally coughed into his mimosa the other week and sprayed me with the beverage inadvertently. I love how when he tries to act sexy he ends up resembling a drunk Lana Turner. I love that he loves me and that we are both men and that we have had sex together so many times that if there is a hell (there isn't!) I would have a front row seat at the foot of Satan himself. I love that he went out of his way to understand why <i>Borderline</i>, by Madonna, is such an important song to me. And I love that at the ripe age of 55, I can finally love someone without hating myself.<br />
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I did not demonstrate my love for these things the night I asked the driver to let my friend out at Sunset Blvd., but we are never "done", are we? That night I may have diverged from my goal of affecting systemic change, but in this essay I hope to get back on track. And I will never again refer to my boyfriend as my friend, not because the designation "friend" is a lesser descriptor, but because it does not tell the world the truth of who he is to me, or the truth of who I am to him. And I am tired of shame keeping me from telling the truth.<br />
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<i>THIS IS MY BOYFRIEND.</i><br />
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-29245837977340767742017-12-30T10:20:00.000-08:002018-01-28T06:35:26.838-08:0023--On The Borderline<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Have you ever wondered what your life would be like had you been born in a different year?<br />
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I did not choose to be born in 1962, obviously. Despite popular new age thinking, nobody can actually "choose" their birth date any more than they can "choose" their parents. That is just more wishful thinking for people who have trouble with the idea of randomness. However, I often think that had I chosen the year of my birth, it would have been 1951. In choosing this year, I imagine certain charms about being raised in the 50's, well, as long as you were not a person of color, or gay, or a woman, or poor. But I could be mistaken, for I was not there. I just like how it <i>seems</i> that people conducted themselves with more decorum back then, at least in public if not in private. I suspect it would have been a good childhood at the least.<br />
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But childhood is not the primary reason I would choose to be born in 1951. I think that, throughout history, childhood has been a mixed bag of love and shit, regardless of the greater culture. The main draw would have been becoming a teenager in the mid to late 60's, arguably the most important time of cultural change in the last century. Imagine it: growing up during the emergence of rock and roll and the gradual shift from repression to expression. I think about being 16 years old and being shaped and shaken by songs from the likes of The Beatles, The Turtles, Buffalo Springfield, The 5th Dimension, The Mamas and the Papas, Jefferson Airplane, The Monkees, and more. I knew songs from these artists during my time, but I was just a child then and they meant little to me other than being catchy and melodic (imagine ever taking catchy and melodic for granted--how I <i>long</i> for it in today's music!). But were I a <i>teen</i> when these songs were released, they would have shaped my development as a young adult in a way that diverged from what I had known.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The new expression of youth in the late 60's</td></tr>
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In my alternative life I imagine leaving my parents' home and moving to New York or San Francisco in 1968 and emerging myself in the counterculture as a way to form my own identity apart from how I had been conditioned. I realize that even the counterculture was, or would shortly become, its own culture, but at the time it was a radical throw-off of traditional views, gender roles, and perspectives. It would only become a culture itself once it was discovered that money could be made from it, as the case was with the commercialization of Janis Joplin, with the record company pushing her to be a fashion icon and the voice of the hippies (this ultimately killed her far more than her drug use). In this timeline, I would have been able to avoid the draft and the Vietnam War, since they drew draft lotteries only on men born between 1944 and 1950. While the show <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Beach" target="_blank">China Beach</a></i> has its charms, it does not make me nostalgic for that particular experience that I did not have.<br />
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Had all this happened, I would have eventually, say around 1972, begun to live my young adulthood in the singer-songwriter heaven that was the early 1970's (they say the 60's ended with the Manson killings in '69--party over!). Carole King, Carly Simon, Billy Joel, Janis Ian, Dan Fogelberg, Neil Diamond, and more. And I would have hit my adulthood stride just as disco took over the late 70's--what a time that must have been! In reality, I was in my late teens back then, and though I was indeed a huge disco music fan, I was too young to get into anything other than the young adult disco in San Diego (<i>Stratus</i> was its name!). At least it had a lighted floor like the one in <i>Saturday Night Fever</i>, but I am sure it lacked the cocaine-fueled creative and sexual vibe of adult clubs in New York. Believe it or not, I did once get into Studio 54 before it stopped being a dance club in the mid-late 80's. I was visiting New York during a break from college. I remember standing in line and miraculously getting in, but beyond that my memory is vague. I just remember feeling that I had <i>arrived</i>, when in fact all I had really done was arrive.<br />
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***<br />
I often wonder what my parents must have thought of the 60's and the 70's. Mom was born in '22 and Dad in '28, so their formative years occured during the late 30's and early 40's. What a shock the late 60's must have been to them! Or maybe not, now that I think about it. For most of the country it was actually "business as usual", with the hippie culture being isolated to small groups of youth in San Francisco. The counterculture was fringe enough that most folks just mildly adjusted their hairstyles and clothing, not their behavior, to keep up with the changing norms. But still, think of it! The fashion, the music, the sexual norms were quite different from what was happening in the 40's--I regret that I never asked them about this while they were alive. At the least it must have been awkward, at the most a relief.<br />
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What I find interesting about the time my parents came of age is that there did not seem to be a separate "youth culture" during those years. All the pictures from the 30's and 40's show young people dressing much like adults did at the time, or at least "adults in training". It seemed as though it was the opposite of today, where adults attempt to look like young people--back then everyone appeared to be anxious to grow up!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Teens in the 1940's</td></tr>
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I found out that the word "teenager" <a href="http://www.smosh.com/smosh-pit/articles/50s-now-what-it-was-be-teenager-decades" target="_blank">was not even invented until 1941</a>--it came to be as a result of the outlawing of child labor. Suddenly young people had a time when they could just be young before worrying about going to work and a new developmental category was created! But even still the new teenagers had not yet created a unique culture--they were mostly practicing to be grownup, albeit with a bit less sophistication and sex appeal.<br />
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That changed in the 60's, primarily due to involvement in music and politics--suddenly young folks had a voice that <i>differentiated</i> them from adults, and they developed a look that went along with that difference. Perhaps that is why it was business as usual for most adults--they were not part of the revolution. And as a child, neither was I.<br />
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***</div>
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Had I been born in 1951, well then it would have been a different story altogether. Even if I had been missed the draft, I would not have been out of hot water completely, as I would have most probably succumbed to the next deathtrap: AIDS. I surely would have enjoyed the sexual freedom and exploration of the late 70's and the hedonism and ecstasy of the disco age as an adult, but like many who were in their late 20's and early 30's during that time, I would have had a hard time avoiding the virus that affected so many who were part of that lifestyle. </div>
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I was in my early 20's at the time, which probably is the reason I am still alive today--I was too young to have been exposed due to excessive sexual activity. By the time I had opportunities to have sex the rumors of "gay cancer" were already spreading, so I abstained completely from sex for a couple of years. I remember being <i>terrified</i>--this was a period when nobody knew how it was spread. By 1985 nobody (except the government) could deny that there was something seriously scary going on. AIDS cut the 80's in half the way that disco cut the 70's in half, though with far less celbration, obviously. At the time it felt like my adulthood was paused before it even got started.<br />
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Want to hear somthing controversial? Sometimes, when I am wistful, I imagine giving up my life in exchange for the "full experience" of the late 70's. But these are just the musings of <i>someone who was not there</i>, and someone who did not get sick, and someone who did not know many people who did get sick and die. There can be a sort of romanticism in nostalgia for what never was, and we are allowed to go wherever we want to go in our minds, but in the light of day I am grateful to have sidestepped that particular timetable, because at the very least I made it to the age of 23.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A pic from the weekend we met in 2015</td></tr>
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I met K when he was 23, and I was 53. Through ups and downs, we have known each other for over two years now and have been officially dating for just over a year as of this writing. I did not want to date a man more than half my age, for a million reasons. But the one reason that applies to <i>this</i> essay is the cultural reason--too much happened in the 30 years between us--it can be quite difficult to share perspectives from one time to another.<br />
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As an example, K's 23rd year was nothing like mine. He was working toward an actual career, having already received a master's degree. He had been in one major relationship with another older man, but that did not end well. His sexual experience was fair, but limited, although he had already explored some "outer limits" of his sexuality. In contrast, in my 23rd year I was hoping to be a professional dancer, but I was working various shitty service jobs to pay the bills. It was 1985, a great year for music but a horrible one for sex, since AIDS was now a full blown nightmare in the gay world. Up until then I had a number of lovers and sexual experiences, starting from the age of 16. There is no way my "23" could be the same as K's. They were 30 years apart. But perhaps some bridges could be built.<br />
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Music can create such a bridge. In 1985, the year I turned 23, my favorite artist (along with nearly everybody else's) was Madonna. My favorite song of hers at that time was "Borderline" from her debut album. Though it was first released to the world in 1983, it was not until June of '84 that the song showed up as a radio single. It was a <i>smash</i>, charting 30 weeks on the Billboard charts, and was so enduring that it actually delayed the release of her already finished second album (Like A Virgin). The song's massive success was greatly aided by the accompanying <a href="https://youtu.be/rSaC-YbSDpo" target="_blank">music video</a>, which was directed by Mary Lambert, and shot in Los Angeles in early 1984. That video actually changed my life, as it was my first narrative visual exposure of Madonna, and it perfectly presented her as a fashion and lifestyle icon. It was set in the street and showed the multiracial scene she surrounded herself with, and her confidence and style was fully formed in a way that we all would strive to emulate. I had never seen anything like it before.<br />
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Besides being unnaturally photogenic, Madonna's video presence spoke to a part of me that was oddly familiar with the unfamiliar--do you know what I mean? Have you ever seen or heard something that is unknown, but feels known? Not as in a past life sort of thing, but as in "this has always been within me" sort of thing. "Borderline" awakened me, so to speak, both activating and displaying the attitude that I would adopt to get me through the second half of the 80's. The video showed me that, despite death (or perhaps because of it), life was all around the fringes of the street, and it's main fuel--love--would not be reduced or diminished. It showed me that I could be aggressive toward my fears; that I could chance taking huge bites out of life as long as I looked great while doing it. Fashion was the armor and style was the weapon against everything that scared us back then. It may sound silly, but most of us were quite literally grasping for something to hold us above water. Madonna's music and image gave us something to be excited about, and her brazen hipness prepared me for the upcoming years--years that would become even worse before they become better. We all were, without a doubt, on the borderline of something.<br />
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I watch the video today and I swear it does not look dated--she was that good (and Mary Lambert's directing instincts were <i>spot on</i>). Unlike many other artists of the time, Madonna didn't just wear the look, she <i>was</i> the look. I have tried to convey the importance of this song and video to K some 30-plus years after its moment, and I could tell that his listening was, well, more polite than convinced. They say that if you have not lived an specific experience, that you can grasp it intellectually, but not experiencially. I suppose that I wanted him to share my experience of the song, but that could never happen. The time of <i>my</i> experience of it has long passed, but remains fresh in my memory. I wonder if I would react to the song the same way were it released today? I do think it is a well written song, but I am too attached to it to truly be objective.<br />
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Weeks later, K came to me and told me that he finally "got" why I loved it so much. He had listened to it enough that he got pulled into his own experience of the song, 33 years after the world first heard it. A bridge had been built.<br />
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***<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me in the mid-80's with "Randy". Check out the 'stache!</td></tr>
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In the British science fiction series "Black Mirror", there is an episode in Season 3 called "San Junipero". (K actually shared this episode with me, and I am very glad he did because it generated a lot of thought.) I will not spoil it for you if you have not seen it, but the basic story is set in a a fictional 1987, where two elderly and ill women are able to meet and virtually "be young again" via advanced technology. The show, beyond being well written and acted, reminds me of why I have nostalgia for the 80's. If you were young in the 80's, <i>you cannot pretend that you are still young anymore</i>. The women in the episode are artificially inserted back into their youth, it is the only way they can act on what they are thinking. But that technology is fictional--this could not really happen. For me, I cannot revisit the way I looked and acted in the 80's, at least not without looking like a grand fool. I cannot act as though nothing has changed. <i>Everything has changed.</i> It was a period that does not translate into older age, therefore it is a period that will forever be trapped by within its own timeline. Perhaps that is why Madonna ditched the hair rags and rubber bracelets only two years into her career--she knew it would not last and wanted to move on ahead of the others.<br />
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K is 26 as of this writing. He is still fully in the midst of his youth. The experience of a 55 year-old with a 26 year-old is far different than the experience of a 26 year-old with a 55 year-old. At times I would try to explain to him that he could not know what it was like to be my age--that it was more than what his fantasies told him, that it also involves some aches and sagging muscles and lost erections on occasion. Not very sexy at all, perhaps. He gets me to rally around his youthful interests once in a while--I had a blast at a Kesha concert that I <i>never</i> would have attended on my own. But what finally worked in getting him to understand who I am now was <i>helping him to understand who I was</i>. This is why it was so important for him to "get" the significance of the "Borderline" song. That song tells him more about my experience in the 80's than any verbal discussion. How does it do this? It conveys the <i>mood</i> of the time. It is experiential. He was able to <i>feel</i> the time, as much as he possibly could without having lived through it.<br />
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Love can be a tricky thing. <i>Being in love</i>, a phrase I am not fond of, is usually about who we want the other to be. <i>Loving someone</i>, as I like to think, is about who the other is now, who they used to be, and who we help them to become in the future. Much more interesting to me! Meeting me when I was 53, over halfway through my life, meant that K had a lot more understanding of me to do than I had to of him. It must be difficult to join someone after they had already lived most of their life. But by exploring who I was in my 20's in the 80's, he has been able to catch up a bit. Thanks, Madonna.<br />
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I cannot ever be 23 again. That time is permanently a part of my past--it is a part of many peoples' past, and it is lovely to think about on hot summer nights. During these moments, the melancholy sadness of spent youth is replaced by the golden warmth of memory. And memory can be a wonderful filter to look through. I can walk across the bridge made of shared musical experience to join closer with my young boyfriend--not to join him in youth, but in a mid-ground where we both feel ageless for a bit, at least until we cross back over the borderline.<br />
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-68758329343181470392017-09-16T06:58:00.001-07:002017-10-29T11:39:03.631-07:00The Personal Is Political, Unlike Coq Au Vin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><br /></i><i>"The Personal Is Political" is not my turn of phrase. I borrow it respectfully from the Women's Liberation Movement of the 60's, as it was first brought up in a paper by Carol Hanisch. You can read the paper, and her explanatory introduction, <a href="http://www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PIP.html" target="_blank">HERE</a>. Please enjoy my first and possibly only post from 2017,,,</i><br />
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<i>***</i><br />
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As I write this essay, I have Coq Au Vin cooking in the crockpot for a dinner I am sharing with a friend tonight. Have you ever made anything in a crockpot? If you have, then you have noticed how the smell of the cooking food infuses every space in your home. I can assure you that this is the case in my home at this moment. The recipe that I am making makes use of <i>packaged beefy onion soup mix</i> as a "cheat" step, but the finished product tastes the opposite of a short cut! Nevertheless, the apartment smells as though I am brewing a cauldron of onion soup. The <i>beefy</i> kind.<br />
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I want you to also get a visual sense of what is going on. My apartment is in the front of the building, and the patio door faces west toward the setting sun (in the evening, of course). My front door is opposite the patio door, but facing south, and opening into the drive that separates the two buildings of the complex. Here in Los Angeles, the wind mostly blows from "off-shore", meaning that it blows in from the ocean from west to east. Because of this, I often get a good breeze blowing through my place from the patio door toward the front door. If I have both of these doors open, the smells from whatever I am cooking waft into the drive, and every tenant with a nose is made aware of what is happening in my kitchen.<br />
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Fortunately for me, this phenomena has resulted in more mouths-watering than scrunched-noses, if I am to believe the reports. Were I to prepare a dish that was not favorable to a particular tenant, I would assume that I would receive more of the latter than the former, as tenants in this building are not shy about sharing their discomforts with me.<br />
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***<br />
I sometimes feel as though my ways of thinking are similar to a slow-cooking pot of Coq Au Vin, with the significant difference being that my thinking, when expressed, gets more scrunched noses than watering mouths. I tend to be a private person, meaning that I like to keep the "doors" of my thoughts closed to most. Even my essays are more about "themes" than my life in particular. But over time I have come to accept that thoughts, like smells, often travel underneath, around, and through closed doors to the public space beyond the private.<br />
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What I mean to say is that, like it or not, I am a <i>political</i> person by the very nature of how I think, move, and live in the world. The very act of holding a man's hand in public or <i>not</i> saying "amen" during a church funeral or wedding service are choices that, despite discretion, get noticed by others. And this noticing then influences how others respond to me, even if all they know about me is what they gather from the observed act. And the reason that the act gets noticed at all is merely because <i>it is often not what most people do</i>. That makes it political.<br />
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What happens when we see, hear, read, smell, or taste something that is not immediately familiar or within what we know? Do our mouths water, or do our noses scrunch up? We all know the answer to that one, I suspect. My best friend and I are true foodies, and there have been many times when I have found myself in a restaurant with him where he will ask me to taste something I have never had before. In these cases, one of two outcomes happens: either I blind-taste the item and give my system a shock of unfamiliarity; or he will tell me what the item is "similar to", priming me to expect a flavor/sensation that I am acquainted with. Whether he primes me or not, I generally have more mouth-watering experiences in these cases for the simple fact that we tend to dine in good restaurants.<br />
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But what about when people are <i>not</i> primed?<br />
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Atheism is one of those ways of thinking that people are, more often than not, <i>not</i> primed for. In 2017, fewer and fewer folks are scrunching up their noses at, say, homosexuality, or transgender people. We see them on TV, and sometimes even in our families. We hear about them in the news and read about them in the magazines (does anyone read magazines anymore?). But atheism is still relatively in the closet, meaning that the darkness prevents clear viewing, or even simple acknowledgement at times. I have no doubt that the U.S. would more readily elect a gay or lesbian president before they would elect an atheist one, and if ever a gay or lesbian atheist were elected, I would fully prepare for the pitchforks to come out. In the same way that homosexuality used to be linked with perversion, atheism is often associated with not having a moral compass. The idea of a man loving a man is easier for America to digest than the idea of a man <i>not</i> loving god.<br />
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Just because you don't understand something does not mean that it is okay to judge it. How many times do I say this to the couples who come to my <a href="http://couplestherapistla.com/" target="_blank">psychotherapy practice</a> for help?<br />
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Let me clarify that I am <i>commenting</i> on the issue rather than complaining about it. I have nothing to complain about! As a cis-gender, white, masculine, tall bio-male, I pretty much have the world at my fingertips. My oddities are not in plain sight, unless you are paying <i>very</i> close attention (it never happens!), so I suffer very little compared to most. Additionally, my atheism is a <i>choice</i>, whereas my attraction to men is not. But regardless of a feature being from nature or choice, I notice that only those on the "shortlist" get a free pass.<br />
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What is on the shortlist?<br />
-being heterosexual<br />
-being and/or looking male<br />
-being and/or looking masculine<br />
-being and/or looking white<br />
-being Christian or a variation of that (preferably)<br />
-believing in God, not just <i>a</i> god<br />
-being cis-gender<br />
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What is <i>not</i> on the short list?<br />
-being gay, lesbian, bi, asexual, or any variation that is not straight<br />
-being agender or non-binary<br />
-being of color, particularly if you are "dark"<br />
-being trans<br />
-being genderqueer<br />
-being Muslim<br />
-being atheist<br />
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Notice that the last two on the list are choices, but often identify a large part of a person's identity.<br />
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For this essay, I am focusing on <i>being</i> gay and the <i>choice</i> to be an atheist, but only as the context from which to present a perspective on how who we are and what we do often becomes political, whether we want it to or not. Besides, it is what I know, so I stand a greater chance of being nearly right. And I like being right.<br />
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***<br />
What does it mean for the personal to be political?<br />
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I did not know myself until my personal actually became political. How did I know that this was happening? Well, people started being upset with what I did, who I was, what I said, and how I said it. I know that happens to everybody some of the time (and perhaps some of the people all of the time), but the difference between regular upset and when the personal gets political is that with the latter the upset is <i>really</i> upset! When others would get upset with me for <i>how</i> I said something, I take full responsibility for that. I readily admit that my "how" needed working on over the years, but that was the pendulum swinging from zero to full speed.<br />
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Initially, politicization began because I was "sensitive" as a boy (not allowed!), or so I was told again and again, and as I got older it showed up when others found out, or suspected, that I was gay. I remember one time as an adult when I was in Hollywood with a guy I was dating, chatting and saying goodbye in front of his building at the end of a date night. We were leaning into each, but not making out, just showing the kind of close physical contact any couple who were dating might do at the end of the night. Suddenly, some guy on the sidewalk yelled at us, "Oh my fucking god, are you two faggots?" At first I thought it had to be a friend of ours, making fun of us in the way that gays sometimes do, but then it continued. "Are you guys <i>kissing</i>? I think I am gonna be sick! Do you like suck dick and fuck ass too? That's fucking disgusting!"<br />
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Now, this was Hollywood in the early 2000's. Not exactly the place where one would expect intolerance and hatred to show up. I looked at the guy, who was walking his dog with his girlfriend, and I replied with the first thing I noticed about him that I could attack. "Well, I may by gay, <i>but at least I am not fat</i>."<br />
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Dear readers, I want you to know that the thing about a good retort is that it not only hits the target, <i>it obliterates it</i>. I caution you to not go after any seasoned homosexual, because in all likelihood he will <i>obliterate you</i> with his retort. (Sorry, lesbians, you do not generally have this particular skill--but don't worry, you have other gifts.) This skill is not about being being queeny. This is about<i> attack</i>, and knowing, from years of observation, what people's weak spots are. <i>Do not underestimate this ability, or you will likely perish under its effect. </i><br />
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When I called the guy fat, you should have seen his face. He has just verbally attacked me and my date with a vulgar, homophobic outburst that was not provoked by anything other than two gay men "being gay men". But once I called him fat, he acted as though a line had been crossed. He approached me with hatred in his eyes and all of a sudden I realized that I might have to defend myself. Fortunately, I continued my rant toward him, and I am not a small person, and the opposite of fat, so he stopped short, perhaps renegotiating his chances of success in a confrontation. I do not know if I would have beat him up, but I do know that some of the things I said to him hit like a punch. I do know that I was ready to protect myself and my guy.<br />
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Fortunately, I did not have to. My date recognized the attacker as a tenant of the building they both live in, and he warned him that he intended to report this to the manager, a gay man who had zero tolerance for homophobic behavior. The guy backed off, but the damage was done. My date and I were both shaken, and the "shame" of being gay, reinforced by the verbal attack, forced a wedge between us. Who wants to be with the enemy?<br />
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Growing up, my family celebrated all holidays together, as most families did until, I don't know, they didn't. When I became an adult and moved out of the house, I felt there was an expectation that I would continue to celebrate holidays at home, and I did in fact do this at the beginning. My mother, as I have described in earlier essays, relied on homemade dishes as much as she did canned items, so our holiday celebrations were a mix of cooked meats, homemade gravies, cooked frozen or canned veggies, and store bought rolls. My mother was, truth be told, really good at warming things up for dinner, but that was par for the course in the late 60's and early 70's. <i>Frozen Dinner Night </i>was considered a special treat--so that should give you an idea of the times.<br />
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As an adult, I sensed a shift in the family dynamic, but I also recognized that I seemed to be the only one willing to admit that things were changing. I was also aware of the differences in how my brother and I were treated regarding our dating lives. The personal became political when I dared to comment on this difference, which consisted of pointing out that his girlfriend was granted validity by the family, while the anyone I was dating was treated like an "imaginary friend". <i>Not real.</i> My love life, which I was expressing in the only way that was natural to me, was not considered "real", while my brother could fuck whomever he wanted and reward her with a prime seat at our holiday table.<br />
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The personal had become political in my family, and I spoke up about it, as anyone would, but was immediately reprimanded for being selfish, needy, and inconsiderate of "other's" needs. Didn't I see how hard my mother had worked to make dinner? (May I remind you that she mostly warmed things up?) Why did I have to turn everything into a <i>gay thing</i>? Why was I causing trouble? Why couldn't I just <i>stay quiet</i>? I thought I was just talking about how I felt, I didn't <i>feel</i> like I was being political. But this is the point. For those for whom their personal is political, that label is provided by others.<br />
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Now just to show you that I can see both sides, I will admit that I was not the only one in the family whose personal was political. My mother was a woman who had been divorced three times before she met my father--not acceptable in those days! And my father was a dark-skinned Mexican man who married a white woman in the late 50's--enough said about that! But my parents differed from me in one aspect:<i> they did not embrace the political nature of their choices</i>, they ignored it. I, on the other hand, could not ignore it, primarily because I was not allowed to do so, and secondarily because the source of my political nature was not a choice. The world reminded me, on a daily basis, that who I was and what I chose to do about it was unacceptable. And because I could not pretend that this was not happening, I pushed back. I became political.<br />
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Pushback has an iffy chance of being successful, but then that also depends on what it is you plan to be successful about. In my case, pushback succeeded in making my family upset with me, and it succeeded in my feeling even less understood than before, but more justified in my loudness. On a deeper level, though, let's face it--pushback rarely works. This is because it is an <i>effect</i> of marginalization rather than a solution to it. In other words, it is still part of the problem! The only time it actually changes things is when it is done in a way that cannot be ignored: the early actions of ACT UP during the AIDS crisis; the Occupy Wallstreet movement (at least until it became just another reason to hang out and get stoned); the initial thrust of the Black Lives Matter movement. These examples of pushback were so loud that they resulted in change--for a while.<br />
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And yet what other choice does one have when their personal becomes political? Well, the approach that I am currently experimenting with, somewhat successfully, is just to "live my life, being me". While this might not strike you as revolutionary, I have noticed that I am able to be an agent of change on the micro level rather than the macro, and that this change--one person at a time--is not only longer lasting, but also willingly undertaken by the other instead of forced. Change is happening because I am giving others an experience of being myself, a political person, <i>without shame and without agenda</i>. The ones that notice this have an opportunity to be influenced by it for the better. This is why my current approach is not part of the problem, but a solution. So far, so good.<br />
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It works with most. But there are some in my life where the political has outweighed the personal. Not surprisingly, those I am referring to all happen to be family. Ah, family--what to make of it? We are thrown into the mix with these people without a say in the process, at least until we become adults and have say. In my case, that say has resulted in me not talking to my brother in 3 years, one of my nieces for the same amount of time, and one of my female cousins. The crime? Being political. But truth be told, there is more to it than that. I really don't like any of these aforementioned relatives. I have, in the past, but I don't like who they are now, and I don't suppose that they are that fond of me either. However, in my defense, I was at a disadvantage from the start due to my being political in ways that "bother" them. At some point, ya gotta make a choice, folks. And I chose to be responsive to what I was feeling. I have no regrets. I wonder if they do?<br />
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***<br />
Coq Au Vin is not the only dish I make in my crockpot, but it is one of my favorites for the simple reason that it is ridiculously easy and crazy delicious. Isn't that the point of crockpots, to make life easier? When I make this dish with the packaged beefy onion soup, I realize that I am taking a shortcut that, most likely, will <i>not</i> be noticed by those who share the meal with me. What they don't know won't hurt them.<br />
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I have not yet found any similar shortcuts when it comes to being an authentic human being. In my experience, this process has to be done the hard way, because authenticity is not a given in modern culture and is often <i>chosen</i> in response to feeling the effects of its opposite. As much as I dislike the people who have made my personal political (and the cultural narratives that create the divide in the first place), I also must be grateful for the push this gave me toward my own authentic expression of self. Meaning, I am not interested in hiding what makes me political anymore. I don't pursue provocation (much), I just live my life as I am, and that, some might say, is the most political of all actions. Those who still find me to be political are, I suspect, not only living their own lives, but also the lives of others. Otherwise, my personal would remain personal. This intrusion on their part is <i>controllable</i>, unlike the scents from my slow-cooker Coq Au Vin. How I wish that others could live their lives as tempting invitations, like the scent from my cooking, instead of as unwelcome intrusions, like the actions of my brother, niece, and cousin. When this happens, their political becomes <i>personal</i> for me.<br />
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But as they say, it's no skin off my ass. I have a full time job assessing my personal without worrying too much about another's political. But this is also a tightrope walk, as the political is becoming more dangerous in recent months. I am beginning to suspect that my responsibility is greater than just living my life, but the form of that responsibility is vaguer than the urgency to figure it out. I tend to prefer changing systems instead of individuals, as there is a greater chance of success with systems at times since individuals need to affect change on themselves. But both are valid. In the case of my brother, niece, and cousin, I think we consider the other to be a lost cause, so I long ago shifted my focus from individual change to the deconstruction of religious brainwashing, racial separation, gender inequality, climate change denying, and homophobia in all its forms. Perhaps I am being petty, but you can't say I ever denied being human. I admit to holding grudges where they are earned, but I let them motivate rather than stagnate. Can you blame me? My personal is political.<br />
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-29700095353681343992016-12-30T07:48:00.000-08:002017-01-30T06:12:14.645-08:00A Familiar Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Cats have nine lives, supposedly. But from what I have noticed, they don't change one bit throughout any of them--they do the same shit every single day of their passive-aggressive lives. I know what you are saying right now: <i>"The nine lives thingie is about them <b>never dying</b>, NOT the idea that they change lives!!" </i><br />
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You went back to add the second exclamation point just to make sure that I got how dumb I am for saying that. But it didn't work. I know that cats don't change lives! They don't even change what they do because they don't work! Dogs work!<br />
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I saw a bit on the <i>Today</i> show where they were introducing puppies who were soon to become service dogs. The trainer was explaining how the puppies got to have a few weeks of "just being puppies" before the training would commence--but she assured us viewers that once it did start they would be having a <u>good time</u> because "the dogs LOVE their jobs!" <i>Really.</i> Stupid dogs!<br />
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Cats would <i>never</i> fall for that trick. But don't think that cats actually have the better deal. Cats may not get suckered into work that is "fun", but they sure as hell can't escape their miserable lives either. At least not until the tenth attempt, but by then, can it really be called living anymore?<br />
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Humans are not so simple as to be classified solely as stupid or passive-aggressive, though you don't need me to convince you that there are some humdingers who are examples of either or both. I am fortunate to have avoided these two particular experiences completely: I am not stupid, and I am certainly not passive, uh, in my aggression. I am aggressive-aggressive, but you will have to believe me when I tell you that in some circles that is greatly appreciated (if not welcomed). I try my best to direct my wanderings within appreciative circles. I am not always successful, but in those instances, I think others suffer more than I do.<br />
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***<br />
How do we come to be who we are? Though the process can be tracked linearly, close inspection will reveal multiple detours and stops, backtracks and potholes, straightaways and hairpin curves. My life has been no exception. At the age of 54, I find that my memory of where I began sometimes gets muddled. Did I really do that? When did that happen? Was that me? Why don't I remember?<br />
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Fortunately, I have stacks of old photos, and I found myself going through them the other day for a reason I cannot remember now. But as I flipped through the albums, I noticed having a strange feeling. I knew the lives I was seeing in the pictures, I knew the places, I knew the people. But at the same time it seemed as if it were another life, not mine. What was once known was no longer known, only <i>familiar</i>. It felt like I was re-reading a book I had read a thousand times--enough times to know what the characters were going to say and do.<br />
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But these lives, these places, these people, they are not mine anymore. They are just road stops I hung out at on the way to where I live now. Road stops that exist only in memory, and in photographs.<br />
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I like who I am now. I recognize who I used to be. But rather than being connected intimately to this past, it is, alas, only familiar.<br />
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The thing about this picture is that, despite the slope of the lawn, I was securely grounded in my stance. At least I think I was. Since I was around one year old at the time, I suspect that explicit memory was still not fully online. So though I remember the lawn, it is not actually a memory from this incident, but rather from subsequent years of living in the house that this lawn was attached to. I will go so far as to say that, when I look at this picture, I am more familiar with the lawn than I am with the child standing on it. Another way of saying it is that I have no memory of myself at this time. I only "know" it is me because I have been told so, and as such I have made this picture a part of my story, without further verification.<br />
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What makes us believe parts of our story that are not in our memory? Do we simply go on the authority of those who are telling us the story? Why do we accept these stories without question? A silly question, I will admit, and yet why don't we question them when it is our story that is at stake? Sample questions could be:<br />
1. How do you know this is me?<br />
2. Why should I believe you?<br />
3. Do you have proof other than your word?<br />
4. How does knowledge of this change how I have previously thought of myself?<br />
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I don't actually have memory of the picture above, either, even though my explicit memory was clearly online at the time. I do have a sense memory of this picture though--perhaps implicit, if you will--in that there is familiarity associated with what this picture triggers: weekend runs with my father and brother to Tijuana for haircuts and pan dulce; the front tooth that was "dead" because of a childhood accident involving falling on something; the tee-shirts that I wore to school because that is what kids wore in the late 60's.<br />
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But the familiarity ends with these associations. My connection with this little boy is no more intimate than that with a character in a well-read novel. The familiarity at this point is based on a known story more than a lived sense. It is a memory of me, but a memory nonetheless. It is no more a part of who I am now than is a meal I consumed a month ago.<br />
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I remember this shirt, I remember this cake, I remember this living room, as it was in our house. My mother is with me in this picture, as we were going to a school event with a "Mexican" theme. That is as far as my familiarity goes with this one.<br />
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What happens when I look into the eyes of this little boy with the outrageous and yet theme-appropriate shirt? I try to "see" me. I know I wore this shirt and took this cake somewhere, but my related-ness with this boy springs more from compassion than recognition. Compassion for how innocent he truly was, how much he loved his mother, not realizing that even here, nearing 50 years of age, she would leave him far sooner than he preferred. Compassion for how Mom helped me bake this cake, and how she put on her "Mexican" blouse so that she would be theme-appropriate as well. Compassion for how much this boy wanted to do well at school, how much he wanted to be liked, how much he really really like this shirt because on some level it represented "fashion". Compassion for landing in this family somehow, and instantly being declared a part of it (naturally), yet never realizing that membership came with conditions.<br />
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I think the cake kicked ass in whatever "contest" it was entered into. At least that is how I would like to remember it. If nothing else, we should have won for our outfits.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me on the right with my mom and brother</td></tr>
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<i>Now</i> we're talking! Familiarity verges with knowing when I look at this picture. I <i>loved</i> this vest, and you can surely tell just by looking at me. This was the early 70's and Mom made a lot of our clothes, which meant that, on occasion, I got to pick out the fabric I wanted. I picked a doozy here, and I knew <i>exactly</i> what I was doing.</div>
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The thing about style is that you either have it or you don't. Fashion can be bought, but not style. Style is part of one's personality, and it springs from creativity and imagination, courage and vision. It is the result of paying attention, and reflecting what is seen with spin and interpretation. </div>
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I had this look <i>down</i>. My brother, not so much so. But take a look at my mother here and you know where I got my sense of style. Poor Mark (my brother). He couldn't even compete with me and Mom. He was such a dork as a child, and he didn't find his footing until he found the ocean waves and paired them with a surfboard in his teenage years. Unfortunately, he also paired them with cocaine, among other things, but I suspect that is because he never really trusted himself as I did. </div>
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To this day I have a hunch he still doesn't. But what do I know about hunches. What I <i>do</i> know is how to pick a good fabric. </div>
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The thing about brothers is that it's like being in an arranged marriage of sorts. I didn't have any choice with who I was a "sibling" with. My brother and I did okay for several years (being so close in age), until the day we no longer were okay. It happened soon after this picture was taken. I was on a bus as part of a foreign exchange program between my school and a school in Mexico. I was 14. I can't remember where we were headed when this picture was taken, but I think I was having a good time with my new friends from south of the border. We were all kids, that is all that mattered to us--certainly not our skin color, language, or country of origin.<br />
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When I returned from the two week program, my brother had moved all my stuff out of the room that we shared. He told me in no uncertain terms that he didn't want anything more to do with me. He was done. I was brokenhearted. I think he had decided that I was not cool enough for him. Silly boy. Did he not see how I looked in my rainbow zig-zag vest?<br />
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Even with my devastation, I had just returned from the adventure of my life up to this point. I had been out of the goddamn country! I had been to Mexico City, and visited pyramids and bars (yes, they let us in!). But most importantly, I experienced my first crush.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My first crush.</td></tr>
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Meet Scott. I mean, just look at him. At fourteen, looks carry a lot of weight, because, for me at least, they represented perfection and love and all the things I thought I did not deserve at the time. When Scott looked at me while I took this picture, he seemed to be saying, "I <i>know</i>." Of course he wasn't, he was just using that sleepy-eyed charm that I am not sure he was even fully aware of. But I suspect that he <i>did</i> know something.<br />
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My familiarity with this time reminds me of a night while we were all in Mexico City. Many of us students had gone out, and we miraculously got into a disco even though we were all frightfully underage. But it was Mexico in the seventies--I think the legal age was six. Scott had not joined us for some reason, so when I got back to the hotel at around three in the morning, he was already in bed asleep. He and I were sharing one of the double beds, and our other roommate, Dean, would sleep on a mattress on the floor. Dean would not share a bed with another boy. His loss was my gain.<br />
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As I slipped into the bed, I realized that Scott was literally taking up the whole mattress with his body splayed out like an "X" from corner to corner. He was wearing only underwear, which for me was pretty much like having Satan tickle my balls, and I had to make him move if I were to ever get a night's sleep. I quietly asked him to move over until he finally roused, but then he did something that will be seared into my memory for all my days. Instead of moving over to his side of the bed, he rolled over onto me, <i>with his whole body</i>.<br />
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Let's just consider this incident for a moment. Scott was an athlete at his school, and had the strong muscular body of a developing teenager; he was quite the opposite of me, still underweight for my height, and certainly lacking anything resembling a "build". Scott was a god to me, and more than that, on this trip I became his best friend, which was like being given a pass to the good life. And now this god, my best friend, was on top of me, splayed out in only his underwear.<br />
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I did what any closeted fourteen year old would have done in that instant--I fucking panicked. I pushed him off me within a moment of his skin hitting mine, and I acted as though I was totally grossed out about what he did, while he acted as though it had all been a grand joke on me.<br />
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Which I suppose it was. Scott was straight, and he was just playing around. But I was in puppy love with him, and I realized that he could never ever know this about me. But if he ever reads this essay, he will now know that I have never forgotten, nor lost my familiarity with, the brief moment in time when he rolled on top of me and ignited my desire.<br />
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Perhaps, just perhaps, he has never forgotten either.<br />
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My family lived on <i>Christmas Tree Circle</i>. What this meant was that every year, for the month of December, the whole block would light up and decorate for the holiday. Can you imagine what this must have been like for a little boy with great taste in fabrics? Talk about being fed unrealistic expectations about the world! At our house, my dad would go nuts with the decor outside, while my mom expressed her insanity on the indoors. I <i>loved</i> it. </div>
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When I look at this picture I see a typical family holiday photo, all in appropriate jammies, yet Mom was still made up with her hair done, as though she actually went to bed like this. She didn't. She used to take her makeup off, of course, but she would also use pink "hair tape" to hold the set in place while she slept. It was interesting to see, to say the least. That look was never captured in a photo. </div>
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My brother had glasses, which I suspect he hated, but he was blind as a bat without them. My dad was, well, my dad. He seemed to me, at least for the first fifteen years of my life, to be a caricature of a dad. <a href="http://leavingcaliblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/time-to-talk-about-dad.html" target="_blank">How little I knew.</a> </div>
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They are pictured in front of the artificial Christmas tree that Mom put up every year--this was the early seventies, and <i>everyone</i> had artificial trees, at least on my block. They had them for the same reason that everyone ate TV dinners and margarine--it was okay for upper middle class families to do so. I doubt I ever even tasted real butter for the first 18 years of my life. Rest assured that since then, I have caught up on both real butter and real Christmas trees. </div>
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I recognize everything in the picture, but two of these people are dead (Mom and Dad), and the other one I have not talked to in over a year. Are they my family? Were they my family? What was I hoping to capture by taking this photograph? Was I trying to convince myself of my place among them, or hoping to reveal evidence to motivate my escape? We were a pretty happy family at this time, though shortly the shit would hit the fan in the guise of my brother's bad behavior and my queerness. </div>
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But on this Christmas Eve, long long ago, we were still a "family", albeit one that hid its washed faces and pink hair tape. And what I recognize in my mother and father is the reality that being this family was very important. For them, a happy family was the mark of success, a refuge from the battles they endured in younger days. For me, a happy family was...hmmm...was my first conscious experience with abandonment. The smiles in this picture were real--not just for the camera, but they were conditional, which is something I did not realize then. They were conditional on me and my brother enrolling in our parents' version of refuge, and neither of us could do that. Their expectations eventually shattered, in different ways, our sense of belonging in the family; for me at some point it was made clear that my insistence on being treated like family would bring about the very destruction of the same. </div>
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I don't blame them. Anymore. Most families were like this in the seventies: parents from an earlier time trying to raise families, in a way that was familiar to them, during a time of massive cultural change. Their vision of family turned out to be as artificial as the plastic Christmas tree in the background--pretty, but certainly not living. </div>
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I made it out alive, and I tried with limited success to drag my parents along with me in my explorations, but they were too bound to their histories. I wish I had seen this--I would have spent more time loving them and less time trying to change them. Interestingly, this is the same issue that many of my couples clients struggle with in their relationships. My parents did what they thought was right and good for us--at some point the rest was up to us. I can say that I have made a remarkable life for myself, both because <i>and</i> despite all that my parents did. My brother, I am sure, would say the same thing, and I suppose some would agree with him, but I will tell you that he lives in the same house, and still puts up an artificial Christmas tree. You can do the math.</div>
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Even familiarity can be infused with familiarity. When I was a in my last year of high school, I participated in the senior play. The big dance number was "We Go Together", from <i>Grease</i>, the biggest film of 1978. <i>Grease</i> was, of course, a fond look back at the high school culture of the 1950's. In this picture me and my partner Diana were about to go onstage for the big number. We are somewhat dressed in period costumes, though I think Diana did a better job than I did. I just kind of rolled my t-shirt sleeves up, or so it looks. </div>
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The fifties were fun from a filmic standpoint. I think that in reality, they were really only fun for straight white men. But when you turn anything bad into a song, it automatically becomes a hopeful lesson! Our nostalgia for the fifties during the seventies was a yearning for familiar unfamiliar. We wanted to remember the world as it never was, because it made us feel better about what it was now. So even back then, as a seventeen year old, I was trying to connect with the familiar. </div>
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Who was this boy? Was that me? Do I still have those arms? That smile? Those eyes? (I <i>know</i> I no longer have that hair!)</div>
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What is the familiar? When does it become less familiar? Does familiarity have a limit, or is its intensity based on proximity to the event, place, or person? I went into the Naval Academy for two years right out of high school, but my time there is as fresh in my memory as what I had for lunch yesterday, whereas the particulars of the year right after I left are vague. Why do certain times feel more familiar than others that are more recent?<br />
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In this picture I am saying goodbye to my mother at the airport before flying to Maryland for my first year at the Academy. I had never been to the east coast before, or spent more than two weeks away from home, so this was a BIG deal for both of us. When I look at this picture, she seems to be hanging onto me for life; I seem to be hanging onto her with a mixture of relief, sadness, and anticipation for what was to begin for me at the conclusion of that hug. I was her baby, the youngest, and had a very close bond, yet as an adult I have come to realize that the bond was never as close in reality as I thought it was in my mind. Oh, she loved me, make no mistake, she would have killed anyone in a second had they tried to harm me. But our bond originated out of tragedy--the death of my sister one month before I was born, so her love for me would always weigh heavy with desperation and loss. </div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yO1sYfIXxkg/V9eCz8Nn6TI/AAAAAAAADTo/IG6whHxYNqEfJwN-WCgRliuMEngQ0Cm_gCEw/s1600/IMG_0004_NEW_0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yO1sYfIXxkg/V9eCz8Nn6TI/AAAAAAAADTo/IG6whHxYNqEfJwN-WCgRliuMEngQ0Cm_gCEw/s320/IMG_0004_NEW_0001.jpg" width="320" /></a>I did not feel like her baby--I was 18, and itching to start an adventure as an adult. I would not know for many years how it took every fiber of her being to not stop me from getting on that plane. Her desperation deferred to my needs regardless of the cost to herself; this is why true selflessness is grievous--it is born out of fear of loss. Not all of my hugs carried so much meaning. This one on the left was simply and completely about affection. </div>
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This is me with Christie Brinkley, of course, circa 1982. She was a guest star on a television special that Bob Hope was filming from the Naval Academy grounds, and I had the good sense to volunteer to be on the crew for the show. During rehearsal week, she was friendly with everyone and we all got chummy, and it was my first taste of celebrity. Not surprisingly, Christie seems more at ease here than I did--she was lying on the ground when I asked for the picture, and she eagerly asked me to join her there, but I was too nervous so I asked her to stand up. She did so gladly, and promptly threw her arms around me as though she had been friends with me for years. This was how friendly and unpretentious she was--she acted just like "one of the guys", but she wasn't. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in person, and little did either of us know that she would soon be touched by tragedy, as only a year later her fiance would die tragically in a racing car accident. Had I known that this was going to happen to her, I think I might have hugged her more tightly.<br />
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What is music, when you sit and think about it? Is it rhythm? Is it melody? Is it lyric? I remember hearing some story about how the first music was probably created by sticks hitting against stones or something like that. Percussion, you know. That makes sense to me. I like to imagine that the first percussive music was an attempt to externalize our inner rhythm--the heartbeat--but at the same time I also like to think that it is connected to something less romantic but more universal--that rhythm is a part of nature's vibration, and that when we move, we are simply joining in. </div>
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What is the point of it? Why does the body move to a rhythmic beat, sway to a lovely melody? I think that it is the body playing, both with its own abilities and with its relationship with the world. When they say, "get into the groove" they are talking about joining the flow of life--not just what is happening in our little worlds, but what is happening all around. Have you ever watched a flower turn toward the sun? Perhaps this is a similar process, where the organism seeks out, and responds to, that which provides life. I think that music helps us live. I think it provides movement. Movement is life. </div>
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I don't know about you, but I can't think of music without thinking of movement, with each being the effect of, and the stimulus for, the other. It doesn't even matter which came first, because it is impossible to imagine a time when one existed without the other. For me, movement to music was an effortless undertaking. My mother and father were both incredible dancers, and at some point in my early teens I discovered that this new thing called "disco" had a power over my body. I was tall for my age, and to be able to dance at fifteen meant that I was popular with the girls at the school dances--they didn't have to bend over to slow dance with me, an important point for young women who are eager to start wearing high heels. </div>
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My father, as I said, was an astonishing dancer from way back to his own school days, and he used to tell me that dancing is "all in the hips". I believed him, at least as far as social dancing goes. But I remember how early on I yearned to move more than just my hips. The music of the day seemed to be calling me to go further in, deeper, harder, and longer. I could not ignore it, nor did I want to, because for a skinny sissy boy who was known to be "sensitive", the dance floor was the one place where I outshined them all. On the dance floor my body came into power. It just <i>knew</i>. </div>
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Right out of high school I went into the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, but I left after only two years to become a dancer. Why? Because, as Gloria Estefan sang, "the rhythm is gonna get ya". I studied ballet, jazz, and tap, and I even taught and choreographed at one point. I remember how I used to lay down and close my eyes while listening to a piece of music that I wanted to set to movement, and afterward I would have to go into the studio and see if the vision I had imagined was even possible. I needed to be able to do everything that I set on other dancers, and I would sometimes practice my own choreography in the middle of the night--just me and the music. </div>
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I suspect that my father was envious of my ability to dance--this was one area of skill where I actually had the talent to surpass him. Why he saw this as a threat instead of an accomplishment is beyond me, but I suppose that my dancing caused him to reflect on his own "familiar life", only to realize how detached he was from it. </div>
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If he had looked close enough, he would have seen that he was in me, in my movement, my passion for music and dance. For both of us, movement was not a choice--we were called by music. Besides, I could not dance like he did--nobody could. There was no threat, only difference. I wish he had embraced that difference, among the many others, but at this point in his life it was about hanging on to what was familiar--I suspect he was afraid of who he might become if his past glories became unfamiliar. </div>
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Have you ever done anything that makes no sense at all simply because you had to do it? If not, don't wait for fucking ever. Find whatever rhythm calls to you, and heed the call, even briefly. Because what you will get out of it is the ability to STOP, at any time, the mandate that every activity must be tethered to an outcome. What you will get out of it is the experience of <i>having</i> an experience, rather than waiting for one or observing one. The world, at least the Western world, is quickly becoming a place that is watched rather than lived in. The appeal, I suppose, is that watching is less work and more entertaining, so where is the downside? The downside is in excess. It helps to know when to stop watching and when to start living. We all have to find that line for ourselves, don't we. Have you?</div>
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I think a LOT about love--what it is, what it means, how it looks. The novel I will probably never finish is all about if we can ever know whether <i>what we feel</i> is about the other person or about us, and beyond that, when we can know that it is <i>real</i>. Some say that true love happens when we are more interested in another's happiness than we are ours. To some, this description will sound like co-dependence (a term I abhor), but if you remove that bias from it, it describes the essence of <i>care</i>. Loving another, having concern for their well-being, wanting to make them happy, <i>none of these require that you stop doing the same for yourself</i>; but real love <i>does</i> require that your interest in the other be based on recognizing that they are <i>not </i>you. Why is this important? The way I see it, until you can do this, you are not <i>in</i> love, you are just "in love".</div>
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Limerence (being in love) is a real state, but culturally constructed. Attraction and bonding are essential parts of our need as social mammals to attach--the romance part is was made up (courting). But I like to say that you don't have to take the frosting off of the cake, as long as you remember that the frosting compliments the cake, and not the other way around. I observe that most people see it as the latter, and then wake up a year later sick of eating just the frosting. What happens is that, during limerence, we become strongly attached to another, <i>but we don't know who they are</i>. The cultural construct of courting and romance has misled us to believe that attachment equals love, but it doesn't if you go by my definition. What is missing in limerence is <i>bonding</i>, which tends to happen after six months or a year. The key component of bonding, if it develops well, is <i>interest in the other based on healthy differentiation</i>. Bonding is not enmeshment! It is a process of <b>coming together as one</b> while at the same time <b>maintaining a two-ness</b> (Walter Brakelmanns' concept of "Closeness"). If one never moves from limerence to healthy bonding, then the panic begins, as they try to sustain the fantasy connection despite the encroaching reality of disconnection. Bummer.<br />
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I knew little about love when I was young. In my 20's I was so desperate to be loved that I would have licked bad frosting off of a dirty knife for a chance at connection. Nowadays, I have a different perspective. I am not so interested in entering the psychotic state of being in love, because that is not so fun anymore--I already feel good about myself, so why go nuts for someone in pursuit of that? Still, it would be nice if my heart were to speed up a bit in response to a person's gaze or touch, I suppose. Is that even possible when the false meaning has been extracted from the process of connection? Can I get back to basics and find an organic excitement that is detached from a cultural narrative? I honestly don't know if this is possible, or even desirable. I suspect that, for me, the longing is for a remnant of the familiar--that which is hanging around until something comes along to replace it. I wonder what that might be...<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-n9A0Nb654z0/V9eC5wvAVFI/AAAAAAAADTo/Ake49QfSJIoLRt4qYrL3JkzAlufBV9A7ACEw/s1600/me%2Band%2BRandy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-n9A0Nb654z0/V9eC5wvAVFI/AAAAAAAADTo/Ake49QfSJIoLRt4qYrL3JkzAlufBV9A7ACEw/s320/me%2Band%2BRandy.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me and Randy in the mid-Eighties. Please forgive my moustache!</td></tr>
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Randy, on the right in the above picture, was limerence big time for me. He was a part-time model (hot!) who worked as a cook at the Crest Cafe (hot!), a little diner where I worked in as a busboy in the San Diego. We were a ragtag group of young people, high on Madonna energy and the genderqueer expressiveness of eighties New Wave. In our youth, I suppose we sensed a new era of possibility within ourselves and the world, and this was reflected in the music of the time: Culture Club, The Eurythmics, The Cure, New Order, etc. We were <b>change set to a dance beat</b>.<br />
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Randy used to make me lemonades at the restaurant and hand them to me over the kitchen counter when I was working. He had dangerously seductive green eyes and would let me know that he did this <i>only for me</i>. He was obviously flirting, and my heart sped up a a bit every time. We began dating (having sex), hanging out with his beautiful sister and their friends, and generally getting drunk on our youth, beauty, and coolness. It was a heady time for me. I thought Randy was so fucking cool, and being with him made me feel cool as well (the limerence was about me!). We burned brightly for a few weeks, but the flame died quickly as we realized that sex could only carry you so far. I used to think that he broke my heart, for I suffered emotionally when we split, but I think now that what he did was break my connection to what he represented--acceptance, coolness, relevance--the things that I longed for that meant that I was a part of the world.<br />
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Randy was a "door" for me, an entrance into feeling a part of things rather than apart from things. But he was not the only door--there were many through the years, and I tried to love them all. But more than limerence, what I valued most from these encounters was the feeling that <i>I mattered to someone for a while</i>. This proved to be more seductive to me than even green eyes. It represented original love. I just didn't know that this is what I was looking for. Now I know, and I found out that I had to give this to myself, which I did. Perhaps this is why my favorite companion is me. Nevertheless, I don't regret my messy sexy travels through lives and hearts, and I cherish the memories of the <i>Randys</i> who joined me for brief periods of time. Like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, I had to take an external journey before I could take an internal one.<br />
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At this point, I suspect that I may be interested in journeying outside once again, but this time I think it will be an unfamiliar path.<br />
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<i>Reflection </i>is not an odd way to pass the time as the year draws to a close. This essay is more than just a reflection on a year though, it is a reflection of a life. But the reflection is incomplete, as is the life that is reflected upon. I chose to focus on my youth, since that is period is far from the present time, and if you were to ask me the purpose of doing this reflection, I would tell you that it is because it is a prelude to the never-ending question, "What now?" The answer to that question is both beholden to <i>and</i> unleashed from the past, if you can imagine such a circumstance. It is beholden because the answer is influenced by what came before, and it is unleashed because I can choose freely <i>despite </i>what came before.<br />
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As the year winds down many people think about their recent choices, and sometimes they vow to make different ones; they "resolve" to change the way they choose in the coming year. It rarely works. This is not because we can't change, but because we underestimate how difficult it really is to unleash from the past. Changing choices is not like changing your shirt; some choices can feel like you are changing your very skin. I prefer to review my choices daily; it is practice in case the results are unpleasant for me or for others. This constant assessment gets me used to <i>movement</i>, and yet even still the status quo calls to me. However, it is getting easier to turn away from it.<br />
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Be care-full with your choices--I suggest loading them up with meaning. They make up who you are, and yet they also make sense of who you were. The tether between the past and the present is as fragile and essential as an umbilical cord, and yet the difference is that this tether should not be cut (nor can it be!). My past is both familiar and unfamiliar, but it is mine nonetheless, as is this very moment that has just passed. My goal is to move forward with intention, as much as I can give attention to this, and to be purposeful with retention. I am and I am not who I was. But who I was will always be a part of who I am. Perhaps that is why I so enjoy solitude at times--that is when I can nurture the relationship I have to my history and my future. I like tending to the relationship between the two. It is not advisable to look back on your life only to realize that it is not at all familiar anymore.<br />
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-91898798797950527332016-08-14T07:15:00.001-07:002016-08-23T11:37:03.431-07:00I Used To Think...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have lived long enough at this stage (of the game) to have a retrospective view of the arcs of my thinking over the years. It is a beautiful sight, this view--a number of clean, bumpy arcs from one point of view to another, dotted here and there with the blood of my mortally wounded previous worldviews. I notice along the way that some arcs have returned to sender, so to speak; they return from whence they came after a process of careful consideration. Meanwhile, other arcs travel a more daring route, ignited by a societal "kick", moving rapidly from the source and traversing unfamiliar landscape to settle in unknown but welcoming territory.<br />
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So what's the point?<br />
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Thinking is an activity--but I suspect having been misled by the premise that it is meant to go somewhere. As an activity, thinking has many purposes, only <i>one</i> of which is to "arrive" at conclusions (a pedestrian function, I find). I am more interested in noticing how thinking influences my current experiences in the world, while reflecting back the very same. I am interested in how my thinking decorates my immediate environment--I will concern myself over where I am moving to once I start moving. Devoid of destination, this type of thinking allows time for lounging in wormholes and sandtraps; this type of thinking dances with the outside in a free form sort of tango where there is no lead and no follower, just rhythm. This type of thinking flirts with me for my attention in a way that shiny-eyed young men used to. This type of thinking is the only thinking that leads to me writing essays.<br />
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My thinking these days continues to poke and prod me with its restlessness, belying my age and growing indifference. I feel at times like a parent with a toddler who never ages, you feel me? And like a dad shaking his head while smirking with pride, I find myself entranced as much by my thinking's current shiny objects as I do its trail of discards.<br />
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This essay is about the discards. <br />
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1. I used to think that because I was a nice person, everyone liked me. I have since discovered that even though I may be nice at times, not everyone thinks of me in this way, and some of these people do not like me because of how they think of me. When people demonstrate their dislike of me for a reason I have not given them, I stop being nice to them, validating their assessment. I don't think I am a nice person anymore--I think I am a person who can be nice, unless I am not. The latter scenario is curiously dependent on whether or not you are nice to me.<br />
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2. I used to think that sex was love. I was wrong--not about the sex, but about the love. Sex <i>is</i> love, even if you never see the person's face or know their name, but it is not the type of love I used to think it was, the kind of love I used to look for many years ago. That type of love comes as a result of what happens before and after sex, not during. I wish I had known this. </div>
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3. I used to think that God would protect me. I no longer think there are gods. I no longer think I am protected, nor do I need to be.</div>
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4. I used to think that I was not smart. I now know that I am.</div>
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5. I used to think that Madonna would never age. Seems I was right about that one. What I did not think was that the younger generations would not deserve her.</div>
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6. I used to think that the religious were to be respected. I now think they are to be pitied, and in some cases (like my brother), completely ignored.</div>
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7. I used to think that people had each other's best interests in mind. I still think that, but I also think that our culture has turned us against each other's best interests.</div>
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8. I used to think that friendships were second to love relationships. I was wrong.</div>
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9. I used to think that I could no longer be moved by music. And then I saw this:</div>
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10. I used to think that I wanted to live in Jeannie's bottle, but I now realize I really just wanted to be Jeannie. </div>
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11. I used to think my family was right about me. Now I realize they were just scared. </div>
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12. I used to think that wearing the latest clothing trends made me "cool". Now I realize that wearing no clothes in my 50's is cooler. </div>
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13. I used to think that life was a test where I had to score well. Then I thought it was a game where I had to win. Now I think it is a meal where there is no scoring or winning--just taking it in bite by bite, enjoying and discovering new and old flavors, appreciating the experience even if I burn my tongue, sharing with others, digesting it slowly, nourished and temporarily satisfied until the next "hunger" arrives. </div>
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14. I used to think that doing my own yard work was being in relationship with nature. I still do. </div>
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15. I used to think that it would get better. Now I realize that <i>we</i> get better. </div>
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16. I used to think that magic was something outside of me. I used to think that it had to do with things that could not exist--what you find in the shadows or in between rays of light. But magic is just another word for what we have not been trained to see. Magic is nature, and it is perfectly logical while also being mysterious. Magic is the area of science where we just don't know everything yet--the moment of conception, the communication between bees, why we select one person out of twenty in a room. Just because we don't know does not give us the right to outsource the answer to a god. That is reductive and lazy, and frankly disrespectful to nature. The gift of magic is that it allows us to sit in mystery without clues or a solution. I used to think that solutions were what I wanted--they offered order and comfort. I now think that the safest place to be is on the high wire: hyper sensitive to the laws of balance while averting disaster with every successfully placed step. </div>
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Magic is the space between steps. I think this is where I am most comfortable. </div>
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I think.</div>
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-30728200986829609162016-06-18T09:23:00.000-07:002016-06-24T18:07:18.514-07:00My Response to the Orlando Shooting<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #6d6c6c; line-height: 115%;">I have struggled
with what to say about the Orlando shooting, as there are so many people saying
so many things. I am sending this out because I decided that it might be of
value to share how I respond to human tragedy, hoping that it might add to the
conversation of what to do. </span></i><i><span style="background: white; color: #6d6c6c; line-height: 115%;">I am writing based on what I have read about
the incident up to this point, and this essay is not an assertion of fact, but
rather an exploration on how I respond to what goes on in the world at large. </span></i></span><i><span style="background: white; color: #6d6c6c; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Please read on as I discuss response as a
catalyst to insight and change...</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 15pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">How does one respond
to a public human tragedy? It is hard to know. Responses to the Orlando mass
killing have included anger, grief, sadness, rage, compassion, confusion, and
even indifference. I myself have felt both anger and sadness over the needless
loss of young lives and the overt demonstration of homophobia. But as the week
goes on, I have to ask myself, as someone who did not personally know any of the
victims, how to express these feelings in a way that creates change within
myself, my environment, those who I come into contact with, and the
culture at large. </span><span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">The process of doing
this is challenging and won't be embraced by all, but I am sharing it because
for me it channels grief into positive change, and turns tragedy into something
palatable. I have to be able to look at what happened without turning away in
order to be able to then look inside myself. So let's begin.</span><span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">The phrase "We
Are Orlando" is currently showing up in many places. What does that mean?
It means many things, but to me it means that I am both the victims AND
the shooter. Not literally, of course, but in a way that prompts insight and
self-reflection. Why would I use a national tragedy to engage in
self-reflection? Because by separating myself from the culture and influences
that contributed to this happening, I am nullifying the effect of anything I
feel beyond myself. </span><span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Orlando was not about
me, but it is, in part, </span><i><span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 15.0pt;">of </span></i><span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">me,
and of all of us. I am familiar with the homophobia and self-loathing that the
shooter seems to have been influenced by--when you grow up in a homophobic
society, you automatically ingest some of that. It continues to
be a struggle for me to make conscious choices around how I think
about other gay men, especially those who do not
"behave" as I do. Am I colluding with homophobia by
"passing" as a heterosexual male, or just presenting myself
authentically? Am I perhaps strengthening self-loathing in myself by
censoring some of my own creative (and flamboyant) self-expression? Do I stick
close to those who are like me, avoiding opportunities to explore difference
and even disagreement in others? What is the experience that someone will come
away with after spending time with me--inclusiveness or entitlement? How do my
choices influence the local environment as well as the culture at large? Are
there times when I am an aggressor toward others, and times when I find myself
a victim of aggression? <i>How does hate show up in me? </i></span><span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">These are challenging
questions, but what I find is that the asking of them leads to a less
impulsive response. It leads to a response that does not see merely
innocence or evil, but instead sees the complexity of living in a culture and
economy that is fueled in large part by fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar,
and the many ways this manifests in our actions towards others. The response
that comes out of this reflection has a better chance of including compassion
and a desire to act. The response that comes out of this has a better chance of
influencing positive change. A rant is often just a rant. I am interested in
changed outcomes. </span><span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">I did not know the
shooter. It appears that he suffered from several serious internal
conflicts, and was probably also mentally unstable. This view does not excuse
his horrific actions. When I work with couples I will say that both parties are
equally responsible for the dynamic of the relationship, a dynamic that
sometimes causes problems, but that <i>each individual has to be 100%
responsible for the actions they choose</i> to take in response to this
dynamic. <u>The shooter is 100% responsible for his actions</u>, but at
the same time I admit to <i>my</i> share of responsibility for
creating a cultural dynamic of fear and homophobia that may have influenced
him. Rather than feel guilty about this (which stops the process), I consider
how to then respond in a way that strengthens connection among others, rather
than dis-connection. I consider how to respond in a way
that deconstructs this harmful cultural narrative.</span><span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">To put it simply, I
resort to a question that I have used many times with clients when they are
conflicted on how to act on their anger or grief: <b>What would LOVE
choose? </b>This question cuts through the desire to hurt others or hurt
myself, and opens up possibilities for healing action, even if it means saying
to another, <i>"Help me through this, I am having trouble getting to
love."</i> </span><span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Do you notice how
people help each other out after a natural disaster, or how communities have
come together to support Orlando and the families who are grieving the loss of
loved ones? THAT is an example of what LOVE would choose, and that is an
example of the response that I work to cultivate, since love sent out is
received by both the recipient AND the sender. As Pema Chodron writes, we get to decide which wolf we are going to
feed: the angry vengeful one, or the loving compassionate one. You decision
will hinge on what you feel will most nourish your human, <i>being</i>. </span><span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Everything is an
opportunity, even tragedy, to explore how we are being toward ourselves and
others. We don't need to create tragedy to do this, thankfully, but when
tragedies happen, this is one way to live through the pain. </span><span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 13.5pt;">Choose love, and then
action.</span><span style="color: #6d6c6c; font-family: "helvetica" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-30895073490047677232016-05-30T12:07:00.000-07:002016-10-26T09:04:32.289-07:00Matthew Broderick CANNOT be 54<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; line-height: 22.5px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;">(Photo by Andrew Toth/Getty Images for the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival)</span></span></td></tr>
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I am at a strange time in my life. Things in the world are not just changing, they are also <i>changing over</i>, and I am not yet clear on how I feel about it. Change itself is inevitable, but often, what something changes <i>into</i> is not revealed in a linear fashion. The end result of change, if there is such a thing (there is not), is often only vaguely connected to the intention at the point of initiation. This is because the process of change itself is poked and prodded along the way by outside forces that contribute to change. These forces are ever-present, making the very idea of change a difficult one to conceptualize because there is no "opposite" to reference. But as I said at the beginning of this paragraph, I am more interested in discussing <i>change</i> <i>over</i> than change, since this is a potentially digestible exploration.<br />
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***<br />
Matthew Broderick just turned 54. I think he is too young to be as pudgy as he is. He and I were, until he turned 54, the same age. I am a few months behind him, which means that from his birthday until the day I celebrate mine in August, he is temporarily one year older than I. I am not entirely okay with him being anywhere near my age, but it is what is happening. As everyone knows, he is also married to Sarah Jessica Parker, who I think is too old to be as thin as she is.<br />
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They have a son named James Wilke, who is 14 as of this writing, and they have twin girls who were delivered by a surrogate, who also have names. They have homes in New York, Ireland, and the Hamptons, and are worth several millions of dollars together, so you don't need to feel bad for them for the things I am saying. Besides, what I am saying is not about Matthew or Sarah, nor is it about their kids, of whom I have named one. It is about me.<br />
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What you need to know about me is that I am not okay with Matthew Broderick being an older man. Granted, 54 is not "old" in today's bionic culture, where nobody seems to get forehead wrinkles anymore, but if you lived through the time when he was a "big deal", then maybe you can relate to my current distress.<br />
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What is bothering me is that I have no frame of reference for thinking of Matthew as an older man. To me, he is now and forever <b>Ferris Bueller</b>, the coolest and cutest guy in school, and I, by association, am a person still capable of feeling renewal. But he is far from the former, and I am reduced to playing 'hide and seek' with the latter.<br />
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I remember when I went to my first high school reunion. It was our 25th, can you imagine? I was unsure about attending, as I had not seen any of my schoolmates since our graduation in 1980. I was not sure I wanted to see what had become of them, but even more so, I was not sure I wanted to see how they had become 25 years older. My memories of high school are precious to me, as they are to many people, and I like to think of that time between 1977 and 1980 as an era of innocence, not in deed but in thought, where I moved through my life at the helm of possibility. The construction of myself has depended, in part, on the stability of the building blocks. If I were to see in my classmates' crumbling facades both the celebrated and failed middle age adults they have become, I was not entirely sure what would then become of me.<br />
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The good new is that I turned out okay, post-reunion, but not before I negotiated adjustments to the narratives of both my past and my present.<br />
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***<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferris_Bueller%27s_Day_Off" target="_blank"><i>Ferris Bueller's Day Off</i> </a>came out in 1986. I was 24 at the time, moving toward 25, and I was a dancer in San Diego, California. The dominant pop culture personality was Madonna, of course, and there was a definite entrenchment for those around me in the post-disco androgynous glamour that was<i> new wave</i>. <a href="http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1986.html" target="_blank">That was not all</a> that was going on, though. AIDS, Chernobyl, Whitney Houston's debut album, and the Challenger explosion all made news. For our purposes, Matthew Broderick has just come off of a few notable films, but he was not yet a huge star.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adorable, isn't he?</td></tr>
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That all changed with <i>Ferris Bueller</i>. Written and directed by the prolific John Hughes, it was a film that was intended for Broderick from the beginning, and one viewing of it will show you why. Matthew played the character as an innocent, kind and generous, yet possessing an edge; he is a free-spirited and clever teen who ends up liberating all who cross his path. Even the school principal, Mr. Rooney, is transformed, though at the end of the film we are not yet sure if it is for the better.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cameron, played by Alan Ruck</td></tr>
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Unlike many teen comedies where the grown-ups are all dolts, the adults in <i>Ferris Bueller</i> are more complex (though still dolts)--they are essentially different versions of what can happens over time when a teen allows their spark to be dulled. In the film, this conflict is illustrated brilliantly by Cameron, Ferris' best friend, who has become a depressive hypochondriac as a result of years of conforming to his parents' expectations. Cameron's story is a sweetly sad counterpart to Ferris' free spirit, and yet the stories compliment each other and give the film emotional depth.<br />
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I remember to this day when I first saw the film. I was in a foul mood at the time; I think I was dating someone I was not sure I wanted to date and the last thing I wanted to do was go to a film with him. Still, I had committed to the meeting, so in I went. As I watched the movie, Matthew's portrayal and the story had a magical effect on me--they restored <b>hope</b>. I needed to see that film, and when I emerged from the darkened theater I saw the day, and my date, from a different perspective. <i>I was joyful.</i> It is that kind of a film.<br />
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Hughes captured a unique time in the 80's. Teens were just starting to develop into modern hip versions of young adults, wearing clothes that were ridiculously intentional and self-assured, yet dripping with the ironic effortlessness. They were not just kids anymore--they were beautiful young adults who were already putting their stamp on the outdated fussy world of adults. Think about it, most of the parents of teens in the 80's were born in the late 40's, growing up themselves in the late 50's. The 80's was a whole different culture from theirs. Ferris Bueller was a new kind of teenager on the screen. He was the young man every guy wanted to be and every girl wanted to be with (and some guys wanted to be with, including yours truly); he was the friend everybody wanted to be best friends with, and the son every parent wanted to have. You could not imagine him having gone through an awkward stage.<br />
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To me, he represented <i>potential</i>, young and confident, taking in life by gulps, <i>unafraid</i>. He showed me the cost of giving in to fear. Matthew Broderick was a part of that time for me as well as being a catalyst for change; and he will forever be best known for this role in a film that continues to be referenced in popular culture.<br />
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So how can he be 54?<br />
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***<br />
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Unlike the challenge I have in gaining perspective on Broderick's aging, I have pretty much accepted that I am in my 50's. The difference is that I have been living with myself for the past 30 years since <i>Ferris Bueller</i> came out, so in that time I have had a day to day experience of getting older. Matthew has occupied less space in my attention span, so when he turns up in a picture, walking his kids in Manhattan in a rumpled sweater, I have a bit of a flip-out. How could he have grey hair??<br />
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When I see him in his current state, it has the effect of distorting the picture I have constructed of my past. In other words, it is a glaring reminder that <i>things change</i>. While that may seem a given regarding the price of gas and L.A. rents, it is less simply accepted regarding the past of our youth. We don't want those memories to be fucked with, do we? They mean something to us, and are instrumental in how we think of ourselves in the present day. When characters from long ago show up changed in the present, it reminds us of our own changing selves, our own aging selves, and the irrefutability of time passed. When I see Matthew Broderick celebrating his 54th birthday, I am strikingly reminded that I too have aged 30 years since 1986--perhaps day by day, but 30 years nonetheless. The past is over, and so is my youth. Fuck!<br />
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But even more challenging than accepting the changes wrought by age is the acknowledgment that things are <i>changing over</i>. Matthew Broderick is no longer a top movie star. Today his equivalent does not even exist in my mind, all the male stars under 30 kind of blend together for me--famous more for their beauty than for any particular characteristic. But don't think of me as a rocking chair grouch, I realize that Matthew in his day represented change as well--he was not Frank Sinatra or Mickey Rooney!<br />
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But this is my point entirely--that things change over, just as they always have. The reason why it is hitting so hard right now is because, like Matthew, I am on the <i>retreating</i> end of this current shift, or so I think. This shift has been imposed for the simple reason that we are not young anymore. I don't mean to imply that we don't have relevance--we do--just not so much in popular culture. Disposable culture. Chew them up, spit them out.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Louie C.K.</td></tr>
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Louis CK, one of my favorite comedians and actors, did an episode about this in his show <i>Louie </i>(Season 5, Episode 3), in which he found himself being blatantly disregarded by a 20-something shop owner who saw no value in encouraging his patronage. When he told her that she should care about his experience in the store and should want him to shop, she says back to him,<br />
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<i>"We're the future, and you don't belong in it. You have this deep down feeling that you don't matter anymore." </i></blockquote>
He agrees with her. The saving grace of the show is that I know that Louie wrote this for himself as a way to comment on the changeover effect. In essence, he is commenting on the fact that, for those of us born before 1970, it is not our world anymore. It is changing over, but we are still here. This means that I worry about what it is changing over into (which will be addressed in a future essay). Am I concerned about a culture that undervalues aging simply because I am aging, or are my concerns legitimate in the culture?<br />
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<i>The essay SHOULD stop here, but you know me, I have just a little more to discuss that is related to this topic, so I beg your indulgence for just a bit more...</i><br />
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***<br />
I ask myself why this matters. It is not as though I should be surprised that aging has happened--I knew I would be this age in this year way back when I was 20. No, there is something else, and I suspect it has to do with the significance of <i>youth</i>. Youth is a quality associated with being young, but that is too limiting a boundary. Don't be deceived into thinking of youth as reliant on age--its true essence stands independently, and it acts as a driver rather than a rider. But what does it drive??<br />
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What is it about being young--what is the reverence for? The answer could be twofold, perhaps, if you look at it from the inside out. First, there is the appeal of youthful beauty: smooth skin, clear eyes, strong body, thick hair, etc. But for me at this point this list is not enough to draw any more than passing interest--it lacks the depth I need to engage and sustain interest. The second quality that gives relevance to youth is far more seductive to me, and that is <i>potential</i>, and it is this quality that has inspired this essay. Potential wanes as one ages, though you might argue that it merely decreases in some areas and increases in others, but I refer specifically to the <i>potential for living</i>. When I was young, I had so much more living to do, and that afternoon viewing of <i>Ferris Bueller</i> reminded me of that in full cinematic color. I walked out of that theater reconnected to my youthful potential, and I challenge you to present a more inviting experience for a young person.<br />
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Seeing Matthew Broderick as a frumpy, graying 54 year old man is like a thump on the head, much like the film was 30 years ago, except this time the thump is an unwelcome reminder that my potential, while still potent, is running low. I had my chance to make the world, and I suppose I did as much as the next guy--but now that power is shifting as the changeover continues. And I am just not sure how I feel about this.<br />
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What I AM sure of is that I am not okay with Matthew Broderick turning 54. Of that I am sure. So I will remember him as Ferris Bueller, and use that memory to connect to the origin of my own remaining potential. After all, Ferris Bueller has not aged a bit.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ferris Bueller, forever young and full of potential<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me, with remaining potential</td></tr>
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-69178893365029292102016-01-17T08:00:00.000-08:002016-01-17T08:00:03.133-08:00Bowie<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kuw4LmNv0fI/VpR-Nml3lpI/AAAAAAAABpQ/zl6Dbg4qa0w/s1600/7565137.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kuw4LmNv0fI/VpR-Nml3lpI/AAAAAAAABpQ/zl6Dbg4qa0w/s320/7565137.jpg" width="320" /></a>I have a vivid memory of my first exposure to David Bowie, and it was not at all pleasant. Mind you, unpleasantness is not always a harbinger of bad relationships; sometimes it is the effect of a particular time and place. In this case, it was <i>certainly</i> that, as I recall being only a boy of 11 at the time, living in Chula Vista, CA. It was 1973, and for some inexplicable reason, I was given a copy of the album "Aladdin Sane" for either my birthday or Christmas--I can't recall which. The story gets even stranger when I tell you it was <i>my parents</i> who gave me the album. Why was this strange? Well, it was 1973, and if I was listening to anything at all, it was probably what was on pop radio in those days: Jim Croce, Helen Reddy, Diana Ross, Elton John, Roberta Flack, and my parents were not what you would call "current" on the music the kids listened to.<br />
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Hell, <i>I </i>was not current on the music the kids listened to. I was 11!<br />
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Bowie was not played much on pop radio back then, even though in 1973 he was a bona-fide rock superstar, one year after the breakthrough release of his album "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars". Elton John was a rock star too, but his music was embraced by radio since the songs largely fit the format of what was being played--Bowie was an altogether different beast. Elton John was outrageous, but David Bowie was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before, making music that was unlike anything ever heard before. He was definitely unlike anything I had ever seen before.<br />
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Even though I don't remember exactly when I got the record, I do vividly remember opening it up and gazing for the first time on the cover. It freaked me out completely: the makeup, the lightning bolt, the hair, the naked torso. And what exactly was the meaning of that pool of liquid on his collarbone? (It is supposed to be a teardrop.) I didn't know what to do with it. I could not identify at the time the feelings his face brought up in me, but now I would describe them as a mixture of shock, disgust, curiosity, and fear. I do remember that I felt it must be somehow <i>evil</i>, and I didn't want to play it, so my parents returned it. I don't remember what I got in its place, but it was no doubt less memorable. To this day I continue to be curious about why my parents thought it might be an appropriate and appreciated gift to give to me. I never asked them about it, but I like to think that they were appealing to the "outsider" they sensed in their boy, or perhaps they were just trying to keep up with the times. I will never know. What I do know is that as an 11 year old, I was not ready for David Bowie.<br />
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<span style="text-align: center;"> ***</span><br />
<span style="text-align: center;">I did not encounter Bowie again in a significant way until several years later, around 1980. This was an electric time for music, as disco was waning and new wave was just starting to show signs of life; but many artists were caught "in between", and many of them never made it out to the other side. Bowie had never become a "disco star", so he made the transition quite easily, especially since his 70's music was already showing signs of the future. In 1980 he released "Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)" to critical and commercial success, and I became aware of the song <i>Fashion</i> because it was being played on certain radio stations and in certain youth oriented retail stores. I distinctly remember visiting Georgetown University in Washington D.C. during my first year of attendance at the Naval Academy, and while in a record store I saw the video for <i>Fashion</i> playing on the TV. Now this was before MTV was launched the following year, so I am not sure how it was playing, but it was actually the first time I remember seeing a video for a song, and it struck me as something new and cutting edge. (Music videos had actually been used to promote songs since the 60's to some extent, but of course entered the zeitgeist with the launch of MTV.) </span><br />
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<i style="text-align: center;">Fashion</i><span style="text-align: center;"> is a hypnotic song, and I love it to this day. At that time, it signaled to me the possibility that music could be more than just pleasant songs to listen to--it could also excite and stimulate, seduce and challenge. <i>Fashion</i> is not Bowie's greatest song, but it made an impact on me in that it awakened the artist, it appealed to the outsider, it flirted with the explorer. When I saw the video and listened to the song that day, something in me started to change. I became aware of possibilities in expression that were not shown to good Catholic boys from Chula Vista, California. Bowie signaled to me that there was a whole other world of people who lived differently than I did. And I wanted in. </span><br />
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My roommate at the time on campus was a big guy named Kevin, who was from Los Angeles, and he was older than we were since he came to the Academy from the enlisted ranks. Kevin was brilliant but lazy, a common combination that keeps many people from accomplishing many things, but he did introduce me to real rock music. He had hundreds of albums from most of the great rock acts of the 60's and 70's: The Eagles, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Elton John, of course, as well as the "city" bands: Kansas, Boston, Chicago. Kevin introduced me to a world that was richer than the pop landscape I was familiar with, and for the first time in my life I learned that rock music was not yelling and screaming, but actually thoughtful, challenging, melodic, musical, theatrical, seductive, and my favorite--transgressive. </div>
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Bowie's music was part of this offering, and the album that shook me up the most was "Hunky Dory". This was some of the most beautiful music I had ever been exposed to, and the lyrics spoke to the boy in me who was hidden: the gay artist masquerading as a Naval Academy midshipman, the sexual explorer pretending to be a heterosexual virgin, the philosophical thinker trying to be a staid engineer. I knew of the song <i>Changes</i>, since it had been a pretty big hit ten years previous, but I hadn't known about <i>Oh! You Pretty Things, Life On Mars?, or Quicksand</i>. One of my favorite lyrics of all time is from the latter:</div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="line-height: 20px;">I'm not a prophet or a stone age man</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="line-height: 20px;">Just a mortal with potential of a superman</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="line-height: 20px;">I'm living on</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="line-height: 20px;">I'm tethered to the logic of Homo Sapien</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="line-height: 20px;">Can't take my eyes from the great salvation</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="line-height: 20px;">Of bullshit faith</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="line-height: 20px;">If I don't explain what you ought to know</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="line-height: 20px;">You can tell me all about it</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="line-height: 20px;">On the next Bardo</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="line-height: 20px;">I'm sinking in the quicksand of my thought</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="line-height: 20px;">And I ain't got the power anymore.</span></i></span></span></blockquote>
I mean, <i>what the fuck!!!!</i> This album, as many others have declared, changed my life. It's music and lyrics hinted, suggested, and cried to me about a world where all was not as it seems. It described a life where thought could be a cage or a set of wings, where love could be sticky. If suggested that conflict was a state of aliveness, that one could hold two ideas at the same time and not decide, that you could want to move on and yet not be able to let go. This album showed me that things are not always simple, as I was raised to believe, but that we are all "tethered to the logic of Homo Sapien" in ways that were maddening and invigorating.<br />
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Kevin failed out of the Academy before graduating, not because he was not intelligent, but because of his laziness. I have never heard from him since, though I suspect that they sent him back to enlisted ranks. But he did succeed in introducing me to the richness of rock music and the alternative worlds of the artists who created the songs. Thank you, Kevin, wherever you are.<br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">After two years I decided to leave the Academy and take up the study of dance. If you are shaking your head as to why a young man would give up a stable and respectable career as a naval officer for the vagabond existence of a dancer, you aren't the only one, and you do not know me very well. Rather than being a "path", the Academy ended up being a sidebar--it was an opportunity for me to get away from Chula Vista, California, and find out what kind of man I wanted to be. What I found out is that I wanted to be my own kind, not a cloned template cut from the military mold. Like <a href="http://www.metrolyrics.com/major-tom-lyrics-david-bowie.html" target="_blank">Major Tom</a>, I decided to float away from the spaceship and find my own way, and I knew that the path would be paved with music. </span><br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">In 1982, as a 20 year old, and I remember hanging out with a friend I knew when I was in high school. Her name is Annette, and she was unlike anyone I knew, and she was also a fabulous Bowie clone. I had just started to reconnect with the gay world in San Diego after leaving the Academy, and Annette was a willing and eager buddy in this endeavor. We were young, and music was key in our lives as it served as the soundtrack to our attempts at love and laughs. It was during this time that Queen released the duet <i>Under Pressure</i> with Bowie, and a classic was created. Annette and I used to sit on the curb of the street and listen to this song, <i>our</i> song, and we would revel in that particular golden narcissism that only the imagined rebellion of youth can sustain. </span><br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">There was something about the ferocity of the lyric that gets me to this day. A sample of my favorite lines:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: center;"><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 19.1429px;">Can't we give ourselves one more chance?</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 19.1429px;" /><span style="line-height: 19.1429px;">Why can't we give love that one more chance?</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 19.1429px;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 19.1429px;" /><span style="line-height: 19.1429px;">'Cause love's such an old-fashioned word</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 19.1429px;" /><span style="line-height: 19.1429px;">And love dares you to care for</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 19.1429px;" /><span style="line-height: 19.1429px;">The people on the edge of the night</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 19.1429px;" /><span style="line-height: 19.1429px;">And love dares you to change our way of</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 19.1429px;" /><span style="line-height: 19.1429px;">Caring about ourselves</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 19.1429px;" /><span style="line-height: 19.1429px;">This is our last dance</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 19.1429px;" /><span style="line-height: 19.1429px;">This is our last dance</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 19.1429px;" /><span style="line-height: 19.1429px;">This is ourselves</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 19.1429px;" /><span style="line-height: 19.1429px;">Under pressure</span></i></span></blockquote>
I wanted to have this kind of love, the love for the people on the edge of the night. I wanted love to dare me to change how I cared about myself. I wanted love to have me under pressure. I wanted to give myself one more chance (this was my youthful narcissism, as I was just at the beginning of my romantic life!). I did not want to love like everybody else, and you know what? I never did.<br />
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To this day I have not yet had my "last dance".<br />
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Once you have a hero, it takes a lot to dislodge him or her. Bowie became my hero, and he was never dislodged. He flirted with, and seduced, mainstream pop in the 80's with his hit album "Let's Dance", but he can be forgiven for this affair, <br />
because the 80's drew many mavericks from their course for a time, including Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins, The Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand, and more. I don't blame them. But Bowie's affair with the mainstream did not last for long, and it had integrity. However, I was glad to see him return to the edge in the 90's with albums like "1. Outside", and "Earthling". This was not radio music. Instead, he surrounded himself with impeccable musicians and, like Madonna, reformatted current music trends to suit his talents and vision.<br />
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Bottom line, the man cared about music. You could tell by the songs he wrote and the musicians he hired and the producers he employed. He wrote about a world where the outsider had relevance, where the "freak" could fly, and the rebel could lead. He wrote about death and solitude and loss and love and a world of topics that you won't find in most music. His vocals "floated" on top of the production, inviting attention and only pulling focus to bring home the point. He blurred the lines of gender and sexuality, showing us that music could be theater and that art could inform as well as entertain. He never wrote a casual lyric. He was both flawed and perfect, which was an example I needed to become aware of as a youth, having been trapped in both worlds; I needed to know that there was such a thing as duality of existence, and David Bowie showed me that there is.<br />
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He is dead, but will never be forgotten, as his music will awaken future freaks for generations to come. There was a meme spread around Facebook recently that I liked. It said that we should consider ourselves fortunate to exist in a time that included David Bowie. I would go further than that. I consider myself to still be alive because I exist in a time that included David Bowie. His was a life well lived, and he shared it with the public in glorious notes and melodies. Goodbye, my hero.<br />
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-6587503634304237552015-12-05T07:48:00.000-08:002015-12-07T20:22:41.122-08:00Giving up Dating, Part 2: An Update on the "Forever Stop"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>This is a ridiculously long essay, but I feel it is necessary. The essay that this follows up on, </i><a href="http://leavingcaliblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-forever-stop-giving-up-dating.html" target="_blank"><b>The Forever Stop: Giving Up Dating</b></a><i>, is the most viewed on this blog, and so in standard "Hollywood" tradition, it makes sense to have a sequel! In this case I hope that you find this to be more than just a trite re-hash of previous themes; perhaps more of a further examination or extension of the original themes. Who knows...this may end up being a trilogy! Read on and enjoy...</i><br />
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There are certain things that one should not "let go of". <i>Fear</i> is a classic example of one such thing. <b><span style="font-size: large;">"Let go of fear!"</span></b> Do you know of anyone who has successfully let go of fear? I don't. I do know many people who have <i>tried</i> to let go of fear, and as a result now suffer not only from fear, but also anxiety and the shame of failure. The idea of "letting go" of our feelings is right on par with the religious expectation that we should strive to never "sin". It sounds good on paper and sells books, but it only generates disaster when applied to real life lived by real humans. With fear, what generally works is <i>leaning into it</i>, as Pema Chodron advises. With fear, "letting go" does not work. It often results in something more like chopping off the hand that is doing the holding. How do I know? Because I know.<br />
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But you are welcome to try it out yourself, since my authority no doubt means nothing to you. The next time you feel anxiety or fear, go ahead and try to ignore it, or be happy. Go ahead! Then if you succeed in having it "go away", I will eat my shoe for charity. But I like my shoes very much, so I doubt this will happen. But you are free to try.<br />
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However I am not writing about fear in this essay. This essay is about what happens when you choose "letting go" in a situation where it <i>can</i> work. <i>Dating</i> is a classic example of one such situation. With dating, "letting go" can work because it suggests <i>the loosening of one's grip on control, </i>not avoidance or distraction. Control, in this example, often shows up in the way one thinks about dating, and it often goes something like this:<br />
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<b>meet, attraction, sex, date, commit</b></div>
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Granted, those categories can be arranged in any possible order--it is not the order that indicates control, but the reliance on categories that yield a consistent low return. On their own, these categories can be quite harmless, but combined together, in any order, they rally their power to steam a train along a rickety track. Time after time I have noticed it in myself and others: <i>if I meet someone and there is attraction so we have sex and if that is good then it means something so we date and if we date then we must at some later date commit</i>.<br />
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Or perhaps that was just me.<br />
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Regardless, I made the decision at the end of last year to <span style="color: #0b5394;">let it go</span>, forever. I made a decision to break up the chain gang of categories and throw them up into the wind to scatter and fall where they may. I let it all go--the story, the expectations, the format, the need, the interest...the control--and I decided that I would just busy myself with living my life.<br />
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This essay is my follow up report on that strategy, a year later.<br />
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<i>Nothing happens unless you do something.</i> While I wouldn't build a scientific theory around this statement, it succeeds in communicating a basic idea. I tell my clients this all the time: If you want change to happen, you have to do something different. Letting go of dating was just one step in my process. Why did I not stop there? Because in my desire to let go, I was not inferring that I was giving up; instead, I was starting a process. There is a difference. I was <i>making room</i> for something different; the nature of this something was more vague than I preferred, but I was willing to start with "something". That something was a desire to re-ignite my creative, playful nature, and to find out how to trigger erotic connectivity.</div>
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Why did I want to do this? Primarily, my motivation was the desire to feel something other than a sense of efficiency in my life. Do any of you identify as taskmasters? Well, hello there, I am your leader. Building a business from scratch is a lot different from baking a cake from scratch. My livelihood depends on the results of my efforts. In the process of doing this, I got a bit safe in my emotional life. I am not sure why I felt this was necessary, but it is what I did. Freud used to say that we have a finite amount of energy to direct, but he used to say a lot of crazy things that have no scientific validity. I suppose that I felt that all my energy had to go to business development, or else I was being <i>lazy</i>. I also think that I knew the energy focus would be temporary, until things began to hum. It worked, from a business standpoint, as I now have a mildly supporting fledgling practice that continues to build momentum.<br />
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As my business grew, so then did my restlessness for some <a href="http://leavingcaliblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/leaving-safety-zone.html" target="_blank"><i><b>sacred messiness</b></i></a>. I liken it to recovering from a broken limb, when you get the sense that you have progressed far enough to try and "get back to it", as it were. I was surprised by this resurgence, but not disappointed. And since I like to explore my instinctual inclinations, or at least the sober ones, I decided to look for opportunities to pursue this. At this point I will cut to the end of the story and save you the suspense, not because I am a nice guy, but because the opportunities are not what I want to write about. I want to write about the results.<br />
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Ain't nothing easy about "relationships", I always like to say. My opinion is supported by the culture, the media, and certainly by the couples who come into my practice struggling with unanticipated difficulties. I have long suspected that the stories we are fed about love are similar to the apple that dooms Sleeping Beauty--enticing but numbing--they lead us into a state of constant unfulfilled desire. I am currently reading a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Missing-Out-Praise-Unlived-Life/dp/1250043514/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1446006035&sr=1-1&keywords=missing+out" target="_blank"><i><b>book</b></i></a> that talks about how we spend most of our time in relationship with our partner's <i>unlived self</i>, and I see this as the result of a story of relationship that resides nowhere in our lived biological or emotional lives. Not that there is no truth to the story of romance, but it is just one of <i>many</i> ways to be with another, and at some point every couple has to get off the cloud and face the question of "Why am I really with you?"<br />
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They say that love can break through walls or build them. Actually, I just said that, but it sounds like something "they" would have said. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the "purpose" of relationship as far as it applies to my work and my personal life. I have come to the conclusion that the "romance story" can only exist within the realm of lack: something must be missing (self-esteem, confidence, purpose, meaning, excitement), and it can only be attained from another. Once the illusion of lack is shattered, romance must assume a new identity. It must naturally move from its status as headliner to supporting player. But then what takes its place at the top? Is there a true purpose for getting together with another? No, not in that sense inferred in the romance stories, but there are <i>reasons </i>that are really very simple and based in evolution. Well, two reasons. One is ancient--we are mammals and we evolved to attach to others in order to survive and nurture our young. The second is modern--it is in relationship that we have a chance to heal emotional trauma. The rest is dressing to the turkey--delicious, but not essential, but since you are having the turkey, why not have the dressing!<br />
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As an older man, I have continued to ponder my own reasons for intimate engagement, because they are not the same as they were when I was younger. Not that the previously mentioned reasons no longer apply, but it has become more of an effort to give a shit as I have gotten older. Life is pretty damn good even without romance. But I have been feeling that there could be a benefit to my personal development were I to explore the arena of relationship, so to speak. As I dip my toe in the water once again, I have awakened the pondering, and here is what I have come up with so far in regards to why I would date.<br />
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There are three basic reasons I currently identify as draws to relationship in my advanced age:<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Ignition:</span> </b>Have you ever just felt blah about life? Sometimes the blahs are on the surface, and they can be responded to with something as simple as a strong cup of coffee or going to a new restaurant; at other times, the blahs are more than skin deep. Sometimes they are pervasive, such that they cast a sheet of dullness over every activity, every thought, every interaction. This is not a good thing, by the way. This level of the blahs warrants immediate action, lest one either succumb to them, or resist them with harmful attempts at stimulation.<br />
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During a recent run of the blahs, I resorted to neither remedy; but I knew I wanted to interrupt them. <i>Ignition</i> invites in <i>interruption</i>, but they are equally dependent upon each other, since you can't get to the former without the latter. Why is ignition a draw? <i>Because it feels good to feel good.</i> Ignition dispels the blahs by interrupting them and inviting in excitement, newness, and curiosity, and as the name implies, that is just the start. Ignition can lead to more actions toward relationship, but it can just as well lead to action toward anything. As I see it, there is no downside to ignition because it is not an end in itself, and it works like a charm.<br />
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I call <i>ignition</i> a draw to relationship due to the fact that the source of ignition is generally another person or an event tied to another person (both can be interruptions). Ignition, by its nature, assigns meaning to the presence of the other. Meaning is one key ingredient to relationship due to its application to both event and person: an interaction with significance attached to it tends toward relationship; and a person designated as meaningful typically triggers ignition! Ignition increases the sense of meaning, and on and on it can go, the whole process infusing life energy into the trigger and the triggered. This can be especially powerful when one is older, when one's "motor" tends to stall more often.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Companionship:</span></b> This is an option that is settled into by many couples who have been together for a long time, but it is also an option that is the first choice for some older folks, who don't have the energy or interest in romantic love. I get it--it is wonderful to have someone around as you get older--just not too close! Studies have shown that "loneliness", which is different than solitude, is one factor that can lead to an early death, so a relationship chosen for companionship can be helpful in that regard.<br />
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I have a couple of friends who are dear companions. I have even discussed the idea of marriage with them, but truth be told, they are holding out for romantic love. That is fine. For me, I like the idea of having someone around who I like and trust, but am not obligated to entertain or fill all their emotional needs. I think it can keep one sane. I know that there are those who will argue that getting older does not mean that you can't have romance, and I would agree, but I do have an issue with the idea that you must not stop wanting romance. Why, in god's name, would I want the same things I wanted when I was 25, or 35? There are basic needs, which rarely change, and surface needs, which are age, culture, and development dependent. Being "in love" satisfied a need when I was young that I no longer have today. Companionship can fill in the blanks very nicely.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Fair Exchange:</span></b> This is actually more attractive than it sounds, and truth be told, is the basis for every traditional relationship, whether you admit it or not. The gist of it is that you find a person who has something you want, and you trade them for something they want. End of story! The items on the trade sheet might include sex, company, activity partner, cuddling. This is a specific terms engagement, as both parties agree to the limits of the exchange.<br />
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Some of my most successful engagements have been Fair Exchange, where we both know what we want from each other while also knowing what we <i>don't</i> want from each other! These relationships can be short term or long term, and are usually without conflict or fuss. The reason they work so well is that they are devoid of the expectations that conventional relationships come saddled with--instead, both parties get what they want while giving what they have agreed to give. You might scoff, but tell me it doesn't sound appealing!<br />
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This type of arrangement can also be known as "lovers", in which the item up for exchange is fairly obvious.<br />
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None of the aforementioned is "better" than the other, and in fact, they can be combined into a sort of combo reason.<br />
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So where does that leave us after this rambling perusal? Well, hopefully in a state of deeper thinking concerning dating and relationships. You know how they say that things are better enjoyed if you are <i>present</i> for the experience? In a similar way, I propose that dating is better if one <i>thinks </i>about why one is doing it. Dating is not just an activity to do so that you have something to publicize on Facebook, or at least not in my book. (Sorry, almost everybody!) Dating can just be plain old fun; it can also be a powerful form of engagement with the potential to heal emotional trauma. Why not make it both? This is currently my personal intent around all this nonsense. I like to think of it as a sort of mud run. You are going to get dirty, perhaps filthy, and you will fall down and get burned at times and shocked and scared and wet and bruised and discouraged and insecure, but if you have a certain intent at the start you may get through it with <i>joy</i> attached, experiencing the challenges as worth the price of admission in order to feel that alive.<br />
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See what can happen when one decides to stop doing things the old way? You might find that your engine is not quite ready to stop. At least not forever.<br />
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-57408359892556147222015-09-20T09:17:00.000-07:002015-09-20T09:17:42.355-07:00I Wish You Joy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Most people don't understand that very funny people are often <i>extremely</i> serious.<br />
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I, on the other hand, have taken notice of this misunderstanding my entire adult life. It is a subject of interest to because I myself have been branded "serious" more times than I can count, and yet people don't usually elaborate whether they are making an observation, or just accusing me of doing something wrong. (Sometimes the two go hand in hand.)<br />
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I remember walking the halls of my junior high school many many years ago, just minding my own business, and having other students yell out "Smile!" to me as they passed. I was usually taken aback, as I did not realize at the time that my face needed adjustment; I did not realize that their day was so greatly affected by my display of emotion, or lack thereof. I did get the impression that I was doing something <i>wrong</i>, but I was not sure what that might be. I now realize that my only crime was not living up to others' expectations, and, perhaps, bringing to the forefront of their awareness the idea of existential dilemma. But I shy away from granting them <i>too</i> much credit for thought.<br />
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I agree that I am a rather serious person. But I have never felt the need to "smile" to cover this up, as if there is a required way of being when out in the world. I suspect that the commenters in the halls of my junior high were, at their best, just wanting me to be "happy", and at their worst, trying to comfort themselves. But why were they even bothered by my seriousness? Let me clarify that what I mean by <i>serious</i> is that I think about things--a lot--and I observe just about everything that is happening around me. Now, I suspect that I do this because I am curious about things, but there is another reason; the narrative of my life required <i>serious</i> editing once I hit my teenage years.<br />
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This edit necessitated a great deal of thought, since I did not have much to reference from my public education or catholic upbringing that might have been helpful. I learned to label this practice "seriousness" not because it lacked humor and smiles in the hall, but because it often included solitude and brow furrowing, while lacking a certain carefree frivolity. In other words, I smile when I have something to smile about. Is this a rule? No, it is not. But I have found that frivolity, especially the carefree version, mostly works against contemplation--while being perfectly suited to <i>social</i> <i>engagement</i>. In days of yore there was not so much engagement in my seriousness, because contemplation is best done alone, but don't mistake that for a lack of humor.<br />
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Because I am funny, goddammit.<br />
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It seems that Joe and Jane Public are genuinely shocked to find out that their favorite comic is in fact a very serious person. Everyone I know seemed shocked when Robin Williams committed suicide, not understanding how someone so funny could be depressed enough to want to end his life. Well, the question I have for you at this point is: Where do you think funny comes from? <i>True</i> humor comes from pain, and the best comics mine their own to come up with it. Currently, Louis CK is at the top of this game, so if you like him, you know what I mean. I suspect that Robin Williams was <i>not</i> able to mine his pain so well in the long run, and perhaps that is why he was depressed. I also suspect that this is why his humor was not funny to me, since it relied on shtick more often than pain. I saw him as a clown, not a comic. But even clowns take off the mask eventually.<br />
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Back when I was acting, I was a comic actor who occasionally did drama. When I was required to be funny, I would literally do <i>anything</i> for a laugh, unselfconsciously. My aim was to use my insecurities for the audience's benefit, and ultimately, for mine. To me, it was about triumph--by using my pain to make people laugh, my pain no longer hurt me so much. It was still there, it just had little to no power over my choices. If you confront your worst fear in front of others and survive, you may find it can no longer terrify you. I like to think that I was absolutely hysterical in my comedy roles (sometimes I was, sometimes I wasn't), because I had a lot of pain to mine, and the control I had onstage over my audience was preferable to the control that my pain had over me for so many years.<br />
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I am not acting anymore. Instead, I have gone into the rather serious profession of psychology, which suits me to a tee. But lately I have noticed that I am missing the art of humor a bit. Mind you, this is not an indication that I no longer have pain to mine.</div>
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I recently attended my final meeting with a men's process group that I had been participating in for nearly a year, and some of the members were sharing feedback with me. One of the guys said to me that he would miss my contributions to the group--that I always got him thinking. But he also said that there was one "side" of me that he regretted never seeing--he never saw me "laugh out loud". I blinked with surprise, realizing that he was right, at least about how I presented in the group; suddenly I concluded that my seriousness was taking over the entire house. I have been so intent in the last couple of years on building a private practice and so careful about not spending money that I have choked off a lot of "fun", so to speak. I have stifled my magic, semi-retired my sexuality, locked up my laugh, tampered my colorful creativity.<br />
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This was done in the name of my career, which is very important to me, and I do enjoy what I do. But I realize that, beyond the need to support myself, this career has taken on a disproportionate amount of importance primarily because it is the one thing that is<i> all mine, </i>or so I think. I feel on one hand that it is all I have, and on the other hand I feel that I don't even need anything else. Have you ever had the sense in your life that you have complete control over something? Though it can never truly happen, we can still get the feeling from time to time. And for a person like me, where for many years I wanted nothing more than to be left alone so I could take care of myself, this feeling is comforting and powerful. I think I was willing to sacrifice everything else for this level of control. In the process group, I suspect that they were more aware of the cost to my life than I was, and I also suspect that this is what they were trying to tell me during my final meeting. (This, by the way, is the value of group therapy--becoming aware of how you present in life.)<br />
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Control is alluring for many reasons, but I don't think it was always alluring in the way it is now. I see control today as a constructed response to a cultural effect: the lie that there is an <i>order to things</i> that benefits us. Since order, or not, is a result of cause and effect (not divine intention as many believe), there is often a little tiny part of us that spends some of the day in a bat-shit crazy panic. You might know this as <i>anxiety</i>. The antidote to that panic is feeling a sense of control or knowing. But when you replace an illusion with an illusion, it just delays the inevitable breakdown and reassessment. What usually works for me is to stare <i>randomness of order</i> in the face and form a response where I make out as well as I can, given what I know. Sometimes I err on the side of caution in this process, becoming very serious in the act. I would do well to remember that laughter never hurts when one is confronting a lack of complete control.<br />
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Before the therapy group ended for the evening, this same man said one more thing to me, which I appreciated the most. He said, "I wish you joy." He did not say that he wished me "happiness", because then I would have asked him to define his terms. He said "joy", which is an emotion, and not a fictional state of being. In this moment, I felt that he truly "got" me. Has anyone ever wished this to you and really meant it?<br />
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The dictionary definitions for joy are inaccurate and vague, linking it to feelings of happiness or success, without ever really describing what it is. That is like describing green by linking it to a marker pen. So let me give it a try.<br />
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As I said, joy is an emotion. So what does that look like? JOY is living fully. JOY is celebrating what or who is in front of you, whether you know what it is/who they are or not. JOY is being surprised by someone's love. JOY is seeing the effect of your caring towards others. JOY is holding the hot jerky movement of a baby. JOY is the pleasant activation of various senses individually or all at once. JOY is feeling appreciated. JOY is giving and sharing, knowing that you won't run out. Joy is creating art. JOY is eating summer strawberries from your garden. JOY is listening to music as a primary activity, not as background noise. JOY is grass on you bare feet, swimming naked in the ocean, riding you bike in a cool summer rain, doing yoga in the sunshine.<br />
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You might call these things happiness, but I don't. I see happiness as a marketing term, made up in order to sell things; it refers to a "mood state" or a "personality" (he is a happy person) that has little to no relation to an experience in the moment. Rabbi Irwin Kula, the writer of one of my favorite books, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Yearnings-Embracing-Sacred-Messiness-Life/dp/1401309135/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1442289702&sr=1-3&keywords=yearning" target="_blank">Yearnings</a></i>, says that "Being happy isn't only about feeling good, but also about doing good." I like to think that he uses the term "happy" as I use the term "joy", because I like the definition. The form of joy he describes is one of many things we can feel throughout the day, and its contextual and transitional nature is why it feels so welcome when it happens. It is not an expectation, in the way I see culturally defined happiness, so it often surprises us in the best way. And it is relational, whereas happiness it often associated with <i>personal </i>happiness--something you feel about yourself, by yourself. Joy can be felt in solitude, but even then it is still the result of a relationship with nature, silence, or gratitude. And doing good, going back to Kula's definition, is a relational activity. "Happiness is," he writes, "therefore not just a feeling or emotion but <i>a profound connection to the world</i> (italics mine)." I strongly suggest reading Kula's book to learn even more about joy, love, relationship, and more. I recommend it to nearly everyone I know!<br />
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In a recent attempt to have a profound connection to the world, I attended a men's weekend gathering in the mountains below Big Bear through the group <a href="http://www.calcommen.com/" target="_blank"><i>CalComMen</i></a>. My intention for going to the event was to renew, through community, my creative and playful leanings. As I have said, I can be a bit serious, and since devoting myself to taking exams and building a practice, I have certainly nudged out play, at the very least. I saw this camp experience as an opportunity to leave the world behind and fan the creative flames and let <i>play</i> run the house for a few days. </div>
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It worked. I hiked without lights in the mountains. I swam nude. I wore blue eyeshadow to the "Rainbow Dance". I read nasty haiku in the Talent/No Talent show. I canoed. I participated in a <i>heart circle</i>. I played bongos in a drum circle. I connected strongly to other men--young, older, cisgender, trans, big, small, and otherwise. And in the course of the weekend, during my re-ignition, within a community, I came to fulfill the generous wish bestowed on me by the caring process group member. I experienced joy. Sometimes it is required that we move out of our familiar context in order to have a new experience of ourselves. Nature can often be the ideal place to move into.</div>
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Back in the flat-lands of Hollywood, the tingle of joy has not deserted me. Its glow warms me and reminds me that it is readily accessible via connection and play. The other morning it rained in Los Angeles, and you know what I did at 6am when I woke up? I walked outside and let the rain hit my skin. It was <i>wonderful</i>. It was joyful. And as it was wished upon me, I wish the same upon you.<br />
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Now get out there and play a little...<i>with others</i>.<br />
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-11792268551868236322015-06-21T08:36:00.000-07:002020-06-21T10:22:12.921-07:00Time to Talk About Dad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have written <a href="http://leavingcaliblog.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-letter-to-mom-if-you-could-see-me-now.html" target="_blank"><i>a lot</i></a> about my mother. For some reason, she beckons to me as a portal from which to explore myself and my responses to the world. If I may be so bold, I contend that my relationship with her is the birthplace of my initial relationship skills. This is, of course, a plus/minus statement, in the way that most statements about families tend to be. But I have come to a place where I don't expect it to be any other way, and at this point I am far enough from my lived experience with Mother to mine it for literary inspiration without getting covered in soot. Thank you, Time.<br />
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My father, on the other hand, holds a more slippery position in my evolution. I suppose it is past time to give him some due--not that I would deny his right to it--it is just harder to categorize the benefits derived from our relationship.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dad worked for Safeway for years</td></tr>
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Fathers have had a rough time of it, haven't they? From an evolutionary standpoint, it is a fairly modern definition of paternity that dominates the landscape today; the father role used to be, like most everything else, something that was shared by many. I would suspect that things changed around the time that agriculture came around (the new blame dump--and you're welcome, mothers of the world!). Since the time that land ownership became a "thing", there needed to be some structure to the passing down of property. Suddenly, paternity, and the heirs produced by the same, became <i>very</i> important and localized, and the idea of <i>sharing</i> receded from being a community value to serving the immediate blood family circle. This, of course, was a shame, but for my purposes it serves just as a meditation on history so that I can frame the impact of my father's legacy.<br />
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The consensus on this legacy? I give it a 5 out of 10.<br />
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This is not a bad thing, so before you jump to conclusions about my level of appreciation, let me clear things up a bit. Mother scores a 10 on the scale, but that is not necessarily a wonderful thing. A scoring of 5 is remarkable in its own way, in that the impact of a 5 is <i>influential while evading lasting damage</i>. A score of 5 is, for my father, perhaps the greatest compliment I can offer him. It means, essentially, that I got out of it alive and well with more than a few stories. That, in itself, is a success!<br />
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Dad had no fucking idea what to do with me once I turned 15, so he focused on my brother, who suffered quite a bit as a result. (Dad never practiced wrestling with me, but he did with my brother, who remembers the competitive nature with something other than a "warm" memory.)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My brother, Dad, and me.</td></tr>
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Dad instead left me to my mother's devices, which worked, unless it didn't. I was studious, and quiet, and quite sensitive, which does not exactly generate enthusiasm in a father who lettered in practically every high school sport that was offered. But do not assume that my father ignored me, or was disgusted by me. Not in the least. I suspect that instead he feared me a bit because I represented something he did not understand, something that had the potential to reflect badly on him, but that was nonetheless connected to a part deep of him. I was able to be sensitive while my father was not. He had to be a man very early on, while I got to skirt the issue until after I had done some "research" on the subject. He was proud of me, but I doubt he was sure why, since my accomplishments weren't flashy. I would like to think that he was in awe of me, and that is why he kept his distance, but perhaps that is just a story I have made up. (I like it though.) </div>
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I do know that he loved me as a son--as <i>his</i> son, and that his encouragement showed in his eyes rather than his voice; his kisses to the top of my head and salutations of <i>mijo </i>that reminded me I was his son and this meant something to him. What it meant, he never told me, but I like to imagine that I personified the freedom he rarely granted himself. For all my passivity, I was quite fearless at times, and the more I corralled fear, the more he was corralled by the same. My ascent matched his descent, and there was little I could do about that but embrace my time, just as he did with his many years before.<br />
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<span style="text-align: left;">A male child moving into young adulthood must be difficult for any father, since there are inevitable shifts in power; in my family Dad's decreased while Mom's solidified. You know what I mean? By the time I was 16, homosexuality became the shiny new love that pulled me from the family, while my father was increasingly lured by alcohol; thereafter the power shift was complete. He then lived out the rest of his life as a shadow, attempting to reach former glories by standing on a bottle of whiskey. He didn't have a chance at this point, and I think that this is when I loved him the most; he became human instead of being the cigarette ad who used to kiss me goodnight in my childhood. </span></div>
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This is also when I hated him the most. Ain't love grand?</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Smoldering as a teen in 1944, bottom row middle</td></tr>
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The hate I felt for my father was based in grief. I was losing him to alcohol, and I was left to become a man on my own. He could have taught me so much. My father was an All-Star athlete in high school, as well as being the best dancer and a definite ladies man. He was kind, funny, and affectionate.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dad and Mom early in their marriage</td></tr>
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He was quite handsome, but because I was born when he was 34, I never really knew who he was as a young man--by that time he had learned to accommodate his virility to white culture--realizing that a dark-skinned Mexican man would have to do more than play sports well to gain respect. He succeeded in this, gaining not only respect in business, but also the hand of my mother, who at the time was a tall, striking redhead, and perhaps the only person who could keep up with him on the dance floor. They were terrific together, for a while.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With his baby girl, Marla</td></tr>
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I didn't hate my father forever, though. As an adult, I learned that his dependence on alcohol increased after his young daughter Marla died, a tragic story that affected everyone in the family. For all his outer strengths, he was ill-equipped to manage this searing inner crisis.<br />
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I often wonder who he would have been had Marla lived, and respectively, who I would have been. Even still, the gay thing was sure to separate us, at least until we ultimately united as fellow "black sheep" of the family. You see, as my mom and my brother both embraced mormonism (lowercase intentional) for the illusion of control and safety (I don't blame my mother, as she was aging and needed those things. I have less compassion for my brother.) As a result, I was soon joined by my father on the family <i>time-out bench</i>. The conversation went something like this:</div>
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Me: "You a drunk?"</div>
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Him: "Yeah. You homo?"</div>
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Me: (scooting over) "Yeah. Have a seat."</div>
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Finally, after so many years, we found a place to connect.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mom and Dad making the best of it. </td></tr>
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My father died six months after being diagnosed with cancer in his lungs and in his brain. He was stubborn as hell, so he would not go to the doctor despite having seizures and fits of rage, so by the time he was diagnosed the cancer was inoperable. When he died, my mother, now free of the alcoholism that had ruined her marriage, waited just a couple of weeks before throwing out all the furniture they had shared, replacing it with all new things that she wanted in the house.<br />
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Ain't love grand?<br />
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As Father's Day comes and goes every year, I think about the relationship my dad and I would have if he were living now. Don't we all wonder that of our parents? His life was sparked in a different time and the flame of its peak burned bright and early. He was, like my mother, both a product and a prisoner of his times, but he is 50% responsible for creating me, and I like to think that in some way I am now living the life he would like to have lived. <i>I owe him my life.</i> And for that reason alone, his life was not, as my mother's furniture replacement indicated, disposable. His pain and his triumphs showed me the levels to which we can rise or descend, and our joining toward the end showed me the depth of his vulnerability and forgiveness. He was my father, and he loved me, best as he could goddammit! Love does not require complete understanding or perfection, only willingness. In this area my father's levels never dipped. This comforts me, even to this day. I miss who he was to me during the best of times, but even more so, I miss who he could have been to me during my worst times. We were so close to getting there before he died. So close.<br />
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My appreciation for him grows as time continues, not because I drop into a hazy recollection of who he was, but because I better understand the things that kept him from becoming who I wanted him to be. His struggle unites me with him, and his potential was not fully unrealized; it lives in me, his son, and continues to unfold through my efforts to live as a free man. Plus, I am one hell of a dancer.<br />
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Ain't love grand?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me and Dad in my L.A. apartment around 1992</td></tr>
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7178028168770339652.post-62103246534877114742015-05-08T07:49:00.002-07:002015-05-08T21:42:43.476-07:00A Letter To Mom: If You Could See Me Now<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circa 1984: Me and Mom</td></tr>
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The <a href="http://leavingcaliblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/leaving-grief-behind-for-mom.html" target="_blank"><i><span style="color: blue;">last time</span></i></a> I wrote about my mother was Mother's Day of 2013. And yet as Mother's Days continue to come and go, I find myself feeling further and further removed from it, primarily and directly because the number of years my mother has been dead continues to increase with each passing observance. I guess that is what happens, though, isn't it? You might notice that I did not say that my mother is "deceased", "passed away", or "gone". I wrote that she "has been dead". While that might seem harsh, you would at least grant me that it is the truth. I hate writing it, not because I don't like the word, but because I am using it to describe <i>my</i> mother. Even so, I would bet that it jars me less than it does most, because I have spent years facing and accepting the fact that she is dead, rather than deluding myself into a comforting fantasy of her continued existence, somewhere, somehow, benevolently looking down upon her favored son. Delaying grief via denial is rarely the healthy choice, it is instead only a diversion. Look, she died. It was the saddest fucking day of my life. But even the worst days eventually end, don't they?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mom in her 80's</td></tr>
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What is comforting to me is knowing that in her 86 years, she lived a great deal, part of which included making me. I can't tell you how happy I am about that happening! Her death truly flipped me over and turned me inside out, but it also reminded me that you can do a lot in 86 years, if that is how many years you have. It reminded me that when it is over, it is over, so I had better get busy living. It reminded me that nobody hears prayers after they are dead, so you better say what you want to say while they are alive. It reminded me that no amount of creative thinking can surpass the scientific fact that my mother is imprinted in my very cells--that every gaze, every touch she bestowed was received not only on the surface, but also by the interior. She is, for lack of better terminology, inside me. Who needs heaven when I have her in my DNA?<br />
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Whenever Mother's Day approaches, I find myself wondering what Mom would think about my life if she were alive to see it today. She was always proud of me, but boy, if she could see me now. I would, of course, have to catch her up a bit.<br />
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<i>***</i><br />
<i>May, 2015</i><br />
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<i>Dear Mom,</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>Good gracious I fucking miss you. </i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>You have been dead for over six years now. Mother's Day is coming up soon, and yet again I won't have anyone to buy flowers and a card for. Thanks a lot, Mom! What am I supposed to do with Mother's Day for the rest of my life? I feel like the "little boy that Santa Claus forgot". Did you think about that when you shut down your body at the age of eighty-six, long after your mind had</i><br />
<i>deteriorated from Alzheimer's? Nooooooo. Your excuses won't cut it here, Mom. Would it have killed you to have just once, before you died, thought about how it would affect ME? Look at me, I am raving to a dead person, that is what it has come to. But at least I am not as bad as that guy at the gym who sings along to his private music like he is a pop star. Sigh, what does one do when after they have lost the one person who will give them undivided attention no matter where, when, or what. What does one do?</i><br />
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<i>Comedian Louis C.K. has a joke that says how a lot of things happen after you die, just none of them include you! I think that is funny. Well, a lot of things have happened in my life since you died, and while none of them include you, they all are a reflection of you. In fact, my whole damn life has been full of choices influenced by our relationship. My life is because of you, then was developed with you, then was in reaction to you, then in response to you, then in respect to you, then in celebration of you, and finally, in honor of you. </i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1980</td></tr>
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<i>You are gone, but I won't let go, so I suppose we should at least catch up. </i><br />
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<i>***</i><br />
<i>The first thing you must know is that I finally passed my exams and am now a fully licensed psychotherapist. It was a ten year process, but I love being a therapist, Mom. I have learned so much about compassion and patience, and sitting with someone's pain. There is more to being a therapist than sitting with someone's pain, of course, but that is certainly a big part of it. Nobody "sits" with another's pain anymore, I notice. People assuage, they comfort, they utter bland reassurances, they run away, they publicize, but rarely does someone simply sit, witness, hold, and honor the process. If this weren't necessary I would be out of a job, but it is, so I am not. Our culture does us a great disservice by shaming pain, or maybe the blame should be on the free market for selling happiness as the highest state of being. Whichever it is, I am here to confront the problem and ease the pain.</i><br />
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<i>I feel a sort of "love" for my clients, but it is not the usual kind of love. It is a love based on caring and service, knowing that it may not be reciprocal. And yet I am only able to feel that for my clients because of what I have concluded about love in the outside world. A great deal of that I learned from you. You taught me that love is not easy, but it is also not often a choice. You taught me that love feeds hope, and that it feeds life. Love softens death, and calms the tiger. Love can be quiet, or it can be loud, but it is most often quiet because it does not need to be loud. (Lust is loud, but love is quiet.) You also taught me that love can breed fear--fear of loss, disappointment, need, and change. Fear shows up in the therapy office all the time. I sit with clients who want so badly to control love, and I tell them that they can neither control it nor deny it without disastrous results; so the best policy is to walk with it, notice what it wants to show you, then make some sort of choice. </i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mom preparing a Christmas dinner</td></tr>
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<i>Remember that time when I was a teenager, Mom, and I was in so much conflict about my homosexuality that I was acting out like a total ass? You asked me why I was doing this, and you wanted to know what happened to your "Tony". I answered you by saying that I was trying to get you to stop loving me so much (I felt like a fraud of a son). To this day I remember your response. You looked at me and quietly said, "If you think I can do that, then you don't know anything about love." And truth be told, I didn't. I didn't realize that no matter what I did, no matter who I was, no matter who I wanted, that you would never stop loving me. Never. Not even a bit less. Even if I felt, at that moment, like I did not deserve it. </i><br />
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<i>On that day, with that response, I learned something about love. </i><br />
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<i>You have probably guessed that I don't dance professionally anymore, Mom, but I certainly do dance in my apartment. Music is still a driving force in my life--you passed that on to me. In fact, I think of you every time I play Shirley Horn or Cassandra Wilson or Harry Connick Jr. When I listen to music I wish that you were there with me, because you knew how to listen to music--you listened with your body. I remember that time when I took you to see Cheryl Bentyne perform, and you and I were moving in our seats to her glorious vocals, like some secret language between us. At one point we noticed a man sitting in front of us who was staring straight ahead, motionless, with a grim mouth. <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mom in her 80's in Montana.<br />
It's all about those shoes.</td></tr>
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I knew at that moment that we both felt sorry for that man, so unable or unwilling to let go to the music, as though he were immune to a magic that was affecting all those around him. You got the music, Mom, and when it was playing we didn't need to say a thing. </i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>You would love my apartment, but you would blush at some of the artwork, because there is a penis or two in the pieces. But I would not hide them when you visited, because the paintings are beautiful, and I am not ashamed of my appreciation of penises, and I suspect that at some point in your life you appreciated them too. You would be comfortable in my home, and we would have fun, visiting coffee shops and farmer's markets for sure, but most of our meals would be eaten here since I would cook up a storm for you. Do you know how much I love to cook, Mom? I even know how to make your Chicken Cacciatore. My comfort in the kitchen started from watching you--the way you set a table, your willingness to vary the menu, your insistence on serving a salad with every meal. Granted, what you cooked was based in the 70's aesthetic, meaning home cooking as well as plenty of TV dinners, casseroles, and pot pies, but you were a product of the culture, like everyone else. And your homemade tacos were the best.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><i>You would notice that I have hundreds of books in my place, and almost as many pieces of clothing. The book titles might confuse you, but you would like the clothes in my closet. I buy things that flatter the long legs you "gave" me, and like you, I have remained slender. I favor style over fashion. Don't you think for a minute that I didn't notice everything about your attention to detail and beauty. I took it all in, and have applied it to my life and surroundings. </i><br />
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<i>My friends love me and show </i><i>me great care. <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mom at her sister's wedding.<br />
She was in her 50's here.</td></tr>
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</i><i>I am sure that I would have them over one night and make a big fuss about you visiting. Y</i><i>ou might be a bit embarrassed, but I could not help myself from showing you off. My friends always seemed to love you, but the boyfriends not so much! You could be cold at times with those who required my love, but you just felt that nobody was good enough for me, and I confess that you have me convinced of that myself. You didn't really do me a favor in that department, Mom, but what can I do at this point. </i><br />
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<i>Not that it matters that much. I am getting older, which means that I am simplifying, slowing down, and enjoying my own company. Granted, for me slowing down means that I run at the speed of most thirty-five year olds, but it is a slow down nonetheless. It is welcome though, because for so many years I never stopped. I couldn't stop--I wasn't ready to be with myself. But now I am, and I wish I could show this to you. </i><br />
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<i>***</i><br />
<i>Anyway, Mom, I have to go finish another essay I am writing. It started out as a Mother's Day post, but I think it is turning into something more political. It is always good to cloak your opinions in sentiment, I like to say. I am a writer, and I have a lot to say, and some people like to read what I have to say. You would be surprised at how big my mouth is now, but I am pleased to tell you that there is less anger coming out of it now than when I first found my voice. I smile more now.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>But oh, the world gives me lots to talk about, Mom. </i><i>It is, in many ways, a grand mess. There are some horrible people doing horrible things to others in the name of who knows what, but I suppose that has always been going on. You would not like it, I suspect. <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1970--I was eight.</td></tr>
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You would not understand why people are glued to phones all day, why dating has become something like thumbing through the Sears catalog, or why Kim Kardashian is famous. Meanwhile there are just as many rooting for love and simplicity, who refuse to listen to the story our culture has written. I wonder which camp you would be in, Mom, but not so much. You were always ahead of your time, while still being rooted in it. I wonder who you would have been had you been born in the 50's or the 80's instead of the 20's? </i><br />
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<i>But what I really want to tell you, Mom, is that beyond the gifts and graces that you gave me, I have really become a self-made man. The life you would see around your son these days started with you, but has blossomed through my own efforts. I have always had a vision of a good life, even when it did not feel so good; not a life full of material goods and success, but one full of people, laughter, support, food, sharing, care, celebration, simplicity, respect, music, nature, and love. That has always been my vision, and this is the life that I want to show you now. In the truest sense, I have made something of myself, Mom. I have become a kind man, and I wish more than anything that you could see me now. You would smile and be proud, knowing that you did alright. You did alright. But above all, I did alright. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I carry you within me every moment. Happy Mother's Day.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Your son,</i><br />
<i>Tony</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Summer 1980--Saying goodbye</td></tr>
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737992571206851964noreply@blogger.com24