One wonders at the differentiation. There is an instinct to live quietly, humbly-- to not make a fuss. But there comes a point where you have to imagine that this is a kind of cop-out. What you are doing instead is hiding from the world, exercising an avoidant personality, afraid of ever truly giving your best. What is one to do in such circumstances? 

There are twin fears, as most of us know. The one is the fear of failure, that you will find some essential quality lacking in yourself, the fear of inadequacy. The second one is the fear of success, that you will find yourself now under the burden of heightened expectation.

Hiding in a closet and waiting for death to overtake you is probably no kind of life. After all, death will arrive inevitably, so you might as well do something interesting in the meantime. Being circumspect will not alter that dreadful hour, nor will it spare you from having to face the supreme terror.

Hiding in closets,
Watching warily as a fox

'Til your eyes become twin black holes--
It avails us nothing.

So what if your flesh crumbles?
So what if your chest heaves and burns?

The best of men have flagged and failed.
Keats breathed his tubercular last

In a Roman room, despondent,
The last breath pining for home and love.

Oh, well. Never mind.
Better men than you have been exiled

And it is no shame
To shake a little before that deadly cold.

No point in hurrying it along, either.
Be as circumspect as you may

Or reckless as a shrike.
In the fullness of time

The ink has already dried.

I turned-- as children do,
When hurt or affrighted, to their Mama--
To say to my guide:
"There is not one gram of blood
That does not tremble in me now--
I recognize the signs of the ancient flame!"
But emptiness only was there
Where a moment ago Virgil had stood.
Virgil, sweetest father;
Virgil, to whom I had entrusted
The safety of my soul.
And in that moment,
Not all the Garden that our ancient mother had lost
Could stop my cheeks--
Which he had washed with dew--
From being newly stained with tears.

Dante, "Purgatorio"

1. The occasion of the day to write a letter to whom I please-- like Eris' golden apple, "Kallisti"-- "to the fairest". To praise those I think deserve it (your supremely eloquent face). In all your face there is nothing timid or indistinct or half-hearted; every inch and every angle has all the power and intention of a galloping horse. Terribly beautiful and terribly dangerous-- not like a white tiger, for there is nothing surrealistic, icy or remote in your spirit as I see it-- but like a jaguar: sultry, languid, imperious, lethal. (So, of a sad necessity, there are those that would seek to curb your bloodlust).

2. Those who seek to trap it up, shut it away, clap it in chains-- having found it, they think only of keeping it; keeping it, they think only of neutralizing it. But what is a cat without claws, a rose without thorns, a hawk with clipped wings. X is deathly afraid of losing Y, and so loses her. Having seen the person of the desired image-repetoire, Z seeks to change an essential facet of the loved one and so alters her irreparably. Hades abducts Persephone and Spring vanishes. The malignant spell of half-life: I will possess half of her, and be content with this moiety, but only if the rest of the world possesses none of her. This grotesque and unkind will-to-possess.

Born to Lie

Lana Del Rey, born under the sign of Gemini, is symbolically represented by two people-- in this case, maybe more. (Hell, it's appropriate to wonder about who's really singing here. "Lana Del Rey" isn't even her real name).

There are a few different people present on this album. They all have a common undercurrent, a thread, but the sense of fragmentation persists, making it hard to listen to any one song all the way through-- they all seem about a minute too long, with one possible exception.

So what's the roll call? Well, most of the personae on "Ready to Die" have a distinctly 1960's feel-- the early part of the decade. Del Rey's image on the cover is a major hint in this direction-- she's telling us that this is from when dissipated (key word #1) girls would lounge on hardwood floors, smoking cigarettes, and wish they were starring in black-and-white French films. The proto-Tumblr generation, maybe-- a kind of hollowness that seeks for romanticism, and if it can't find it, settles for the romanticizing of hollowness itself. (It's too spoiled to be true weltschmerz, though. It hasn't even found its way out of the suburbs yet).

So with that in mind, watch in wonder as Del Rey tours through all the components of this particular slice of Americana, but never gets them to cohere. This (for me, at least), is where the interest and the aggravation of the album are located. This is a collection of phrases, not poems. Del Rey has got a talent for finding the little hints and pieces of the gestalt, but can't quite put it all together into one big, satisfying package.

I mean, for the most part, we've seen these pieces before. The biblical, doomstruck lust of "Blue Jeans" has been P. J. Harvey's stomping ground for years. The drunk-on-wine, lounging-at-the-poolside languor. Her slightly exaggerated, California-girl sighs and enunciations (which clash oddly with her British pronunciation of "vitamin" on "Radio"). The corny chirpings that make you wonder if Debbie Reynolds might not have had a granddaughter we didn't know about. Little stylistic choices, most of which seem to get picked up and dropped at random.

The result is a kind of maddening collage of all the girls who would namedrop Nabokov for one reason or another (her not mentioning "Lolita" at some point or points in this album is almost inconceivable, and sure enough, "Off to the Races" has her murmuring "light of my life, fire of my loins"), mixed with a healthy dollop of Nancy Sinatra, with some bemusingly anachronistic dancefloor-DJ touches. Imagine Charlotte Gainsbourg produced by Timbaland. (There's even a spoken-French interlude on "Carmen").

I had mentioned earlier that there's one place where this particular construction comes together and holds. Of course I'm talking about "Video Games", where Del Rey's affected, distant delivery suddenly finds itself a tune and texture good enough to make it transcend itself. The essential fakeness of Del Rey's whole attitude works in this song, as we're invited to picture a girl making maudlin, sweeping love-declarations to herself while her boyfriend, incurable romantic that he is, drinks beer and plays video games. She's off in the corner, congratulating herself on her affair for the ages-- "this is my idea of fun, playing video games", she says, fooling no one-- while he is completely unaware of his emotional makeover at her hands. On the rest of the songs, the guy is a figment of Del Rey's melodramatic imagination-- he's a bad boy, a rebel, a dangerously sexy pegged-jeans-and-Lucky-Strike character-- in other words, he doesn't exist. On "Video Games", he's a real person, probably not too interesting, drives a car, plays pool and darts, someone who is filtered by the singer's imagination, not created by it. The difference is conspicuous.

Maybe that's the key to the puzzle of how to make a basically fake attitude convince us of its sincerity. Del Rey is at her least convincing when she's selling it straight, acting as if these hot times and forbidden schoolgirl stirrings were the whole truth of the matter. What's far more interesting (at least to me) is when we get clues that the singer is making the whole thing up, that these are the songs born of a girl with a rather humdrum life, that have been draped in lipstick and romanticism just to make the occurrences more interesting and livable. I can't believe that Del Rey's character stayed at the Chateau Marmont in the 60's, but I can believe that she wishes she had.

So if I were to offer advice to Ms. Del Rey I would say: don't try to trick us-- make us complicit in your escapism! We're all willing to join you in the Los Angeles of your imagination. Just keep an eye on the dreary realities that you're singing to get away from-- it will make the reverie all the more appealing.

Emotion ---> Cogitation

The most sophisticated systems of analysis are those that are not hard-edged, but are biological or "soft" in their application, fluid to such a degree that the postulates and underlying assumptions of said algorithms change instantly in response to that data which is input. Associated with the human phenomena of perception and intuition, this would give rise (presumably) in a sophisticated person to the idea that their fundamental operating procedures would change quickly and smoothly in response to external stimuli, even that which is unfamiliar or unexpected. A shorthand way of depicting this is to say that you would change based on what you were observing, or rather that what you were observing would change you. This comes tantalizingly close to some of the conclusions drawn of late by quantum physics, in particular the idea that by observing some solid-state phenomenon, the observation itself has the property of altering the outcome or the very reality of that which is being observed. To return again to the idea of human intuition (something so subtle yet widely disseminated throughout the whole of the human species as to be poorly understood), this rapid restructuring of one's self-concept or modes of behavior would happen so smoothly and completely that for all intents and purposes it could border on precognition. Nevertheless it must be said that this is probably a characteristic of the fluid or "water" type of personality, often described as one of the four cardinal personality categories. There is another mode of behavior which is to assert oneself as basically inalterable, to such a degree that the external reality is obliged to reshape itself in order to mold around this incontrovertible expression of will. This is another neat duality (to go on the almost infinite pile thereof)-- whether to change, or allow oneself to be change. The aforementioned intuitive capacities could be reasonably expected, if we can apply this kind of second-order thought-- to provide us information on when to resort to either of these two modes of behavior. To put it another way, we can intuitively know when it is time to be intuitive, and when it is not. This type of abstract thinking would seem to preclude those who are not in touch with their own inner landscapes, as this paradoxical and occasionally contradictory thinking and byzantine operating instructions can easily give rise to brooding, labyrinthine analysis and re-analysis, trapping the intellectual aspirant in unproductive loops of thinking.

(There may be some physiological benefit to these thought-loops. In much the same way that a treadmill may be used to burn off calories and nervous energy, the glucose-consuming hamster-wheel of the mind may be used to reduce the cogitator to such a degree of exhaustion that acceptance and enlightenment are more easily reached).

The primarily intellectual or "air" person, I suppose, would develop their schema and hermeneutic pathways to such an elegant, complex degree that all unknown information would find itself quickly and neatly sorted into its appropriate box. The obvious drawback to such a method is that it finds itself quite useful when dealing with logical phenomena, but flounders when confronted with a non-sequitur or paradox. In such cases the cogitator must rely on auxiliary modes of self-guidance, and if such modes have not been adequately developed during the upbringing or formative years then the data will be rudely shoved into known equations whether or not it fits, leading to shrill or hostile or unreasonable behavior.

About a Girl/Woman/Lady/Child

In you represents-- perhaps not perfection, because who of us is perfect?-- but then again, "perfection" seems to me to be the word. Let me explain: not perfection as the unobtainable goal, but as the culmination. Perfection as the only logical outcome of a series of steps. Perfection as the only reasonable fulfillment of all criteria.

Prismatic is another word. To meet a person of such richness, multiple facets, and depth. Like the description of an expensive coffee or wine.

It's a good feeling, being in San Francisco and around you. The sensation of abundance is particularly present, such that any expression of personality or persona arise naturally, not affectedly. That which you see has no choice but to appear. Rather like a fountain pouring its streams onto the sick, withered seeds of my heart. Etc.

Liberalisitarianism

I do not identify as a Libertarian, although I am a big fan of personal freedoms. How do I reconcile these two positions?

I think Libertarian thought is essentially a snotty teenage attitude, written in political ink. They don't like the idea of anyone telling them what to do, for any reason. They think that every country should mind its own business. It's as big a power vacuum as Anarchy, although I've heard Penn Jillette claim that the two are not synonymous.

My political leanings remain Liberal. I don't believe that it is impossible for a government to provide services and regulations, while at the same time being fairly educated and enlightened as to the realities of human life. And what do I mean by that? Oh, things like the idea that marriage is a social institution first and foremost, and it is up to one's chosen clergy to sanctify it, if that's where your pleasure lies, and is not the prerogative of the State. Or that most human beings will respond well to concerns of safety and well-being, rather than paranoia and oppressive attitudes.

The Libertarian viewpoint is basically the Wild West, so far as I can tell. And we've already done that (I know that, because we've done everything). I suppose I recognize them as ideological brothers and sisters because both our positions are based on "liberty", literally and linguistically.

But consider the following. People like to band together, do they not? Whether for protection, efficiency, or the simple pleasure of doing so. I maintain that some of these groups will, without designated auspices, harm others for one reason or another. It's the responsibility of the lots of little people on the bottom to make sure we have a pledged group to the little people. Or to put it another way, government's first obligation is to the people. Any governmental system that says otherwise is bizarre at best, nefarious at worst. On the other hand, a corporation's first interest is that corporation itself. To hell with the people, unless they're shareholders!

And there is nothing inherently strange or wrong about this. We can acknowledge that certain groups and ideologies are in it to make money, first and foremost. That's fine. It's a large world and there is certainly a place for such groups. But where we fall flat is where we start bullshitting ourselves that these entities, without any kind of regulation, will automatically serve the best interests of the people. I just can't see this leap of logic.

To take a more specific example, I happen to like having the FDA around. I like the idea that food manufacturers are legally required to post accurate information about their product along with said product. Do I think that these food manufacturers, if they had the chance, would cut corners, add potentially harmful ingredients to their foods, and so on, assuming such practices increased their profit margins? Absolutely, unequivocally, without a doubt I do. And I hold no malice towards them for it! That's just what they do.

So let us, for our part, invest our political power in groups whose raison d'etre is keeping an eye on these other groups.

And to reiterate my point, I do not give up hope of the idea of a fairly enlightened series of regulations when it comes to this type of thing. Is this going to happen in America? Not any time soon, Jack. The system is firmly entrenched, and it's going to take something like spiritual dynamite to get any kind of change happening. But I happen to like the Scandinavian ethos. They seem, to use the word, "civilized". I suppose that I myself believe in civilization. We can be gentlemen and -women, can we not? Not in any kind of antiquated, stuffy sense. But let us assume their sense of gentility, honesty, plainspokenness, and so on. (We can do without all the class-based colonization in places like the Congo, that goes without saying).

Because what we have now is a lot of stuffy, blue-nosed, schoolmarmish nightmares. We strive to be without moral blemish while perpetrating the worst of horrors. Can we admit to a few vices, if that will help us face up to infinitely more dangerous habits? I hope so.

Diagnosis

Life is a long, irritating, painful slog. The only things that seem to make it worthwhile are virtually impossible to obtain or achieve. Under these circumstances, I cannot condemn anyone for taking their own life; indeed, there are times when I think of suicide as one of the only really rational actions of which a human being is capable.

Well, all right, let's talk about the Democratic party, although I'm out of my depth here (and probably have been from the beginning).

I'd say their biggest problem right now-- and I mean "problem" in the sense that they relate to the rational, normal American like you and me, and not in the sense of Democratic strategy-- is that they are not the GOP. To cut right to the chase, there is a huge game of Good Cop/Bad Cop that is being foisted on the American public right now. (God, I feel like I'm laboring the obvious, but oh well).

As soon as official party policy becomes, "At least we're not that OTHER GUY!" you've begun to introduce a kind of slow rot into the idea of electability. This is what seems to have torpedoed the Democratic aspirations in '04 against Bush. The best Kerry could ever muster was, "Well, I'm not Bush, you can say that for sure!" And that's pretty weak tea, cold oatmeal. It's death, from a philosophical standpoint. Even factoring in the roiling tides of anti-Bush sentiment, it just wasn't enough.

And that seems to have been a crucial point in Democratic ideology. "We're not those guys!" Which is great, because on the one hand, no, we don't exactly want a bunch of eye-rolling loonies. But of course that's a colossal dupe. There is no choice. Do you want a punch in the eye or a kick in the balls? You're plenty bad enough, even if you aren't those guys. You're just a little sneakier about it.

Do you want something that explicitly terrifies you, or only implicitly? I wrote a little anecdote which is the best I can put it:

The impatient businessman says to his client, "Don't forget to take a pen on your way out." His client looks at the empty mug on his desk and says, "But you're out of pens." The businessman replies, "Fine, then take two and let's not have any fuss about it."

party conversation topic

As I was explaining last night to a fellow who turned out to be from Scotland, Texas is in the rather unusual position of having to defend a rational policy.

And what I mean by that: Texas, by virtue of its geographic character, shares a pretty enormous border with Mexico, meaning that in spite of all the abstract thinking and (let's be honest) stupid rhetoric that gets tossed around on this issue-- they actually and truly have to deal with being a border state. As a result, even though they are firmly in The South, solidly conservative, GOP, home of George W. Bush and so on, someone like Rick Perry has had to stand up and say to other GOP candidates things along the lines of, "Well, we'd all love to build a fence to keep out 'illegals', but you know that's not really feasible or desirable..." while the other candidates then get to jump on him for being soft on illegal immigration.

You can probably see the rich irony of the situation. Texas politicians get flak from their own party for dealing with reality, no matter how much they might wish it were otherwise, if only because official party policy is at such odds with reality. And this puts them in the blackly humorous position of having to defend a rational, reasonable, forward-thinking set of policies because such rationality is held in such low regard by others in their party.

This, to me, is modern political theater at its most absolutely hilarious. I mean, for pure black comedy you just can't beat it. It makes Pagliacci look absolutely amateur.

I think in certain ways this makes Rick Perry the inescapable end-product of our modern political system, or at least one wing of it (the Democratic side of the aisle has a much more subtle terror going for them, but I won't go into that now). Where he is not absolutely and monstrously wrong, he is absolutely and monstrously right, and there is no way either of these positions can do him any good. (There's also the chance that he really is a braindead buffoon. But I don't think it's lack of intelligence, per se, that makes him the figure that he is). He is right for all the wrong reasons, and he's wrong for all the right reasons. And you can't ask for a more fascinating politician than that.

As a matter of fact, what's been his most effective strategy so far, as a politician? Not showing up! He didn't show up for debates when it came to the governorship of Texas, and that suited him perfectly. That strategy was a resounding success. And now that he's become a national joke, what is he talking about doing? Not showing up! Yes! The problem is that he has actually been going to the GOP debates, and opening his mouth, and just generally spewing forth the type of incoherent word-salad that has him plummeting in the polls like a swan with an arrow through its heart. His tactic is to be absent. His positions are that which remain once all other positions have been taken by other, irritatingly present candidates. Rick Perry is What's Left. And that is fucking brilliant.

Now, this may have suited him for the governorship, but I don't think it'll be enough to win him the GOP nomination. For one thing, Mitt Romney just keeps showing up and not being demonstrably insane, which you can tell is pissing off the Washington insiders no end. They're desperate to go with any-fucking-body else, but it's just not happening. For another thing, Perry has already burst his own balloon by doing the opposite of what he does best. He's already shown up (and it's been a disaster). If he had been the perfect, abstract candidate... and aren't those polls hilarious, the ones that show Obama losing to generic, anonymous "Republican candidate", but him thumping soundly any actual person with a name and an agenda?-- he might've stood a chance. But no, he's become distinct now, and what he is is distinctly... strange. Not electable, anyway. Oh well. Poor Richard.

another in a series of endless examples

there is, I believe, a fundamental difference between american and european attitudes when it comes to personality. (This is a grotesque and probably objectionable oversimplification on the parts of both europeans and americans, but it serves here as a shorthand for what I'm really getting at. The idea, of course, being that I'm trying to emphasize a basic duality which transcends national boundaries, and has at various times been filled by American and European roles. The two characters could easily be reversed and probably have been).

On the one hand, you have a certain affected naivety, where the roles of social convention are followed to a T, at the expense of a certain effectiveness. On the other hand, you have a kind of honesty which seems simplistic but (in my opinion) is much more effective when it comes to communication and tolerance of the individual.

James Spader's character on "The Office" (in this case a pretty quintessentially "American" show) fills the second type of personality, and in so doing, lends a pretty good streak of humor. He simply exists, unapologetically, leaving the other characters politely bewildered in his wake. (I wonder if this might not have to do with europe's having had yea many years to understand and absorb the lessons of Kafka, who taught us once and for all the absolute nightmares that lay behind trying to politely follow the rules. Which in turn prefigured the endless enigmatic terrors of Stalin's bureaucracy and so on). At any rate, the lesson to be learned is the difference between being "open", which is merely a shorthand for being confused and not much of anything, and simply being, which is far more fascinating and potentially impolite, which is just better, I think, for all of us.

Parable

I stumbled across this by accident. I quite like it.

An aging Hindu master grew tired of his apprentice complaining, and so, one morning, sent him for some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it.

“How does it taste?” the master asked.

“Bitter,” spit the apprentice.

The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake, and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, “Now drink from the lake”.

As the water dripped down the young man’s chin the master asked, “How does it taste?”

“Fresh,” remarked the apprentice.

“Do you taste the salt?” asked the master.

“No,” said the young man.

At this, the master sat beside this serious young man who so reminded him of himself and took his hands, offering, ”The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things... Stop being a glass. Become a lake."

It Keeps me Running

On a camping trip last weekend, I was sitting next to this beautiful, intelligent woman by the fire pit. I wanted to ask her a little bit about herself.

"So," I said, and then stopped.

"Yes?" she said.

"I wanted to ask you..." and then I trailed off. I could feel my thoughts piling up, one on top of the other, like a traffic jam. I couldn't really think of any way of asking her to tell me about herself that didn't sound questionable or peculiar. Abort.

"Um, never mind. It's not important".

She got up and walked away.

Dope, I thought to myself. That didn't go very well. Now her most recent memory of you is going to be of a sub-verbal doofus. I sat there stewing for a few minutes. Then a feeling came up on me. It was a feeling of frustration and, from frustration, freedom. I had botched things, so now I could do as I liked without fear of further embarrassment. It was clear in an instant that I needed to communicate, if I was to communicate, through a better medium than idle chatter between strangers.

I walked back to my tent and got my guitar. Now I was on more familiar ground. Late nights, fire going, lots of cheerful people bent on beer and unidentified substances. Yes, this was an old, comforting situation. I could deal with this.

I sat down by the fire and started thwacking the strings, letting my self-recrimination and turbulence come bouncing out, lapping out in waves that hit the trees and the rocks and the bugs underground. There was no one in a ten-mile radius who was singing Radiohead with more fervor than I was at that moment.

Amazingly, the universe granted me a wish. She came bouncing back up soon after. I had thought she might be the musical type, and I wasn't wrong. She started inhabiting the musical space right along with me. I brought out a book of Beatles tunes and a flashlight. She volunteered to hold the flashlight. "How's this?" she asked, putting her arm around my shoulders and shining the light on the pages. We stayed like that and sang "While my Guitar Gently Weeps", our heads practically touching, her harmonizing with the lyrics, totally intent on the song and the emotion.

Folks, I don't ask for much, but every man needs a good moment now and then. Just a little crumb. A little twinkle. Doesn't have to be much. I'm not greedy. A moment that puts its arm around you and sings with you. It keeps me running.

Solitude

Solitude, though silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone-- all leave it alone. Even a little child has dread, whispering consciousness, that if he should be summoned to travel into God's presence, no gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him by the hand, nor mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share his trepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and child, all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, which in this world appalls or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo of a far deeper solitude through which already he has passed, and of another solitude deeper still, through which he has to pass: reflex of one solitude-- prefiguration of another.

--Thomas De Quincey

Fulcrum

So much was going on at one time; I'm empty now inside. But I know what it is. I have put my inner self to sleep, for a little while, and am trying my luck in the hard-edged, concrete world of the outside. Once I have secured a better place for the animal I can turn back in on myself and water the seeds that have gone to sleep under the soil.

Life in Death

I'll tell you about another time I felt happy. It was towards the end of our Anatomy class, when our teacher told us that some of the kids from the Zoology class were offering a look at their dissections, you know-- to see what was going on at the other branches of the taxonomic tree.

A bunch of us were curious to check it out. We were told that the Zoo class got specimens in from all over the county, and dissected them, putting their skeletons up for display. All of us had done our cadaver dissection at that point, and weren't about to be put off by a little biology.

Anyway, when I walked in the door, it was amazing. They had a deer, a mountain lion, and a fox all in various stages of dissection. The deer was laid out on a large table, with its open belly looking like a barrel. The scarlet blood pooled between its ribs. There was fur and blood everywhere.

The smell was intense and unmistakable. The animals were not treated with any sort of preservative, and the ripe stench of dead biological matter had well set in. Flies buzzed around. The only time I could remember smelling anything like it was when I cleaned out the fridges filled with chicken when I worked at a barbecue joint.

The whole thing was fantastic. It was savage, intense, messy. Students were walking around with filtration masks and gloves while the vibrantly dead figures lay, exploded open, on various surfaces. There were skeleton models of various animals set up around the room.

As I walked around, I was joined by the girl I had a pretty severe crush on. We strode the room, peering over people's shoulders, taking in the pools of blood and the skin and the muscles and the bones and the paws and the teeth. The smell was like rotten vinyl. Her hair looked like the red patch of a blackbird's wing. I felt great. Some atavistic part of my brain was definitely being spoken to, some simian part that looked at the slaughterhouse scene and saw only triumph. I felt like picking up a femur and running out to smash the first thing I saw, hooting all the while. It was gross and primeval and totally exhilarating. I wished I could visit the room whenever I wanted, to get some sort of visceral impact.

My modern routine is fairly safe and sanitary, for the time being. But it was nice to look at animals, to see biology in an up-close and impolite way, to know that some sort of identification with carnage rumbles and paces around the back of my modern, civilized brain. It's reassuring.

My Heart, the Whore

Recently I feel like I increased my Understanding a little bit more, because it seemed clearer to me how you could get hurt by someone and enjoy it. This is not necessarily related to BDSM, but maybe it is.

I'm not explaining this very well. But I had met someone who had enacted a change in my heart that was unprecedented, which happens with all people who change my heart, because all people are different.

Anyway, the particulars of this person were that they made my heart feel like a prostitute. That's the simplest way I can put it, because it was a feeling and feelings don't really translate. But yes, I felt like my proud heart had been overthrown and reduced to the purest junkie beggary. What organ had once been the model of modest decorum became, as far as this person was concerned, the most outrageous slut imaginable.

So, from that sort of abject thrall, I could suddenly understand how you could flaunt being owned by someone, or be treated roughly by them. That person was my liege, my flag and my flower, if she wanted. (She didn't-- c'est la vie). So even if she cut off all my hair, stabbed me or bit me or deprived me, I would feel like running up to other people and, with the greatest, most genuine pride, show them my marks.

Anyway, like I say, this was all emotional, psychic information. None of it actually happened. But now I feel like I Understand a little bit more than I did before.

Summertime Detox

After a conversation with a friend yesterday, and watching some Red Hot Chili Peppers videos this morning (and some other psychological factors I won't go into here), I think it's a good time to try being really strict with myself. In other words, I'm going to try taking no psychoactive drugs whatsoever-- no caffeine, no nicotine, no THC, no alcohol, no nothin'. Also, I'll be a vegetarian while this is going on.

I haven't imposed any pressure on myself to do this for any specific length of time, but I feel like it's an important thing to try and do right now. Also I'll be trying to get as much exercise as possible.

It probably has to do with the fact that the sun has finally come out around here.

Also, I'd really love to finally try Kundalini yoga-- I found a studio that teaches it, right here in town. The only thing stopping me is cost, but maybe I can find a way to swing it. If this all works out, I think I'll be in a good place to make some psychic progress.

The Absent One

"2. Historically, the discourse of absence is carried on by the Woman: Woman is sedentary, Man hunts, journeys; Woman is faithful (she waits), man is fickle (he sails away, he cruises). It is Woman who gives shape to absence, elaborates its fiction, for she has time to do so; she weaves and she sings; the Spinning Songs express both immobility (by the hum of the Wheel) and absence (far away, rhythms of travel, sea surges, cavalcades). It follows that in any man who utters the other's absence something feminine is declared: this man who waits and who suffers from his waiting is miraculously feminized. A man is not feminized because he is inverted but because he is in love. (Myth and utopia: the origins have belonged, the future will belong to the subjects in whom there is something feminine.)

3. Sometimes I have no difficulty enduring absence. Then I am "normal": I fall in with the way "everyone" endures the departure of a "beloved person"; I diligently obey the training by which I was very early accustomed to be separated from my mother-- which nonetheless remained, at its source, a matter of suffering (not to say hysteria). I behave as a well-weaned subject; I can feel myself, meanwhile, on other things besides the maternal breast.

This endured absence is nothing more or less than forgetfulness. I am intermittently, unfaithful. This is the condition of my survival; for if I did not forget, I should die. The lover who doesn't forget sometimes dies of excess, exhaustion, and tension of memory (like Werther)."

--Roland Barthes, "A Lover's Discourse"

Attn: Investors

Hello! and thank you for your enquiry into the Bright Animal Sex Center and Pleasure Palace.

Our company was founded on the belief that everybody deserves the best sexual experience available. Our watchword is the happiness, healthiness, creativity, safety, and enthusiasm of our employees and clients. We here at the BASC&PP pride ourselves on our years of practice, innovation, professionalism, and satisfaction. What can you expect from the BASC&PP?

--VARIETY. We believe in the individual. As such, we have an unparalleled range of choices for you and we love constantly expanding our horizons! We are proud to employ men and women, as well as people of more ambiguous gender, anatomy, and genetic makeup. We here at the BASC don't much cotton to limitation. Needless to say, we cater to all major sexual orientations, and not a few minor ones as well. (Please note: due to unanimous board decision, all employees are of legal age in the state in which they are employed. This is one of our very, very few inflexible points.)

--ENTHUSIASM. What do we at the BASC look for in our employees? Quite simply, we look for people who love what they do. We pride ourselves in employing the best, no matter what their area of specialty. Elaborate fantasies? Not a problem. Something you can't bring up in polite company? We specialize in that. Like to be immersed in Jell-O while watching a Filipino lady in a gas mask masturbate? Hell, we have a check box for that. We look forward to hearing your ideas. In the extremely rare case that we are unable to find an employee to suit your needs, there is someone at one of our other branches who can, and in most cases can be at your location within 48 hours (additional fees and travel expenses may apply).

--SAFETY. We here at the BASC realize that we are dealing with an inherently biological process and as such, certain risks may apply. That is why we have a cutting-edge medical facility, which serves to screen all potential diseases, viruses, and bacteria with ruthless efficiency and speed. To reiterate, we value the health of our clients and workers above all else. Upon admission to the BASC, you will be given a comprehensive blood, lymph, saliva, cerebro-spinal fluid, bone, and complexion scan from one of our state-of-the-art NCLEX 180B machines, in ten minutes or less. We promise that this will be minimally invasive. Unless you'd like it to not be. We really cannot stress enough that we are very accommodating.

--ACCESSORIES. All of the above is really just the tip of the iceberg. We are extraordinarily well-stocked in everything necessary to ensure a memorable experience. We have a warehouse full of devices that have all been scrupulously inspected, tested, and calibrated. (Seriously, we have Japanese ones that will do everything but your taxes.) If it can be molded, formed, cast, turned on, if it wiggles, vibrates, oscillates, pulses, strobes, swings, moves, jiggles, thumps, or swivels, we've got one.

--SETTING. We are proud to be the owners of a large, spacious facility. The contemporary design and modern amenities mean no crowding or rushing. Please consult the attached map for orientation purposes. (PLEASE NOTE: due to renovations on floor 17, Ruby's clientele has been temporarily relocated to suite 1535. Until structural reinforcements are complete, you may want to bring your own handcuffs and/or hex bolts. We apologize for any inconvenience).

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact one of our representatives. We look forward to hearing from you.