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?

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A Reversible Poem

Years ago, I wrote a poem that could be read either forward or backward, one line at a time. Forward, it goes:

I'd like that:
to walk with you
through the grass,
falling twilight--
unlike
a play,
the scene begins
when
slowly, the curtain

falls

the cherry blossom:
marks
the first action.
A drama,
not meant for
to end the day.
In my garden,
a walk with you...

I'd like that.

And backwards:

I'd like that:
a walk with you,
in my garden,
to end the day.
Not meant for
a drama,
the first action
marks
the cherry blossom

falls

slowly, the curtain,
when
the scene begins
a play,
unlike
falling twilight.
Through the grass,
to walk with you:

I'd like that.