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Coherent

I imagine that most of us have experienced the “need” to explain ourselves to someone we love, whether that person is kin, spouse, lover, or friend. We think that we must be clear or that the other person requires that. Often, such a need happens during or after a fight, and the source of the need is defensiveness. We have something to prove or we have to be right. Often, the other person is demanding that we explain ourselves, a demand that may be verbal or that may be aggressively implicit.

I don’t remember what my lover and I were talking about when he said, “You don’t have to be coherent,” but we certainly weren’t fighting. I do remember that the subject was deeply personal and that I was wanting to be clear about something I was feeling.

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Boys, men–that sex

My friend Becky calls them boys. I call them men, and sometimes, in fun, that sex. The male species. A phrase I used to use and which, I admit, is more than a little sarcastic. I don’t use it anymore. As Becky said and I agree, we love those guys!

Becky is almost 25 years younger than I am, but I don’t think that’s the reason she calls that sex boys. I think that Becky simply enjoys the term “boys,” as I enjoy the term “girls” for women friends of mine, no matter what their age.

Joanna and Becky:2

At any rate, Becky and I were just talking on the phone about men. We were feeling at once delighted and flummoxed, unable to decipher behaviors and uninterested in speculating. Patience, patience, we encouraged each other.

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Girlfriends

She helps me with everything. From art to every other expansion of the heart.

She is my prophet of integrity.

She is practical and mystical, a family woman, an honest soul.

She and I meet once a week for talk and treats, like linzertorte and carrot cake. Living is our subject. I love how we live in one another’s presence.

She reads me well and with elation, the way a person who cares about a poem pays attention to it.

She sings the songs she writes, she plays guitar, she thinks of serving others because she is aware of generosity. She follows through.

She instructs me in the asanas that inform my every movement.

She puts me in the place that anyone would call love.

She is as auspicious as the black jaguar that attached itself to my leg in a dream last week.

She is my oracle, giving word of my own state of being.

Smoky miracles

“Shop Around,” the 1960 hit by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, has been playing inside my head for the past couple days. In the lyrics a mother tells her son to find a girl whose love is really true and advises him to shop around till he finds her.

Shopping could be on someone’s mind today because it’s almost Christmas and she may still need to buy some gifts. But that’s not my story.

“Shop Around” is a joyful song, and its morals are down to earth: Don’t settle for just any good looking match and Secure the one who loves you. I just watched Smokey and the Miracles perform the song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YPdVqwk978), and he’s especially suave and sparkling, even with out of sync vocals and visuals.

My friend Frances, with whom I’ve shopped numerous times, says that I’m very clear about what I’m looking for, whether that’s groceries or clothing. We’ve been friends since our early thirties. She says that if I find what I want, then I don’t keep looking for other items, and if I don’t find what I want, then I go someplace else or forget about the desired purchase for a while.

Shopping, shopping, shopping–decades and decades, 2 husbands, women and men. Frances would say that I know now what I want.

Smoky miracles. Aren’t all miracles smoky? We may know what we want, but all the causes that create the effect that is a miracle remain mysterious.

Golden skin

Line 8 of Sexual Advances reads:

I’m thinking of your goldenness

The first time I saw my lover naked, the color of his skin surprised me because it was so purely and creamily golden. Maybe the light, which was shining softly into his bedroom, warmed his skin tone. Maybe I’m still enwrapped–enrapt and wrapped up in–the romantic radiance of our initial lovemaking, and maybe that radiance colors my memories and present observations of him.

Of course, he is golden to me–his heart feels rich and enriches mine–as everyone we love is golden when we spontaneously fill the connection between that person and ourselves, and life in the process, with generosity and with first sight, which allows us to see what is truly in front of us. In Sexual Advances I see with first sight every time, in each of the 1,000 lines, and that liberates my vision from looking for what my lover should be in the future or wasn’t in the past, from problems that fear, running rampant, or just walking along at a steady pace, creates out of speculation, obsession, and impatience. Fear turns gold to mud.

Women staring at women

If you’re a woman you’re probably aware of another woman having stared at you. In fact, at a very particular part of you, like your clothed belly or naked thigh or upper lip. What is she looking for, anyway?

I think that she’s looking for similarity or difference in order to determine, perhaps unknowingly, an equivalence or a discrepancy that makes you or her the “better” woman. In other words, the staring reflects a competitive “achievement” of femininity or beauty. Whose abs are firmer? Whose thigh is more slender? On whose upper lip is the hair invisible?

Last week I walked into a jewelry store, in Tucson, known for its unique and elegant designs, intending to purchase a silver chain, which I did. My feet drew a stare from the woman who helped me–I was wearing red sandals with black socks–and later she stared at one of my cheeks–a swift scrutiny of faded, teenage acne scars? She was kind, helpful, and respectful, as a customer would expect in such a shop, yet I felt strange, even when we mentioned our short fingernails and she looked at hers and then mine. She was gathering evidence–for or against me, I’m not sure.

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Intimacy and femininity

I don’t think that femininity and intimacy are necessarily linked.

Intimacy with a person brings out my femininity. Receptivity is a conventionally feminine quality, and intimacy opens me so that I’m receptive. Bold innocence and receptivity go hand in hand.

Intimacy

Intimacy can be defined as erotic. The erotic can be defined as connection, a loving connection. Do I connect with a man’s body? Is there chemistry between us? Chemistry bonds me to a lover. Chemistry, for me, comes from and generates deep, kindred emotion and a mysterious understanding of another person. I mention chemistry with a man, a lover, and we also can feel chemistry with friends, with strangers we see on the street, with a wonderful class that we’re teaching. Chemistry charges relationships with beauty and fascination. Chemistry is different from lust. Lust may likely not create intimacy.

Intimacy can also be defined as familiarity: I am very familiar with my body; I am familiar with a lover’s body. Many people are not very familiar with their own bodies, even though they say, “I know my own body.” They may know it, but they don’t listen to it. They don’t pay attention to its guidance. Intimacy is a knowing that encompasses feeling, listening, touching, tasting, smelling, and looking lovingly. I mean these literally and figuratively. I know the way to the grocery store in my car, but that’s a different kind of knowing.

Playing with boys

I love the boys because they give me pleasure. Sometimes I call you men boys, you husbands, students, lovers, thinkers, friends, and artists, men who I love in the flesh and from a distance that is centuries, cities, blocks, or the vagaries and factual black holes of written history, because I like being playful. I call you boys, flirtatiously and a bit facetiously, because it’s light-hearted, like calling my women friends, who range in age from their 20s into their 70s, girls. (From my performance Why I Love the Boys.)