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New
“What’s new?” is a common greeting in America. The next time someone asks me, I think I’ll say, “I’m taking a short trip to Antares and I have 4 new lovers.”
Standard alternatives to “What’s new?” are “How are you?” “How’s it going?” and “What’s up?” Why use “What’s new?” What does it communicate? Not that people think about the meaning of their greeting before choosing one, but news and newness are overarching values and tropes within the celebrity and consumerist culture that the world calls American. Read more
I AM desire
Steady, easy, and passionate–intensely centered–in desire, I let myself relax into it. That relaxation fits with ideas that I’ve read in Yoga Spandakarika: The Sacred Texts at the Origins of Tantra. Desire is at the heart of tantra, and the commentary by Daniel Odier, who both studies and practices tantra, illustrates that being in desire is as simple as soft breathing.
Desire is benign, but people think otherwise. Read more
- July 17, 2010
- Filed under: Body and mind, Pleasure
- Comments 2
A time defined by honey
I return home from visiting friends and family who I love and who love me. I am sated from conversation and food. Travel has sapped my energy.
For close to 20 years I’ve traveled a lot, for work and pleasure, in the United States and internationally. I travel easily and come home full. Now, for a while, home is the only place to be.
At home it is hotter than 7 suns.
I entertain my cool head.
A tow truck driver verbally displays to me, who sits in the passenger seat of his vehicle, a passion for guns. He mentions his high IQ. Then karma. I say, at the end of our short trip to a tire shop, “It was fun talking with you.”
In a waiting room 2 workers in residences for the old and the infirm talk of low income, comparative shopping for an axle fluid change, and administrators who they like and dislike.
A fat woman with the energy and skin tone of health teases herself about her love of food.
Unwanted immigrants and other citizens wait for rain as the clouds build every afternoon.
I soften like the girl I was, I am, in my mother’s arms.
I am quiet like the sky as the rains get ready to test the strength of rooftops.
Sacred tantric texts reveal what every yogi knows: mind rules the world, mind bends it, mind in its ordinary state is clear, and empty of concoctions, intellectual or fantastical (which can partake of each other). Yogis may read tantric texts. They may be scholars of Buddhism, Taoism, or embodiment. They may theorize and philosophize, they may write books about the history of yoga. None of that matters. Practice does.
People try to hold their world in place, to keep it from changing so that it can stay what it is, which nothing can. The rain does not hold back–a drop over there on the patio, a torrent for miles with bolts of lightning.
I eat Greek yogurt, densely rich like sour cream, a little less tangy, with local honey from a 12-ounce jar. The label reads “Sonoran Desert Honey.” Beneath the words an illustration of saguaros and prickly pears and a tree, ironwood perhaps, conveys the expanse of the land in which I live. I like knowing, from the information to the side of the picture, that Sonoran Desert Honey “is a pure natural blend of mesquite, catclaw, ironwood, saguaro and other springtime honeys.” The reddish gold liquid is the infinitely sexy complement to the thick dairy. The honey is startlingly sweet, even after my eating it days in a row, a most desirable partner for the mildly tart yogurt. (Before buying the Sonoran Desert brand a couple weeks ago, I hadn’t eaten honey for years.)
An attractive man helps me choose a gunpowder green tea, the smokier of 2 choices.
I water the plants until the rain comes.
In New York in March I met a man’s who’s a delight. I don’t think that I’ve called any man but him a delight. Our romantic interlude at his home in April was absolutely satisfying. I feel no desire or need to spend more time with him. I tell my friends about it all. “I feel like I’ve just heard a novel,” one says, and they and I accept the mysterious goings-on of a happy heart.
I’m listening to a clock and birds.
I’m drinking that smoky tea.
I’m living in a time defined by honey.
- July 7, 2010
- Filed under: Beauty, Body and mind, Men and women, Pleasure
- Comments 1
Mystic/realist
No one lives more in reality than the mystic. Forget asceticism, altered states of consciousness, transfiguration, or idealistic foolishness. The mystic enjoys the everyday world because its marvels fulfill her.
Marvels–the voice of a cashier, the color of brewed tea; a man sleeping in an outdoor alcove of a church, the sheen of a polished wooden chair; the scowl of a woman who looks at you when you board the bus, ice cream and butter at the temperature of their perfect softness. No dark night of the soul, à la St. John of the Cross. No flash-in-the-pan epiphanies.
Experiencing everyday anything as a marvel, the mystic doesn’t linger in an experience in order to prolong its pleasures or discomforts or to agitate, vilify, or congratulate herself. When feeling moves along at its own pace, everyday anything is new, instantly and continuously, and the body and senses freshen themselves. When disappointment, dread, anger, sorrow, anxiety, delusion, projection, envy, stupefaction, cowardice, yearning, or frustration arise, they pass quickly, as does any perception or feeling, because she does not oppose them.
The mystic practices ordinariness–the mind untrammeled, unraveled from discursive embellishments. She lives in a palpable, sensuous world which includes her body. You may call the mystic’s ordinariness extraordinary if not impossible. For her, gliding and loving are synonyms, as are smoothness and peace.
- July 1, 2010
- Filed under: Body and mind, Pleasure
- Comments 1
Shrink-wrapped/loose
“A shrink-wrapped response.” One of my girlfriends gave me that smart interpretation of an email I’d received, an answer to a question I’d asked a lover–the relationship is tenuous!–about his work.
Shrink-wrapped: packaged, enclosed, untouchable, distant from the senses.
The one-sentence response was also a paradox, like the kind of paradoxes with which ancient Taoist masters, in their brilliantly agile texts, ply my humor. What could be more naked? What could be looser?
A problem with passion
“You’re passionate” rings as a compliment, a superlative in contemporary ears.
Passion is a problem in the sacred texts and counsel of Buddhism and yoga. There, passion is fever. Fever flames when the human system is out of balance. Read more
- June 17, 2010
- Filed under: Body and mind, Pleasure
- Comments 0
Maturing sexiness
The word “naughty” trivializes eroticism and sex. A popular synonym for “sexy,” “naughty” is a sly, little smile with an insinuating wink that force sex into a playground that is associated with children. Making love is play, looking and feeling sexy is play, but adults make love and children look pathetic in sexed-up attire. “Pathetic” in that sentence does mean arousing pity. Children are not capable of the richly erotic sexuality that powers a mature and, if chosen by a person, continually maturing sexiness.
“Naughtiness” defined as disobedience deserves mild punishment. Sexy adults may be disobedient in terms of societal norms, but they are not bad girls or bad boys–they are grown-ups feeling good about themselves. A grown-up has grown from her experiences so that she can discern what feels good to her and what does not, what gives her ease and what does not. Not all people over the age of 21 have accomplished that. One of the best things about being a grown-up is that you get to make choices about how you enjoy yourself and with whom.
“Naughtiness” is also a cute kind of indecency. Honestly! What a ridiculous way to perceive or talk about a grown-up man or woman.
- June 3, 2010
- Filed under: Beauty, Body and mind, Pleasure
- Comments 1
Sweat on the back of my neck
I took a walk this morning and bought groceries halfway through. The bags were very heavy. Shoulders down and back, with ease, as I walked home in the increasing heat. The prediction is for 100 degrees today. (If that happens, it will be the first 100-degree day of the year. Late for Tucson.) Blueberry, raspberry, and white chocolate muffin, with unsalted butter, loose gunpowder green tea, brewed strong, with a bit of nettle, a not-too-thin slice of mozzarella. AC not on yet. Heat and sweat flow over strong shoulders, flexible neck, a face with no makeup and under thick hair covering the scalp. The sweat feels especially delicious on the back of my neck. I put up my hair.
The beauty of human beings 1
People assume that the young are more beautiful than older or old individuals. Is beauty innate to youth? Or is it innate to human beings?
I think that beauty is innate to human beings and that a primary reason why young people often look more attractive than older people is because the younger ones generally haven’t lived long enough for chronic damage to occur. How long has someone been depressed, had migraines, heartburn, stomach aches, hated his parents or her thighs? Illness is systemic, a soul-and-mind-inseparable-from-body effect that can influence the health of one or several organs, the circulatory and nervous systems, muscle tone, the color and texture of one’s skin and the aural and emotional tone of his laugh, indeed, everything that goes into the making of a human being. Chronic damage appears, among other places, on the surface of the body, in its appearance.
Taking care of oneself is a full-time occupation for which few people appear to have little time or inclination. Caring for oneself can be a pleasure of gradual and continual self-discovery. Maybe such kindness to oneself does contribute to a person’s beauty as she grows older.
Equal pleasures
A list of equal pleasures~
Going to sleep at night
Waking up in the morning
Tea or coffee in the morning
Watering the plants outdoors
A peanut butter cookie and vanilla ice cream at The Cup Cafe in Tucson
The subtlest pressures and resistances of erotic give-and-take
Emotional connection during lovemaking
Walking in a high wind
Smelling star jasmine
Reading
Talking with my girlfriends
I could probably produce a book listing equal pleasures of mine, so I do not intend the items here to be definitive or even to designate categories of pleasures, such as sexual, sensory, or intellectual. At the moment what interests me are differences between equivalents.
While all the pleasures above are equal in the abstract, their value, impact, or intensity changes according to my exact experience of them. Was the cookie warmed up just right and the ice cream softened to a perfect texture? Was the conversation with a friend restrained or halting rather than fluid and forthcoming, which I enjoy more? Was a lover self-involved rather than reciprocating? Reciprocity offers increasing refinements of sensation.
- May 3, 2010
- Filed under: Body and mind, Pleasure
- Comments 0
