Guilty pleasures

Subtly, in little ways, joy has been leaking out of our lives. Almost without a struggle, we have let the new Puritans take over, spreading the layer of foreboding across the land, until even ignorant small children rarely laugh as much as they should anymore. Pain has become more noble that pleasure; work however foolish or futile, nobler than play, and denying ourselves even the most harmless delights mark the suitably somber outlook on life.

It’s an easy trap to fall into. Somehow bad news is easier to believe, more important, than good. Joyful people singing of blue skies always sound slightly simple minded: the prophets of doom sound so much better educated, so much more likely to be right, and when they threaten us with cancer, rape, global warming, gridlock, AIDS, war, famine, and pestilence, we listen closely and believe. The small pleasures of the ordinary day come to seem almost contemptible, and glance off us lightly. By bedtime they’ve vanished, lost among the ominous headlines, rude taxi drivers, and tight shoes looming in memory.

Part of this is genetic programming. Back in the dawn of things, those who dawdled on the path smelling the flowers and smiling at the sunshine didn’t last long enough to hand down their genes. The genes that traveled farthest were those of the most pessimistic, the most resistant to pleasures, the most alert to flies in their soup, tigers on their trail. They invented the angriest gods and prepared for the most menacing neighbors. Gloomy and suspicious they slept with one eye open.

We are their heirs. Scientific tests are proving that we notice and remember dark words more sharply than bright ones. They weigh more in our minds.

Americans in particular have always been wary of pleasure. When we ponder the pursuit the great question of life, how shall we spend our days on earth, enjoying ourselves as much as possible is not a respectable answer to come up with. “the pursuit of happiness” isn’t exactly meant to be fun. In fact, many of our ancestors came over here specifically to escape from all that post Cromwellian singing, dancing and wrenching (love that word…lol), ruffles and ribbons and bows. They hated fun.

We did have some relief…after the Great War (WWI) the 1920s roared in escorted by Prohibition..we squeezed some merriment people danced..and theaters roared with laughter..party collapsed overnight with the Depression..and the war of the 1940s..and we had a serious bout of self doubt with McCarthyism of the 50s and in the late sixties and seventies…there were moments of artistically enhanced pleasures… of marijuana..and Grateful Dead acid tablets..and sex..cheaper than drugs and less time consuming…
And so we skip over the 80s and 90s, and here we are today in an era of Bush’s agenda……and some absence of joy…from counting grams of fat, jogging, drinking only bottled water, and the focus on work…I saw some stats recently that Americans worked over 158 hours a month, roughly a month longer then we did in 1974.

Our permissible enjoyments are public, official and commercial and TV regulated as in Disney World, Casinos, QVC shopping, Reality show TV, organized sports and rock concerts.
To make sure we are not having any casual, private fun, the contemporary wisdom of chicken gravy, long summer vacations, impulsive quickie sex with the one you love (that be you kat), martinis, bacon, sleeping late and replaced them with fitness and gloom.

So in deference to guilty pleasures..think we are overdue to reconsider pleasure at its roots. Changing out of wet socks and shoes. Bathrobes. Warm slippers, Yawning and stretching. Real tomatoes (not those hybrid experiments you see in grocery stores). Chocolate..real chocolate..not things that taste just like chocolate. The magic day in January when it’s clearly, painfully no longer dark at 5am in the morning. Waking up in the morning and going back to sleep. The cold and limey rattle of a vodka tonic being walked across the lawn in the summer. The smell of fresh cut grass, kids jumping with abandon into a big pile of leaves. Playing dress up like you did when you were a kid..Buy a comic book…Finding a taxi in a downpour…actually finding an out of print book you wanted in an old book shop…Opening an old scrap book and remembering your roots, reading old love letters and remember that perfect moment when you were loved unconditionally for being you. Renting an old movie like Casablanca or some movie that evokes the child within you may be Indeed pleasure…may almost as good as our health…chemists tell us that happy people produce endorphins…and enkephalins (don’t ask..lol) brain chemicals that improve t-cell production and thus enhance our immunity to cancer..heart disease and infections

Let us strive in life to be happy…and merry…

Gloom we have always with us..a rank and sturdy weed…but joy requires tending. Pleasure itself is endangered. So indulge in endangered pleasures…it is something the bible told us to do..so God knew that we needed to have fun..

“Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish and wine unto those who be of heavy hearts. Let him drink and forget his poverty and remember his misery no more” Proverbs 31:6:, 7

Happy New Year

these are words….Little One

there are words..
simple words..words..Little One
that conjure..noctural needs this sunday evening
sexy words..that form images..
WICKED
DEEP
WET
SLOW
FAST
HOT
EROTIC
Crave
NEED
BURNING
INSIDE
BARE
WEAK FLESH
HARD
INSISTENT
RELENTLess
ENTER
EXIT
ENTER
NEVER
STOP
DON’T
GOD
YES
POUR
PUMPING
MORE
GOD YES
DO
ME

NOW

there are words..
simple words..words
that conjure..daylight and wet moist nocturnal needs this Sunday evening

a dance of freedom and Walmart plastic bags

In the 1999 film “American Beauty”, winner of 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture, and directed by Sam Mendes, one of the characters says to another “Do you want to see the most beautiful thing I’ve ever filmed?” Then you see a home movie of a plastic bag slowly developing relationship with the wind on a deserted city street corner. With the accompaniment of simple yet potent narration and poignant piano background, it is one of the more memorable screen moments I cherish, surprising and eloquent in its emotional impact, up there with Fellini’s sudden arrival of a peacock in his classic film “Armacord”. What is it about a deserted street corner, a plastic bag and the wind that evokes such a strong response. As I sit and watch and feel the developing dance between bag and wind, I become aware of a sensation within my chest of “something” expanding. As I remain present with this “something expanding” I come to realize it is the living and pleasurable response of “freedom” arising within me.

Everyone desires freedom because we know innately that our essence is free. Whenever we have a moment that expresses the experience of freedom, it always feels good, it is always welcomed within the body.

Freedom can sometimes look like chaos. The winds that carry our bag (anything expressing the reality of our being alive) can be cross currents, or buffeting winds, or calm eddies, or whirling eddies. They express change. If we don’t resist the change of the current then we simply move with it. In moving with it we discover buoyancy. In discovering our buoyancy we experience a deeper experiential awareness of safety. In discovering a deeper safety we allow trust to bloom more fully. In allowing trust to bloom more fully we expand into the possible. In allowing ourselves to expand into the possible we discover and learn new things about ourselves, environment and life. In discovering new things we expand our options for creative choices and play. In expanding our options of creative choices and play we create a new world.

A plastic bag is a receptacle to hold something. It can hold things, beliefs, concepts, emotions, desires, goals. The heavier the bag, the more difficult it is for the wind to carry. The more inert it becomes. The less it moves. Then we call it garbage.

The dance of the plastic bag and wind echoes the core of human desire and longing….reunion and ecstatic fusion with the invisible transcendent, spirit, God. It is the heart of divine discontent that fuels all creative ventures. And it mirrors the deep ache in the gut to find a way to imbibe, express, share the somehow known but forgotten bliss in abandonment of the yes. This is more than celebration, it is ecstasy of the sublime within the simple and ordinary.

So in the plastic bag of my life….what is it filled with? What past events, memories, dreams, concepts, beliefs, identifications, traumas, contentment’s and discontents have I put into it. What conditionings are in this bag that perhaps weigh it down. To what degree have I emptied it? Emptied myself. Myself as empty vessel to be carried by the winds. What winds? The winds of desire? The winds of some unknown force or destiny or consciousness? The winds of change? The winds that Lear howled against, and yet ultimately in belated wisdom submitted to in blindness and humility? Is wisdom and humility ever really belated if it provides one with wisdom and humility? Is our suffering only because of our addiction to filling up the bag with whatever novelty of gratification entices our desire to be filled, fulfilled, from an unacknowledged fear of emptiness, and thus preventing us from discovering the freedom and joy of being carried, guided, within the split second changes of a force that ultimately, perhaps, cannot be explained, or controlled, but that nonetheless has our best interest at heart. And even if it doesn’t have our best interest at heart, it can still be recognized as a phenomenon of beauty. Perhaps that is the main reason for any kind of creation at all. It is an act, sometimes delicate, sometimes small, sometimes desperate, to reveal or allow some semblance of the awesome magnificence of life through a token of gratitude. And this small token is recognized as beauty. And in that our heart somehow sings because it reminds us of what really matters.

Why is this so hard? Why the resistance of emptying our bag so that we can fly? Perhaps it’s habit. Perhaps it’s fear. Perhaps it’s something that is so ancient and unyielding that we can no longer put a name to it, let alone even recognize its existence in the background….or underground. Like a shadow it is a ghost that haunts us, that follows us, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, civilization after civilization, and probably world after world. It is the irony of our life. That this seemingly insubstantial shadow, this unseen invisible partner, this ancestral thread of resistance, has morphed into the chains imprisoning us from the longed for delight of that which is our light, light as air, that we long to dance with once again.

And so this image of the bag dancing with the wind haunts my mind. Or rather it feeds my mind with an evocation, it’s seemingly simple and innocent gesture that at heart is really supplication, is invocation, is sacred prayer, of that which lingers deep in the heart. That seed that may or may not sprout into conscious recognition, but nonetheless is still there, in deep soil, oh so deep soil of the soul. This image that evokes an awakening of the seed within, that golden seed sprouting its desire to release the chains of resistance and forgetfulness, and to rise buoyantly, triumphantly, despite its solid surface, to receive the warmth of sun and new life. This image that reminds me. This image that beckons me. This image that moves through space….. and an inner space responds.

My disorderly beautiful rule of life-Older..wiser?

Rule…2….You’ll get older but not necessarily wiser

There is an assumption if you listen to the media, look at all the great quotes around wisdom, see the reverence certain cultures have for the elders, that as we get older we will get wiser, but this is not true I am afraid. The real rule of life is we carry on being just as clueless, still make plenty of mistakes. It is just that we make new ones, different ones, more textured ones. We do learn from experience and may not make the same mistakes again, but there is a whole new world of fresh ones just lying around in wait for us to mess up and fall into. The secret is to accept this and not beat yourself up when you do make new ones. The Rule I guess is really this: Be kind to yourself when you do mess things up. Be forgiving and accept that it’s all part of the growing older but no wiser routine.

Looking back, we can always see the mistakes we made but we fail to see the new ones looming up. Wisdom isn’t about not making mistakes , but learning to escape afterward with our dignity and sanity intact.

When we are young, aging seems to be something that happens to, well, old people. But it does happen to us all and we have no choice but to embrace it and roll with it. Whatever we do and however we are, the fact is we are going to get older..don’t you hate when that happens…lol. And this aging process does seem to speed up as we get older.

You can look at it this way-the older you get, the more areas you’ve covered to make mistakes in There will always be new areas of experience where we have no guidelines and where we’ll handle things badly, overreact, get it wrong. And the more flexible we are, the more adventurous, the more life-enhancing, then the more new avenues there will be to explore-and to make mistakes in-of course…lol

As long as we look back and see where we went wrong and resolve not to repeat such mistakes, there is little else we need to do. Remember that this rule of wisdom also applies to everyone around you. They are getting older too. And not any wiser particularly I might add. Once you accept this, you’ll be more forgiving and kinder toward yourself and others.

Finally, yes time does heal, and things do get better as you get older. After all, the more mistakes you’ve made, the less likely that you’ll come up with new ones. The best thing I that if you get a lot of your mistakes over and done with early in life, there will be less to learn the hard way later on. And that is what youth is all about, a chance to make all the mistakes you can and get them out of the way.

Blessed be…her Master

Blessed be his feet that walked him to me
Blessed be the knees that kneel before my sacred temple of love
Blessed be his hard throbbing manliness, erect for my eyes to see
Blessed be his strong chest, powerful and beautiful, a gift from God above
Blessed be his sweet lips that whispers softly, I love you Little One
Blessed be his soulful eyes that look upon my face with unconditional love and romantic care
Blessed be my true Master who is forever true….and the one I was destined to serve always

Happiness by Amy Lowell

Happiness by Amy Lowell
Happiness, to some, elation;
Is, to others, mere stagnation.
Days of passive somnolence,
At its wildest, indolence.
Hours of empty quietness,
No delight, and no distress.
Happiness to me is wine,
Effervescent, superfine.
Full of tang and fiery pleasure,
Far too hot to leave me leisure
For a single thought beyond it.
Drunk! Forgetful! This the bond: it
Means to give one’s soul to gain
Life’s quintessence. Even pain
Pricks to livelier living, then
Wakes the nerves to laugh again,
Rapture’s self is three parts sorrow.
Although we must die to-morrow,
Losing every thought but this;
Torn, triumphant, drowned in bliss.
Happiness: We rarely feel it.
I would buy it, beg it, steal it,
Pay in coins of dripping blood
For this one transcendent good.

Amy Lowell (1874-1925), American Imagist poet, was a woman of great accomplishment. She was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, to a prominent family of high-achievers. Her environment was literary and sophisticated, and when she left private school at 17 to care for her elderly parents, she embarked on a program of self-education.

Her poetic career began in 1902 when she saw Eleonora Duse, a famous actress, perform on stage. Overcome with Eleonora’s beauty and talent, she wrote her first poem addressed to the actress. They met only a couple times and never developed a relationship, but Eleonora inspired many poems from Amy and triggered her career.

Wanting..needing..wishing..feeling

Wanting…
To lick…
To taste…
To savor you.

Needing…
To touch…
To feel…
To be completely aware of you.

Wishing…
To understand…
To perceive…
To comprehend you.

Feeling…
Too consumed…
Too enthused…
Too addicted to you.

Yet I know that no matter what I do…
I will never get enough of You .

My name is Lust..welcome me

Close your eyes…feel my touch

Dream with me
fly with me………. play with me

My name is Lust

I walk through the night

invisible to all

I play with those who seek pleasure

fiilling them with need…

A whisper in their mind..

urging them on..

bringing their hidden desires to the

front of their mind.

It is me that haunts your dreams..

It is me who taunts you with forbidden images..

taboo fantasies..

the seduction of the unknown.

It is my hand that strokes your flesh

as subtly as the evenings cool breeze..

my mouth against your pulse

feeling your heart race in lost excitement..

I am Lust..

call for me..

let your voice ring out loud and clear into the night..

open your arms wide and embrace the power I bring you..

Let me teach you how to explore
the darkest corners of your mind.

welcome me..Little One

surrender to me

..and I will make your wildest dreams draw breath.

Tango erotique

Smell of sex is ripe
Bodies moving
Against the burnt flesh
The degree of heat
Is so hot that our skin
Becomes one with the music
Eyes of darkness
Lips tinted red
Hair dripping wet
Smoke fills the air
Dressed in black
Swallowing the remy liquor..
liquid gold ignites her soul
Kissing his lips
Wrapped in his arms
Very erotic
Closing my eyes
Wanting him inside of me
Needing to feel his control
To be teased with the demon
Who always has his hands stirring in my soul

59 ways to leave your lover

A self-evident or universally recognized truth; a maxim The more beautiful the woman is who loves you, the easier it is to leave her with no hard feelings. Nothing improves with age. No matter how many times you’ve had it, if it’s offered take it, because it’ll never be quite the same again. Sex has no calories. Sex takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble. There is no remedy for sex but more sex. Sex appeal is 50% what you’ve got and 50% what people think you’ve got. No sex with anyone in the same office. Sex is like snow; you never know how many inches you are going to get or how long it is going to last. A man in the house is worth two in the street. If you get them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. Virginity can be cured. When a man’s wife learns to understand him, she usually stops listening to him. Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself. The qualities that most attract a woman to a man are usually the same ones she can’t stand years later. Sex is dirty only if it’s done right. It is always the wrong time of month. The best way to hold a man is in your arms. When the lights are out, all women are beautiful. Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you won’t either. Sow your wild oats on Saturday night — then on Sunday pray for crop failure. The younger the better. The game of love is never called off on account of darkness. It was not the apple on the tree but the pair on the ground that caused the trouble in the garden. Sex discriminates against the shy and the ugly. Before you find your handsome prince, you’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs. There may be some things better than sex, and some things worse than sex. But there is nothing exactly like it. Love your neighbor, but don’t get caught. Love is a hole in the heart. If the effort that went in research on the female bosom had gone into our space program, we would now be running hot-dog stands on the moon. Love is a matter of chemistry, sex is a matter of physics. Do it only with the best. Sex is a three-letter word which needs some old-fashioned four-letter words to convey its full meaning. One good turn gets most of the blankets. You cannot produce a baby in one month by impregnating nine women. Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Thou shalt not commit adultery … unless in the mood. Never lie down with a woman who’s got more troubles than you. Abstain from wine, women, and song; mostly song. Never argue with a women when she’s tired — or rested. A woman never forgets the men she could have had; a man, the women he couldn’t. What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick. It is better to be looked over than overlooked. Never say no. A man can be happy with any woman as long as he doesn’t love her. Folks playing leapfrog must complete all jumps. Beauty is skin deep; ugly goes right to the bone. Never stand between a fire hydrant and a dog. A man is only a man, but a good bicycle is a ride. Love comes in spurts. The world does not revolve on an axis. Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation; the other eight are unimportant. Smile, it makes people wonder what you are thinking. Don’t do it if you can’t keep it up. There is no difference between a wise man and a fool when they fall in love. Never go to bed mad, stay up and fight. Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another. “This won’t hurt, I promise.”