This IS water

Forgot to mention how much I loved that David Foster Wallace speech. Thanks for the link, man.

Has the World Changed or Have I Changed?

Toe,
A short thought I am certain you will appreciate:

I've been listening to some Smiths songs via Youtube this week. I used to own two Smiths albums on cassette, but ditched my cassettes a few years ago. I have no Smiths now, and hadn't really listened to them in years. I forgot how much I loved them, and how good they were.

I have two Smiths songs going through my head constantly this week: "The Boy With the Thorn in His Side," and "There is a Light That Never Goes Out." They seem to be a good soundtrack for my mood now. Hell, they almost seem to be a good soundtrack for the economic mood.

Anyway.
Love,
E-word

Night swimming

Now I feel like I wrote a little sermon about sex instead of a blog post. I'm in a sermonizing mood lately. I feel like I am heading into epiphanies all the time, that there is a big one around the corner, waiting just for me. I need to slow the hell down and remember I really don't know much of anything, and that most of the time, I am just swimming in my brain, clutching onto thoughts that seem buoyant.

Some thoughts I am having right now:

I saw a dead cat on the side of the road a few streets over. It looked like a a cat I assumed was a stray, a cat I have seen around here the past few years. It made me really sad, and I slowed down because I felt like I should take it off the road or talk to a neighbor who might know if the cat belonged to someone. Instead, I went home, unpacked the groceries, chopped an onion, opened a beer, and drank it while I saute'd some dinner. What happened to that sadness, and that impulse to do something?

I had a sense months ago that the economy was going way south. A lot of people did, so I can't claim to be prophetic, but at the same time, I feel a certain sense of satisfaction that I got on the bus with the people who were right. What does that mean, though, when I didn't change my life, aside from perhaps trying to save more money than usual. More importantly, what does it mean that I didn't think about anyone's finances but my own?

I want to write a novel one day. I've wanted to write a novel for many years, which means I've wanted to write a novel for many days. On every one of those days I did not write, what was I doing that I have to show for now?

All right, enough swimming around in doubt for now. I just had to write some thoughts and associated questions to prove to myself and to you that I do not know that much. Why I needed to do that, I don't know either.
E-Word

Tall grass

Toe,
I want to write so much. Instead, a picture for you.
E-Word

How can I love you if you won't lie down?

Toe, I like your thought about raising a kid who is not obsessed with sex. I think this is a noble goal. It would be hard in our culture, though. I sometimes wonder if it is possible in any culture. Sex is powerful.

Do I make you horny?

Toe,
I read your's and jersn's comments about sex and religion. Religions are all fucked up when it comes to sex, even beyond the Judeo-Christian realm, even. I think the issue is that sexual attraction is just so powerful that people really have trouble putting it into the context of the rest of their lives. It is especially problematic during adolescence and into your 20s, when your sex drive is so strong and your judgement is so weak. I think problems with sex rise up again later, during mid-life, as the sex-drive begins to wane, yet your sense of what can and can't be done is so strong that you feel you can manipulate reality and rationalize whatever acts your heart really desires.

I'm speaking really abstractly here. Honestly, my sex drive was strong in my adolescence, but I was so scared of hell and damnation that the most I could ever manage was to masturbate regularly. Even that invoked regular, post-orgasmic waves of abject guilt.

In my 20s I wasn't much better about sex. Although I had systematically purged myself of religious guilt, it lurked in the background, like that dorky kid that you half-knew in high school who shows up at your New Years party every year (bad metaphor--I was that dorky kid). Anyway, what really ruined my sex-life in my 20s was my lack of sexual experience, which kept me from actually having sexual experiences, as I tried to play cool and hide the fact that I really didn't understand sex, primarily because I had had so little of it.

Now, in mid-life (yes, I am admitting to the fact that I am entering mid-life--this is a huge moment), after some years of marriage, I understand sex a lot better. I am devoted to my wife, and have no interest in fucking up my relationship with her. However, in the abstract, I can understand how middle-aged men get involved with other women, or have one-off daliances while on business travel, or whatever: You reach a point where you understand the limits of your sexual power, what you can and cannot do, and you have enough confidence and believe you have the knowledge to know how to get laid.

As I write this, I am having visions of pathetic, married, middle-aged men trying to cheat on their wives and get laid with young women. Men like that may have some kind of power they did not have in their youth, but it is sort of an unbalanced power, one based on delusion: The sense that, just because you want someone and that you think you know what will get them off and make them happy, you can make love happen.

I guess ultimately sex is not about skill or knowledge or being comfortable with yourself. It is what it always was, even when you were young and fumbling about with your girlfriend: Two people who find each other attractive and want to be together. It is simple, powerful, and as difficult for religion to harness as it is for balding men who think they can still charm the pants of the young and the beautiful.

God, I went way off track in this post. Anyway.

Love,
E-Word

Why are catholic girls so hot?

E-word,

As I get older, I realize I don't have time for misanthropy, it that makes sense. When I was younger it was so important to judge people on taste, or intelligence, or whatever, but I don't have time for exclusivity, except for maybe excluding those who define themselves by exclusivity. I want earnest friends who have given up on irony, mostly!

Which reminds me of this great Onion article about a guy who buys porn ironically, and masturbates to it unironically. It's the unironic part that's so true.

...

My first girlfriend was Catholic. She refused to have sex with me for years, which meant I got a lot of oral sex and hand jobs, which were justifiable as they weren't intercourse. I finally got her to have sex with me, and now, over 12 years later, I wonder if she still deals with Catholic guilt. Isn't it crazy how serious things seemed when you were 23? I mean, I don't know, I'm just glad I'm not as insecure, defensive, and angry now.

...

I don't know where I'm really going with all this stuff. I'm scattered, and have a dozen thoughts of a dozen things.

...

This is water. This is water. This will break your heart. Stupid David Foster Wallace, why did he have to kill himself? Yesterday we attended the Korean service at church, and I couldn't understand much of the sermon at all. However, I remember the verse, John 4:10, where Jesus talks about 'Living Water', and I couldn't help putting his Kenyon Commencement speech and this verse together.

...

We're leaving for Seoul tomorrow. It's going to be a full trip, for sure. 5 days in Japan (split between Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo), 3 days in Hong Kong (I still have no idea what we're going to do there. I got a tour book, but I think we'll be depending on input from El's friends who are living out there), and the rest of the time hopefully relaxing with family in Korea. I'm bringing 'Something Happened', 'Mere Christianity', and one more book that I haven't decided on yet. I'm thinking maybe 'The Screwtape Letters'?

...

It was great talking to you last week. Again, I'm glad that you were able to be there for your friend, that kind of friendship is the most important.

Yikes, my brain.

Love,

Toe

Virgin, Ho!

Toe,
When I went to church as a young child, I would regularly become light headed and need to go outside. My mother would go and sit with me. I am not sure how often this occured, as I can only clearly remember three times, but it's possible it happened more, or even just twice. You know the way memory can make things blur together or seem separate. I can see clearly my mother sitting with me on the low, brown, flagstone of the railing on the side entryway to the church, asking me what was wrong, telling me to take deep breaths. In subsequent masses, it got so I would both dread and enjoy the way I could feel one of these fainting spells coming on, and the time I would spend outside with my mother. It was always a pleasure to come back into the church and see how much of the mass I had missed.

Being raised Catholic, I had a lot of anti-sex stuff driven into me. This didn't keep me from thinking about sex during mass, as you seem to experience even now, as a man. I think, though, that my feelings were always more deeply tied to guilt. When I was about thirteen or fourteen, when I was at church I used to think about sex, the masturbating I had been doing, and I would feel so awful and sinful and would ask Jesus to forgive me. Then I would look across the church at some very hot Catholic girl and would curse her for being so attractive. I would ask God, Isn't it her fault for making me want her? Why do they dress that way, except to tempt me into sin? I really developed quite a terrible image of women in this way. It took me years, years to get over this sense that women were leading me into sin, and it totally screwed up my social life later in my teenage years. I didn't understand sex, and no one really took the time to explain how sex and desire fit into the scheme of things.

Sex makes a lot more sense since I have grown up and rejected my religious upbringing. On the other hand, I sometimes miss the sense of it being forbidden.

I enjoyed your post about thinking about sex in church, by the way. I wouldn't be surprised if any of those people do those things in private. What would that mean, though? How does it all fit together? To me, Protestants seem to have a healthier spin on sex than Catholics, but maybe that's not true.
Love,
E-Word

Painless

Toe,
It's a beautiful day here, and I am taking your cue and adding a few posts. I'm trying to write as quickly as I can without thinking too much. I think I mentioned a few weeks ago something that was bringing me down involving a friend. I think I can talk about it, but I am such a self-censor with these entries. I always wonder, what if the friend in question reads this? Anyway, what the hey. A friend's girlfriend died the end of last month after a long illness, and he came to stay with us for a few weeks, as he is basically homeless until the end of the year (or he decides to get a place). We have done a lot of drinking with him in that time, so much so that I am basically giving it up for a while so I can let my liver regenerate.

It's been an odd couple of weeks. I'll tell you more about this some time. I'm just not good at revealing anything on this thing, especially when it regards someone else who could stumble across this.
E-Word

Don't Look at Me That Way

Hey Toe,
As I write this, I am listening to that song we wrote on the trip to the GC in 2003. I feel weird listening to recordings I made with me singing and playing geetar. I both enjoy and don't enjoy hearing these, and it always feels slightly masturbatory to listen, alone in a room, to the sound of my own voice and guitarplaying. I mean, I am not listening to it with the intention of improving my playing or singing or songwriting, I am just idly enjoying it, feeling mildly embarrased by mistakes, but mostly sitting here saying "That song is kind of cool" and "Listen to that nice little bit there."

I sometimes imagine listening to it with a friend and them enjoying it. This exercise feels especially masturbatory, because it involves imagining another person enjoying something with me, very much like some kind of fantasy I am jacking off to. Do other shy and mildly talented people do this?

I have to remember this when I notice invitations to stroke egos among actual artists that I know. It sometimes strikes me as needy or childish to ask "What do you think of this? Do you really like this thing I made?" But geez, they are doing something quite brave, I think, revealing what they have created, for the world to criticize or reject or love or ignore. Who am I to judge them, as I sit alone in my office listening to an old tape?

Love,
E-Word

Roam if you want to

E-word,

El and I met up with an old classmate of mine and his wife last night for dinner. He's moving to Japan in a month to get his PhD. His wife is Japanese (and he's white), so it works out well for them. We were talking about how it seems that the only way to get people to meet up is for one of them to basically leave for somewhere far away. The definite benefit is that since they'll be in Japan for the next 3 years, we'll have friends to visit in Japan when we inevitably go to Seoul.

It was a fun night, El and his wife (let's name them Alfred and Suki) got along great, we drank lots of alcohol and had a lot to talk about. They're going to Paris for the first time next week before they leave for Japan, and since El and I met there, we had a lot of stuff to share with them. As well, Suki has been helping us out with getting reservations at restaurants in Tokyo while we're there.

This got me thinking about community again, and how even though friendships like this are rarer and come less frequently, they seem so far superior to 'intentional' communities. I think, anyway. I've had so many random thoughts today.

Suki was really envious of El's life in NY, but we told her that in the end we didn't like NY. The problem with saying that to anyone is the fact that everyone really wants to experience that disappoint for themselves as opposed to just taking folks on their word. I completely understand. In the same way, even though I think that joining a small group will be disappointing, we still have to do it to make sure that that's how we feel.

Anyway, I went to work hungover for the first time in ages, and it frankly felt great. It reminded me of younger days, and even though I have no desire to go to the gym, I'm tired, and my head aches, it's still a bit of nostalgia.

Love,

Toe

Mr. Jones and me

E-word,

I think maybe the worst thing about belonging to a community is the pressure to keep up with the Jones'. It's all in my head, I know, but lately I feel like I need to move into a house that is the right size and is in the right neighborhood. Like, be appropriate for my age and my self-evaluated level in life.

Lately I've been trying to have a better relationship with God (despite the kind of crazy stuff I write- writing has to be an outlet for me to release some of the stuff that builds up), and I have to say that I find it highly ironic that I perceive the most pressure to keep up with Mr and Ms. Jones not from my parents (I'm not sure why they care?) or my wife (though that's a weird one; sometimes there is a ton of pressure, sometimes there is none at all), but from church members. Going to church can be a mind-blowing thing, really. It's almost like walking into a Saks Fifth Avenue sometimes, where everyone seems to be totally blinged out. Parking there is like parking at a Starbucks in Greenwich, CT. What is with all of the Rolex and Cartier watches, the huge diamond engagement rings, and Louis Vuitton handbags? Why are there so many BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus cars in the church parking lot?

We join churches to build a community of like-minded Christians, but I swear that there is far more pressure joining one of these 'communities' than there ever is when I just hang out with friends that I make organically. It must all be in my head. I got some things to work out.

Again, ironically, last Sunday's sermon was about the first commandment.

If you will dare, I will dare.

E-word,

I have some of my most corrupted thoughts while at church. It's not something I'm proud of, but I have to be honest about it to myself. Sometimes thoughts that are totally inappropriate pop up at times when maybe they shouldn't, but I can't castigate myself for something I don't necessarily have control over.

About three weeks ago, El and I were at church, and we were standing and clapping along to the praise. A couple enters the pew directly in front of us. The thing that got my mind started was a small section of the woman's hair was matted with a white substance, that was probably hair spray or soap. The couple was very appropriately dressed, and maybe just slightly rumpled, which is how I think Sunday clothes look sometimes when they are not worn frequently and hang in a closet jostled by other clothing more often worn.

The matted hair got me to thinking that maybe the man came in the woman's face that morning, after a bout of rough sex, and some of his come got on her hair. That was just the start. Maybe the guy was smacking dick across her face, and some of her own saliva sprayed onto her hair. Bear in mind that I'm clapping along with a praise song at church while I'm having these thoughts, I'm trying to keep my mind on God but all I can think about is if this very chaste looking couple in front of us are having porn-inspired sex right before service, who else in the congregation is screwing violently.

The pastor of our church is a very charismatic speaker, with a very large congregation. While I know that if you are really able to keep your eyes on Jesus Christ, a lot of these compulsive thoughts and desires go away because they aren't quite as important, but it is easy to imagine (especially with all the anecdotal evidence) that this particular pastor pees on his wife.

I don't really know where I'm going with this stuff. Sex is an idol like anything else, and it's possible, despite everything we learn from the bible, that pastors and my brothers and sisters at church have deviant sex. Maybe my pastor wears a diaper, maybe he likes to be lashed across the back. Maybe the middle-aged woman next to me wears leather, and the middle-aged man next to her has sex with an eighteen-year old prostitute.

It was a very distracting service. Basically I wasn't able to cut off the noise in my brain until after the benediction and we were able to leave. Fortunately I didn't obsess about sex yesterday during church, but it did remind me to write this down on our log.

Love,

Toe