Kids don't follow

E-word,

Loving the This American Life archive. Here's another one; I particularly liked Act 3. If that rule had been enacted when I was a kid, I might have actually grown up happier.

Love, Toe

Dirty old men

Toe,
Yes, when we are 50 we will still remember our young loves. I think we will. And we'll probably still look at young women lustily. Somehow I don't think we'll feel like feel like dirty old men, but we might.

Lately, I don't feel dirty looking at young women, especially if they seem to want to be looked at. However, if one of them happens to notice me looking, I do feel instantly dirty, as in "Oh, my god, she is young enough to be my daughter, if I had a kid at 23 like I would have if I were born a decade earlier."

God, I have to stop writing.
Love,
E-word

Soft as fontanelle

Toe,
Another thing about photos: I am not sure if I am the only person who feels this way, but sometimes I find photographic images of people to be slightly heartbreaking. I am not talking about images of people while they are sad, or photos of some tragic scene. I am talking about just ordinary snapshots, where someone isn't quite looking as good as they can, with their eyes half closed, smiling or moving. Generally, images where someone is not aware of the fact they are being photographed make me a little sad. I see people as most vulnerable in shots like that.

I find this feeling arises also if I pause a DVD or VHS. I was watching "Friends" on DVD a few years ago. I think I was watching DVD after DVD, and there was some glitch on one disc that made it pause every so often. At one point, Joey, the simple friend. was saying something funny, and the disc paused. He was frozen with this kind of stupid look on his face, his mouth gaping, and his eyes closing. I felt such a paternal sense of caring for him, it almost broke my heart.

As I write this, it just sounds weird. Anyway, it's true.
E-word

I'm the only bee in your bonnet

Toe,
I enjoyed your observation about the bee photo. I think you are right--it does seem strangely mammalian. There is something vulnerable about the top of any creature's head, and seeing something vulnerable like that raises all the mammalian instincts, the ones where we care about the small and the defenseless.

I love those instincts. I know that makes me in some ways less masculine than I am supposed to be, but I swear to fucking God, those are the instincts that will save us.

So, thank you for that.

I was testing the macro function on my camera when I took this photo, by the way. I also took a movie of a butterfly on a flower, at about the same distance as I was from this bee, but it didn't come out as well, because the flower was wobbling in the breeze.

So.
E-word

Jesus, etc.

Toe,
I heard that "This American Life" this weekend. It was pretty freaky, the whole story of Mary Ann, the woman who had no close family, who died alone. I find the prospect kind of frightening, myself. I think I probably think about dying as much as you think about God. I sometimes think, well, I don't really believe there is anything beyond death, so what am I worried about. But years of Catholicism is hard to get rid of, and a part of me thinks God, Jesus, and everyone (including my Mom) are waiting for me on the other side. Honestly, I don't seriously believe that, but I have moments when I do.

I think the most terrifying image I have of death came from a kind of feverish moment I had recently. I was sick, probably with a fever, and I woke up from a dream about a small, muddy hole, that I somehow, impossibly, had to squeeze down. The hole was dark, very dark, and about the size of my upper arm. I woke up, in my feverish state, thinking "That is what dying is." You go down a hole that, in life, you find terrifying and impossible to contemplate, and that's it. There is nothing beyond that hole.

Then, of course, the Freudian in me says "Ah, that hole seems kind of vaginal. Maybe this dream is really just about a fear of sex, going back to being born and having to push out through that hole. Kind of a fear of va-jay-jays. It has nothing to do with death. It is about transformation and breaking lose from your inhibitions, jumping from what you know to what you do not know."

Of course, that is death again, in some sense. But maybe it's just pussy? Maybe it is all wrapped up together? Death, sex, vaginas, and life.

All right, I've had a little to drink. I am drinking an utterly delicious beer from Colorado. I think this beverage has tipped me over into what passes for faith and religion in my agnostic mind: Meditations on symbolism and life.

I think I understand both your doubts and your interest in believing, at least a little. I remember, when I was a Catholic, trying to reconcile creation with science. But it was easier for me. Catholics are not so much into the literal bible stories. I even had a priest who basically said that many of the old testament stories are essentially metaphors, and the important thing is to understand what they symbolize. The creation story was not literally about a man named Adam and a woman named Eve. It was about how God had a hand in creating each of us, and also about how his wisdom created the balance in the world--darkness and light, water and earth, man and woman.

Because of this looser interpretation, I was able to believe in evolution and God. God worked on the world through evolution, or else he basically set the world in motion and stood back to watch his beautiful machine. The details were not actually central to the story. It was just important to know God was there, caring for the world in some mysterious way.

I too wonder how intelligent people believe a literal evolution. The earth cannot be 10000 years old, unless our measurements are terribly wrong. Believing such things always seems to call for much grosser rationalizations than the ones I conducted myself when I believed in God.

All the old testament stuff is harder to believe than the new testament, you are right. That is kind of the way Christianity is meant to be, though, isn't it? I mean, isn't Jesus supposed to supplant the old testament?

Anyway, I should stop. I feel a little rambly.
Love,
E-word

My God, I'm all alone

E-word,

Speaking of the devil; oughta be happy that we got fambly obligations.

Love,

Toe

Just a slob like one of us

E-word,

Yo man. I've been thinking about God lately. I will tell you frankly that I do not believe in Adam and Eve, and I do not believe in Noah's Ark. I think generally I don't believe in Genesis, at least not fundamentally. I believe in evolution. I don't know why God gives a fuck about homosexuality, but I can see where God cares about abortion.

I find my faith wavering a little lately. I need to learn more about Genesis, and I also need to reconcile that intelligent, educated people believe in Genesis. I have a much easier time believing in the miracles of Jesus Christ than I do in fairy tales of Cain and Abel and so forth. How does that gibe, though, with fulfilling prophecies? I just don't know.

I dunno. I'm down with faith, but some of this stuff is just CRAZY. I'm not sure how you ever reconcile that the earth is only ten thousand some years old, and every living thing on this earth came from Noah's ark, and all the creatures flooded from somewhere in Iran or something to the rest of the world. What the fuck. Seriously. What the fuck. This is almost like believing that the sun rotates around us.

I think it's cool that you're spending Thanksgiving at home. El and I have done it a couple of times now, and it's actually really nice. I guess I like my family, but it's such a hassle, really. We have to drive for hours, and now spend time with my brothers and in-laws and nephews and nieces and really, at this point it's all really just baby sitting, you know? We don't actually converse or connect on any level, especially with all these motherfuckers everywhere. It's obligation, but I guess, I don't know, I guess it's good to at least have people who feel obligated to spend time with you, right? At least someone in the world is forced to care about ME.

Man, just close my eyes, sew them tight.

Getting back to what you were saying earlier, it is very interesting to see how we (who are not that old in the scheme of our entire lives, but pretty fucking old, I mean we both could potentially have had children in college now) view our 'youth' as we get older. Will my fifty year old self remember in a non-pervy way getting come all over my teen-aged girlfriend? Am I doing this now, or this totally pervy? Maybe my fifty year old self will be like, 'Yeah, pussy! I remember me some young pussy!' Jeez, I hope not.

I love that photo, by the way. That bee looks cute, he's digging in there, maybe oblivious to you photographing him, there's a vulnerability that is very mammalian? I don't even want to say human because my dog often has that same cute, vulnerable thing going on when she's focused on something singularly.

Love,

Toe

There is nothing new under the sun

Toe,
I like your depressing Bible quote. That quote is in proximity to the more famous "There is nothing new under the sun," if I recall. I actually like the Bible a lot, especially the old testament. Although I am an agnostic now, I find the stories to be interesting, and the idea of God is also very appealing to me, so I take a kind of comfort in the idea, even if I don't really believe it. I don't know if that makes any sense. I have to think about the feeling I get from the Bible some more and get back to you, because it is more complicated than I want to go into right now.

I have been traveling this week a little for work. I feel somewhat tired today, and a little sick. I drank too much the other night, and what had been the tail end of a cold turned back into a cold. At least that's how I feel right now. Perhaps it is a cold-like two-day hangover.

We may be having Thanksgiving at home for the first time in years. Not that any family will be visiting us. If anything, we may have some friends over. Or hell, we'll go to another childless young couple's house and have a T'day dinner. I like a holiday where there are no overarching theologies, one where we can all just cling together for companionship rather than splinter apart over dogma. A holiday where we can all agree on the fact that food is good, let's be grateful for this marshmallow-flecked sweet potato dish.

C is home this morning, and I am catching up on a long-forgotten work project. It isn't high priority, but it has reached the point that it needs to be done or else forgotten forever. I like that kind of choice. It makes me want to do something, but in a relaxed kind of way. This work I am doing is unimportant, and unlike the Ecclesiast, I take a sort of comfort in that, at least today.

All right, give me some sugar. Have a nice weekend.
Love,
E-word

Not to pee on everything under the sun

Ecclesiasties 2:17-18

So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

***

Don't mind me, I'm just having a moment.

Love,

Toe

Layer cake

Toe,
Your memories of your young love are so beautiful. I really like the way you write, especially the way you capture so much with so few details--the ice cream, the spring rain, shaking branches getting you wet.

I know what you mean about nostalgia and the past. It is not necessarily nostalgia to be wrapped up in some memory. It just happens. The result is a sort of bittersweet feeling, but I don't think that feeling has to always come from nostalgia. You feel the sweetness of being young, remembering what that was like, and the bitterness of it being gone.

One day we'll look back at these posts--or remember writing them--and think, "Jesus Christ, I was so young when I wrote those things about my lost youth." I guess that is part of getting old. There are layers of experience being built up, as we speak, like the layers of paint on an old oil painting.

I have been sick with a cold the past week. It kind of tempered my excitement on Election night. We don't talk politics much here, and I won't, but I just have to say how fucking glad I am Obama won. My stuffy nose won't let me shout much, but I wanted to holler.

Glad you enjoyed that Go! Team video. I love them. They give me so much hope for the future. I find it interesting that your remembering the past, and ruminating on lost youth, the meaning of nostalgia, etc., seemed to coincide with listening to the Go! Team (or did I misread the post?). Anyway, I think my love of them is based on the way their music has elements of the music of my childhood--sort of 70s funk, early rap, and Mo-town--mixed with more contemporary sounds, like the noise rock and electronic beeps. It always makes me feel like a little kid when I listen to them.

Anyway, I am going to bed.
Love,
E-Word

B is for O Bama

E-word,

Of course I'm riveted to the tv right now too. Go Ala BAMA! You know Barry O Bama must've gotten just a ton of shit over his name when he was a kid. I can just imagine.

Go Obama Yo Mama!

Love,

Toe.

My God, I'm all alone

E-word,

I've been thinking about being young, especially after my last post. I thought about A**a, and how innocence and lust crashes together. I remember things like eating ice cream with her on hot summer days, and french kissing her and cold ice cream sliding between our tongues and our mouths, down our chins. I remember giving her her first orgasm, and A**a saying, 'What was that?' I remember our very first kiss on Prom night, and I remember practicing kisses on my dog before-hand. Puppies are great for things like that, I'd kiss her on her back.

I guess I can't help but have nostalgia for some things. I remember walking around a park in spring rain, and A**a would shake the branches of a tree to make me wet. I remember when she would visit me at my dorm during the fall, and we'd hang out in her car until she had to drive home. I remember walking back to the cafeteria, seeing people I knew and having dinner with them.

Not believing in nostalgia doesn't mean I don't have memories, I think. It means not believing things were better back then. I have to say that hot summer days eating ice cream are far and few between as I get older.

Love,

Toe

I'm not still waiting

E-word,

Weird moment; a family in our small group (church community small group thing- I'll explain it later if you're not familiar with them) lives up near where my first girlfriend lived when we dated. Man. I am never out in that neck of the woods. It may as well be Vermont, considering how often I am out there, which is never. I found my ex's house on google maps. It's literally two miles from her old house, maybe less.

It's funny, as time passes, my head swirls, but fewer images come up. I just thought of her breasts. She had really nice breasts, big for her size (she was under five feet tall). They were firm with youth, and she had dark brown nipples.

Hmm, anyway. Sorry for getting dirty here. I remember coming in her mouth, and her being really pissed at me for doing that. We were young. She had really long hair, and I'd always get come in her hair.

Love,

Toe

Parallel Past

E-word,

It's Saturday night. El is upstairs sound asleep, working off her jetlag. It is generally nice that she is home. I'm almost done with 'Something Happened', and I think something really horrible happens at the end (I cheated and glanced at some pages). I also think that maybe this novel is a hundred pages too long. It loses some of it devastating punch by being a little over long.

I have also had some shochu to drink, so I'm feeling pretty good. I'm also listening to that totally infectious Go! Team song. Do it, do it, alright! When I first listened to that Smiths song you put up, I actually felt my eyes water. Man, what a song, and it was totally meaningful to me when I first heard it. I still love that song. I'm listening to it now. 'Young and alive'. It's funny, I know what that line means now. We should one day go to a Go! Team show and bop around, aching joints and bones be damned.

I will disclaim that I must be taken with a grain of salt since I'm slightly inebriated. Crap, I forgot what I was going to say. No, I remember. Getting older sucks. I feel like the stakes are so much higher. When I was in Seoul, my parents were telling me that a part of getting older is making sacrifices. If El and I decide to have kids, we have to make sure we live in a good neighborhood with a good school district, even if that means driving farther to work. My mom was particularly brutal, saying, it's great that I owned a house, but it's not that impressive that I live in S*S*, actually. A townhouse in S*S*? So what, big deal, it's the ghetto.

Well, parents need also be taken with a grain of salt. And stakes are higher. Getting older ungracefully is kind of the epitome of pain. I know it happens, and it'll probably happen to me and you and every sucka we know, but nonetheless it's one of those things that we try to avoid, I think. I dunno, I had too much to drink. Which wasn't all that much, which I guess is good, it means that I don't actually have a high tolerance.

E-word, love will tear us apart. More later, and less inebriated. Dang, this Go! Team song, is crazy awesome. We got the right combination, we got everything!

Whoa, this Go! Team video has a NASA theme.

Love,

Toe