Magical.

They were “The Boys,” with quotation marks around them, standing all together on the dock, some with their shirts off. They had tans . . . The boys had muscles, and also grins, of a sort that you don’t see any more on men’s faces.

I found the boys very glamorous. Or no: I was too young for glamour. I found them, instead, magical. They were a longed-for destination, the object of a quest. Going to see them was—in anticipation, at least—a radiant event.

MARGARET ATWOOD, Moral Disorder

Enjoy, my lips said.

Enjoy.

. . . such a brave and lovely act it is to let the body celebrate.

TOM SPANBAUER, In The City Of Shy Hunters

“Larry was a masterpiece.”

“We would just laugh together. He would smile, then I would smile and then we couldn’t stop.”

Remember Larry
Remembering Lawrence

Photo: LATimes

MAMBO!

GUSTAVO!

Gustavo The Great

Outcast in your own country.

By that which suffices the spirit, we can measure the extent of its loss.
—HEGEL

Living in or near poverty has always been a form of exile, of being cut off from the larger society. But the distance between the poor and the rest of us is much greater than it was 40 years ago, because most American incomes have risen in real terms while the official poverty line has not. To be poor in America today, even more than in the past, is to be an outcast in your own country. And that, the neuroscientists tell us, is what poisons a child’s brain.

PAUL KRUGMAN, “Poverty Is Poison”, New York Times, February 18, 2008

Housing Is A Right.
Literacy Is A Right.
Eradicate Poverty.

The elusive obvious.

“He never opens his mouth without subtracting from the sum of human intelligence.”*

It is all reminiscent of the exchange among Alice, the March Hare, and the Mad Hatter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. “Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare tells Alice. “I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.” The Hatter chimes in, “Not the same thing a bit! Why, you might just as well say that `I see what I eat’ is the same thing as `I eat what I see.’” In an ignorant and anti-intellectual culture, people eat mainly what they see.

SUSAN JACOBY, The Age of American Unreason

America, you already possess a nuclear arsenal that could redily destroy all of life as we know it. Yet, this is not what will end the world or save a single U.S. citizen. The fall of America will be illiteracy and ignorance.

Cartoon: Mr. Fish, Harper’s Magazine
*Speaker of the House Thomas Reed (1890s)

“Guess I can’t get away with it anymore.”

“Get away with what?”

“Well, summer in Provincetown can be pretty tough.”

He makes an impatient sound with his tongue, as if I’m being a fool. “People are far too concerned about aging these days,” he said, slightly irritated. “Gay people especially.”

“Well, gay culture is pretty youth-oriented.”

“Don’t you believe it. That’s your own fairy tale, concocted in your own head for your own reasons, If you choose to believe such things, there’s nothing I can do to change your mind.”

“Well, I guess if you don’t play the game, you don’t have to follow the rules.”

“There was a man once a long time ago who came up here to live. Name of Henry Beston. Wrote a book about this place, what it’s really like, what it’s really about. You should read it. I can quote you some of it. Some of his words float around in my head every day: ‘The world is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.’ “

He looks over at me. “That’s what you need be thinking about, not how old you’re getting.”

WILLIAM J. MANN, The Men From The Boys

The other day I saw a young swimmer in the surf. He was, I judged, about twenty-two years old and a little less than six feet tall, splendidly built, and as he stripped I saw that he must have been swimming since the season began, for he was sunburned and brown. Standing naked on the steep beach, his feet in the climbing seethe, he gathered himself for a swimmer’s crouching spring, watched his opportunity, and suddenly leaped headfirst through a long arc of air into the wall of a towering and enormous wave. Again and again he repeated his jest, emerging each time beyond the breaker with a stare of salty eyes, a shake of the head, and a smile. It was all a beautiful thing to see: the surf thundering across the great natural world, the beautiful and compact body in its naked strength and symmetry, the astounding plunge across the air, arms extended ahead, legs and feet together, the emerging stroke of the flat hands, and alternative rhythms of the sunburned and powerful shoulders.

Watching this picture of a fine human being free for the moment of everything save his own humanity and framed in a scene of nature, I could not help musing on the mystery of the human body and of how nothing can equal its rich and rhythmic beauty when it is beautiful or approach its forlorn and pathetic ugliness when beauty has not mingled in or has withdrawn. Poor body, time and the long years were the first tailors to teach you the merciful use of clothes! Though some scold to-day because you are too much seen, to my mind, you are not seen fully enough or often enough when you are beautiful. All my life it has given me pleasure to see beautiful human beings. To see beautiful young men and women gives one a kind of reverence for humanity (alas, of how few experiences may this be said), and surely there are few moods of the spirit more worthy of our care than those in which we reverence, even for a moment, our tragic and bewildered kind.

My swimmer having gone his way, out of a chance curiosity I picked the top of a dune goldenrod, and found at the very bottom of a cocoon of twisted leaves the embryo head of the late autumnal flower.

HENRY BESTON, The Outermost House

A Cute Little Ditty on Romance

Romance is placing a dozen assorted condoms and lube in my lover’s suitcase before he leaves for London.

Romance is doing his laundry (everything but his jock I wear on my face as I sort through colours).

Romance is never tiring of watching the way his cock moves.

Romance is when you cease to apologize for farting and begin to welcome it while rimming.

Romance is dreaming of the day that I might be able to feel his thick black horse dick unload up my ass again without latex and without risk.

Romance is surgical gloves, plenty of eye contact, and good communication.

Romance is swell.



JEFF KIRBY, The World Is Fucked And Sometimes Beautiful

Love of the Cock>

Happy Birthday Kim!

Insoluble.

All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble. . . . They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This “out-growing” proved, on further investigation, to require a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appeared on the patient’s horizon, and through this broadening of his or her outlook the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms but faded when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.
—C. G. JUNG

It’s my conviction that slight shifts in imagination have more impact on living than major efforts at change . . . deep changes in life follow movements [my ital] in imagination.
—THOMAS MOORE

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN

If you’re going to imagine things, why not also imagine them in your favour? To your delight?. . . . Don’t try to change. Simply see/choose numerous ways you can approach your day differently. We’re often quick to say, “Oh, I could never do that,” or “I wouldn’t be comfortable,” at times when our wise body is simply pointing out other directions we don’t redily allow ourselves to consider. Play it out, as opposed to habitually ruling yourself out. Choose the non-habitual.
—JEFF KIRBY, Start Here

p.s. If it’s void of humour, make another choice. Remember, it’s supposed to be fun.

Gospel

“Oh, it’s so big.
—Do you think it’ll hurt?”
“Honey, it only hurts when it’s small.”

ERIC ROBERTSON