This is the use of memory:

For liberation—not less of love but expanding

Of love beyond desire, and so liberation

From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country

Begins as attachment to our own field of action

And comes to find that action of little importance

Tough never indifferent. History may be servitude,

History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,

The faces and places, with the self, which, as it could, loved them,

To be renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

T.S. ELIOT, from Little Gidding (No.4 of ‘Four Quartets’)

But to apprehend

The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight.
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.

T. S. ELIOT, from the fifth part of The Dry Salvages



I can’t imagine a better prescription for what ails us: Prayer, observance, discipline, thought, and action. Beyond these things, life consists of hints and guesses, and perhaps those unattended moments when we hear something lovely, or smell something odd or memorable, or stumble on a line of poetry that sticks, or meet someone who moves us, or discover in the patterns of nature the lineaments of our own spirit.

I would mark especially the last word in Eliot’s prescription: action. “And right action is freedom,” he says. Right action leads to “freedom/From past and future.” This freedom is the ultimate liberation, betokening release from the wheel of time. Right action must be subject to the individual conscience as well as communal norms. One comes to action last, as Eliot notes, having moved through prayer, observance, discipline, and thought. Without the previous four things, right action is difficult of access, perhaps impossible to discern. And right action, always, occurs in time, as choices are made, paths taken or refused.

JAY PARINI, Why Poetry Matters ; New Haven, CT : Yale UP, 2008.

This book was yet another gift I received while doing my placement at Northern Secondary in Toronto with a generously knowledgeable teacher-librarian, Geoff Vanek.

, originally uploaded by [ج.] [ر.] [ك.].

Fuck that

baby i feel LIBERATED today.

i own myself, i own my art, and i make SEXY art people. that’s what it’s about, it’s an intrinsic part of it and i think i’ve been pretending that’s not true so i can strive for some form of legitimacy in the worlds i’m familiar with. fuck that, done. over.

i’m a faggot-pop-pinup-porny-burlesquy-videomaker.

this is what i do:

RICHERT SCHNORR, in Graphic Glory

Photo: Richert Schnorr, REGULARMOTION.net

Saving Ted.

To say I have no empathy for Ted Haggard would place me alongside his more spiritual, vengeful, unforgiving followers who defrocked and banished him, his family, from his own New Life [Mega]Church in Colorado. This is, first and foremost, a story about how the Church treats its own.

Not a new story. Gays have been killed, wished dead, tossed out of their families for centuries. If not in the name of Christ, in the name of whatever evil, authoritarian church/state executes power over our own bodies.

If Christ is a liberator, nobody told American Evangelicals.

It’s also the age-old story of living the double life of a liar. Ted Haggard clearly had good reasons to lie. I mean, come on, all gays know they’ve got to lie to live, let alone to get anywhere in this world. This is “don’t ask, don’t tell”, “I believe marriage is between one man and one woman” (in successive attempts), America. You don’t want people to know. To find out. Not your family. Not your job. Not your church, for crissakes. I mean, you just know what they’ll do to you. They’ll strip you. You’ll lose it all. You’ll lose everything.

They’ll crucify you. (Again, not a new story).

I don’t know Mr. Haggard. We’ve never met outside of his rather sizable media reach. Based on his television persona alone, this is not a man I would seek to share closeness with or befriend. To me, he puts the snake in snake oil. Still, he got tens of thousands, perhaps millions, to believe in his lie. Not the truth in Christ that sets the captive free, but the lie that you can’t be a man and lie down with another man and live freely, openly, to tell the story.

You can’t be gay like Jesus.

(O Mary, don’t ask.)

So, once again, we have a story of a man who cheated, lived a lie, duped his family, parishioners, told countless of thousands of gay kids to “fight the good fight” (or die trying), selling his empty bag of goods, quotable sound bites, biblical gumdrops to cherry-picked tow-the-hard-line believers who never falter in the truth…

but are always caught in the lie.

Ted, I don’t blame you for lying. For believing the lies. For becoming a real good liar. A great liar. Top of your game “truth pedlar.” There’s some unique, albeit disingenuous, craft in that.

And, I don’t blame you for so badly wanting to be straight. To continue to sit the same pew with the people who compare you to murderers. Lower than murderers. Hitler. Scum. Exiling you and your family to perish. Fend for yourselves.

Hell, I’d even forgive you for denying Christ a third time. You can live in denial for the rest of your god-given, life insurance selling days.

But I’d never ask even one of my gay (or non-gay) sisters, brothers, to pick up their nets and follow you.

Sonnet

Caught—the bubble
in the spirit-level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.
Freed—the broken
thermometer’s mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
it feels like, gay!

ELIZABETH BISHOP

The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology / edited by Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland

Never blend in.

At my first screening of Milk, I came with a critical eye. There’s a lot of history here to recreate/relive. I had lived voraciously through its time in the States as a very public, fuck’m in the streets, gay activist, relishing my criminality, hating straights, hating myself, dancing my tits off most nights through university backed with my daily pursuit to service any number/variety of hot men over eight inches, 24/7, par excellence. So, I knew the scene, the politics, the Briggs, the Anita Bryants, (the Ted Haggards). The Harvey Milk story is gay America’s Martin Luther King story, already brilliantly chronicled in Rob Epstein’s 1985 Oscar-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, based on Randy Shilts’ The Mayor of Castro Street (with yet another feature film in the works), and thirty years later, the same religious hegemonic crap is being protested in America today. Only back then, it was hardly about anything so trite as “gay marriage”. “Never Blend In” is the film’s promotional byline. Beyond King, the gay movement was a battle cry for liberation, FREEDOM baby, for ALL! For everyone. The “us” that Milk speaks of is everyone outside the “establishment”, the Man, any “authority” over our bodies. That great, idyllic, promise of American freedom, still only a dream, for those few who can still afford to dream.

And dream we must. But we must also live.

On a recent second viewing, I let this glorious gem of a film tell me its story, and O, what a story. An American story. An only in America story, because, lest we forget, America’s first impulse is to fight, first, foremost, and always. America was built (continues to be) on the conquer and slaughter of entire nations. Americans fight for everything, including their causes. You can’t win without a fight. And Americans can only win. (This, so brilliantly on display in yet another timely American film, Frost/Nixon). Number 1. We never quit. This is America.

The rights of Americans have all been hard fought for. Killed for. While I heartily welcome, invite other, un-American approaches, it’s inherently the American way.

The fight continues. And, we the people, will prevail.

Soul and flesh.

She drapes herself around me, warming my soul. Ache with desire and squeeze her, trying to liberate myself. Feel the flesh hindering us till we find a rhythm. Her body and hot mouth, there’s nothing else. Tear at each other sinking into love, talking crazy sounds, love’s language. Till we’ve escaped and travel the vastness together again. The flesh is only the means to an end not the end itself. Another device to get outside yourself and be One. Squeeze her wanting to merge our bodies and suddenly the elusive soul is free.

GEORGE CAIN, Blueschild Baby

My Christ is a liberator.*

He who would lead a Christlike life is he
who is perfectly and absolutely himself.
—OSCAR WILDE

Your true nature lies, not concealed deep within you, but immeasurably high above you, or at least above that which you usually take yourself to be. Your true educators and formative teachers reveal to you what the true basic material of your being is. . . . your educators can be only your liberators.
—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

My only response to you (as well as myself) is yes, “a resounding, joyous, glorious, staggeringly beautiful, yes.”

*not to mention, “très beau”.

“The free man never thinks of escape.”*

“Find your true weakness and surrender to it. Therein lies the path to genius. Most people spend their lives using their strengths to overcome or cover up their weaknesses. Those few who use their strengths to incorporate their weaknesses, who don’t divide themselves, those people are very rare. In any generation there are a few and they lead their generation. ”

MOSHE FELDENKRAIS

I’m still a liberationist. There are damn few of us left.

*JEANETTE WINTERSON, Weight