Lunch time is here. I have slipped out of my office again to the Biggby on Friendship Court to write. Of Monsters and Men was on the speakers here. Hearing this music that would so six years ago my interest was piqued. As a result I pulled one of their recordings up on Apple Music. Had forgotten how much I liked the song Dirty Paws. I had bought the CD but gave it to somebody to listen to and never got it back. So quickly the day’s fashion falls away.
Today is a cold day. Today is a grey day. One of the constants in this northern town is the monochromatic monotony of the passing days. My wife and youngest son have headed out to the Detroit Auto Show. I think this is good for my son. More in real life contact with people will help move along in his evolution. I can’t be sure but he seems engaged in his studies at community college.
Funny story on that. He is retaking a writing course. Now mind you he is a great writer and very literary. The. problem is that with his issues with depression he has a tendency to give up on his courses middle of the term. He has been assigned for the umpteenth time an essay on overcoming adversity. When I gave him grief about what adversity people in his class would have suffered his response was succinct. “Dad, for a person to be in community college there has been adversity.” Touché.
Today is day two of my return to WW. Yesterday was easy, today is hard. My body is now realizing its cravings for sugar and salt are not being responded to. The feeling is one of almost an outright aching for a candy bar. Still, I need to do WW’s controlled portions program. I feel bloated. I feel slow. Now maybe these feelings are just the aging process. Still, I think the winter’s reduction in my exercise regimen and the slip from this is a treat to this is a routine vis a vis inappropriate foods are the real culprits.
Recently my habit has been to binge watch TV. Over the past few weeks I have watched Happy. This is a demented SyFy series. Quinten Tarantino meets H.R. Puffenstuff. I have also watched the first three seasons of the Magicians. Right now I am in season three of TruBlood. Fun, lots of twisted subplots and lots of pretty naked people.
I thought about putting the last sentence in above. Time has come for a re-evaluation of how our culture deals with sexuality. The #Me Too movement was long overdue. But how do we move forward? Sexuality is something that in the early years of life is basically instinctual. It is more urges and immediate bodily responses that thought, increasing moisture and heartbeats. Accepting No means No and I do, what are the proper routes of progress forward? Does anyone get to be the initiator of sexual behavior?
Somewhere I watched a skit where before two people went out on a date they had what looked like a lease set out on a table. They were initially paragraphs that included sections as to what cues would permit what action. There was a whole subsection dealing with the impact of alcohol use and its negation of some of the consensually agreed upon cues. Will this be what life will be like going forward? Will we have to agree that a nod and a look down by a woman will be agreed upon as an okay for contact between a man’s hands and a woman’s clothed breasts? What happens to this situations where a woman rubs a man’s groin outside his clothing as he grabs her buttocks. We they have to hold a phone up and verbally communicate their express consent to this and to the following removal of clothing?
I am old and I have no idea how the young will navigate bug lust. The issue is huge and I think we are at a moment where the issues are ripe for careful consideration. Don’t know what the evolution will be bring, but things have to get better.
Oh well, I spent too long on that.
Methinks I should focus on the here and now. I am thinking I am going to have to start rereading Think. I need something to juice up my mind again. I need to resubsribe to Mother Jones. I need to have conversations that are focused and real. What is it we are living for? What is it we are working for? Does what I perceive as justice ever win or does it always come in a distant second to social Darwinisn? When I look in the papers it seems my view of equality is not on the ascendancy.
Oh well I end with a Buddhist thought.
Intense times call for intense practice. But in the world, as in the zendo, intensity does not mean straining or pushing; rather, it is a willingness to begin fresh.
—Bonnie Myotai Treace
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