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Friday, August 13, 2004


NUTRIENTS

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In his every movement a man of great virtue
Follows the way and the way only.
As a thing the way is
Shadowy, indistinct.
Indistinct and shadowy,
Yet within it is an image;
Shadowy and indistinct,
Yet within it is a substance.
Dim and dark,
Yet within it is an essence.
This essence is quite genuine
And within it is something that can be tested.

Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching

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‘The fifth planet was very strange. It was the smallest of all. There was just enough room on it for a street lamp and a lamplighter. The little prince was not able to reach any explanation of the use of a street lamp and a lamplighter, somewhere in the heavens, on a planet which had no people, and not one house. But he said to himself nevertheless:
‘It may well be that this man is absurd. But he is not so absurd as the king, the conceited man, the businessman, and the tipler. For at least his work has some meaning. When he lights his street lamp, its is as if he brought one more start to life, or one flower. When he puts out his lamp, he sends the flower, or the star, to sleep. That is a beautiful occupation. And since it is beautiful, it is truly useful.’

From: THE LITTLE PRINCE – By Antoine de Saint Exupery – Harcourt, Brace and World

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‘It would seem that man can successfully shut himself off against hearing the voice of his conscience. But there is one state of existence in which his attempt fails, and that is sleep.
Here he is shut off from the noise hammering at him in the daytime and receptive only to his inner experience, which is made up of many irrational strivings as well as value judgements and insights. Sleep is often the only occasion in which man cannot silence his conscience; but the tragedy of it is that when we do hear our conscience speak in sleep we cannot act, and that, when able to act, we forget what we knew in our dream.’

Excerpt from Chapter IV – Problems of Humanistic Ethics

From: MAN FOR HIMSELF – An Enquiry into the Psychology of Ethics – By Erich Fromm
Fawcett World Library

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Under certain adverse curcumstances, paranoid feelings can be aroused in most people. In my view, this paranoid potential takes origin from the fact that most human beings are born into the world in a very helpless state, and remain dependent upon, and at the mercy of, those who are older, bigger, and stronger for a greater proportion of the total lifespan that occurs in any other species. The psychoanalist Thomas Szasz begins his book of aphorisms, The Second Sin, by stating, ‘Childhood is a prison-sentence of twenty-one years.’ Although we may hope that the majority of children do not regard their early years in quite such a negative light, we have all expereinced being picked up or left to cry at the whim of others; and fears of once again being reduced to the condition of helpless pawns whose needs and wishes are disregarded are easily aroused.’

Excerpt from Chapter 13: -Why Human Beings become Violent-

From: CHURCHILL’s BLACK DOG – and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind – By Anthony Storr -Fontana Books

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A Revolutionary Analysis Of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song
By Huey P.Newton

‘When the movie (director Melvin van Peebles) opens we see the faces of women: there are young faces and old faces, but in all of them there is a sign of weariness, sadness, but also joy. Tou soon recognize that the women are in a house of love, a house of prostitution, a house of ill-repute. Of course it can be any of these things, depending on what position you are viewing it from. This is the essence of the whole film, the victim and the oppressor looking at things in a much different way, from a different point of view.
‘The women are tired yet they are happy. This is because they are feeding a small boy. As you look at the women you see that they are strong and beautiful Black women, definitely African in ancestry and symbolic of Mother Africa. The size of some of their breasts signifies how Africa is potentially the breadbasket of the world. The women are feeding stew to a small boy who is apparently very hungry, and as he downs it they keep offering him more. These women with their large breasts potentially could feed and nourish the world, and if this is so, certainly they have the potential to raise their liberator, for that is what the small boy is, the future of the women, of Black people, liberation...
‘Next we see theboy is healthy and growing, working as a towel boy in the house of prostitution. Then we see the prostitute making love to him. But this was a scene of pure love and therefore it was a sacred and holy act. Even though it was in a house of prostitution, it was not a distorted or corrupt thing. We see this by the very words the woman uses, for she tells the boy that he ain’t at the photographer to get his picture taken: she tells him to move. In the background we hear religious music signifying what is happening and what will happen later. First there is ‘Wade in the Water,’ and we recognize that the boy is being baptized: then there is "This Little Light of Mine, I’m Gonna Let It Shine,’ signifying what will happen in the future. The music indicates that this is not a sexual scene, this is a very sacred rite. For the boy, who was nourished to health, is now being baptized into manhood; and the act of love, the giving of manhood; is also bestowing upon the boy the characteristics which will deliver him from very difficult sitations. People who look upon this as a sex scene miss the point completely, and people who look upon the movie as a sex movie miss the entire message of the film.’

Excerpt from: A Revolutionary Analysis of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song
From: TO DIE FOR THE PEOPLE - By Huey P.Newton – Vintage Books

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‘One of our retarded girls, age 14, was very normal by the usual physical criteria except that she chose to creep on her stomach or log roll wherever she went. She was very much attracted by her young male clinician, would attempt to unzipper and remove his trousers; and although she did not ordinarily talk at all she managed to convey to him in words as well as gestures her desire to run about with him in the nude. Of course, the clinician could not do as she wanted. But neither was she willing to respond to her in such a way as to lose the benefit of her high motivation to be totally involved in a meaningful physical activity with important psychosocial and verbal aspects. He therefore used this surge of sexual interest as a communication bridge and as a means to the expansion of her neuromotor activity. Although not in the nude, they ran together. Not only did she reveal unexpected potential for verbal communication and locomotor skill but, more subtly, she took a big step in learning that she could restrain herself and express her desires in socially acceptable ways.
Is it possible that we can learn to rise above the negativism of the past and present, pluck sexuality from its traditional entropic state-and move into a new era in which its potentially
constructive energy can be available as a major personality resource rather than as a grim liability?’

From: THE JOURNAL OF SEX RESEARCH
Excerpt from Sex Education and the Mentally Retarded – By Warren R.Johnson

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‘Slowly it becomes clear that one of the greatest of all superstitions is the seperation of the mind from the body, This does not mean that we are being forced to admit that we are only bodies: it means that we are forming an altogether new idea of the body. For the body considered as separate from themind is one thing-an animated corpse. But the body considered as inseparable from the mind is another, and as yet we have no proper word for a reality which is simultaneously mental and physical.’

From: THE JOYOUS COSMOLOGY
Adventures un The Chemistry of Consciousness – By Alan W.Watts – Vintage Books

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INTIMATE STRANGERS
-Surrogate Sex Partners-

‘What makes the use of surrogate partners in sexual therapy so controversial is that the methods of therapy in which surrogates are used involve both physical contact and sexual activity as the central and essential ingredient. Questions which come immediately to mind are: is the use of surrogate sex a form of prostitution? Who are the men and women who become substitute sex partners, and what motivates them? Who are the professional therapists who use surrogates, and are they qualified, respected members of theit professions? What is the rationale for helping single men and women achieve more satisfying sexual functioning?

-Barbara Roberts- M.S.W.

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‘Ive been a sex surrogate for a year now. I’ve had 55 clients. I was trained in the traditional Masters-Johnson techniques, in a 65 hour training program in conjoint therapy. I’ve also had massage training and the eight-week training program with the S.F.S.I. switchboard. ‘I’ve worked with a variety of sexual dysfunctions as well as with disabled people, a man who has polio, a quadriplegic, a rheumatoid arthritis victim, and a 25-year-old who has Frederickson’s ataxia. That’s a degenerative disease. He’s alone in his appartment, sleeping in this little cubby hole between the bathroom and the livingroom. He told me he had this scary dream the night before I showed up the first time. He doesn’t think of doing good things for himself. He doesn’t think he deserves any pleasure. He feels that he’s being punished for something, and that’s why he’s gor his disease. ‘Many of the men I see are alone. Nobody cares about them. These are the ones who get attached to me, a possessive attachment. There’s nobody else they let those feelings out with. It’s a problem for me, too, but not so bad I can’t handle it. I figure if I can’t handle it and be friends with them, then they’ll have nobody. I’m basically doing work on myself as far as attachment. I used to be very attached, and cry a lot.’

-Katherine-

Excerpt from: The CATALOG of SEXUAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Grove Press

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‘Morgan: I often like to think that placing my hands on the body of another person is a spiritual experience. And more times than I can count, when I first place my hands on the head of someone I have just met, I feel I am being spoken through, though there are no words and that I have been given a precious gift-trust and love from another human being and I am holding it in my hands. I often imagine I am at a cosmic wheel, steering myself and the other person.’

From: TOUCHING
The Human Significance of the Skin – Ashley Montagu – Columbia University Press

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‘What outlandishly convulsed faces! What winking eyes sparkling with sarcasm under birdlike countenance! What leering, piggybank grins! What hatchet mouths! What jocular dodecahedral noses! What abdomens large with pantagruelian mockeries! Across the swarm of this blissful nightmare, sudden portraits of irresistible effect were scetched in flashes, caricatures to render jealous a Daumier or Gavarni, fantasies to make the marvelous Chinese artists, the Phidiases of the paunchy, potbellied figure, gape in admiration!’

-Theophile Gautier- on hashish

‘One must at all costs cure oneself of the tiresome habit of writing. Style coming from outside is unworthy, even if it superimposes itself exactly on the interior style. The only possible style is the thought made flesh. Read official reports, the writing of mathematicians, surveyors, specialists in any branch whatsoever it may be. Suppress all other reading.’

-Jean Cocteau- on opium

Both from: THE DRUG EXPERIENCE – First-person accounts of Addicts, Writers, Scientists, and others – Edited by David Ebin -Grove Press

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posted by Walter at 8/13/2004



Monday, August 09, 2004


ABDOMINAL STRAIN

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‘Our first thought is good for art- the second is good for anything else’

-Allen Ginsberg-


Heat envelops the city. I’m alone in my studio- right arm stuck to my desk- dust settling on a futile scetchpad in front of me. Scattered sounds from outside mix with the hum of the airco- the tireless respirator that seperates me from the heat exhausted crows- limp tree shadows- and the dazed- and petulant shopkeepers. Through the blinds I’m looking at the backyard- White light has obliterated all color- the neighbors’ balconies have gone deserted- couples withdrawn inside their apartments- jolted by an intimate response to a timeless call.

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LONE GENTLEMAN

Young homosexuals and girls in love,
and widows gone to seed, sleepless, delirious,
and novice housewives pregnant some thirty hours,
the hoarse cats cruising across my garden’s shadows
like a necklace of throbbing, sexual oysters
surround my solitary home
like enemies entrenched against my soul,
like conspirators in pyjamas
exchanging long, thick kisses on the sly.

The radiant summer entices lovers here
in melancholic regiments
made up of fat and flabby, gray and mournful couples;
under the graceful palm trees, along the moonlit beach,
there is a continental excitement of trousers and petticoats,
the crisp sound of stockings caressed,
women’s breast shining like eyes.

It’s quite clear that the lcal clerk, bored to the hilt,
after his weekday tedium, cheap paperbacks in bed,
has managed to make his neighbor
and he takes her to the miserable flea-pits
where the heroes are young stallions or passionate princes:
he caresses her legs downy with soft hair
with his wet, hot hands smelling of cigarillos.

Seducer’s afternoons and strictly legal nights
fold together like a pair of sheets, burying me:
the siesta hours when young male and female students
as well as priests retire to masturbate,
and when animals screw outright,
and bees smell of blood and furious flies buzz,
and cousins play kinkily with their girl cousins,
and doctors glare angrily at their young patient husband,
and the professor, almost unconsciously, during the morning hours,
copes with his marital duties and then has breakfast,
and, later on, the adulterers who love each other with real love,
on beds as high and spacious as sea-going ships-
so for sure and for ever this this great forest surrounds me,
breathing through flowers large as mouths chock full of teeth,
black-rooted in the shapes of hoofs and shoes.

-Pablo Neruda-

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From: MAKING LOVE – The Picador Book Of Erotic Verse – Edited by Alan Bold

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posted by Walter at 8/9/2004