power plays

I am a control freak by nature.  

This fact has given me lots of trouble throughout my past.  I've not behaved very well in the face of things I cannot change, unalterable facts, or even basic reality.

In the past year or so, I've made great strides in accepting life on life's terms, understanding the beauty of things unfolding around me in unimagined ways.

I've also come to understand the security and comfort that comes from surrendering the will to a higher power, to the spirit of the universe, to the raw atomic energy of creation...

Lately my curiosity has been drawn to guys who experiment with submission, power, and control in their erotic lives.  Not those who engage in humiliation, torture, and abuse (I can do that to myself without anyone else's help thank you very much!), but those who engage in exercises of trust, exploration of boundaries, warmly and with much affection.

Along those lines, I've also been thinking about eroticism, friendship, camaraderie, and how gay men seem to vascilate between assimilating into mainstream culture and maintaining the erotic perogative that comes from being a sexual outlaw.

More than anything, I guess I'm understanding that it's human nature to want control.  Self-preservation comes into play.  The fewer the variables, the more likely your survival.  

For an addictive personality, control is just like anything else, we have to have more and more of it to be satisfied, but there is never enough.  We just can't make that final leap to godhood.  

The Universe is not stupid!

So as I make my way through life, I am more and more sensitive to my impulse to reach out, to grab, try to fix, manage, control...  Ultimately we can only control our own actions and reactions.  That in itself becomes a great puzzle of power.  A never-ending adjustment to the reins.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

image: Rinaldo Hopf

body conscious

In the past eighteen months, I've put on forty plus pounds.  That's what happens when you stop getting all your calories from booze and when you put other things in your mouth besides cigarettes.  I really haven't been too demanding of myself physically over the past several months, but I'm finally at the point where my body is telling me it's time to get back into shape.

More than that, I've discovered how disconnected I am from my body.  I'm so damn cerebral, I sometimes forget my body is more than just some device to cart around my head...

To tell the truth, I've always had a pretty antagonistic relationship with my body and my appearance in general.  One of the lessons I'm still learning is to look in the mirror and not get pissed off for seeing someone who looks nothing like the idea I have in my head.

In fact, the image I have in my head doesn't even relate to my own body.  I usually imagine myself taller and either much thinner, or much bigger than my frame would ever allow.  I think my trouble with working out is that I'm always trying to achieve someone else's body.  I don't pay attention to the progress or changes that are actually taking place in my own flesh, with my own muscles.  I keep waiting for my body to look like someone who is much shorter, flatter, and ripped, or tall, massive, and muscled than I'll ever be.

Now, as I've learned over the past few months in other areas of my life, it would help tremendously if I'd simply stop arguing with reality.  Once I accept my body, my physical self for what it is, flaws and all, then maybe I'll start to see myself.  Once I start to see myself, perhaps I'll realize how cold and cruel I've been to a miraculous machine that has sustained me through decades of self abuse.

As with everything these days, lessons come as they are needed.   I'm very grateful to be in a position to pay attention.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at time...

gonna git you sucka

Condi, Condi, Condi... 

Were they showing Team America on the flight over?  Did you not get that it's satire?

"We are going to use the 'full range' of our military might, and let me underscore 'full range' to defend Japan."

Now why would you want to go and bait ol' Kimmie-poo, who has a brand new, shiny nuclear warhead and an itchy trigger finger?  You've just done a diplomatic pom-pom toss and declared an international "Bring It" to North Korea.

I wonder how the Japanese are feeling now that you've practically dared Kim Jong Il to swing his cajones. Maybe they're thinking they should have called the Australians...

And Kim Jong Il?  He's the bomb. 

I mean he's got the bomb.

He's a small man with a big (war) head.

As much as he loves the witty reparteé with his dear pals over in Washington, DC, I wouldn't be surprised if he isn't more interested in playing with his new toys.  If you own a gun, you're going to pull the trigger just once...

And the 'full range' of the US's military might would by definition include...nuclear missles?  Now that's the way to discourage developing countries from pursuing nuclear weapons: drop a few on them.

Again, the Japanese must be skittish (if not outright offended) at all this thinly veiled nuclear chest-thumping.  Since the US never apologized for dropping the bomb on them, maybe they think we've forgotten about that little glitch in our shared history.  Maybe they worry we might miss.  Maybe they remember that somewhere right off the coast out there, Godzilla is probably just waking up from a long nuclear winter's nap...

So Condi, Condaleeza, Miss Rice--whoever you are--please, please, please, for the sake of us who'd prefer not to glow in the dark, think before you speak.

reorientation

The past few weeks have been wild and full. While positive overall, I begin to see a propensity I have for overextending myself, for letting myself get caught up in noise and rush, for biting off much more than is healthy for me to chew.

I usually tend to be quite productive, successful at those things I undertake, but at a cost to my own serenity and my own well being that is both physical and spiritual.

At this point in my journey, I am setting boundaries, gauging limitations, accepting the fact that I personally cannot do it all, that I am not omnipotent, a superhero, or (that primal childhood yearning) perfect...

Today I enjoyed the pursuit of small domestic agendas: watching movies, napping, cleaning my room.  There has been so much clutter of activity that I'm actually looking forward to just working my job and living my life.  

I am beginning to discard the American mythology of busy-ness as a way of life, as a means of justifying, in some warped Puritanic way, one's right to existence.  Time is so short, that projects, activities, relationships, endeavors, must be sought that enrich the soul, not just perpetuate the machine.

There is an art in living well, or perhaps, living well means something totally different today than it did when I was still in the throes of my disease.  There is an option for peace now, and as good ol' Margaret insists, "peace at all costs.'

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

image: Kerry Skarbakka

live long and prosper--get it, christie's?

I am not a Trekkie.  Nevertheless, I am delighted the devoted fans of that imaginary universe have celebrated the 40th anniversary of 'boldly going where no man has gone before' by leaving the fine folks at Christie's auction house spinning in a warp speed wake, scratching their heads. 

A collection of props, special effects components, set pieces, models and costumes brought in a whopping $7.1 million dollars this weekend.  The revenues were more than double those originally estimated by Christie's.  A captain's chair used by Jean-Luc Picard (played by Patrick Stewart), for example, brought a gavel price of $52,000 compared to the $9000 originally estimated.  Even though auction house employees were dressed in Star Trek regalia, one gets a sense from the reaction to the weekend, that the intial approach to the Trekkie fanbase was somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

I am delighted a group of people passionately devoted to a universe of make-believe have quietly and irrefutably demonstrated themselves to be an economically solvent contingency with enough fire power to wow even the very hawkers of Picassos and Van Goghs...

Doppleganger

Once again, I too hastily bid JizzJazz69 goodbye...

There are laws at play in the Universe to which I am not privvy nor over which I have any control. Some cosmic dictate has conjured a soul identity for me that I am apparently not to question or eschew.

So boys, hang on to your nether-regions, the music's playing, the shadows are shifting, and the air is filled with incense and steamy breath. It's time to let loose, embrace everything, and tumble headlong into a warm, dark pool of mystery.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

image: Nick Night