Music - Christmas Carols

There was minimal sound proofing in a four-cube square. You could hear your direct neighbors, but the cube diagnally across from you was (almost) inaudible.

One Christmas this anomaly of sound led to a horror. John and Bruce both wanted to play Christmas carols, and were on the diagnal - they couldn't hear each other's choices. The two on the other diagnal however, could easily tell that they had the same taste: The Little Drummer Boy, and What Child Is This?

That's only minorly dreadful, but when you add that the one of them lagged behind the other by five minutes -!

Innocence - whodunnit ?

She was three months older than he. While that's not very significant for adult dogs, the three months, combined with her earlier tenure with us, played an important role for the two of them. The hierarchy their age difference established remained throughout their lives.

He was obedient and listened to me, but he also responded to her cues.


"Chi, sit"

She continued to stand but turned her head and stared at him, hard.

Certain he'd missed something, he looked at me and anxiously wagged his tail.

Then oh-so-slowly he sat, convinced that she was transmitting a command meant for him.

Night - lovers

You fall into bed at 11 too tired even to sleep. Your arms wrapped around, legs entangled with. At 1, you're spooning until the contact along the length of your bodies almost forces conjunction.

At 2.30 you wake to touch hard, wet, unaware, and join again and again.

At 4 you fall away from each other, momentarily sated, still tired, still longing for touch.

Then, to hear, smell and feel a breath, and to grasp and gasp, aching in your skin and bones.

At 6 your arousal keeps you locked together. One more trial to reach completion struggling through skin.

Night

Edward Hopper is the patron saint of urban night and sadness.

When you don't sleep much night becomes grainy.

The stars shine through a dirty veil.

The dawn isn't a relief. The moon exposes gloom still further.

And yet! After the second or third insomniac night, a storm becomes peaceful, streetlights shine.

Even darkness brightens. Lights flicker. Your eyes adapt a nightime strength the day never knows.

The people you see in the diner at 3am all have the same gray grimness What is it? You show it too.

None of you talk, none of you smile. It's not spring.

Faith - a lecture

People write about "religious instinct". The search for meaning in the universe so closely connected to an existence past death, doesn't show up in people whose upbringing was wholely secular.

You're going to talk about the converts-to-whatever-fundementalism who speak of the emptiness of the unreligious lives they and their families led. The lack of religion tends to be overstated. If they're Jews, they went to temple, and sporadically kept kosher. If they're Christians, often they were Main-Line protestants of a rather ethereal sort.

Not atheist.

Those raised away from religion tend to look at it with interested curiousity, not fervor.

Blindness

My mother thinks she's brain damaged.

She can't do math. As she got through calculus and statistics, I didn't believe her. She could balance her checkbook in the days before cheap calculators and computers. She's astoundingly analytic.

She can't connect real world problems (where there are some) to equations. She can't see math.

Recently, it's occured to me that I'm also brain-damaged. I miss connections between specifics of behaviour and their underpinnings. I have to have everything explained, I often can't retain it.

My blind spot is a surprise. How could someone so curious miss -- well -- what I do miss!!

Sensuality - gourmandizing

When I first saw Tom Jones, two things struck me: the beauty of male 18th century clothing, and the sexiness of "the eating scene". You know the one -- Tom and Jenny rip apart a chicken while staring each other down, and end up -- well end up where you'd expect.

Full frontal assault on food has brought me more than one fascinated (or maybe horrified is a more accurate word) lover The first time I was seventeen, and dismembered both my lobster and his. He claimed he'd never seen less meat left on a crustacean, and fell in love right then.

Sensuality - odi et amo

As I turn around, your presence remains.

Your clothes.

Your tooth brush.

Your scent.

Reminders of you arouse. If I allow any sense memory to return I feel you once more and am drawn back.

There isn't a last or next time. Imagination can contain only your length touching, enfolding the entire length of me.

There are no words for propioception, verbally, we can't necessarily distinguish the myriad forms of touch. And yet, my every breath generates tactile reminders of you - heat, pressure, moisture, chills.

Once more, shivering, I am racked.

Nothing remains but the contact and interaction of us.