Month: September 2014

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Two Johns

Sex as mystifying exploration, conquest, delight and wonderment in the body, and women (mistresses, Mayer’s room-getting lover, presumably female?) as the object of desire, objectified, as displayed in these two writings, one from the 16th Century and one from the 21st, displays the fascination and abnegation of the object of the gaze, at once giving the object presence (Donne’s specific articles of clothing that immortalize his mistress in the words of his poem) and absence, woman/desire as concept, the object of desire without face, language or representation, just catalyst for desire, erection and egocentric absorption (Mayer’s “one thing left to do, discover me discovering you.”

To His Mistress Going to Bed
BY JOHN DONNE
Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tir’d with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven’s Zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th’eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime,
Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th’hill’s shadow steals.
Off with that wiry Coronet and shew
The hairy Diadem which on you doth grow:
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love’s hallow’d temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven’s Angels used to be
Received by men; Thou Angel bringst with thee
A heaven like Mahomet’s Paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know,
By this these Angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
Licence my roving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d,
My Mine of precious stones, My Empirie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views,
That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a Gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus array’d;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see reveal’d. Then since that I may know;
As liberally, as to a Midwife, shew
Thy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance due to innocence.
To teach thee, I am naked first; why then
What needst thou have more covering than a man.

Your Body is a Wonderland by John Mayer

We got the afternoon
You got this room for two
One thing I’ve left to do
Discover me
Discovering you

One mile to every inch of
Your skin like porcelain
One pair of candy lips and
Your bubblegum tongue

And if you want love
We’ll make it
Swim in a deep sea
Of blankets
Take all your big plans
And break ’em
This is bound to be a while

Your body is a wonderland
Your body is a wonder (I’ll use my hands)
Your body is a wonderland

Something ’bout the way the hair falls in your face
I love the shape you take when crawling towards the pillowcase
You tell me where to go and though I might leave to find it
I’ll never let your head hit the bed without my hand behind it

you want love?
We’ll make it
Swim in a deep sea
Of blankets
Take all your big plans
And break ’em
This is bound to be a while

Your body is a wonderland
Your body is a wonder (I’ll use my hands)
Your body is a wonderland
(I’ll never speak again… I’ll use my hands)

Damn baby
You frustrate me
I know you’re mine, all mine, all mine
But you look so good it hurts sometimes

Your body is a wonderland
(I’ll never speak again… I’ll use my hands)
Your body is a wonder (I’ll use my hands)
Your body is a wonderland
(I’ll never speak again… I’ll use my hands)
Your body is a wonderland

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Pinched Green

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Where is my kelly green, my fern? You have moved back to the pines, and I cannot feel your colors visibly, not distinctly, only slippery shades melding one into the other, making my mind yearn for the malachite forest scene of your coming.

Lately, I hunger green, artichoke, asparagus and avocado, even the one that makes you shudder, olive. I walk hunter, drip sap, and smooth moss, the living greens. I ooze.

Last time, when I stuffed you in a box, you danced me among the seething slits and asses, the indecipherable bodies of flickering light, smoke and sweat, and yours in my mouth, on my tongue, salty and sweet scent of yellow-green sea, the hungering hiss of breath on my lips. We shone, our sheen emerald and gyrated hips of jade.

Those were extraordinary days, that caged time down south, when I watched you walk down the city street beside me, clasping the crook of my arm, or scraping your toes against the heat of the ocean smooth sand and then coming to me in your easeful stride and thin-lipped tolerance. The glint in your eye, teasing out desire, was utterly teal and mint tea.

We have traveled deep in the green of your grass, your trees, you in mine.

In moments like today, when either of us lulls and listens, when your mind is dark smoked with bedeviling thoughts of the other who sometimes sits in that bar stool beside me, the burning that bricks up your walls, dug in deep, show me Harlequin, rifle and army green. I hear silent Screamin’ green. Gut green.

There are places that curve around our minds and make your palms moisten in remembrance of lines drawn with your fingers pressed deep past muscle to bone, firing synapses of wince and grin. Back then, in a commercial cocoon waiting, you cradled the pulsing organ that once belonged to me but now rests full, bleeding warm vital viscous tears of soothing dreams and sighs, painfully powerful pounding love in your hands, your hands that I watched unfold my flesh, uncover the beating mass before my eyes. I crushed down in you, myrtle mine, ensavored, enslaved and succumbed, pinched green.

Mantis, Castleton, India, Persia, Russia and Pakistan, paint the air green, tinting the lens in my favorite hue, you. Courage me green to laurel the winter time til spring, the color of you.

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Coming Soon…Showtime’s The Affair

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I am not much of a television watcher. In fact, I was unsure of how to turn my t.v. on for many years, which remote and the sequence of buttons to click, but was never motivated enough to learn. That was until “True Detectives” with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey on HBO last year. Now, Showtime is previewing a series entitled The Affair, which promises to feature an honest, slightly empathetic or at least justified look at the complicated and much maligned subject of marriage and cheating. As enticingly introduced in Cara Buckley’s write up on September 3rd in the New York Times (thanks to Frank Jelnicky for passing this on to me), “Imagine an extra marital love affair in which neither party can be blamed.” Cognizant of the touchiness of the subject, the Israeli writer Hagai Levi notes the challenge of writing something compelling and engaging, serious, without elicited “knee-jerk audience disapproval.” In addition to the promised feature of the landscape of beaches along Long Island, I am looking forward to seeing how the writer and producer’s efforts achieve that challenging goal in their measured choice in casting and intimate, dicey subject matter.
I guess it is time to take lessons in television operations.

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Mistress@bdsmalbum.net

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This Hentai apparent sub appears to be looking in anguish to the missing person in the scene most probably the dom in this master or mistress and slave power exchange. She is bound and exposed, the cartoon breasts and crotch in prominent view. The bonds that tie her seem somewhat like restrictive ribbons, rather suggestive of the play relationship. The only contradiction is the look in the subject’s eyes, which appears to be a mix of slight fright and apparent seduction to the dom. In the typical master/mistress and slave relationship, the lure is the power exchange (whether total power exchange or partial) where the submissive gives his or her power/life to the dominant in exchange for the dominant’s responsibility to take care of him or her. Trust is key. While the control may seem tied up in one person, the submissive’s giving up control usually rests on the tacit agreement, sometimes written agreement, that the submissive determine the limitations, going so far and no further, assuming the participants are consenting partners and not insane. Notice the sub is presumably tied up, looking down at the dom, which suggests she has her own power.

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Lesbos by Sylvia Plath

…Sylvia Plath’s husband, poet Ted Hughes, was having an affair during their marriage. They fought about it, but he refused to give up his mistress. Sylvia Plath committed suicide and four years later the mistress, Assia Wevill, also committed suicide. Both women left behind small children.

Lesbos

Viciousness in the kitchen!
The potatoes hiss.
It is all Hollywood, windowless,
The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine,
Coy paper strips for doors
Stage curtains, a widow’s frizz.
And I, love, am a pathological liar,
And my child look at her, face down on the floor,
Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear
Why she is schizophrenic,
Her face is red and white, a panic,
You have stuck her kittens outside your window
In a sort of cement well
Where they crap and puke and cry and she can’t hear.
You say you can’t stand her,
The bastard’s a girl.
You who have blown your tubes like a bad radio
Clear of voices and history, the staticky
Noise of the new.
You say I should drown the kittens. Their smell!
You say I should drown my girl.
She’ll cut her throat at ten if she’s mad at two.
The baby smiles, fat snail,
From the polished lozenges of orange linoleum.
You could eat him. He’s a boy.
You say your husband is just no good to you.
His Jew-Mama guards his sweet sex like a pearl.
You have one baby, I have two.
I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair.
I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair.
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,
Me and you.

Meanwhile there’s a stink of fat and baby crap.
I’m doped and thick from my last sleeping pill.
The smog of cooking, the smog of hell
Floats our heads, two venemous opposites,
Our bones, our hair.
I call you Orphan, orphan. You are ill.
The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.B.
Once you were beautiful.
In New York, in Hollywood, the men said: “Through?
Gee baby, you are rare.”
You acted, acted for the thrill.
The impotent husband slumps out for a coffee.
I try to keep him in,
An old pole for the lightning,
The acid baths, the skyfuls off of you.
He lumps it down the plastic cobbled hill,
Flogged trolley. The sparks are blue.
The blue sparks spill,
Splitting like quartz into a million bits.

O jewel! O valuable!
That night the moon
Dragged its blood bag, sick
Animal
Up over the harbor lights.
And then grew normal,
Hard and apart and white.
The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death.
We kept picking up handfuls, loving it,
Working it like dough, a mulatto body,
The silk grits.
A dog picked up your doggy husband. He went on.

Now I am silent, hate
Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak.
I am packing the hard potatoes like good clothes,
I am packing the babies,
I am packing the sick cats.
O vase of acid,
It is love you are full of. You know who you hate.
He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate
That opens to the sea
Where it drives in, white and black,
Then spews it back.
Every day you fill him with soul-stuff, like a pitcher.
You are so exhausted.
Your voice my ear-ring,
Flapping and sucking, blood-loving bat.
That is that. That is that.
You peer from the door,
Sad hag. “Every woman’s a whore.
I can’t communicate.”

I see your cute decor
Close on you like the fist of a baby
Or an anemone, that sea
Sweetheart, that kleptomaniac.
I am still raw.
I say I may be back.
You know what lies are for.

Even in your Zen heaven we shan’t meet.

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In Response to “A Letter to My Father’s Mistress” found on rebellesociety.com entitled “no one owes you anything: a letter from Harry Browne to his daughter”


“Everything you want in life has a price connected to it. There’s a price to pay if you want to make things better, a price to pay just for leaving things as they are, a price for everything.” — Harry Browne

During the darkest part of the night, who do you blame?
Do you know who Mr. Browne is? According to Wikipedia, Harry Browne (1933 – 2006) was a free-market libertarian writer and investment analyst who was the Presidential candidate of the United States Libertarian Party in 1996 and 2000. He was also Director of the American Liberty Foundation.
I don’t know what these characteristics translate into or even the kind of person Harry Browne was. I did, however, come across this letter he wrote at Christmas to his then nine-year old daughter. The letter was dated December 25, 1966.
I have shared Harry’s letter over the years with circles of friends and family. The responses have varied. Some have whole-heartedly agreed with Harry, yet some reacted with defensiveness, even contempt, not only for Mr. Browne, but toward me for sharing. Some felt the letter was cynical, harsh, even cruel. There were also those who thought that Harry’s words to his daughter offered them a new perspective on life.
For me, the letter was a great reminder of the expectations we attach to people, outcomes and situations, and the potential blame we assign when we don’t receive what we have desired.
Who is responsible for life’s outcomes? Who is responsible for our experiences?
***
Harry’s letter to his daughter:
It’s Christmas and I have the usual problem of deciding what to give you. I know you might enjoy many things — books, games, clothes.
But I’m very selfish. I want to give you something that will stay with you for more than a few months or years. I want to give you a gift that might remind you of me every Christmas.
If I could give you just one thing, I’d want it to be a simple truth that took me many years to learn. If you learn it now, it may enrich your life in hundreds of ways. And it may prevent you from facing many problems that have hurt people who have never learned it.
The truth is simply this: No one owes you anything.
Significance
How could such a simple statement be important? It may not seem so, but understanding it can bless your entire life.
No one owes you anything.
It means that no one else is living for you, my child. Because no one is you. Each person is living for himself; his own happiness is all he can ever personally feel.
When you realize that no one owes you happiness or anything else, you’ll be freed from expecting what isn’t likely to be.
It means no one has to love you. If someone loves you, it’s because there’s something special about you that gives him happiness. Find out what that something special is and try to make it stronger in you, so that you’ll be loved even more.
When people do things for you, it’s because they want to — because you, in some way, give them something meaningful that makes them want to please you, not because anyone owes you anything.
No one has to like you. If your friends want to be with you, it’s not out of duty. Find out what makes others happy so they’ll want to be near you.
No one has to respect you. Some people may even be unkind to you. But once you realize that people don’t have to be good to you, and may not be good to you, you’ll learn to avoid those who would harm you. For you don’t owe them anything either.
Living your Life
No one owes you anything.
You owe it to yourself to be the best person possible. Because if you are, others will want to be with you, want to provide you with the things you want in exchange for what you’re giving to them.
Some people will choose not to be with you for reasons that have nothing to do with you. When that happens, look elsewhere for the relationships you want. Don’t make someone else’s problem your problem.
Once you learn that you must earn the love and respect of others, you’ll never expect the impossible and you won’t be disappointed. Others don’t have to share their property with you, nor their feelings or thoughts.
If they do, it’s because you’ve earned these things. And you have every reason to be proud of the love you receive, your friends’ respect, the property you’ve earned. But don’t ever take them for granted. If you do, you could lose them. They’re not yours by right; you must always earn them.
My Experience
A great burden was lifted from my shoulders the day I realized that no one owes me anything. For so long as I’d thought there were things I was entitled to, I’d been wearing myself out —physically and emotionally — trying to collect them.
No one owes me moral conduct, respect, friendship, love, courtesy, or intelligence. And once I recognized that, all my relationships became far more satisfying. I’ve focused on being with people who want to do the things I want them to do.
That understanding has served me well with friends, business associates, lovers, sales prospects, and strangers. It constantly reminds me that I can get what I want only if I can enter the other person’s world. I must try to understand how he thinks, what he believes to be important, what he wants. Only then can I appeal to someone in ways that will bring me what I want.
And only then can I tell whether I really want to be involved with someone. And I can save the important relationships for those with whom I have the most in common.
It’s not easy to sum up in a few words what has taken me years to learn. But maybe if you re-read this gift each Christmas, the meaning will become a little clearer every year.
I hope so, for I want more than anything else for you to understand this simple truth that can set you free:
No one owes you anything.

No One Owes You Anything: A Letter from Harry Browne to his daughter.

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Jane Upchurch’s “Hagar”

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Hagar (Genesis 16.1-16)

I am an Egyptian
a long way from home,
travelling on an another’s journey,
following their dreams and destiny
with my service.

I am the one
who carries and cooks and cleans,
nurturing and caring
for someone else’s dwelling.

I am my work,
I am invisible for who I am.
I am a stray feather
acquired and used
but that never belongs.

I had learnt the skill
of neutral eyes
and lowered gaze
until today
when the quickening life within me
burst forth in a blaze
of pride.

I am carrying my mistress’s child.
I, not she, will bear
the gift of the promise
of their God.

She doesn’t like my look
for my eyes mirror
her shame and barrenness back to her
as they vaunt my expectancy.

I am scared.

No longer invisible
I am a target for
her sharp tongue and bile
as all the bitterness of her barren years
finds it’s mark in my condition.

I cannot stay.
The thing that seemed to raise me
has thrown me in the dust
like a broken pot .
My swelling pride
is a thorn in my side.

I have nothing.
I am no-one.
I am running from my mistress
with my unwanted child.

And that is how He found me,
in dirt at the side of the road,
all expectancy gone,
just left with the legacy
of her bitterness.

He knew my name.
He made me a promise
like Abraham’s,
a promise just for me,
for my child
not hers.

And He sent me back,
girded by His hope,
protected by His promise.

He saw me.
I am not invisible.
And I saw Him.

http://janeupchurch.co.uk/57/

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A Letter To My Father’s Mistress

Life as the other woman is just SO hard. You can’t put pictures of your cute little getaways on social media, you can’t brag to all of your friends how awesome your new man is, and you can’t bring him home to meet the folks. Your sleepovers are few and far between and you know you’ll never get that goodnight or good morning text from him because he’s at home with his family. Oh shit — did you forget about those other people? Y’know, his wife? His children? You probably didn’t think it would matter; you probably figured it was just a little affair and we would never find out. We’ll just go on and live the rest of our lives completely unaffected by it, right?

Nope. I am the child of a cheating father and believe me, I’ve been deeply affected by the mistakes you’ve made. In fact the pain that you’ve caused me will follow me for the rest of my life. Soon after my father’s infidelities came to light I struggled with depression, anxiety, and binge drinking — problems that I had never had before you were around. I was in so deep I didn’t realize I was spiraling out of control until I had nearly destroyed my academic career, my friendships and my relationships. The selfish choices you made ruined my whole family. Not just my mom, and not just me or my sister either. But his parents too. His sisters, nieces and nephews. My mom’s sisters and her nieces and nephews. It ruined my relationship with my boyfriend of two years because I couldn’t deal with the stress you caused. People have openly mocked me about my dad being a philanderer and I can’t say anything back because it’s true. Do you have any idea how it feels to come home to your crying, depressed mother and have to be the one to comfort her because of mistakes YOU made? Members of my family (myself included) had mental breakdowns because of the pain that YOU caused. The worst part is that I had to accept you or face the threat of being cut out of my father’s life. Because, after all of this, he’s still crass enough to continue dating you. Yeah, he may have left her, but don’t you dare believe he ever did it for you.

THIS is not a little affair and you’re ruining people’s lives far beyond your own. It’s bad enough to disregard his wife, but the damage you’ve caused me and everyone else will haunt us forever and you will eventually pay for what you’ve done. You can attempt to justify your decision by saying he was unhappy and that, if it weren’t you, he would have probably just cheated with another woman. But it’s not your place to decide “If not me, someone else.” You let it be someone else.

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The Coach

An old friend and former lover, the coach laughs with ease and Cheshire grin, inhaling the titters out of me. He is a stocky, dark complected man with large brown eyes gleaming in fear and amusement. He orders his world with hierarchies of God, family, faith and football, with rules and structure, even as he breaks them, breaks others, breaks vows. He is all human. But his heart is mutely echo’d in walls of cotton candied gelatin. The tears well with warm patriotic ardor and weal. Those strong, short arms once enfolded mine, vining around my biceps and wrists, making them fly a simulated soaring flight to the outside of our seedy hotel room, or back of the 79 Mercury or passenger seat of the 73 Beetle, in the park, in my bed. Sucking the world into him like hunger, the coach shouts, stomps, demands, and pushes politely with aggressive passivity, wanting others to love him and resenting them for making him want to impress them. He once said to me with pained realization after I withdrew my hand from his, “You’re cold, ” again proving plays and strategies win the field for the day and lose the love in the long days of getting on with career, raising children and growing old beyond sexual need, into erectile dysfunction and the comfort of the wife who is the worn leather silk of his favorite recliner, the one he couldn’t get out of and so sits way back, softly slouching the last cut, the remnants of the breadth of his shoulders, the line of resolution and absolution his neck and the round of his blades make. Now the coach stands loudly among his charges but has slunk from site from where he sidled up against the trunk of my hips for so long, now receded, ever in retreat. Give the wave, the signal. Hide behind semblance of distinction and cower before the potential exposure of the lie that dresses you up each morning. Yet your killing kindness and funny frailty draw my memories to the temperate comfort of forgotten forgiveness. No words. Peace.

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