Year: 2016

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Blind Fingering Dates

  
Illustration by Frances Waite via instagram @franceswaite.
 

Yes, they exist. A woman, unclothed from the waist down, stroked by a fully clothed stranger (man, so far) to orgasm is called orgasmic meditation. The purpose is not just to get the woman off, but to exercise mutual focus on one spot–literally–that becomes meditative for both, I assume. There is no information from the the doer’s perspective, only the do-ee’s vantage point in the Dazed article “Blind ‘fingering’ dates are London’s Latest.”

“Learning how to handle her pussy is equally important as learning how to handle the rest of her. Imagine what would be possible if you learned to do both?”

The fifteen minutes of orgasmic meditation costs about £147 for the first session with the exploratory aim of an intensely meditative-orgasmic shared experience–which makes sense if you think about it. What is the hardest part of meditating? Keeping the mind chatter quiet. Getting stroked to body and mind submission–you know that focus that orgasm takes–is a kind of cheat shortcut way of silencing the mind for brief minutes anyhow. And as to the orgasm part, for those who find it difficult to orgasm with a significant other (don’t want to hold lovemaking hostage, fear of hurting someone’s feelings, total lack of knowledge or experience), this seems like a solution.

The other advantage here is the association of orgasm and meditation. I think the author lightly touches on it (pun intended), but my own experience at least proves this true. My meditation practice tails my daily yoga session. So the routine practice, including DR.DREZ music and burning incense, triggers the meditative disposition and my mind quiets quicker due to the association. So imagine the possibilities of an orgasm-meditation reflexive association.

According to the accompanying TEDx talk, speaker and method founder, Nicole Daedone, claims the practice is not merely liberating but culturally transformative, given how women are typically unable to access orgasm for a host of reasons not some of which are schizophrenic societal expectations and unrealistic or harmful portrayals and treatment of women, especially female sexuality. Tapping into orgasm feeds the “hunger” many women feel. Daedone believes if more women were tuned in and turned on, they could change the world.

To my mind, however, just as to Dominque Sisley’s, the writer of the article, the binary underpinning of this practice is exclusionary, and quite frankly, mystifying. If isolating a fifteen minute orgasm into the mechanics of beingness, of the meditative moment, is also a lesson in the mechanics of female parts to orgasm, then what difference does it make whose fingers work the parts? I’m also curious about the giver’s experience, an unfortunate lack in the article. What’s in it for him?

Despite the gaps, the 15-minute TEDx talk is worth watching as Daedone is clear, clever and charming. Enjoy and happy finger-ful Sunday!

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Writing to Know Me

writer

I, like many, write to grow myself and grow knowledge not only of all that’s out there but also of all that’s on my mind.

Novelist Judith Guest in the Foreword to Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones writes: “It is easy to lose sight of the fact that writers do not write to impart knowledge to others; rather, they write to inform themselves.”

That may seem egocentric, but isn’t that all that anyone can be? I read writing advice daily: write for others, give readers something to chew on; enrich them. Well I, for one, know that I may never sit down to write with my readers’ benefit in mind. That I could not do. I would write not one word (and did not for decades) with so much burden, so much expectation.

Besides, it’s presumptuous to believe I have anything to offer my reader–knowledge, advice, tips, beauty–beyond my human experience. I offer one person’s view of one person’s observations.

After I have sent something out there–to be read–then, that is when I send my hopes and wishes that someone somewhere finds something in my words, something worth the time spent reading them. But if I wrote with that same desire, that my recollections reach a reader, I would not write for fear of disappointing.

Anyone out there? (sound of crickets)

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The Poetry of Being

  
The components of being build essences of the all told, acted, sung and noted.

They shake out doings done and yet to come like San Andreas’ fault, not a fault. 

Did we quake? My shoulders shuddered like a surge, a heart murmur or eruption.

No, the inner mechanics of rebellion taking a stand on all things ingest just arose.

When the ear throbbing starts, I know I’m lost to it, going into floated notice din.

My heartbeat declares so loudly inside my ears in its under water muffle-areum.

I doubt creation’s pen then, my mouth moving silently, my hands ripping at keys.

Keyboard fingers fly like the cocaine toad hopping brain’s clicking away at strings.

There’s this word association that bleeds writing, a lapse, slide gurgle into them:

Strung words, the meaning of which is not revealed until they mix and sit together.

They settle in a rhythm and slur, brushed water tinted smears blotting tilted space.

Poetry and being entwine thus: letter, scene, wish, guess all overlaid in blindness. 

Squeezed juice, the nothing of matter becomes me-you, and we polish air’s shine.

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Our weekly or sometimes bi-monthly lunch date

  
“How was class today?”

“I finally convinced my students that writers are like magicians. They make something out of nothing. Turning a blank sheet of paper into an essay is like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, changing the properties of one thing to transform it into another.”

“And they bought that?”

“They did.”

“Because you hold their future, namely their grades, in your hands, you think?

“Maybe. Whatever it takes.”

“Sounds like teaching is a lot like extortion.”

“There’s a lot of ‘or else’ in life, not just in teaching. Everything is a matter of dangling carrots or dodging sticks: Pay your bills on time or pay penalties, finance charges or lose your electricity. Pay your bills on time and build good credit, so you can have more credit. Sticks and carrots.”

“Speaking of which, I’ll get the check this time. You paid last time.”

“Carrot. You want me to show up next week to reciprocate–or retaliate, right?”

“Clever girl.”

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When a father…

We never carry them the way they carry us, but we carry, we do.

I may never lift my father in my arms and cradle him to sleep–

but I would if that were the only thing to do, if he withered away,

the blood in his urine signaling cancer gone cure-less, and all

of his 6’3″body shrunk to size befitting my strength’s capacity.

His burden was not the same as mine now, yet just as heavy.

I make his doctor appointments, petition his insurance carrier

for returns and permissions, for money owed and paid, due

promises others should keep, I track them and bite my nails

when he drives, counting the days til the inevitable unknown.

I am his memory and his nattering nit-picking conscience.

Parenting him is not like his parenting me–not like it at all.

He left parenting to his wife, my mother, who stares skeletal now.

My parenting is ironic, the young to the old, whereas his or hers

was right side up. Picking up my body in his arms to rush me,

bleeding, to the doctor downstairs when I cut my finger off in the

city apartment steel shut booming door I teased with my 3 year old

fingers til it bit my left forefinger, my pointer, right off my hand,

he carried me, but not like I carry him, in his arms, not in my arms,

but in my constant vigilance and resentment and worry and fear.

I watch him and struggle to be patient, to be nice, to be a daughter

not a mother or a wife or stranger disinterested in the outcome,

though that may be how it appears on the outside, estrangement.

But it’s never-without-burning back of the mind bearing weight,

loaded on a mind’s shoulders, sagged under heavy-careful love.

He held me in lightness and faith, worry, worship and wonder.

I speak him in my dreams, awakening to his anger and my own.

Shaking off our bodies to the dust is always on our minds, we two–

a father to a daughter-mother-mortal-stranger til the end, ours.

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Sex Goddesses

  
Credit: goddessofsacredsex.com
 

Urban Dictionary’s top definition of a sex goddess:

n. a female who is a deity to mankind in bed. She is so potent at giving and receiving pleasure that she will often leave men enchanted in a helplessly amazed stupor.

“I am a sex goddess,” she proclaims.

“I join the ranks of many.”

She’s right. There have been many. (See Wikipedia)

Albanian folklore 

Prende, goddess of porn

Armenian mythology 

Astghik, goddess of fertility and love

Aztec mythology 

Xochiquetzal, goddess of fertility, beauty, prostitutes, female sexual power, protection of young mothers, pregnancy, childbirth, and women’s crafts

Xochipilli, god of love, art, games, beauty, dance, flowers, maize, fertility, and song

Tlazolteotl, goddess of lust, carnality, sexual misdeeds

Ixcuiname, goddess of the carnality.

Tiacapan, goddess of sexual passion.

Teicu, goddess of sexual appetite.

Tlaco, goddess of sexual longing.

Xocotzin, goddess of sexual desire.

Buddhism 

Aizen Myō-ō or Rāgarāja, a deity who transforms worldly lust into spiritual awakening; his red-skinned appearance represents suppressed lust and passion

Canaanite mythology 

Astarte, goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare

Qetesh, goddess of love, beauty and sex

Celtic mythology 

Áine, Irish goddess of love, summer, wealth and sovereignty

Cliodhna Irish goddess, sometimes identified as a goddess of love and beauty[1]

Chinese mythology 

Yue-Lao, a god of love, who binds two people together with an invisible red string.

Tu Er Shen, a deity who oversees the love between homosexual men.

White Peony (Bai Mudan or Pai Mu-Tan), a goddess who tempts men, especially ascetics.

Wutong Shen, a group of five wanton deities from Southern China. They ravished and possessed beautiful women.

Pan Jinlian or P’an Chin-Lien, goddess of fornication and prostitution

Baimei Shen, Chinese god for prostitution and brothel. On her first assignment with a client, a prostitute was supposed to make sacrifice to him

Han Shn, Sage of Harmony

Shi Dei, Sage of Unity

Qian Keng (Peng Zu), God of health-focused sex.

Nuwa or (Newa), Goddess of the wedding band and wedding jewelry. Represents Heaven and the never ending sexual desire between married couples.

Chuang Mu, Chinese goddess of the bedchamber.She and his husband Chuang Gong look after everything that may happen in the bed room, including sex, sleep, childbirth, etc

King Zhou of Shang, one of worst tyrants in Chinese history. He is known as the god of sodomy

Egyptian mythology 

Bes, god of music, dance, and sexual pleasure

Hathor, goddess of the sky, love, beauty, and music

Bastet, goddess of felines, love, sexuality, protection, perfume, beauty, and dance

Min, god of sexuality, reproduction, love, and sexual pleasure

Etruscan mythology 

Albina, goddess of the dawn and protector of ill-fated lovers

Turan, goddess of love and vitality

Greek mythology 

Aphrodite, goddess of love, sexuality and beauty

The Erotes

Anteros, god of requited love

Demeter, Goddess of agriculture and fertility but also of motherly love & unconditional love.

Eros, god of love and sexual desire

Himeros, god of sexual desire

Hedylogos, god of sweet talk and flattery.

Hermaphroditus, god of hermaphrodites and of effeminate men.

Hymen, god of weddings and wedding songs

Pothos, god of sexual longing, yearning and desire

Ganymede, sometimes identified as the god of homosexual love

Narcissus, god of self-love and Vanity

Peitho, personification of persuasion and seduction

Pan, god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature, hunting and rustic music, and companion of the nymphs, also associated with sexuality and fertility. Famous for his sexual powers and is often depicted with an erect phallus. Diogenes of Sinope, speaking in jest, related a myth of Pan learning masturbation from his father, Hermes, and teaching the habit to shepherds. Pan’s greatest conquest was that of the moon goddess Selene. He accomplished this by wrapping himself in a sheepskin to hide his hairy black goat form, and drew her down from the sky into the forest where he seduced her.

Philotes (mythology), either Goddess of Affection or a Daimon of sexual intercourse.

Guaraní mythology 

Kurupi, god of sexuality and fertility

Hindu mythology 

Kama (left) with Rati on a temple wall of Chennakesava Temple, Belur.

Kamadeva or Madan or Kama , god of love and sexuality

Rati, goddess of passion and lust, wife of Kamadeva

Parvati, the goddess of love, devotion and fertility

Lithuanian mythology 

Milda, goddess of love and freedom

Enzo, god of love and stress

Mesopotamian mythology 

Inanna or Ishtar, goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare[2]

Nanaya, goddess personifying voluptuousness and sensuality

Moroccan mythology 

Qandisa, Jinn (ghost) who first seduces men then drives them insane[3]

Norse and Germanic mythology 

Freya, goddess associated with love, beauty, magic, shamanism, seiðr, sacrifice, war, death, and sexuality.

Freyr, worshipped as a phallic fertility god, he was said to “[bestow] peace and pleasure on mortals”

Frigg, goddess of marriage, married women, household duty, and divination.

Sjöfn, goddess associated with love

Roman mythology 

Venus, the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Aphrodite

Cupid, the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Eros

Suadela, the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Peitho

Slavic mythology

Dogoda, Polish spirit of the west wind, associated with love and gentleness

Dzydzilelya, Polish goddess of love and marriage and of sexuality and fertility

Lada, fakeloric goddess of harmony, merriment, youth, love and beauty

Siebog, god of love and marriage

Živa, goddess of love and fertility

Turco-Mongol

Aisyt

Voodoo 

Baron La Croix, god of the dead and sexuality

Baron Samedi, god of the dead, sex and resurrection

Erzulie Freda Dahomey, god of love, beauty, jewelry, dancing, luxury, and flowers

Yoruba mythology 

Mami Wata, a pantheon of water deities sometimes associated with love and lust

Oshun, goddess of love, intimacy, beauty, wealth and diplomacy

Yemoja, mother goddess of the oceans, fertility, prosperity, peace, and protection

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Pot 


I suffer from insomnia, always have. My brain either does not shut down at night or does not stay shut. It is not a constant condition but revisits often enough to make me miserable.

The usual cycle begins when I divert, even slightly, from my regular sleep and awakening time. For instance, if I work a night shift on one job and then teach an early class at the other, I lose sleep. By the time I settle down to sleep, it’s late and my optimal 7 hours of sleep is down to 6 or fewer. And too little sleep one night does not result in a guaranteed better night the next. In fact, the opposite is usually true. I get over-tired, making sleep impossible when I am wide awake from having gone through too many tired hours.

Ordinarily, I fight insomnia with sufficient exercise, healthy diet and strict sleep times. Sometimes months pass without a bout. But lately–the last two years lately–I am not able to avoid it even with careful attention.

I am not one to medicate. Yes, I like a glass of wine with dinner and a cold IPA after a long week, but pharmaceuticals I avoid. Most sleep aids leave me with a hangover and homeopathic remedies have not proven successful for me to date. And every one knows alcohol disrupts sleep when the effects wear off during the night.

A friend donated “medicinal” marijuana to me for the cause a while ago, which helped me sleep during some of those insomnia episodes. After high school, pot stopped being fun since it only made me fall asleep, a condition I wanted to avoid most of my life. But now, that is just what the doctor ordered–literally.

I visited a pot doctor and a dispensary today to get a “recommendation” and “medicine.” It was rather surreal to this old girl who has not purchased pot since 1977. I had heard about the different varietals and experienced the potency surge–like pot on steroids–but I was amazed at the various applications, combinations and methods to use this plant once purchased simply as a dime bag for ten dollars that yielded either good stuff or bad.

The dispensers at the dispensary were quite informed and professional, affording me samples and sniff tests to entice my discerning nose to the subtleties in aromas. And though I sniffed and nodded, I had to confess to total ignorance.

“Just give me something that will make me sleep–the entire night–and still allow me to teach a 7:20 a.m. class as a human not a zombie, ” I requested. After all, this was the purpose, the reason for this trip and experiment for a cure or at least relief.

“Girl Scout Cookies,” she replied, and I went home with my Rx bag of enough medicine to last me for the next one hundred bouts of insomnia or my lifetime, whichever comes first.

I must say, the number of tweaks to whatever you eat, smoke or apply is mind boggling. There is something for whatever ails you, and not merely back pain, insomnia, stomach ache, anxiety, depression and soreness. There’s even a recommended varietal for writer’s block (or was a I sold a bill of goods?).

You can spray cannibis oil on affected areas of muscle pain or rub in ointment if preferred. You can eat candies, cookies or marshmallow puffs, according to the literature I perused while at the “shop.” You can quarter, halve or pop a whole cookie in your mouth depending on your tolerance for THC, cannabinoids or late night sugar snacking.

According to my doctor, the edibles are best for sleeping through the night but not the heavy bodied indica types that leave residual hangovers (though all of them can in the wrong dose). Hybrids seem best. But timing is everything with those, not so good with an unpredictable work schedule or late night shifts. Who has the extra two hours to wait or gumption to eat pot at work? Not me.

We’ve come a long a way from pot brownies, I guess.

Curious about why California, the earliest leader of pot legalization, is late on the bandwagon behind Colorado, Washington and Oregon (D.C., maybe too), I researched and found politics, money and petty bickering between purists and pragmatists, both vying for the initiative that will finally win the day after failed attempts in 2010 and prior. As it stands, the 2016 initiative, California’s Adult Use of Marijuana Act, which is finally down to only one initiative–so far–is still gathering solidification and blessings from grandfather NORML and political power ReformCA, two big backers of pot legalization.

Hopefully, sensible law will win the day, one that de-criminalizes marijuana use completely, not in some half-assed mock health law, though I am not knocking the compassionate care legislation that gave real patients medical marijuana relief. I suspect some of my fellow office visitors at the doc’s today just wanted to recreate, and so played the sick card. The farce should end.

As for me, I’m playing the guinea pig and research subject (this whole experiment is merely for research purposes and a good story, right?). Stay tuned for updates.

 

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She Like Me

  

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think interior decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves –  Anna Quindlen

Over jack fruit tacos, fresh chips and salsa and pumpkin bisque, she repeats the urgency to me. “At my age, I feel I should be on some path. I thought I had one, but now I don’t know what to do.”

She is 20. Her eyes glimmer the sea’s green under the sun.

“Maybe you’re already on your path,” I offer. “Searching and yearning is a path you return to periodically throughout your life, I suspect, judging from my own. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”

She dips a chip, swivels and scoops the salsa to her mouth, chewing and thinking.

“No one gets how interesting it is that the same Aussie passes by the same spot outside the store each time I work.” 

She’s off on a new topic, obviously. 

“Or that the old dude with the baggy pants and dead cigar, who sits on the bench watching people go by is not creepy, just lonely. No one finds interesting the same things I do. No one even notices the same things I do. They just look at me blankly, like ‘I don’t get it.'”

Maybe she is not onto another topic after all, I think, and say to her, “You have the eyes and notice of a writer. Perhaps you should write.”

I smile inside at the thought–of her writing, of her at 20, and of her as my daughter. Her terrible beauty in striving splashes coolly recollected imagery over me of the shadow passion of a younger woman, far less stunning but more deeply driven. I too wanted to know my path back then, a college student looking for purpose and love and hating both, the need for either. I too was unable to see the road under my feet for my eyes focused farther down the way.

I mindlessly bring a chip to my lips and the crunching disrupts my musing. Watching her animated face, her lively expression full of open mouth laughter and wide eyed indignity at the passing observations, wishes and gripes she tosses out over half eaten tacos, I marvel at this bundle of gesticulations and well-spun tales of friends becoming strangers and strangers turned friends, this woman of my making with well-chosen words to help me see.

I see me and not me in her at 20. I only hope I was as engaging and fascinating a lunch date as she.

 

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Meditation

  
Hold hands in equanimity,

knuckles to knee, soft palm up,

elbows east and west to the sea,

or thumbs poised right angle to

index, cupping the joint round.

Lotus springs from the dead

but loving breath warms limb, 

left foot rising over right over

left again, balance in the being

synced forth in a becoming to

the rhythmic beam’s third eye.

Hold hands, heart with mind,

hear the calm of 10,000 years

in lungfuls of uncharted time.  

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bench waiting

 
 
The hours waiting…

waiting on the bench

cement and puke mold

bench, after finger-ink-

smudge-shove-printing,

while I witnessed her,

shoe-less, bra-less, 

patch-toothy grin like sin,

cheap dye and tat job,

resisting and they, bitch

cops, pushers, shovers,

kicking the shit out of her,

who was out of her mind,

uncontrolled, and they,

shit-bitch-dep-pukies,

clubs and punches, her

forced with her head 

shoved down by gloved 

fists, face between her

legs, until subdued,

no breath, so violent, so

much violence, shouting,

berating, beating, negating, 

every bit of it, all of it,

dystopian, institutional,

blues and grays, painted

cement walls, filthy dinge

cages and cages, and the

continual influx of human

fodder, walking lines, room

to room, to room to room,

walking lines, room walking

lines, walking–no room 

for poor players out, no 

way out, no way, not for the

poor paying prison prices.

 

credit: ktla.org

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