“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
Credit: http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/09/the-50-greatest-yogi-berra-quotes
What kind of love is it?
Unconditional love. Love unconditionally the gospel of everyone tells us. So simple. Just love for the sake of loving without expectation of return. Love is enough.
But we are also socially conditioned to believe that love is circumscribed to acceptable people and circumstances. Monogamy dictates love only to the betrothed, regardless of how many loving people a lov-er meets along the road of a long life.
We categorize love: friendship, passion, God, country, children, siblings, spouses, lovers, flings, new cars, cats, gardening and pizza. We give time limits–for a lifetime, a season, a night. So many names for so many kinds of loves–expensive ones (mistress or travel) to home grown ones (God, spirit, charity, and light). We love the earth, the skies and the seas. We love.
But we are so busy defining the type of love we are receiving and giving that we forget to just love and let love be the guide not the answer or the question.
Analytical as I am, I fall prey to this downsizing and chopping love to bits. If I love being with an other, just talking and spending time, so much so that I can declare that I love that other for this compatability and gift we bestow of conversation and time, am I violating some unspoken laws or ethical codes if this person is promised to another for that other kind of love, the eternal everlasting one of ceremony and song? This I must always inventory.
A visitor came to town, someone from cyberspace, whom I have never met other than through x’s and o’s. I took it upon myself to be ambassador. The tour of some of my favorite cafes and nature spots yielded an instant bond and good time. I found a co-spirit in great conversation, shared interests and world views, a peace of just being.
Flitting thoughts of expectations or produced impressions strafed this good time like WWII bombers overhead, periodic and impactful, enough to disrupt the flow with slight uneasiness. Am I giving the wrong impression–that I am interested in a relationships, fling, one-night stand? That I am interested? Don’t want to mislead.
Why not love what or who sits before me without figuring out the good or bad of it, hemming myself in measured patterns of behavior and select words?
My daily aim is to feel love not that way but freely–unfettered. Not in exchange or as gift but connection. In some rare moments, even I am successful.
Akrasia
“akrasia, the mystery of why people choose to do other than what they think is best for them to do.” ― John R. Perry, The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing
I am having a meta moment: procrastinating by reading about procrastination. My article is due by midnight. It is not even half way done and the one who assigned it, my possible future editor, is waiting for it to see if I am worthy to write his blog fodder will-write-for-food spin.The thought of this looming project deadline scratches at my peace every hour–at coffee, eating breakfast, scouring Facebook, chatting with a friend, doing yoga, watching a soccer game, eating lunch, texting anyone, playing with the kitten, reading emails–even every quarter of an hour, yet I cannot muster the urgency…yet.
Curious about procrastination, I started reading widely over the net to discover why I am procrastinating. Finding no answers (and still not writing my work with an ever shortening deadline), I decided to draw the feeling of it, a cocktail of procrastination–slow and steady, slightly shaken–with a shot of stress on the rocks. It should be a jolt but it is more like an electric line down shorting out wildly slashing the ground like a toad on cocaine, like my brain some days. And this is what it looks like at the moment:
So now it’s getting late. I’m sufficiently motivated. Until tomorrow….
Pissing up Ropes
Read a Reddit post about the plight of being white, cultureless, unoppressed and bland that someone replied to by stating, “I’m not going to waste my time pissing up ropes.”
I had never heard of that expression prior to reading it there so researched with little success. My procrastination limits have already been reached today, so I could not spend the requisite time to do the slang expression justice, but I did find this on encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com
“Piss Up a Rope” is a song by the band Ween in 1996 from the album 12 Golden Country Greats. It was released on 7″ yellow vinyl single on Diesel Only Records.
When asked about the lyrics “You can wash my balls with a warm wet rag” and “On your knees, you big bootied bitch,” Dean Ween stated that he wrote the song for his wife. The inspiration for the title came from his father: “[It is] a funny expression that I copped from my dad. When I was a kid, he used to say, ‘Aw, go piss up a rope.’ It was just nonsense. It was like, ‘Aw, go shit in your hat’ or whatever.”[1]
I gather it is a British expression for some futile exercise, but I would love to find the origins of the expression, just because…well, being a logophile, I like that sort of thing. Who first thought of it and in what context?
Oh, and there is a Facebook page with the title “Pissing up Ropes” that has one like.
Anyone know something about this expression?
Meeting Her: Guest Post from Patricia D, Volunteer at Infidelity Counseling Network
For those of us who have experienced infidelity, there is one particular moment we truly dread: meeting our husband’s affair partner (a.k.a. The Other Woman). Here is my story of that encounter.
Meeting Her
Here’s what is going to happen. Prepare yourself. Imagine the worst thing you have ever experienced, death of parents, losing pets, awful natural disasters, locusts, any of it. Take all of those things, put them in a big truck, have the truck run you over, and maybe that will give you a tiny fraction of the pain and madness you will experience when you discover your partner has been unfaithful and your marriage is done.
Flashback to our Kentucky Derby party. And may I say, the last Kentucky Derby party we would ever host, and likely my last as well. My husband invited a number of women from his gym, where his workouts consisted of Zumba class, Skinny Jeans class, Ripped class – you know, activities where lots of women would be.
From the moment she showed up, almost everyone at our party picked up on something that was off. She walked in to my home like she owned the place; as it turns out, she had been there before. She brought a hostess gift, although it was addressed to “Kirby Baby”, complete with bubble-dot I’s and hearts. She barely acknowledged me. But I was committed to trusting my husband. She spent the afternoon drinking bottles of chardonnay, and suddenly was telling anyone who would listen about how her husband of 23 years cheated on her. As the evening progressed, some my family members pointed out that everyone had gone home except for her. At this point she was so wasted that I couldn’t let her drive, so I told her she could sleep on the couch. I thought since she was a friend of my husband that it was the right thing to do. The rest of us — except him — settled in to watch TV. She went to find another set in a different room, and then it was radio silence.
About twenty minutes later I went to find my husband. Boy did I find him. On top of her, in one of the guest rooms, full-on making out.
I never thought I would be in this place. I’m sure many women have said that exact same
thing. Everything had seemed too good to be true when we settled into our new house; I’d worked my ass off to be able to buy it, completely on my own. We don’t have kids, by choice, mainly because my career kept me traveling, and so for ten years we seemed the perfect married unit. We never really fought, and I never once pressured my husband to get a job. It all worked, or so I thought.
What was going on in the background? His father had recently died; I was traveling a lot for my career; we had lost all the equity in our first home in a bad market; our beloved Labrador had major surgery; my father became sick and died a horrible death six months later; his sisters were feuding over the estate after his mother’s death; I had put on 30 pounds; he had many years of career troubles. Or maybe it was something else. Something different.
After his father died my husband decided to lose some weight. He had always been a big guy, and this was good for him from a health standpoint. Although, as it turns out, his motives were altogether different. He began to drop weight, spent a lot of time with a woman in our apartment complex, and then he started telling me lots of things that were not true.
The first time I found out my husband told me a major lie I was completely devastated. In hindsight, it’s possible that there have been lies all along, but in my mind they were just small, harmless lies. The big lie though, involved a hockey game (I love hockey) and the woman in the apartment complex. She became a divisive factor in our relationship, and turned me into someone I didn’t want to be — a jealous, angry, suspicious wife looking for evidence of an affair. Of course, I had every right to be suspicious, and after a year and her saying just horrific things about me on text messages, the kind of things that typically only a mean teenage girl would say, he abruptly ended their “friendship”. A few weeks later he had a new one on the line. This time I wanted to trust him, so I did. I assumed the lunches were innocent. He said the texts were just flirting. Know this ladies, no good can ever come of flirting text messages. Ever. Ever. Ever. And this was no exception.
When you think about those moments in your mind, or you see them in movies, or hear about them from your friends, you always think you will react a certain way. I’d assumed I would become enraged, loud, vindictive. But this assumption was diametrically opposed to how I actually reacted. Looking back, I am really proud of how I handled it, that night at our Kentucky Derby party when I caught her and my husband making out in our home.
I politely told her she had to leave.
I calmly asked how long this had been going on. They both denied anything was going on.
And just to show you the type of person she was, she insisted on driving home even when I told her she was unfit to drive because she had drank four bottles of chardonnay.
So I explained that I was not concerned about her wrapping herself around a tree, rather the possibility that she might harm someone else and my potentially liability in that situation. Her response? “Well, that’s why you have insurance.” My response? “Get the hell out of my house, now.”
Crossposted at http://www.drpsychmom.com/2015/04/17/meeting-the-other-woman/ and http://eldamlopez.com/female-chronicles-story-two/
By Patricia D.
Volunteer at Infidelity Counseling Network
Get support to heal from infidelity – http://infidelitycounselingnetwork.org/counselor.html
Donate to help keep our services free for all women – http://infidelitycounselingnetwork.org/donate.html
Bro-jobs in Salon
She told us, “They stop each other from killing each other by rub rub rubbing, until they come come come. And then have a banana together or something,” adding, “I think there’s a very positive and certainly very natural aspect to this.”
Despite this slightly offputting ending paragraph about rubbing-to-coming monkeys, I appreciated Salon’s broaching a risqué rather than sensationalized topic of real human behaviors that few, if any, in our still-so-homophobic culture here in the U.S. mention.
Of course, I’m a sucker for all things relationship-exploding. Not destructive eruptions, but exploding sedimented behaviors and expectations based on normativity, wether applicable to marital or sexual definitions, the kinds that clear the path to allowing a little reality to seep through.
Salon’s The “Bro Job”: Why “straight” men have sex with each other explores in an anthropology-light sort of way, the underpinnings of self-identifying heterosexual male sex with other men, reasons–if there need be–for its natural occurrence in what is for some, even many, an unnatural social order of human intimate relationships based on heterosexual monogamy.
Pointing out the diversity of male sexual appetite for meaningless as well as meaningful sex, the author explains how men sometimes want sex that is just…well, sex, not love-making or performance, just men enjoying what men do, for fun, release, something less demanding, I suppose, a more automatic, instinctual and non-committal release.
It makes sense to me. Men–and women–suffer under the continual obligation to try and understand another; sometimes the relief lies in just being what they are without apology.
Though the author is quick to point out that sexual politics and labeling are part of the problem too: so is a man who has sex with men and women automatically bisexual? Quickly jumping to labels is what others do to others to make themselves feel comfortable. But the label does not necessarily fit the identity of the labeled.
Fuck labels.
I recommend this quick and tactful read.
Power Tools
Man, myth and vibrators: the Power Tools of the Empowered. Good vibrations: for all your pleasureful needs. And worse.
I was trying to come up with a title for a blog post I wrote for one of my will-write-for-food sites, a post describing a massager and vibrator section of an online catalog of “romantic toys.” The copy was pretty straight forward: selling sex toys with luscious descriptions of need and success in the bedroom. But the title–a real grabber–is always challenging for subjects I know a lot about and so are enthused about, let alone for topics I know or care too little to whisk up a flavorful title.
It’s not that I don’t like vibrators. I just have been sort of meh on them. Some have suggested that I may not have found the right one or are too accustomed to “other ways” of achieving the same results, both of which may be true. But I haven’t really thought about it much until I wrote up this blog piece.
Curious whether I could find commiseration in my take-it-or-leave-it attitude about vibes, I went to the internet. Wading past the ads disguised as informationals, I found lots on the topic but only a couple of good reads: The Secret to Having Mind-Blowing Orgasms with Your Vibrator in YourTango.com and Psychology Today’s Vibrators: Myths vs. Truths.
Beyond the obvious of all obvious recommendations in the one–to experiment and try what feels good (duh, really?) and not to drill your sensitive areas to death–I did take up the solo solution of massaging the rest of your body first as foreplay–sorta. Imagine that, using a massager as a…well, massager.
And while both tackled some myths about becoming addicted and desensitized to using a vibrator, one confirmed that too much of a good thing could lead to less of a good thing in other areas. In other words, orgasming with a vibrator may make it more difficult to orgasm without one. The psychology writer’s opinion was more a “it depends on the person” comment but clearly denied addiction danger:
Do carpenters become addicted to power tools? No, power tools just get the job done faster. Many women really love their vibrators, but that’s a personal preference, not an addiction.
Not sure about the analogy as altogether apt, certainly is cliché, but like most habits, it seems to me it would depend on so many other factors like the person’s relationship(s), mindset, attitude and existing personality traits as to whether vibes are habit-forming. And so what if they are?
Maybe it’s my prejudices. Solo sex is utilitarian, accomplished with or without powertools and a good imagination. Beyond solo, connection with others, well that’s my preference–with or without the tools.
Salon’s “I’m the Woman You Met on Ashley Madison: how the rush of infidelity led to affairs online”
Salon’s Betty Andrews confessional about being an Ashley Madison girl may be disregarded as a disguised public documenting of her infidelity, her exploits, the Ashley Madison world, and the failure of monogamy for those who are wired for insatiable sensation-seeking, but I believe it is more a testament to a new style for an old theme—so many themes, actually: cake and eat it, self-sabatoging, avoidance, brazen dishonesty and crass conformity, to name just a few.
In reflecting on my proclivity for infidelity, I can only describe it as a kind of sensation seeking — the addictive quality of falling for someone new — and a propensity for self-destruction — reinforcing pathological defense mechanisms. Sure, there’s the sex. And that part is great, sometimes even amazing. But for me, it’s not about a secret kink, an insatiable sexual appetite. or not getting enough attention at home. It’s the novelty of someone else. The intensity. The escape. The possibility. The falling …
I used to call those serial daters, the thrill-seekers aka commitment-phobes. But add in the desire to have it all–the comfort and safety of marriage peppered with the spice of the new–and you have a dream life, right? Or you have someone who likes complications that appeal to the brains who love teasers, puzzles and risk, juggling all those balls to keep them in the air–husband, kids, lover(s), job, secrets, etc.. And ultimately to be alone, not so much without a partner or choices due to burned bridges, though that is a risk, but more so due to dancing yourself into a corner.
My insatiable appetite, not just for the sex, but for the whole confusing mix of physical and emotional feelings, persists. Maybe it’s the escape from real life. The exploration of something new. The thrill of falling for someone else. But ironically, there’s also a very isolating quality to infidelity. There is no one to talk to about it all, to reflect on my actions, to process the big picture. I can’t talk to my lover about my husband. I can’t seek advice for marital spats or discuss fertility woes. And I can’t talk to my husband about my lover. I can’t brag to him about the amazing sex, or cry to him with the heartbreak that is being involved with a man who loves someone else. None of it makes any sense to me yet, and the secrecy draws me further, not closer, from the people in my life. In my search for excitement, romance, connection and intimacy, I’m as alone as I’ve ever been. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the point.
In a perfect world, we would all know ourselves enough each to say, “I am thus and so should be true to myself, choose someone who can accept me for who I am” and be brave enough to act in accordance with the statement. But the question arises: Would Andrews seek the others if her husband accepted her dalliances? Or would that take away some of the lure of seeking lovers in the first place? The deep-seated need to be alone, as Andrews remarks, may be the motivation for maintaining infidelity practices, and she suspects or knows it. So long as the cost-benefit analysis weighs in favor of the benefits, she will continue to feed her need to be conflicted and between worlds–or someone finds out and gets really hurt.
I believe the lure is more insidious; it’s about being someone other than who you are. That is what cheating allows, the fantasy of being someone’s “all I ever dreamed of or all that I don’t have” It’s easy when there is really not all of your skin in the game, so to speak–for either. Affairs allow you to be what you are not in your main relationship–and that is the fun, just like Halloween or costume parties. Pretend. And much needed release for being so much of what you are not for someone else.
Prison Phone Calls: when capitalism incapacitates its most precious capital–people
She has slept away her first five days here, awakening only to fret, face swallowed up in full furrowed brows, swollen eyes and shrivelled spirit, grieving inconsolably over something lost, something she fears is lost anyways. She cries. Fifty-five years old, weathered, burnished skin adding ten years to her face, she was picked up for drugs or prostitution; I do not remember which. She once told me in between spurts of awakened anguish over her dogs. All I remember is the agonized tears and the dogs…read more
GHOSTING: Passive-aggressive discourtesy can be a lesson in manifesting the self
A piece I fleshed out from a sketch I posted earlier on this blog, this personal essay on The Mindful Word was published yesterday. I hope you enjoy it.
The act of suddenly ceasing all communication with someone the subject is dating, but no longer wishes to date. This is done in hopes that the ghostee will just “get the hint” and leave the subject alone, as opposed to the subject simply telling them he/she is no longer interested. Ghosting is…(read more here)
In the gaze of the other 