joe.

Monday, March 11, 2002.


I love this guy.


 

Sunday, March 10, 2002.


A fascinating snippet from a fascinating site.


Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume One: The Will To Knowledge, Penguin, London. (First published: 1976).

— Queer theory grew, basically, out of this book. Why? Because Foucault argues that the current Western social view of sexuality is not the sum total of knowledge gathered over the aons, but was invented last century. Our current discourses about homosexuality (or heterosexuality) suggest that these are distinct conditions, or identities; but to Foucault these are just labels put onto people because of some actions they may or may not engage in. In other societies which employ different discourses, these labels would just not make sense.

Foucault also argued that power is not possessed but is exercised; and the exercise of power produces a corresponding resistance. It is therefore partly because people try to shovel discourse about sexuality into the cupboard that it comes crashing out all over the place again.
[See the Foucault pages for more].

Oh, my!  So much to think, and so little time.




There is a warm wind.  It shakes the house, rattles the windows which have been open all night, and makes the doors sound like someone is there, trying to get in.  It's a storm; a mild summery Nor'easter, with clouds close and fast moving one way, and above them, high and slow, other clouds moving the other way.  The warm, wild air through the screen makes me glad that I am here. 

On a night like this, with God panting so near, can heaven be far behind?




81.  When something goes wrong—even though I know it is not my fault—I not only believe that I will be blamed for it, but also that I should be blamed for it.  I am fatalistic resignation man.
82.  I am delerious from Mary's praise. 
83.  I masturbate. 
84.  I think most religions are wrong about almost everything they dogmatize.
85.  Buddhism does the least damage among religions.
86.  When I think of people I've not spoken to in months, but have not missed, I still feel guilty, as if I should have wanted to keep in touch, when in fact I did not want to keep in touch.  If one is superficial and shallow, it is best to simply be that, rather than to be that while pretending to be something else.  Even a cad can find salvation in being a genuine cad. 
87.  I love P-town, I want to live there and work there, somehow.
88.  I don't want soon to die, but if I do I want it to be on a mountain's winter summit, or in a violent ocean's firm embrace; I want lightning's fierce explosions or blizzard's screaming howls to accompany my demise.  I want the world unquiet when I go. 
89.  I gave up caffeine, sugar and most starch when I was in my twenties.  I never felt better.  I want to give it all up again, I just do not want to give it all up again, yet. 
90.  I trim the hair in my ears and nose.  I also clip my eyebrows.  I have long eyelashes.  I don't trim them.
91.  I used to dye my beard (and my pubic hair).  Both are significantly gray.
92.  Typically, I lay in bed reading some unimportant thing—a book I've read before, or one that is not particularly good, or a magazine—until I catch myself snoring.  Then I set aside what I was reading, turn out the light, roll over and lay awake in the dark for about another hour.
93.  It could be that I want a light white wine, some seafood, and something flaming for desert (perhaps the waiter?) almost as much as I want love.  Almost.
94.  I am a size queen, but the one I totally toppled into love with, Kenny, made up in intensity what he lacked in size, and then some.  So it is true; size does not matter.  Unfortunately, with some men, size is all there is.
95.  I am most anxious and lonely when I come home from work at night around 11:30 PM.  I am least anxious when I wake up about mid-morning.  I am never not lonely.
96.  Back when I quit sugar I had a friend who said, whenever I complained about something, "What are you going to do about it?"  I have been hearing her voice a lot lately.
97.  Perhaps spirits are more substantial than the physical walls and the dimensions of time through which they pass so easily.
98.  I went through my high school yearbook again last week.  It was a thoroughly unrewarding revisitation of embarrassments; a monument to all I missed and avoided.  Someday, if I find something to replace it, I'll throw it away.
99.  The guage of a person's life is not, "Does it matter more than most"; the question—if one needs to be asked at all—is, "What irreplaceably precious thing about this person's life am I failing to appreciate?"
100.  I believe nothing is everything, the end is the beginning, God is you, and Life is the laughter of the universe.

Thanks Mary.