The New Pornography

I bought my June, Scientific American Mind,Volume 2, Number 3, 2009http://www.scientificamerican.com/mind-and-brain with cover loudly advertising "Special Collection on Sex", "Your Sexual Brain" "What Kisses Mean", "Why Men Buy". It might as well have been Cosmopolitan but not surprisingly I felt none of the brown paper bag anxiety I might have if I had the latest Penthouse or for that matter, Cosmopolitan. Not only that I read it at the restaurant table while having pie and ice cream. The waitress didn't bat an eye. So much has to do with packaging. The article on Bonobo Sex and Society was excellent. I really enjoyed learning about the short Orangutangs with napoleon complex and rape tendencies. The Orgasmic Mind was hot. I was particularly interested in the finding that "when a woman reached orgasm, something unexpected happened: much of her brain went silent." Perhaps that's also what motivates male sexual activity, I thought. The whole magazine was in truth really great geek sex bits and I'd strongly recommend it to any one. It did not cause me to have an erection or orgasm however. Perhaps that says alot about the importance for men of mystery in sex. It's better if we don't think too much about it. That said, knowing the diversity of human behaviour there's at least one adolescent man or woman out there sneaking this Scientific American into the family or dorm washroom. Probably best to get a new copy.

Conversation

People communicate all the time. What they don't have much any more is a conversation. A conversation was a specific form of communication in which two or more individuals came together to exchange information. Text messaging is if anything training people in the art of conversation once again. With text messaging one person shares something and another shares in return. In a conversation this 'sharing' was the key. Language served in conversation as a kind of dance. Information, often called "ideas' were given by one to another and vice versa.

Conversations today lack the richness of the past for many reasons. One is that people share so little time together. When they do it is often in parallel, two people watching tv for instance. Conversations commonly occurred when people were alone with each other or engaged in a common task that allowed conversation to contribute to the task. For example, quilting. When people quilt together it's equally feasible to converse. Similiarly working in the fields invited conversation but today so much work such as computer and assembly line endeavours exclude conversation.

Further, today few have common points of reference such as even the weather. Farmers conversations began and ended on the weather allowing an easy opening and shared points of reference. The Bible was another such common source of reference and communication. The diversity of collected information and sources of such access to that information is so great that commonly people might not even know Michael Jackson has died, who he was, what was the principle concern about his death before another "story" has become the 'news'. The speed of events as portrayed by the media makes their very discussion often so shallow.

Despite the fact that we are at war for years now there is little discussion of the war yet once when a country was at war it became as important as the weather as a source of conversation. In contrast there is more likely the inaniety of conversation that revolves around the batting average of a player and the dress size of a star. This fatuousness is for many the extent of conversation as the consumer industries would have us believe that the Coke - Pepsi "debate" is truly of serious import to the world as a whole. What was once just a matter of personal preference is for marketting purposes elevated to the highest realm of consideration.

So conversation has been high jacked by the 'talking head' media and 'experts' and 'propanganists' . Then when conversation might occur and ideas might begin to flow there's 'political correctness' guaranteed to stymie any true creativity of expression. Political correctness is one of many forms of censorship that guarantee that the modern and post modern man and women are unable to speak freely despite the claim to 'freedom of speech'. Totalitarian domination of communication and especially conversation is at an all time high, beyond in many ways what was extant in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, as collectively everyone is required to agree or be unpatriotic.

Whole discussions that once were truly diverse are reduced to binary code and sound bite with one being either pro or against it indicates that paranoia is reigning high. Conversations then become fashion statements rather than the investigations and sharing and compromise and tolerance that once underlay this fundamental exchange of ideas. Today it serves more often as a means of marketting and demonstrating political agreement and isolating and ostracizing the politically incorrect.

Judgement stops conversation. Conversations can only occur when there is safety and today political correctness and various others forms of censorship ensure that there are always those who might 'take offence'. Litigation of any kind can be so punitive that most fear conversation as it might well open them to beaurocratic, legal or political condemnation if they are not aware of whether it's 'in' or 'out' to be concerned about the way Farah Fawcett died as opposed to the way Michael Jackson died.

Clearly no one would dare to discuss the number in jail or the tax free status of churches and synagogues or the racism of the immigrants or the continued mass killing of innoscent people while obesity is a principal problem in the school system.

Increasingly 'nice' conversation, is the only acceptable form of conversation because disagreement is 'disruptive' and 'contrary' ideas are 'oppositional' and totalitarianism and one party views become the norm because if you don't believe as I do it is not a topic of conversation or even debate but rather a time for marketting and conversion.

The level of terror in a community is indeed marked by the kind of conversations or their dearth. The mass hysteria and frank insaniety that prevail today is profoundly evident when people meet directly in any non structured situation. To even talk one on one so many people need alcohol or drugs or a script to overcome the social anxiety that is preeminent in any totalitarian state. Isolation and social phobia are common place. Yet it was not always so. The technology today reflects the 'conversations' that once occurred between individuals without the interface of computer screen or cell phone text message.

Conversations between people in the community meeting one on one may be limitted while ironically discussions of great richness occur throughout the internet. Totalitarianism and the inherrent social fears reign extant between physical neighbours yet one will share almost anything with a distant "pen pal". Perhaps the 'structure' and "forms" being established in the internet are restoring 'frames of reference' and 'process' that died with "multi culturalism' and "globalization' but is again being raised as a 'new' form of relating in 'conversation'.

One day the cyber monks will leave 'cyber space" and take the learning of 'discussion boards' to the coffee shops and street corners and again 'conversation' will aurally replace the 'noise' of modern cities. That's just a thought. I"m not sure I'd have a conversation about it.

Forgiving God

You are here, God

I know you in every atom and molecule of existence

You are everywhere and everything and nothing in between

You are my inbreathing and my outbreathing

You are my very self and all that is outside of me

Yet I would feel you more

I would feel the safety and surety of your love

I would feel confident in your presence

I would feel that I am more protected

I would experience you more in my very being

I would understand your design for me

I would follow you

I would truly know you as you no doubt know me.

And I would forgive you Lord

And I would love you Lord

Bad Sex in Fiction Awards

The Bad Sex in Fiction Awards was developed by Rhonda Koenig and Auberon Waugh "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of reduntant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and discourage it." In 2008 John Updike was given the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Pain

If I knew the pain would feel like this

Would I have talked of love.

My father never told me the nail

Would feel like this.

I was so unprepared

Hanging in pain, ashamed, in sorrow.

Does it make it less to say I do it for you.

Better that than feel alone.

So stupid to talk of love among lizards

And those so barely human,

They call me God

While I always called myself a child.

Yet now I suppose I am a man

Dying.

Victim

I somehow missed out on being a victim.

The part was already taken when I came along.

Not only that, I was to be victimized if I even dared claim victimship.

Seemed you needed a pass, a pedigree, a permit or licence.

Only certain victims could be victims.

The best was being a state victim.

Though trait victims didn't do too shabby either.

Maybe you could be survivor, the victimizer victim said.

But survivor doesn't come with reward or revenge, I said.

Shut up and take your place.

Back of the line. Get a number.

Not that I wanted things to be fair.

They only lie when they're talking.

Looking for justice in a court room

Is like looking for love in a brothel.

You weren't born with a private army.

You're somewhere in between

On the short end of the stick.

Average or medium without much spirit.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change, everything.

The courage to change the things I can, nothing

And the wisdom to know the difference

Between everything and nothing.

We go to movies.

We drink coffee

And talk.

The only thing that gives me hope

Is that the anthropologists record some evolution

Over millenium.

Have you taken your testosterone shot.

You get them with the flu vaccine

Along with the viagra.

In the movie the good guys were the bad guys

And the bad guys were the good guys

And you felt sorry for everyone

Because no one had a monopoly on being a victim.

Everything was nothing and nothing was everything.

Motorcycling home: Princeton-Vancouver

I slept poorly. I was working in my sleep again. Bad enough I do it awake. I got out of the tent and the sky was dark. Made my way to the washroom and shower and returned to Laura heading that way herself. Looking at the sky I began tearing down the tent and packing. When Laura got back all the bags were done and the skies had begun to spit. I was just loading the bike when the pissing rain began. Laura got into her jacket before me. I had the last of the bags to bungee down. I put my Harley rain gear over everything else that was soaked.

We headed out. My glasses were fogged. I got Laura to reach round, lift my visor and take my glasses. I was trying to hold upright on the hill that entered onto the highway. With the fogged glasses off I could see. Helps when riding a motorcycle. I drove us into town where we had breakfast at the Country Living restaurant. The rain continued.

After breakfast, we geared up and climbed on the Harley. I was about to head out on the highway thinking miserably about Sunday Summit in the rain when Laura said, “Do we have to do this now.”

“No, “ I said. “Want to go for coffee.” There’s a great coffee shop on the main drag across from the A&W. We dripped in and had two chai lattes. That’s when Alan and Claire pulled up on their BMW Cruiser.

They sat in the table next to us. “Waterproof,” Alan said, looking at the leather seat cover. “Where’d you come from?” he asked.

“The campground, about 10 minutes over there.” I said proud of my morning’s accomplishment. “What about yourself? “

“Penticton”. English accent.

Rain pouring outside. Biker’s in a coffee shop.. We just kept talking.

Alan was a retired fire fighter from England. He also did children’s magic shows as a giant. “I dress as a pirate a lot. ….We’ve been driving across Canada the last 55 days and are about to return to England .”

“Did you rent the bike.” I asked.

“No shipped it over.”

They’d had some bad weather but saw a lot of country. Started by going down to New England and visiting Boston before driving west. Had heard the prairie’s would be boring but “loved watching the weather moving all around us. The skies were amazing.”

It was fun talking with them. Almost as if the comraderie had it’s effect on the weather, the sky cleared and the rain stopped. We donned our gear. It was a slog getting back into all the wetstuff.

Then we were off. We made it to the top of Sunday Summit when the downpour started again. Probably because I come from the prairies I hate the downhill biking in the rain. I don’t trust the brakes though I know I can gear down but I’m sure the bike will cartwheel or slip sideways especially when some idiot is tailgating and I begin to imagine myself under his tires. It was 60 km downhill a lot of the way. I picked up a tail a couple of times and pulled over to let them pass.

Manning Park. Finally. Alan and Claire passed us waving happily. They looked like they’d had more practice swimming on motorcycles.

Then it was Hope, thankfully. Still rain and more rain.

I chose to go back on 7 enjoying the highway through Mission and coming into Vancouver by Hastings.

Home. Hello Cat. Hot shower. Ahhhhhh! Laura’s in the bath.

I’m waiting for delivery.

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