Images of Halloween/Samhain 2013

Some unstructured impressions of this last week or so:  Samhain.  Halloween.

 

Remembering Paula dying, I think it was 2005; looking like she was dying as I sat with her sleeping body on Samhain evening, as my daughter was out “trick or treating.”

Sitting and handing out treats, while inside my stereo plays its standard Halloween fare:  “Danse Macabre,” Carmina Burana, Ruddigore, Symphonie Fantastique, “Night on Bald Mountain.”

Wondering once again whether to put my costume on at work.

The Unitarian Day of the Dead service, and the South Bay Circles Samhain ritual.

My costume this year:  “Rent-A-Beatnik.”  I wore it to the South Bay Writers annual Literary Costume Contest; to the South Bay Circles Samhain; to coffee hour after the Unitarian Day of the Dead service.

Listening to the audio book of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  Lots of drugs in that book, and hallucinations.  Listening to the audio book of And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, by Jack 

Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.  A fairly straightforward book.  Sometime in the last year, Kerouac’s Tristessa, a very drug kind of book.  Also heard One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Kerouac, Kesey, Burroughs, Thompson.  So odd leading up to Samhain/Halloween.

Then the “gay” books:  Stuff by Andrew Holleran and Felice Picano.  Drugs…Sex…and Childhood. 

Thinking of my childhood, and how I feel now:  Old.  Thinking of my older sister who died earlier this year, and the older sister who is still alive, but a continent away.  Thinking about how we come to terms (or not) with our environment as we are growing up.

Yes, a time for reflection.  I’ve thought about old friends and old girlfriends and an old boyfriend; and about places I’ve lived.  Time flows on, winter approaches.

Well, and so we move towards winter and the winter holidays…Season of Reflection, “Season (perhaps) of Melancholy”…

Review: "Basement Games" (Felice Picano)

I was surprised when I finally read the first section of Felice Picano’s “memoir in the form of a novel,” Ambidextrous.  The first section is titled “Basement Games,” and I had started reading several months ago but quit.  In the first few pages we learn that Picano grew up ambidextrous in the early 1950s.  He talks about learning to print by copying his siblings and then moving on, in elementary school, to cursive writing.  He would switch hands from line to line.  I didn’t find this very interesting so I quite reading and went off to finish Andrew Holleran’s novel Nights in Aruba.

I came back this month, but with some trepidation.  I knew from reviews that Picano became sexual at an early age.  He started having sex with girls when he himself was only eleven.  A few years later and he was also sexually involved with boys.  Some reviewers felt uncomfortable with the sexuality, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel.  

And indeed, in “Basement Games” we see Picano drawn, at eleven, into a sexual initiation orchestrated by “the girls next door.”  For me, who grew up sexually isolated until sometime in college, it seemed pretty unbelievable.

But at the same time, Picano is continually humiliated by his fifth-grade teacher for being ambidextrous.  I’m not sure such behavior would be tolerated in a teacher today.  This was particularly significant for me because I felt humiliated myself in the fifth-grade, to the point where I came into conflict with the school system.  So I developed quite a bit of sympathy for the young Picano.  The climax of this first section certainly gives you something to think about!

The book is over 300 pages, divided into only three chapters.  This also discouraged me from reading it at first.  However, I enjoyed the first section and now intend to read the entire book.  It looks interesting and I find Picano’s perspective insightful.  I don’t know whether the youthful sexuality will bother me; but I know now that there is a lot more to this book than just the sex.

Book Review: Nights in Aruba (Andrew Holleran)

My enjoyment of Anderw Holleran’s writing continues.  I have to admit to some reservations about the book I have just read, Nights in Aruba.
 

The first thing that bothered me was the fact that most of it had nothing to do with Aruba.  Even the chapters set in Aruba…I’m not sure what they were supposed to be about.

What I found most interesting was the fact that his family got evicted from their Boston apartment when the landlady discovered that they supported Eisenhower (I think this was 1952).  That is how the family ends up in Aruba.  But I don’t understand the significance of Aruba in the story.  Later, when the narrator reaches draft age, he ends up in Germany, during the Vietnam War.

I thought this would interest me, because I lived in Germany myself, with the U.S. Army.  But Germany doesn’t really matter too much in this novel either; it’s just where he meets some more men, one or two of whom he already knew from an earlier time in Florida.

The book reverts to what we have heard from Holleran in other books:  Gay life in New York City during the ’70s and ‘80s, and life with the family in rural northern Florida.  This ground is familiar to me from Holleran’s other novels; but I’m not sure that anything new is added here.

Of course, Aruba is added; but what is its significance?  It comes across as a dry, hot place I would never want to visit.  No—I take that back.  I can imagine visiting for a week or so, to enjoy the beaches.  But you would have to enjoy the beaches, because there is not much else there.  It and rural Florida are the opposite of New York; maybe that is the point.  Maybe Holleran’s experiences exist in the dichotomy between the gay life in New York City, and its opposite  in these other locales.

I will continue to say that Holleran’s writing is beautiful.  It’s one of the main reasons I read Holleran.  This in spite of the fact that I have little desire to visit any of the places he describes—whether it’s rural Florida, Aruba, or New York gay bars.

I’ve seen an interview where Holleran himself says he went off track in this novel.  It was still fun to read, and interesting—and, of course, beautiful.  Holleran is always beautiful.  I just didn’t quite understand this one, on the whole.

Incoherence and Coherence in Jack Kerouac

I’ve just finished a “double-read” of the audiobook of the Original Scroll of On the Road, read by John Ventimiglia.

 

By “Double-read” I mean this:  After finishing Book 1, I went back and listened to it a second time.  After Book 2, I did the same with it.  And so on.  So when I got to the end of the whole thing, I’d actually listened to the entire novel twice.  And the ending of most of the books impressed me so, I went back and listened to each of the endings multiple times.  This being at least the eighth time I’ve listened to an unabridged recording of either On The Road or the The Original Scroll thereof, I can say that I have now gotten quite deep into Kerouac, the novel, and Kerouac’s story,  approach and style.

I’ve picked up on a lot of details.  There’s a certain seeming incoherence here.  This certainly is why a lot of early critics considered Kerouac a “barbarian with a typewriter.”  And yet—should books be coherent?  Maybe not in all ways!  Because life is not particularly coherent, is it?

So if William Burroughs says “when you’re dead your just dead,” but a page or two later starts talking about communicating with the dead, should we object?

If people are discussing how Carolyn Cassady threw Neal Cassady out, how should we react a page or two later when Helen Hinkle says, “I think it was very wise of Luann to throw you out.”  I thought I had found a real blooper here—and maybe I have.  Or not!  When I noticed this in The Scroll, I ran over to the published novel to check.  The same apparent inconsistency appears there.  Real people do misspeak!

One thing I’ve noticed is that Kerouac really doesn’t talk much about his feelings.  He gives us his ideas, but not so much his feelings.  He gives us his reactions (his response to jazz, for example), but that isn’t the same thing.

I think this is why people often miss the underlying mood of the book.  The recent film concentrated on the sex and jazz; but underlying the entire book is a search for something to make up for the fact that Kerouac’s father is dead and Kerouac’s wife has left him.  Neal Cassady is always trying to connect with his own father and family.  Allen Ginsberg is always asking what the meaning of these travels are.  They all feel pursued by some presence.  And at the end of the book, an old man with long flowing white hair walks past Kerouac and says, “Go moan for man.” 

This is all stated, but not emphasized.  Implications are left for the reader to realize on his own.  Part of Kerouac’s Art is to simply mention these things, then leave us to notice them.  You can debate whether this artistic strategy is good or bad.

Polyamory? Poly-Intimacy?

(From the October South Bay Poly newsletter)

Continuing from last month’s thought.  Looking back on my life, I see that I’m a lot more comfortable with physical affection—and sex—now, compared with how I used to be.  When I was young I felt threatened and intimidated, being rather shy and not terribly confident about myself, my body, and my personality.  I hope everyone eventually grows into feeling as comfortable as I do now—though I think some people don’t, for whatever reason. 

Maybe I just have a better idea now of what I like and what I don’t.  It isn’t so much that I disapprove of casual sex, or sex with strangers; it just isn’t something I enjoy very much.  It probably goes back to my original discomfort when I was younger—feeling uncomfortable with people I didn’t know very well, that I couldn’t relax with yet or trust.  I know there are people who don’t have this issue.

Also, I suspect that it isn’t so much the sex that I’m after, as it is the trust, safety, and intimacy.  I love to cuddle and become sexual with someone; I just need to feel safe with them first.  The question of multiple lovers is a separate issue.

And I think I need some expectation of a long-term interaction, not something that will be over immediately.  That may be a trust issue too.  Still thinking.