“Find the Significant!”

When South Bay Writers was planning its last writing conference (which was put off because the economy wouldn’t support it, back in 2010) we thought we would build the conference around the theme “Why Do You Write?”  Not a bad idea—and I’ve been asking myself ever since, “Why do you write?”  I suppose different writers would give different answers to that question.

  

Some people might write to share ideas and experiences.  We’ve had some peak experience; or we’ve had an idea that seems to be important and possibly even original.  No one else seems to have noticed it, so we’d like to spread it around.

Or something has happened to us, and we think a friend or a relative might be interested in it.  Or we think it’s something important that other people ought to know.  We want to tell them; we try to explain.

Maybe we hope to improve the world—society, the nation—again, we try to explain.

Or, more mundanely, we want to become rich, we want to become famous.  We think we can cook up something entertaining, something enjoyable—and lure people into paying to enjoy it.  We’re hoping to make money.

We may write to give ourselves excitement; or we may chase adventure in hopes of writing about it and capturing the excitement for people who, for whatever reason, prefer to remain at home reading rather than first-hand-experiencing.

Maybe our writing is therapeutic, cathartic.  Somehow, it helps us get something unhealthy out of our system.  Perhaps after we’re done, we’ll arrive at a sense of feeling healed and whole; and never feel the need to write again.

Maybe we want to leave our family and friends with something to remember us by, after we’re gone; a consolation, after our death.

Maybe we simply want to understand ourselves better, or life better, or people better.

So many possibilities!  Lately I look at possible projects and wonder:  Which one do I choose? 

In spite of propensity to fictionalize, I dwell on past and possible future experiences:  For example, the holidays coming up.  I think of how I will interact with friends and family during the coming holiday season.  I think of places I’ve lived or visited; my experiences there; how to describes these things to other people I know.  I think of movies or books or music that mean something to me, and wonder whether it is possible to convey the significance these things hold for me.  I think of traumas I’ve suffered, and I think “What is significant?  Find the Significant—in the Past, in Art, wherever.  Find the Significant and convey it.  Do it—somehow! Do it!”

Poem: "To the Religious of a Certain Stripe"

I’ve thought this over; now I say to you:
I don’t believe that men who love men are evil;
I don’t believe that men who love men are abominable;
Women who love women are my family.
Women who love women are my lovers,
My children,
My parents.

Men who love men,
Women who love women—
Are my sisters and brothers.
You may think they will burn in Hell—
That’s your religious right in this free land.
You have chosen to label these people who love despicable;
I think they bless the universe with their love;
And I, x-fold Pariah,
Condemned by the rigid creed you choose to practice—
I hold you in my heart and thoughts disquieted,   
Not grasping what you gain, when all is done,
From your condemnations. 

Book Review: The End of the Affair (Warning: Spoilers!)

(From the July South Bay Poly newsletter).

Book “review?”  Or merely a “light once-over?”

I began with enthusiasm.  Graham Greene gets the atmosphere rolling nicely.  World War II.  A man living on one side of the London “commons” has been having an affair with the wife of a “friend” who lives on the other side of the “commons.”  The narrator now thinks the woman is cheating on him, so he convinces the husband to let him hire a private investigator.  The woman often coughs terribly.  I immediately knew she would die of TB or something—and she does.

But in the meantime, she finds God.  She was baptized a Catholic when she was two.  She doesn’t remember, of course.  During an air raid, when the narrator is pinned under a door and appears to be dead, she promises God to reform if God lets him live.  He survives, of course (otherwise he couldn’t be narrating, right?).  Now the woman drops him and considers becoming a Catholic.  The narrator suggests that she has been sleeping around right and left (misogyny, I wondered?).

Now the woman has given up the narrator, and continues to have a “non-marriage” with her husband.  In many years of married life, she has never experienced an orgasm with her husband—though she did, apparently, and often, with the narrator.  But now she can get on with dying (aggravated by the narrator’s tendency to drag her out into freezing rain for gut-wrenching conversations) and becoming a saint.  By the end, she’s probably achieved three bona fide miracles—but not the one she really wanted:  Rather than bringing peace to the narrator, he still feels miserable.  Now if this had been a poly movie (a woman, two men, and God)…

Some people feel that spirituality and sexuality are like East and West—“Never the twain shall meet."  I disagree…  Anyway…I’m off to watch one or both of the film versions next.

Ebb and Flow: War On Sex or War On…?

In the cover story for the Silicon Valley Metro (May 9), “The War On Sex,” Palo Alto therapist Marty Klein suggests that both Right and Left are attacking sex as something dangerous and unhealthy.  Whether it’s restricting adult sexual expression or protecting children from supposedly harmful influences, many powerful forces conspire to suggest that sex is principally a threat—not a hope or a joy or a promise—to us all. 

Meanwhile, in the San Jose Mercury News (Sunday, May 13), a letter suggests that once “the biological unit of reproduction is removed,” marriage becomes meaningless.  “If two men or two women can marry, then who are we to deny marriage to three or more people who have a ‘loving, caring, committed relationship?’”

Indeed, who are we to deny it?  If it is a “loving, caring, committed relationship,” why should we deny it?

But, to the letter-writer, such a marriage would mean nothing.  One wonders…or at least I wonder:  If a loving, caring, committed relationship, of whatever configuration, is not holy, what kind of relationship is?

Contrary to what some people believe, we do not require loving, caring, committed relationships to spawn.  Spawning does not sanctify a relationship; love, care, and commitment do.

“Attraction” (South Bay Poly April Newsletter)

After thinking a bit more about attraction (which I mentioned last month), it occurred to me that attraction involves a series of events.  First, you feel attraction towards someone—this involves the qualities that personally attract you; then you decide how you will react to it.  Then you have their reaction to you, based on their own personal tastes and experience and background.

As this develops, societal conditions come into play.  People have their own personal feelings about how they should behave.  They are affected by their upbringing, their religion, their personality.

The stage is now set.  Now the people in question must communicate.  How do they actually begin interacting?  Are they interested in each other?  Are they interested in getting to know each other better?  What might they want or expect from each other?

And then, if they are interested in growing closer and becoming friends, how do they do that?

As they proceed, they run into all the issues that come with knowing someone well, and becoming affectionate and intimate with someone.  But this is how it starts.

Relating: In and Out

The more I think about how people relate intimately, the more puzzled I am by the whole business.  The whole question, to begin with, of how people become attracted to one another, seems less and less comprehensible to me.  We may be attracted to people for no explainable reason; they may or may not be interested in return—again, for no discernible reason.  Attraction may be physical, attraction may be subtle—a matter of personality somehow; but often baffling to outsiders.  “How on earth did those two get together?” we ask.  “They seem to have nothing in common.  They seem so different.”  Yet they’ve bonded somehow.

Once people realize they’re attracted, how does it happen that they grow closer and more comfortable together?  How is it that they come to trust each other—emotionally, sexually?  How do they become inseparable?  I don’t know; it’s not clear.  Some mysterious alchemy seems at work.

And of course, relationships come apart as well—and often just as mysteriously.  How can something split you apart, if you’ve been dealing with it already—apparently successfully—for years?

All very mysterious!  What can we learn here?

What Is This Friendship I Want?

Friendships—what do I want?  What do I need?

Appreciating my wife lately—simply having her around the house; that continuity of companionship.  What can we offer one another, through our protective personal walls?

Still—I have my other beloveds; and I wish I could see friends further off, that I’ve never met in person, only online—across the country, across the world.  But what do I want?

Not the sex so much—but the affection, the companionship; “spending time together.”

But—if I had one perfect companion­­—would I be satisfied?  If I had just that one—would I need any other?

I don’t think there is a “One”—just various people, various friends that I’m compatible with, that I enjoy being with, that I can care for, that care for me.  Tenderness I value; openness; honesty.

I know that my wife cares for me, in spite of our differences.  She knows I care for her.  She knows I do not mean to hurt her.  I know she wouldn’t hurt me.  We do care for one another.

That means a lot to me.  That’s what I want.  Love.

Many ("Poly!") Ways To Be Poly

(From the South Bay Poly August newsletter).
 
Some polys approach their polyness as a choice, others as an orientation.

Those who approach it as a choice may emphasize a larger interest in intentional communities, tantra, sacred sexuality, non-violent communication, sex-positivity, etc.

I feel my polyamory more as an orientation—it’s the “way I am,” and I’m more interested in understanding myself than trying to change society—although I think that people coming to terms with their polyness would change society!

So I examine myself, how I feel, how I react to others.  I ask myself questions:  What attracts me to other people?  What makes me feel comfortable or uncomfortable around others?  What limits my involvement with others?

I’ve suggested to friends that polys can be grouped by several tendencies:  “Active” polys have multiple love-interests; “Passive” polys don’t, but can accept their partner having them.  “Expansive” polys reach outwards to many people.  They can form many attachments, often of a light sort; while “consolidating” polys pull inwards with a small group of people.  Maybe it’s a matter of extroversion and introversion.

Many (“poly!”) ways to be poly!