My Muses

My Muses

Our souls breathe the same air

somewhere

outside of time and space

resonating

as we breathe out

we inspire each other

as we breathe in

provocative exhalations

evoking visions and dreams,

wonderment and admirations

that just seem to fit so well.

As each pronouncement

of the ideal

of the other

mirrors our own aspirations.

If you can imagine it

you can make it happen.

To hear you describe it

is to desire to be that man

who inspires you

to be that woman.

To read your thoughts

is to feel

your soul

breathing your words into my ear.

Each of you

nurture, heal and inspire

the very best of me,

inspiring me

to do the same for you.

Indulgences

of spirit and flesh

are exchanged

as fluently

as

passing from one hand to the other.

Breathless humours and vapors

of our common consciousness

in mutual resusitation.

 

THFWS & TTM’s: The Final Chapter?…You be the Judge….

The Final Chapter?…You be the Judge….

(Show extreme close-up of the eye of Raul, the Talking Cuban Tree-Frog. As the camera zooms out he begins his narration for Intergalactic Geographic while clinging to a branch outside the Sanctuary.)

“Despite the end of the siege, the courtroom drama, and the assassination of Frederick, life in the Home for Wayward Souls continues at the same breath-taking pace that has become de rigueur for longer than anybody can seem to remember. And it seems as if they wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Everyone is so closely connected to everyone else within the community that without introducing any of their own drama, there is more than ample mutual stimulation, validation and support which enables its members to exist within a sort of well (or treasury) of souls, springing from the ‘world soul’…the guf…so that each of its members remains self-sustaining, vibrantly alive and purposeful.”

“Because the Chimps and the Bonobos no longer needed to be separated, the interactions between the two tribes were beginning to take on a decidedly personal aspect as numerous romantic relationships were blossoming within the compound.”

“The influences of both Frederick and The Knowledge had been considerable, and there was no real competition for either food or territory. They had become united by way of a common enemy, and learned co-operation by virtue of common cause”

“And just as surely as the smaller female Bonobos found the masculine allure of the larger and more dominant male Chimps quite irresistible, as the saying goes “For every pot, there’s a lid” and there are plenty of females everywhere in this world, as well as several others with an appetite for domination of submissive males, accounting for numerous female Chimps courting the smaller male Bonobos.”

“Of course, there was no guarantee that any of the Chimp/Bonobo matings would result in the genetic mutations that Frederick experienced, including the doubling of the SRGAP2 gene induced by The Knowledge, or Frederick’s genetic DNA resemblance to Millennium Man (Orrorin tugenensis) and Homo habilis, or the eventual resolution of the disparity between the 24 genes of Chimps and Bonobos and the 23 genes of Man.”

“Although the separate 2a and 2b genes of the Pan primates eventually consolidated into the single Human gene 2 configuration (thereby accounting for the apparent “extra” gene of the Pan primates), there was no guarantee that any of the hybrids that were later to be born would be compatible with future Human additions to their gene pool, should they even occur. Indeed, Frederick may have been a genetic anomaly. Similar future mutations might not occur again for an indeterminate length of time.”

“And Evolutionary Time is very unpredictable. A Quantum Leap can occur in one generation, but it may not be self-replicating, and it might take hundreds, even thousands of generations for that leap to take place, and incremental evolution as a result of natural selection and environmental demands is notoriously slow.”

“But of course, the twins might well represent the future “Mitochondrial Adam and Eve” of a new race of sentient, self-aware, and increasingly intelligent Hominid primates capable of mating with either Humans or Chimps and Bonobos, possibly resulting in future pairings between “proto-humans” and “proto-chimps” much as early Man did.”

“Since it would be ill-advised to mate siblings, there would be a necessity that some new genes be introduced. Even if the twins only mated with Chimps and Bonobos, their gene pool will never be the same again.”

“But given the extraordinary beauty of both of them, there was a very good possibility that future human donations would also result, possibly from other members of the inner circle, or even artificial insemination. If so, the next Great Leap Forward would be inevitable.”

“Merle currently possessed enough of the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to support a congregation of one hundred thousand for over five hundred years on a very regular basis (…just in case…”), although its existence would remain a closely guarded secret, at least for the time being.”

“Although he had voluntarily resigned from his research consultant’s job with Merrick when he first began his participation in the trial to avoid the immanent dismissal that Mark, Darcy and Charles had experienced allegedly “due to business needs”, if need be, he could work for any other manufacturer he chose, or manufacture it clandestinely on the premises”

“There was no longer any financial necessity that any of them take employment with anyone else. They were not just rich…they had become wealthy…or rather, their non-profit incorporation had amassed so much money that their accountants and attorneys were on full-time retainer just to find ways to spend the money on their chartered pursuits of higher consciousness and polyamory.”

“It was they in fact who were now providing employment to selected individuals who were recruited by invitation only, thereby helping to insure that they remained connected to people of like mind and spirit.” 

“And there was no shortage of work for their selected causes to give everyone an outlet and a connection.” 

“To this end, they were also beginning a screening process to determine the suitability of selected candidates to receive ‘enlightenment’, although they were just as hesitant to obtain their informed consent to take The Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as they were to administer it without their knowledge.”

“Because of the legal implications, secrecy was an absolute must. They fully anticipated to be infiltrated by the FBI, DEA. or even the CIA and NSA. Although Stan would be immensely valuable in helping spot infiltrators and CI’s, even the remote possibility of a disgruntled parishioner reporting the mere existence of The Knowledge would be disastrous.”

“Indiscriminate administration of the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil might not result in the spiritual evolution of all of Mankind, given Man’s inestimable capacity to pervert and subvert even the noblest, loftiest and most benign of ideals or goals.”

“The fact that the DOD spent millions of dollars trying to turn the Frisbee into a weapon would be a good example. Also, ‘Knowledge is power’ and power corrupts….”

“Also it is doubtful that any of the present standing governments of the world would desire a self-realized, self-actualized and enlightened population that would be able to see beyond the devious ploys so commonly used to manipulate the general public, except for perhaps the Dutch and some provinces of Canada.”

“They all realized that they stood on the brink of a new existence, and that the likelihood of oppression from an almost endless list of potential enemies would be great unless tremendous discretion was exercised by all parties, even with Stanley Linderman protecting their best interests and continued safety.”

“Merrick Pharmaceuticals, the parent company of PharmaCorp eventually announced that they would no longer be using Chimps or Bonobos for medical research. After extensive isolation and testing for disease or genetic damage, they were retired and donated to The Home for Wayward Souls.”

“Shortly after that, public outrage over the excesses of PharmaCorp’s business practices acting as program administrators for the vast majority of insurers resulted in sweeping legislative reforms designed to prevent them from extorting and victimizing the public by denying claims, unfair regulation and monopolization of trade, providing sub-standard foreign-produced generic versions of medications of questionable therapeutic value, and collusion between PharmaCorp, the Pharmaceutical manufacturers and insurance companies.”

“Huge fines and lawsuits for damages as well as jail time for numerous executives resulted. Simultaneous actions taken by federal, as well as state’s Attorneys General triggered a bloodbath not seen since Mark Anthony first stuck it to Julius Caesar, and once it started, it seemed that the line would never end.”

“Much like the prosecution of organized crime, once one of them rolled over and turned state’s evidence against the company, the domino effect ensured that there would be no place to hide, and even the most top-ranking executives would not be able to pay off their accusers.”

“THFWS as part of their chartered missions began to initiate recognition of Repetitive Thought Injury by the medical and scientific communities, as well as other inhumane practices in the workplace in general and telemarketers in particular.”

“The logic was that if they could get it recognized as an injury, then if insurance companies had to start paying claims, they would pressure the employers to provide working conditions not to be considered as primary causative agents.” 

“Not surprisingly, the effect on the economy was a significant decrease in health-care costs nationwide as major medical insurance administrators followed the lead forcibly set in place for the pharmaceutical industry.”

“Since the huge windfall profits of the administrative companies went largely to executives and stockholders who did little to stimulate the economy except by conspicuous consumption, (which never does much of anything to benefit the general population) they had more disposable income to spend on items that resulted in more jobs in other industries, as well as the perception of an improved quality of life.”

“And since the wages paid by PharmaCorp represented just about the minimum wage that any reasonably literate professional would accept, and as there was no need for massive lay-offs because once the company was forced to operate on an ethical basis, the enrollments dramatically increased along with the public trust, even more agents were needed to act as patient care advocates in customer services.”

“Mark and Darcy took on the daunting task of educating all the primates within the congregation. Since they were all computer-literate on a limited basis, it would also give them ample opportunities to conduct behavioral research on their learning, perception and behavior as well as the developmental advances of Adam and Eve (the unanimous choice for the names of the twins).”

“Because of the necessity of supporting the burgeoning telephone call center related to the television, video and internet interests of THFWS and Kali’s website as well as the recordings of the ArcAngels there were plenty of opportunities at better salaries with better working conditions for ex-pat employees of PharmaCorp’s marketing division, which was eventually closed down in South Florida.”

“Even more surprisingly, a few of the Bonobos agreed to work as telephone operators at the Sanctuary on an entirely voluntary basis for behavioral research but it was understood and agreed that there would be ABSOLUTELY NO TELEMARKETING PRACTICES ALLOWED.”

“So many questions are yet to be answered, and so many situations unresolved, that there can be little doubt that this is far from the end of this saga, but for now, we close this chapter until news of further developments present themselves.”

“Until then, this is Raul, your reporter for Intergalactic Geographic. So long until we meet again.”

THFWS & TTM: The Twins

The Twins

When Darcy’s water broke, everyone but Darcy, Mark, Anastasia, and the midwife got out of the pool, preferring to lend their support and encouragement from the sidelines.

Episiotomies are the most frequently performed unnecessary operation in the United States (depending upon your opinion on circumcision), followed closely by cesarean section because doctors are simply not willing to take the time necessary to properly prepare a woman to birth children in the way that they have done since the beginning of time.

And because time is money, greed is the prime motivator in those decisions followed closely by laziness, a lack of imagination and an unwillingness to embrace a multi-disciplined, holistic mode of therapy.

It is never easy to deliver twins, and they are considered a “high-risk” case at best, but if there are no other complications, midwives will better prepare a woman to deliver just by virtue of the way in which they facilitate the effacement and dilation of the labia, and vulva, thereby rendering a tear-free delivery…in most cases, which was why the Neonatologist was also present…for all the other complications that could possibly arrive.

Cutting to pre-empt tearing is like amputating a limb to prevent a future break that may never occur. The simple fact that the suturing done to stitch the episiotomy frequently results in painful postpartum sex, sometimes for years seems to escape most doctors, who never feel a thing.

Anastasia had met Kat(rima) while they were studying together in nursing school. They became fast friends during some very fast times, but eventually Kat dropped out to study acupuncture and become a midwife. She had also delivered both of Anastasia’s children under water.

Darcy had watched her youngest sister being born at home on the kitchen table because her mother could not afford health care insurance. She had come from a family of commercial fishermen in tidewater Virginia and most of her early life had been spent learning how to “make do” on next to nothing just to survive.

To suddenly be the primary focus for any needs she or her children could ever want for with money no object was to feel gratefully empowered in ways she had never before known.

It takes a very special kind of woman to pull and stretch the surrounding flesh of the vagina sufficiently to accommodate the delivery of a child. If you have ever been privileged to witness a birth with the assistance of a midwife and compare it to any hospital delivery you’ve ever seen you quickly realize  how nurturing and baby-friendly the former is compared to the industrial atmosphere of a hospital delivery.

Many women may tend to feel uncomfortable touching another woman in such an intimate manner as is done by the midwife, but compared to almost all males, they are generally more nurturant and intimate with each other, perhaps by nature, or perhaps because our culture does not embrace homophobia as tenaciously among females as by the generally fearful, self-conscious, strutting, posturing roosters that the males of our species are so often want to make of themselves, especially in their early youth.

Regardless, some women are also programmed for nurturance from a very early age and Kat was one of them. She loved women as much as she did men and she fearlessly and self-consciously embraced an inborn commitment to caring for anyone who deserved her attentions.

And in all fairness, if an OB/GYN doctor were to perform the same procedures in a hospital setting, they would probably be up on charges before they left the parking lot.

Discretion is the lesbian consigliere of Valor.

Meanwhile, most of the Ancient Ones had arrived. The spirits of Lukumi, Los Guerreros, Roti, The Dark Mother (Kali’s almost accidental namesake), Ganesh, and seemingly countless others either sat perched upon the peak of the roof, on the branches of the surrounding trees, or were joining Darcy, Mark, Anastasia and Kat, the midwife in the water, which is one of the most amazing and provocative ways to experience their presence.

Water that contains the usual minerals and electrolytes found in either municipal systems or well water is an excellent conductor of electro-magnetic energy, especially if it contains amniotic fluids, and a number of  the Ancient Ones liked to playfully caress, poke and prod those who can allow themselves to be open to the sensations they impart as they flash back and forth across the pool like dolphins preparing to tail-walk over the water.

As the contractions came closer and closer together and her dilation increased, the cauldrons began to boil and steam and it was at just about that same time when Boop-Oopa-Doop (aka “Betty”) flew in and landed in a Key Lime tree next to the fires beneath the cauldrons.

“What’s up, Toots?” she asked of no one in particular.

Almost in unison, they waved and replied “Boop-Oopa-Doop!” She was widely known throughout the multi-verse, and generally well-liked by all.

As a fellow embezzler of time and space, She was quite adept in arriving precisely when what appeared to be a portent of something spectacular was just about to happen.

The visions that appeared in the cauldrons were similar to those that had foretold of Darcy’s ordained place within the primary group.

It was the image of Darcy surrounded by thousands of primates doing the Bandaloop Dance at sunset. This time, there was a melody that could be heard by everyone, yet recognized by no one, except the primates outside the Sanctuary, and perhaps Darcy, who also began to hum along with it.

The ArchAngels, who were watching and listening to the images and sounds projected and amplified from the cameras quickly incorporated it into their song cycle while the saxophones began to answer and the rest of the band reinforced the melody with harmonizations and counterpoint of their own.

In the area beneath the screens, the Primates had assembled to perform the Bandaloop Dance in unison with the video feed from the cauldrons. They never seemed to need any coaching; it was as if it was something native to their instincts.

As the singing and dancing reached a crescendo, Darcy delivered the first of the twins, a vigorously healthy screaming female, followed in due time by an equally beautiful and perfect male.

There was no video coverage of the delivery, but everyone who witnessed it poolside fell into silence as they each recognized the uniqueness of the twins.

“Unique” is one of the most frequently misused words of the last fifty years, but in this case it was no hyperbole, because in the entire history of the earth, there have never been two children born who possessed the appearance of these two children.

The female was thankfully much less hirsute than the male and absolutely gorgeous to behold, but there was a decidedly simian appearance to her which was not so much apparent until one saw the two of them together, because the male was undoubtedly the offspring of Frederick, who was himself the only one of his kind.

Aside from a slightly exaggerated supra-orbital ridge, somewhat longer than average arm length compared to their overall length and a little more space between the bottom of the nose and the top of the upper lip they looked very much like any other human infant, except for the feet, which were structurally identical to those of the Chimpanzee. This meant that both of the twins had four opposable thumbs each.

This would prove to be the beta upgrade to human feet for these children, who quickly learned to use them like a second pair of hands whenever their shoes were off, which never happened in public, lest  it give away the identity of their father.

But perhaps most importantly, their spines and pelvis, as well as the alignment of their hips were consistent with bi-pedal ambulation. Also, their foramen magnums were located more anteriorly at the bases of the skulls, consistent with a vertical stance directly above the spine.

Given the genetic diversity of the human animal, their appearance was surprisingly human.

The eventual legal decision as to whether or not they be considered Hominid would be prolonged as much as possible for their protection, but eventually, after they are given the opportunity to establish the authenticity of their genetic structure, as young adults it would become their time to be recognized as who they really were.

Since they were not born in a hospital, although their footprints were recorded and notarized by their attorneys, no publicly accessible documents would be filed unless absolutely necessary.

Because the dearth of research, evidence and testimony of Frederick was so well documented, he alone would best serve as the face, the voice, the words and the ideas of a truly self-aware, sentient being demanding his rights to recognition of his ascension to a higher level than was previously judged as at least adequate by the gatekeepers of the most exclusive country club in the animal kingdom called Humanity.

Once his case was won in court, the twins would have their day of recognition and autonomy without outside interference.

It was uncanny however in the way in which their facial expressions were the visage of Frederick’s. Not something one could quite put their finger on to tell of the identify of the father unless you knew Frederick well enough to recognize the similarities.

Although their skin was quite pale, their hair was jet black, but finer than that of the other great apes. Their features looked beautifully exotic…perhaps slightly Asian, or even African or some allele of the North American aboriginals; refined, yet primal, with very large, dark brown eyes. They were strangely beautiful, and once you began to look at them, it was almost impossible to avert your eyes from their soulful faces.

To a casual observer they appeared to be beautiful normal humans in nearly all aspects, but given the transcendent understanding between the members of the group, it was immediately common knowledge as to the paternity of both of them, though no one spoke directly of it that night, because they already knew that everyone else knew.

The remarkable similarity of the genes and chromosomes between Chimpanzees, Gorillas, and Orangutans with human genetic DNA had enabled a union of Frederick’s sperm and two of Darcy’s eggs, despite a long-successful tubal ligation.

Vigorously demanding their evolutionary participation in the replication of their currently unique species, they out swam all the other combined seeds deposited into Darcy’s love canal that evening, just as two eggs had also almost inexplicably made a quantum leap past what was believed to be an impenetrable barrier.

There have been legends and rumors of unions with either male or female human participants and simians throughout the last fifty years or more, but no surviving evidence and great hatred, disgust and violent hostility are often expressed at even the mention of such offspring.

A doctor in Malaysia for instance who allegedly intended to artificially inseminate two female orangutans with human sperm more than forty years ago was murdered, and his laboratory and domestic facilities burned to the ground along with the two female orangutans.

A mere rumor possibly fabricated by poachers that Diane Fossi was copulating with the gorillas whom she was studying likewise may have prompted her murder.

The subject of interspecies erotica is likely to invoke images of Tijuana donkey-shows, women from Amsterdam copulating with huge canines or sheepherders and hillbillies in general. Once the sniggering and fascination over the perceived degradation of the human subjects stops (shortly after the titillation factor wears off), the tendency is to get hautily self-righteous and violent.

As disgusted and revolted as so many claim to be, few can or will avert their eyes once they should witness it.

The book of Leviticus states that if a man shall lay with an animal, that they both shall be killed. It seems unfathomable that the ancient Hebrews believed that somehow the animal was complicit in the commission of the act, but then again, the book of Leviticus is harsh, which may explain why it is such a favorite of Pentecostals and other similarly bloodthirsty and judgmental fundamentalist Christians.

If you stop and think about it, the only true fundamentalist Christians would be the Messianic Jews who were the descendants of either the authors or scribes of the early new testament and the Dead Sea scrolls.

Ironically, it should be noted that some of the most dangerous fundamentalists would be the modern-day ultra right-wing sex-and-pleasure-hating American fundamentalist Christians, who generally want no part whatsoever of Judaism (including the Old Testament) unless it justify self-serving, vindictive, self-righteous wrath, punishment and judgmental retribution. (Muslim Jihadists notwithstanding…keeping in mind that it was the authors of the Crusades who have also sown those seeds.)

The twins were the first scientifically verifiable prototype of this union, and no one intended to make the results known to the general public for the sake of the safety of all parties concerned.

As you may recall, during The Great Eurasian Leap Forward, after Man first diverged from his primal ancestors, the offspring showed a remarkable increase in each successive generation in intellectual capacity due to the doubling of the SRGAP2  gene despite an eventually lowered total brain mass compared to the earlier, larger Neanderthal . Similarly, these children would later prove to be far more advanced than any primate…even Frederick, had ever been.

In the light of the previous events of the day, everyone in attendance was openly grateful for the revelation of the paternity of the children.

No one had suspected, least of all Darcy that it was even within the range of possibility that she was capable of conception in the first place, let alone by way of the world’s one and only Bonanzee.

Everyone in attendance openly displayed tears of joy as Anastasia and Mark helped hold the twins to Darcy’s breasts. She was absolutely radiant, looking for all the world like the proudest mother of all time…the way every mother should.

It was about this time that the visions from  the cauldrons began to change. A face began to appear that looked as if it was painted in smoke. Although initially vague and indistinct, it eventually took on the appearance of Frederick’s face.

Although the synchronization between the lips and the voice that everyone heard was delayed, nonetheless everyone who witnessed it clearly perceived the sound of Frederick’s voice in their heads as clearly as if he was personally whispering the words directly into their ears.

It was later confirmed that whether or not they had taken The Knowledge everyone who heard them verified the words that Frederick imparted to them.

First he repeated his last words spoken to the world at the time of his death. The recordings that were made of the camera feeds showed the video, but no audio was recorded. Fortunately, for posterity he also signed his message as he had before.

To it, he added a final remark. “For those who wished me harm, you have not seen the last of me. I was not born to be so easily dispatched. For those of you who knew and loved me, you too have not seen the last of me, because there is so much more to unfold as our work progresses.”

“Just as Man received a hand-up fifty-thousand years ago, it is now time for Man to lend his hand to his simian cousins to allow the natural evolutionary process to begin again. Who amongst you would deny us that opportunity?”

“Since the time when Man first traded Instinct and Intuition for Reason, he has suffered for it on so many levels that the members of our inner circle have now only really begun to realize.”

“The ancestors of Man can provide him your connection to our mutual primal past, including telepathy…if you can just learn to stop talking and relying on words to express yourselves. You have as much to gain as we do in the symbiosis of our union.”

“Our children will become the beta-version of Mankind. It is time to embrace our next evolutionary quantum leap.”

“Keep me in your hearts so that my spirit may abide there with you all as you raise our children together.”

This was clearly an event that had shocked and surprised a group who had become accustomed to the bizarre and unbelievable in a world where the impossible had become commonplace.

Most religiously oriented persons of any faith would have considered the entire event an abomination, or the work of the Devil, were they to learn of it, but in the hearts and minds of the inner circle of The Home for Wayward Souls, it was a well-received serendipity.

And so it was, that this group who did not believe in a disapproving, punitive, vindictive and jealous God the Creator (either Aravat or Eloah, Elah or Eolith in Hebrew) nonetheless learned to embrace a union with what has been referred to as the Guf, or Treasury of Souls without conflict or contradiction, and who believed in the persistence of the Soul

And it was good…very, VERY GOOD…like, well…(you know the rest)…..

Namaste

Eclecticism vs. Plagiarism

I am currently in the midst of a period of tragedy, loss and re-assessment in a life earmarked by great Beauty, Ecstacy, Love, Danger, Violence, Joy, Excess and Horror. To quote Carlos Castaneda quoting the brujo Don Juan in “A Yaqui Way of Knowledge”, I am reminded on a daily basis that “Death walks in your shadow.”

Of course when Carlos Castaneda quoted Don Juan, even the sorcerer himself was quoting a truism or “Old Saw” well-known to the Yaqui people. This raises the question of how far does one need to go in correctly crediting one’s sources without completely losing the train of thought and presentation in something that masquerades under the banner of original or creative writing?

I did some research and found that Charles Caleb Colton was the author of the term: “…Imitation is the sincerest (form) of flattery….”, I admit that I do not recall ever hearing of him or his works before, but everyone is familiar with the quotation; this is as good as any example that I know of a very small portion of that to which I speak, write, or refer.

I had to look it up to quote the author, now a relative unknown, and discovered that the original quote was: “Imitation is the sincerest of flattery…”. Although he was something of an erratic luminary of his day, with a propensity for self-indulgence and given to excess; he died broke and took his own life and is relatively unknown today except to scholars a great deal more erudite than myself.

If I should use some phrase, to what lengths should I go to quote the source; or should I even perhaps footnote it like a term paper on English Composition? I have read and listened to speakers whose most notable feature is the way in which they weave in and around endless quotations and references, making a kind of pedantic bibliography of the synthesis of whatever ideas they are trying to present.

Some of them are quite fascinating, if you can ever grasp the actual gist or meat of whatever it is they may eventually try to present as an original idea, although the synthesis of the literary Gumbo that they serve up becomes a casualty of the litigious, greedy nature of the modern culture before which we are all forced to bow.

I am a weaver of dreams and teller of tall tales,  mostly true, thinly disguised to protect the guilty (mostly myself) and the innocent alike for fear of implying an unsavory association with otherwise good people who do not deserve such shame for having known, loved, or befriended me.

It is my desire to resurrect the American storytelling tradition by incorporating it into a literary genre I like to call “enhanced and fortified non-fiction”. I was relatively well-educated, but must admit I have forgotten more than most people would even care to ever learn. My point is that in the attempt to not plagiarized, the homage of quotation can become cumbersome.

On the other hand, this pitiful self-indulgent,  self-destructive fiend named Colton has passed into relative anonymity although the mis quotation of his most famous line that is so commonly used that it has become a cliché for people who know nothing of his existence.

If you Google the phrase, you have to only see how many unrelated references there are through which I had to wade to find the source. And of course, there are times when we discover after the fact that what we thought was original was not, leaving us to feel as if as the song by Mark–Almond says: “…It’s all been done before…”

I know there are rules…I was raised on them…chastised if I did not strictly follow them, or warned of dire consequences if I did not adhere to them, courtesy of fear of the scholarly “Hickory Stick” of seventeen-century values, customs and protocols as they dragged their half-dead carcasses across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, leaving a trail of blood, venom, shit and bile like a dog hit by a car that refuses to die before it reaches its Final Destination.

Henry David Thoreau wrote in “Civil Disobedience” that “All machines have their friction…but when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression…organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer.”

This is not to say that I condone plagiarism. To outright steal the complete works and ideas of another author and preset them as one’s own is unjustifiable, but to pick from the marketplace of ideas like a chef choosing which ingredients he or she will use to prepare a meal, perhaps without so much as a defined recipe, instead simply doing a little of this and using a little of that in the style of something you may or may not entirely recognize, although seemingly vaguely familiar (which I have come to embrace as what I call Jazz Cooking) represents a synthesis of originality applied against the clichés and shop-worn ideas and techniques that threaten to strangle us all for fear of accusations of being excessively derivative.

There is a danger in being too well-read and educated. I was raised hearing that there have been no new thoughts or ideas since the Greeks, or biblical times or some other such horse-shit guaranteed to leave a right-minded person afraid to speak, think, or write. The more you know, the greater the risk…so why even bother?

Sometime early in my youth while studying Art and Cinematography. I was introduced to the technique of Collage and Photomontage. In its own way, it perhaps paved the groundwork of the modern Hip-Hop technique referred to as Sampling, which took legal action to be defined and separated from litigation for copy write violation.

Many years before, when George Harrison was sued for plagiarism attributed to his song My Sweet Lord, because of its remarkable similarity to “He’s so Fine” I heard Dolly Parton remark how in the same way, the same sequence of notes in I Saw Her Standing There was exactly the same sequence as Nine to Five.

Her point seemed to center around the fact that context, treatment, style and presentation are in fact the basis of originality, since after all, there are really only twelve notes in the modern Western musical scale.

In the last twenty years, we have seen an irrational preoccupation in the lengths to which attorneys have taken the concept of Intellectual Property on behalf of either Michael Eisner’s New-World Order of Disney, going so far as to attempt to sue a day-care center in Hollywood, Florida for using hand-painted images of Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck or Snow White on the walls of the center. (BTW: When the threats got national media attention, Hanna-Barbara Studios flew their own artists to the day-care center to paint their copyrighted images instead…for free.)

Or consider the story of George Lucas suing a porn producer for making a movie entitled Star Whores and attempting to prevent use of the THX signature of envelope and timbre of the well-known glissando of their logo as the intro for a Hip-Hop song.

Perhaps the real question is to ask “what is the harm?” to determine if any creative artist has been wronged. Where is the line drawn between Homage and Plagiarism? We often either knowingly or unknowingly quote the Bible, Shakespeare, or any number of thousands of previously published works by the choice of a particular turn of a phrase or word.

Sometimes a cliché is all you need to set up a rhythm, an easy shorthand to quickly conjure up an image, or make the hairs on your neck stand on end…(or anything else for that matter) like jumping from second to fourth gear, saving your own (well as their) best energies for the real verities.

The movie Zeitgeist would suggest that even the fundamentals of Christianity are in fact the result of a form of religious plagiarism, but even unique applications of clichés or shop-worn phrases to effect an original presentation of ideas and images that lend a recognizable universality to any artistic work may still be subject to scrutiny.

As to where one point ends and another begins…well, to paraphrase: “The proof is in the (eating of) the pudding.” BTW: Just to illustrate, it was George Carlin (in Brain Droppings) that added the parenthetical, although he was referring to an entirely different set of circumstances.

I frequently use song titles or movie titles to describe something in a certain way that may or may not be recognizable to the reader. I usually Capitalize and italicize the title, so as to draw attention to how it was woven into the fabric of the text, as a sort of “Nod and a Wink” (to the readers who probably also like puns), but with the exception of the use of the first few lines line of Volunteers (of America) by the Jefferson Airplane as the title of a chapter I once wrote, I do not generally quote or footnote.

If anything, I try to avoid using enough of their words in sequence to be considered liable, and whenever possible, it is usually used in such a different context that only the veneer of resemblance is exposed.

Interestingly enough, The Jefferson Airplane was forced to drop the “of America” from the title of both the song and the Album because of copyright infringement, thereby markedly increasing the value of any first-edition releases that were not pulled from the racks.

There is no end to the irony of the fact that the opening proclaims: “We are all outlaws in the eyes of America…in order to survive we steal, lie, cheat , forge, fuck, hide and deal…we are obscene, lawless, dangerous, dirty, violent…and young.”

It was an anthem of the awakening of myself and an entire generation of outlaws, brigands, and perverts. Although I quoted and recognized them at the beginning of the title of the chapter, I should only be so fortunate as to have that work become popular enough that I should be allowed the privilege to pay them tribute in money, if deemed appropriate, regardless of the irony.

For instance, I know very well that it was Hemingway who first used the term “Moveable Feast” when he described Paris. It is my sincerest hope that most of the literate (reading) public does as well. I used the phrase in a completely different context at some point in the past. I remember doing it, but for the life of me I don’t recall when or how, or in what frame of reference.

At nearly the same point in time, both Jackson Pollock and Charlie Parker began doing the same thing in different media by allowing a sort of “stream of consciousness” in music and a “reflex arc” or “muscle memory” in Art to produce their most memorable works in a new style largely invented by each of them, according to their respective disciplines.

Red Skelton, in the midst of controversy of his use of a few sly innuendoes that were deemed “dirty” by some television viewers simply remarked that if you already knew the context, then he was only reminding you of something that you had already heard or thought that was already in your own brain.

In Senate hearings over obscenity in rock music, Paula Hawkins accused Frank Zappa of causing people to “…think dirty…” whereupon he replied that he would be flattered if he was accused of having caused people to think at all.

About a year ago, however, when a reader remarked about how much he liked a particular idea that I had presented, I did mention that it was partially inspired by one of my all-time favorite writers, and in the process turned the reader on to an author of a unique genre of literature in which he stands head and shoulders above almost all others, with few equals anywhere, and that has given me pause to reconsider….

In this spirit of full disclosure, I would like to list some of the artists, musicians, philosophers, comedians, perverts, poets, writers, teachers, lovers, free spirits and bon vivants who have in many subtle and unsubtle ways influenced or inspired many entries I have written in one way or another, and at the very  least given me hope and strength to carry on. I have frequently quoted (and just as likely mis-quoted), and in one way or another at the very least leaned heavily upon each of you in my many hours of need. (These are neither alphabetical nor in order of importance; they are simply presented as they randomly occurred to me. Some are famous, some deserve to be…):

Tom Robbins

Dr. Hunter Stockton Thompson

Artur Rimbaud

Walt Whitman

Allen Ginsburg

Charles Bukowski

Frank Zappa

Jeff Beck

Eric Clapton

Mark-Almond

Douglas Adams

Lawrence M. Krauss, Ph. D.

Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, Graham Keith Gouldman and

Laurence Neil “Lol” Creme (of 10cc)

Spirit

The Jefferson Airplane

The Grateful Dead

Randy Bays and Francis (aka: Francois Hermes) “Frenchy” Massinon

Eddie Bischoff

Abraham Maslow

Robert Hilton

Claude Debussy

Eric Satie

Ernest Hemingway

John Cage

Ingmar Bergman

George Orwell

Aldus Huxley

B.F. Skinner

Timothy Leary

Richard Alpert (aka: Baba Ram Dass)

Lenny Bruce

Linda Goodman

Alfred E. Newman

Louie C. K.

Henry David Thoreau

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Amy Rogers-Edgin-Onasis-Bono-Allman-???

Karan Barnes

Joseph F. Pulitzotto

George Carlin

Robin Williams

Suki Vincent

Anastasia, the eternal “Astral Travler”; aka “the Ex-Stacy”

John Steinbeck

Jack Nietzsche

Andrew L. Oldham

Friedrich Nietzsche

Carlos Castaneda

Ron Jeremy

Robert M. Pirsig

The Rolling Stones

Eric Burdon

Van Morrison

Steven Trask

Hedwig

William S. Burroughs

Charlie Kaufman

Oliver Stone

Quentin Tarantino

LeeAnn Macguire Reyes Cauble

“Captain Mike” Schrader

Jessie (the other outlaw) James

SIG Sauer

Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov

Gene Vincent

George Brown, his brother Cliff, and legendary Vincent (Black Shadow) designer, Phil Irving

Michael (“Eschew obfuscation”) Barnes

Pink Floyd

 Lana and Andrew Wachowski

Tom Tykwer

 David Mitchell

John Cameron Mitchell

E.E. Cummings

Dylan Thomas

Bob Dylan

Ralph Waldo Emerson

James Marshall Hendrix

Eddy Van Halen

Stanley Jordan

Buzzy Feiten

The Whore of Armageddon

Each of these people, and many, many more have struck resonances within me, sometimes after the fact of my own realization or self-discovery, thereby validating and reinforcing something that was already there.

The above listing is only my “short list”, and I apologize for so many not listed there that may have momentarily escaped my deteriorating memory banks.

I believe all inspiration, and epiphanies come from the heavens, trapped in the ionosphere, bouncing, skipping, and returning like radio waves. How we interpret or assimilate those energies is what makes each of us unique.

Without sounding presumptuous, and to misquote and badly paraphrase Emerson…we all stand hand in hand, the whole world round…. They too, have their own set of influences, mentors, and even unconscious influences. I don’t know how much any of them struggled with deciding to quote or footnote all their sources….

I consider myself a casualty of my generation and our culture, as well as my own predisposition for excess, self-indulgence, self-abuse. and wanton disregard for laws or most conventions of polite society.

If my remarks, thoughts, ideas or choices of words should offend you, consider me like one would a madman, running naked through the streets, babbling an echolalia of rants inspired by ionic discharges of the atmosphere while my brain writhes in a series of capacitance as if it were attached to a lightning rod…and to quote Douglas Adams: “…mostly harmless….”. …And that’s on my good days, when I feel inspired enough to assert my will to live. It would appear that I am in little danger of sufficient notoriety to provoke much criticism on any global scale…so what’s the harm? I am but a messenger, a conduit through which I try to present that which inspires and flows through me as I attempt to Divine the Divine.

Namaste.

We All Bring Something Different to the Table: THFWS&TTM’s

We All Bring Something Different to the Table

 

So consider for a moment what is represented by this primary union of individuals within the Home for Wayward Souls.

Ash is in his early thirties. He is handsome and physically fit. He represents a fusion of theologian and showman, an entertainer who desires to bring higher consciousness and spiritual union to an audience. He is as drawn to providing exposure to a diverse range of ideas and influences as he is to eschewing dogma and doctrine.

His wife Kali is a little older and in her early forties although she looks much younger. She is the Earth Mother; the high priestess of Sacred Sex and cunning practitioner of the knowledge and wisdom of Wicca. She is soft and feminine and her body is a lavishly lurid testament to the sexual superiority of women and the power of the Moon.

Merle is the preternaturally tall lanky, and enormous embodiment of all things masculine although he also possesses an occult fascination with women’s apparel, especially their undergarments. He is a shaman, a chemist, a botanist and archetypical prototype of the aboriginal peoples of what is now called America. He is predominantly Apache although he admits to a white Spanish ancestor far back in his lineage. He is the magician and medicine man of the family; the sorcerer and brujo of the chemistry of the body and mind. He is also in his early thirties and the third leg of the triad of Ash, Kali, and himself.

Suki is forty; the child-bride of Charles. She is the unlikely combination of a powerful Eastern-European warlock and a Japanese Tsukimono-suji (white witch). Once a lean and athletic hard-body, a seemingly endless series of health problems, childbearing and the complacency of a decade and a half of marriage left her overweight and out of shape as her libido took a nosedive.

Because of their parents’ association with each other, she had known Charles all her life and had a life-long crush on him despite the fact that he treated her more like a baby sister until years later when they met at a family reunion.

They both had been “swingers” both before and after they fell in love as adults until she seemed to lose all interest in sex.

Charles’ infatuation with Jennifer had reawaked her from her long winter’s hibernation as she exercised  and dieted her way back to fitness before she met Gerard, who reawakened her sexuality and vitality as well as opening her eyes to the benefits of Polyamory, despite his monolithic desire to possess her completely.

Charles was the worldly designated elder of their family of eight. He had a rapacious desire for all manner of knowledge with an uncanny ability to “connect the dots” of seemingly unrelated semantic memory  and vast personal experiences.

He had either received training or worked at one point or another in so many different and seemingly unrelated occupations that it was difficult to imagine how he had managed to acquire so much experience in his sixty-plus years, especially because few people would have guessed him to be over fifty. He looked distinguished and mature despite his compulsively iconoclastic and mischievous behaviors.

He was Ash’s right hand man and jack of all trades who not only helped engineer and bring to fruition many of Ash’s wildest schemes, but frequently came up with a great deal of creative inspiration of his own. He was a catalyst for almost everything that took place within the Home for Wayward Souls.

He often described himself as a “pervert’s pervert” and “something of an acquired taste like Scotch whiskey, Cuban cigars and anal sex” which was a marked contrast to Suki’s almost instantly likeable, outgoing and social nature.

For the last eight years he had worked as a telemarketer. It was supposed to just be a summer job until something better came along. Because of his involvement with The Home for Wayward Souls, he really didn’t care if something did…for the first time in many years, what he did for a living…for money…was not the most important work in his life, no matter how good he got at doing it.

Darcy was a thoroughly Southern thirty-something gal who had been around the block a few times, the sadder-but wiser woman who had risen above her working-class background of alcoholism, and the seemingly endless line of men who would limit and betray her until she got straight and became first a veterinary technician, then went on to college to become an animal behaviorist. She was still working on her master’s degree when she met and fell in love with Mark while working at the Habitat.

She was tall, blonde, thin and pretty. Even pregnant. Being almost six feet tall herself, she was very much attracted to Merle, who was the only man she had ever been with who towered over her. She became infatuated with his enormous uncircumcised cock and the way it made her feel like he was going to split her apart as she encouraged him to violate her savagely. Her advanced state of pregnancy lately had required considerable discretion on Merle’s part as well as hers.

And just to round out their perspective as well as teach them how to communicate without words we have Frederick, a Chimpanzee/Bonobo hybrid who insisted on being called a Bonanzee. His DNA structure had somehow crossed the abyss of non-human primates and closely resembled the first known hominids that later became Man.

Even before he was given The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, he was the most sentient of primates other than man, and to all knowledge, the only one of his kind.

He taught them of the chimpanzee legend of the Origin of Man and how they had made the Great Eurasian Leap Forward during the Upper Paleolithic Revolution by way of interbreeding with aliens who came to Earth to give them something that resembled The Knowledge, thereby imparting sentience to “The Talking Monkeys”.

This group of eight had been a self-sustaining family of sorts for months now, long before their group marriage would have seemed to close the circle. As much as all of them had engaged in various polyamorous adventures on their own before they became The Eight, including a great deal of casual swinging, they had become a close-knit but closed society that had not been breached for nearly a year.

Once again, we see how rules are made to be bent, if not broken. For every absolute, there is an exception out there waiting to make itself known and with which there will come a day of reckoning.

Anastasia had described herself as “…bent, but not broken” as she had also described Suki, her new lover. Even before they met, they both sensed a chemistry between them that is not often seen in ostensibly heterosexual women that most definitely preferred men but were not afraid to acknowledge what seemed to come so naturally to them.

Perhaps not surprisingly, they quickly added Charles to the mix, although he jokingly remarked how he was simply there “to lend an air of respectability to this otherwise unsavory and disreputable group.”

Anastasia was a retired (disabled) ob/gyn nurse who was trying to break into free-lance journalism. Fortunately, her husband supported her efforts, lest she starve, as assignments were few and far between…especially ones that actually paid spendable currency of the realm.

She started doing “research” regarding the Kink/Fet community for a bi-line she was trying to sell to a magazine publisher because somewhere she had read that one should write about what you know, and what she didn’t already know she was curious and anxious to learn.

As they all lived in Florida and were close enough to represent less than a day’s drive, a “friend of a friend” had told her about Charles, Suki, and their activities and shenanigans and thought it might be a good way to “get inside” their community.

Her paternal grandfather was Sicilian and her grandmother was Lakota Oglala and Brule Sioux. She described her mother’s family as “a bowl of mixed nuts” from all over Europe and South America.

She had lived with her Sioux grandmother since she was twelve years old after her parents divorced and learned the ways of the medicine woman while in her care and considered her ethnicity to be Indian, but did not like to discuss her childhood except for her memories of her Grandmother.

She disliked ethnic labels and stereotypes in general and about Sicilians and Indians in particular, and for years was likewise very closed about sharing her knowledge and practice of Wicca, preferring to be an anonymous solitary practicing witch.

She had a lion’s mane of thick dark hair that she often dyed with henna because she liked the way it brought out the red highlights.

She had the deepest, darkest, most soulful eyes Charles had ever seen. They were kind, loving, sad, and mischievous almost all at once. You could lose yourself in them if you weren’t careful, and she frequently encouraged many to revel in reckless abandon, like the imp of the perverse she embraced.

She was ever-so slightly full of figure, the most mature of them, soft of heart and immense of soul, so much like Kali, that it wasn’t long before she had charmed the Dark Mother too . She was a woman’s woman in every sense no matter how much she liked “the boys” as well.

To watch her care for Darcy either as a nurse or as a mother to a mother-to-be was to give witness to something at once both beautiful and primordial enough to make you smile just to cover the lump in your throat (and if that’s not enough to bring a tear to your eye, I’d say you’ve got spit for blood).

Anastasia was the lioness of the pride, and Darcy was the cheetah with cub. To see them together you’d be convinced they had been cats together before in a previous life. It had been agreed she would serve as mid-wife when the time came.

Charles described Suki and Anastasia discovering each other as being “…like suddenly finding a ripe peach in your refrigerator that you never even knew you had when you were really hungry and would have settled for half a microwaved burrito if one had been there..”

The women encouraged and energized each other in a way that inspired and provoked Charles in ways he had not experienced in many years.

For the three of them, this was heaven. Since weekends were best for the three of them, it had become accepted that Anastasia was their mutual “plus one” for any activities at The Home for Wayward Souls, and she was instantly accepted by virtue of Charles and Suki’s endorsement with the understanding that at least for now, she was their guest.

When she would come to visit she would move in for no more than three days at a time. She said she had good reasons for her seventy-two hour honeymoon curfew, but never got around to really explaining them.

They were generally too busy until they were too exhausted to get around to such discussions, and by the time they were ready, she was already “gone like a cool breeze….”

“Leave them gasping for breath and begging for more before they even know where you came from or where you went…a little mystery is good for the both of them…they have security and familiarity, and I have spontaneity  and the enigma of all the women behind the all the veils.”

“I am the other woman that both of them seek because I know of what they dream and know that they will love me when I give them my very self, spun from the stuff of which their dreams are made.”

Anastasia was not boasting. If all went well, she would be back for good one day, and then they could discuss her former reasons at length. Once she had gotten “inside” she no longer wanted to go anywhere else.

And it was good…like the way God said at the end of each day when he said:  “… And it was good…” …it was very, very good.

No matter how much they brought to their table, there was plenty of room, with a place always set for Isaiah, lest no wayward traveler go hungry or without shelter during this their time of feasting upon all manner of things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not Your Grandparents’ Honeymoon II: THFWS&TTM’s

Not Your Grandparents’ Honeymoon II:  THFWS&TTM’s

All eyes were focused on Darcy as they continued to observe the pulsating glow that emanated from the two babies growing within her belly.

Kali and Suki were the first to gently touch and rub Darcy’s abdomen, followed by Mark who gently kissed the taught, seemingly transparent skin that seemed to be unable to hide the twins growing within her.

Because they had been reluctant to learn the gender of her child, they had repeatedly postponed the sonogram that would have also revealed the plurality within her. It seemed ironic that two people who had devoted their lives to scientific research would choose ignorance over inquiry, but it was not so much a matter of a choice as a subconscious avoidance.

As much as the satiation of curiosity was endemic to their collective natures, it is perhaps not surprising that they desired a certain degree of purposeful mystery to shroud her pregnancy and impending delivery.

As humans we are not always logically consistent regarding the full spectrum of our logical and emotional make-up. Although the Scientist desires to know all, the Romantic embraces the mystery that conflicts with full disclosure.

Darcy was in no way negligent in seeking prenatal care, but inadvertently in subconsciously avoiding knowing the sex of her child, she had also missed learning of the existence of a second entity. It just never occurred to any of them until now, and the twins had not yet chosen to force their presence upon them before this moment.

Although there had as of that moment been no scientific confirmation of the presence of twins, at that moment they knew it to be true because they believed it to be true, courtesy of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Tears of joy streamed from Darcy’s eyes, as well as the others as they gently and almost reverently touched and embraced her.

As Mark and Darcy stared deeply into each other’s eyes, they both said “I love you so much!” almost simultaneously.

Charles was by far the most emotionally distant of the group to all but Suki, although as they stood facing each other as Suki gently touched Darcy’s breasts, Charles lovingly touched Darcy’s face and said “You are so beautiful…I love you.”

This almost took Darcy’s breath away, as Charles had never actually spoken those words directly to her before. Although he was demonstratively very affectionate in all of his contact with her, it often took on the air of an almost fatherly manner, much the same as his interactions with Mark.

Charles had often described his relationship with Suki as a “Limited Polyamory” because insofar as they were concerned, Suki insisted she should be considered the “Alpha Bitch” in all interactions with either her or Charles both separately or independently.

Although Charles was in no way what you would describe as submissive by nature, it was his finding that when he indulged Suki in her need to “call the shots” so to speak, she was much less likely to succumb to jealousy or possessiveness, and frequently surprised Charles with her magnanimity and generosity of spirit.

Also, because they now generally limited their pursuit of Polyamory to the other members of their group it was easier for Suki to cope with any real or imagined territorial issues.

In that respect, she and Kali and Darcy regarded each other as equals.

Similarly, Merle enjoyed Darcy’s infatuation with an air of “detached compassion” that allowed her to indulge herself in her fantasies about him without evoking any insecurities within Mark, who was remarkably self-assured and well-adjusted and usually not the least bit jealous.

Although Mark was no wallflower by any means it was difficult for any man to not feel eclipsed by Merle’s presence. Darcy did her best to moderate her enthusiasm regarding her attraction for Merle.

There was no denying that she was wet-hot for Merle, but she truly loved Mark in a way she had never before known with any other man. They were both special to each other in a way that was unique for them.

Darcy was also very much aware of Mark’s life-long crush on Kali…hell, anyone with a pulse and a blood pressure and anything over a room-temperature IQ could not help noticing how Mark adored her.

Whenever Darcy felt a twinge of jealousy, she reminded herself how that must be the way Mark feels about her and Merle.

Kali very much liked how she felt when she indulged Mark in all manner of sexual pleasure.

It was good to enjoy the almost worshipful adoration that Mark bestowed upon her. She never felt quite as beautiful and charming as when Mark was lavishing her with affection and gratitude.

At least once in their life everyone should know what it feels like for someone else to think you are beautiful, charming and brilliant as if they are star-struck by every aspect of your being. To be adored and desired without reservation and overcome by grateful wonderment for the good fortune to be in your company.

Ash had remarked more than once that Mark helped remind him what a lucky man he was, and Suki was particularly fond of Ash’s Arian/Nordic features and finely sculpted body.

Although Charles was quite familiar and affectionate with both Kali and Darcy, he often stated that he generally had his hands full just keeping up with Suki’s seemingly insatiable desires, and ever since his relationship with Jennifer tanked, he had become a little distant with most women other than Suki until very recently.

Lately Suki had been corresponding with a woman who wrote a byline for a magazine that specialized in Kink/Fet articles and features. Eventually, she did an interview with Suki and Charles in their home. The two women bonded almost instantly, and soon became lovers as well as fast friends.

Anastasia was also quite attracted to Charles, so it seemed only natural when Suki suggested a ménage a trois, which Charles heartily endorsed as well. They quickly developed into a triad that was now turning into a source of discussion among the other members of the group shortly before the decision was made that they all incorporate into a Line Marriage.

It wasn’t that there was any rule or prohibition against it, but the last year they had been more or less exclusive within their circle of eight that was based more or less upon their spiritual pursuits in addition to their practice of Polyamory.

Suki had already suggested that Anastasia be included, and the group had agreed to discuss it further in the very near future. Charles and Suki were quite convinced that once the rest of the group got to know her, she would become a welcome addition to their circle of friends, if not actual “family”.

She was however, married to a devoted, indulgent and supportive man who encouraged her to follow her instincts as well as her dreams. She often spoke lovingly of him, but because he traveled extensively as a part of his career, he was often gone, and no one in the group had gotten the opportunity to meet him yet.

Although Anastasia, Merle and Frederick could function more like “free agents” who did not belong to a primary relationship within the group, Kali countered that Merle had been for all intents and purposes attached to the primary relationship between her and Ash for so long that they were already a primary triad, and Anastasia’s addition to the group would help balance the rest of the group in much the same way that Merle had.

Kali was already quite fond of Anastasia as well. She had shown herself to be one of the most naturally provocative and engaging people Kali had ever met.

Anastasia was also working on a feature profile on Kali because of her incredibly successful website on Spiritual Eroticism and Religious Sexuality.

Suki had introduced the two of them a few weeks before the wedding, and the article was slated for publication next month. The afternoon of the interview had proven to be a very enriching bonding of like minds and spirits.

She had been invited to the wedding as well as the reception; that was the first time Darcy had met her, and she too found her to be remarkably engaging and attractive.

It was as if the stars were aligning themselves for the benefit of the group, or perhaps they were each just recognizing how simple and easy it is to function like some kind of magical semiconductor that interpolated, matched and integrated itself with whatever opportunities they encountered.

Somehow answers no longer required questions to justify themselves; resolutions became apparent without the necessity of conflict to reinforce or create their perception of need.

Unspoken knowledge of interconnected solutions seemed to point to some universal factorial that led to an ever-increasing simplicity as obvious as the smile on your face.

They had the good sense to realize that Evil still existed, but for now they also were developing the good Kharma to escape the clutches of its attractive force without having to engage it in battle.

At each juncture a staggering number of omens and signs presented themselves in heretofore new ways without the customarily endless mind-boggling series of consequences.

Challenges became regarded as opportunities impatient to do their bidding for the simple cost of recognition and resolve.

As always, impermanence, danger and sorrow still abounded almost everywhere else they looked, just as it always had…just not here, and not now, and not for them.

Their ever-present never-present present moment was joyous and full of love and incredible richness right here, right now just as it always had been, even if the present moment didn’t really exist in the first place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not Exactly Your Grandparents’ Honeymoon: THFWS&TTM’S

 

When people dream of fantasy honeymoons they may envision Hawaii, or perhaps Rio, maybe Cancun, or the French Riviera, Thailand, Greece, Italy, or even a world cruise when in fact they are lucky if they can afford the Poconos, Orlando, Laughlin, Nevada, or Wildwood, New Jersey. Ten days to a month does not sound like enough time to celebrate the union of two people so in love with each other that they would pledge to spend their collective lifetimes together.

Ash and Kali could have easily afforded to send Mark and Darcy anywhere for as long as they wanted, but this marriage was more than just two people in love. Besides the fact that neither of them really wanted to leave the Habitat right now for any significant length of time, or the fact that they had also wedded six others, and the truth was that no matter where they went, the Ancient Ones would be with them.

If you find yourself wondering why these communions with spirits from the other side of the abyss represent such a quest, the chances are that you yourself have never had the experience.

If you ask an affeciando of cannabis why they partake, their answers will sound vague, nebulous, and unconvincing because you are asking them to describe something outside their usual experiences…something that exists outside the realm of conventional logic and nominal values. My personal favorite is “It just makes everything better…”

Not all experience exists within the finite, the real, the rational, or the logical. It is in fact, that which transcends those boundaries that has the greatest appeal to those who seek something more.

Objectivity for its own sake denies the existence of the subjective values and experiences that enrich our lives in ways that do not require objectification.

What is real on a personal level is as real as anyone needs for their own benefit, and the only way to know those experiences is to experience them for yourself.

It’s like asking yourself what is Love, or what good is Love?

If you have had the experience, no explanation is necessary…if you have not, none will suffice.

There is no end of people who insist that if they can’t measure it, it therefore does not exist. If you try to measure an EKG or an EEG with a barometer or a volt-ohm meter and get no readings it does not mean that those impulses do not exist. You would probably get better results trying to measure their brain activity with a tire pressure gauge.

Even in polyamorous relationships there are usually primary bonds between individual couples that take precedence over their relationships with the rest of the group. Those other relationships balance and enhance the primary one in either group or line marriage.

The intimacy and privacy of simple monogamy is often more of a myth than a reality once the walls and barriers to communications start to build up. Because of the establishment of secondary lines of communication the likelihood of the tyranny of one partner over another is lessened.

In simple monogamy, it is not uncommon for one member to attempt to “put one over” on the other, and act like this is normal or reasonable and get away with it. Anger, silence or simple non-cooperation is less effective as a tool of manipulation when there are other witnesses.

In a setting like group marriage, it sometimes seems like every day is group therapy. Forbidden topics do not exist. Discussions are essentially never closed forever. Bullies do not fare well in group discussions and unreasonable demands or points of view are more likely to be challenged.

This may be the reason that divorce is almost unheard of in group marriage and infidelity is rare, although admittedly, group marriage is also frequently not recorded in the first place, but among those that have been they would appear to be more stable than simple monogamy.

As the members of the group finally got away to the Rectory, the Ancient ones followed en masse as it looked like a bizarre paranormal parade to those with the right eyes.

Darcy had decided and Merle concurred that it would be best for her to stop taking the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil while she was pregnant, although she found that when she was with the group she experienced many of the same visions and insights as if she had taken it.

Merle conceded that it did not only appear that the effects were cumulative, but also persistent in terms of heightened sentience and improved access to all previous experiences. It was as if they received refreshment and reinforcement of the synapses and neuroconduction pathways for the table of contents of their random access memories.

Everyone else was fully charged and buzzed and even Darcy could see the luminance of her persona as a visible aura that undulated like the Aurora Borealis.

Tonight, all attentions were focused on both her and Mark who were clearly the stars of the show.

The primary unions of Ash, Kali and Merle as well as Charles and Suki seemed to buoy Mark and Darcy in a soft parade of pleasure and sensuality.

More traditional conventions and conceits of privacy were not necessary in such a setting because there was no shortage of intimacy.

Whatever garments they were still wearing were quickly shed as Suki took the lead in stripping everyone else in a most provocative and playful manner so typical of her boldly engaging ways.

As they stood together fondling and caressing each other, to the surprise of all in attendance the Ancient Ones started to do the Bandaloop Dance to the sounds of the ArchAngels emanating from the Sanctuary, who were still performing for those at the reception. In addition, all the members of the group could hear a distinct polyrhythmic accompaniment in their heads that seemed to lead the Ancient Ones in their dance.

With that, Merle, Ash Charles and Mark lifted up Darcy to place her on a large round sofa in the center of the room. The music, the rhythms and the Dance continued, as Kali and Suki began to light incense, set up a caldron for scrying, and light the fire in the fireplace.

Despite the prodigious swelling of her belly, Darcy still looked lithe and slender of limb. Her six feet of height seemed to exaggerate the effects of her pregnancy on her stomach and breasts.

There is something wonderful and marvelous about the hormones of pregnancy. Beyond the glow, and the ripe fullness of impending delivery of new life, the pendulous fullness of breasts, the swollen puffiness of the aureoles, the insistent protrusions of the nipples, the distension and enlargement of the vulva, labia and clitoris, or the round, taught swelling of the belly, there is a darkly compulsive sexual drive that seems to overtake women sometime in their third trimester.

Some who are not capable of embracing it with comfort will become secretive, angry and demanding. It is a lucky man indeed who is blessed by the company of a woman who, awash in the hormones of pregnancy and overcome with lust and passion riding wave after wave of newfound obsessions and heretofore unknown, almost boundless levels of carnal desire, trusts him enough to share them.

Some women lost in lust discover that their spouses are alarmed and intimidated by the sheer magnitude of their desire. Darcy was one of the lucky ones that wasn’t. Fortunately both Kali and Suki were also understanding and supportive as well, encouraging her to avail herself of their husbands as needed or Mark might not have survived Darcy’s appetite for semen.

 

Merle was the most frequent target of Darcy’s lust and Mark had been the first to encourage her to slake her seemingly insatiable desires with Merle, lest she drain Ash and Charles as completely as she seemed to do with Mark.

Merle was the prototype for all manner of sexual fantasy for almost any woman. His size, his stamina and general sexual prowess were legendary. For a man of such length and girth he was remarkably sensitive to Darcy’s lust while still maintaining discretion and moderation so as not to injure her.

As her pregnancy progressed she frequently indulged herself by having Merle finish in her mouth so as to swallow the enormous quantities of semen he produced when he ejaculated. She also liked to perform cunnilingus on Suki and Kali during or after they were being fucked. There seemed to be no end to her desire or imagination.

Tonight she would consummate and consume on a level heretofore unknown to even her, and all of it with the blessings and support of the other members of the group.

For anyone driven by the desire to seduce the mate of another, imagine the exhilaration of doing it with the full support and encouragement of all parties involved.

Those who follow the discipline of Tantric are familiar with the concept of Sacred Sex and tonight their passions were fueled by worshipful support aided by spirits from the other side of the abyss.

The energy and insight of experiencing a previously disembodied soul acting out within one’s body is nearly indescribable. It often starts with a sensation not unlike a hobo jumping into a moving boxcar, where the members of the group are the train. Followers of Santeria and the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye have practiced this ritual for centuries, with roots going back to African religious rites.

These powerful spirits seek physical bodies to act out their desires, and those who provide their bodies reap enormous inspiration and escape from the experience. This is but one of many paths leading to sexual and spiritual bliss through unions with many disembodied wayward souls of tremendous power and wisdom.

Some would call them Gods. Some regard them as objects of worship. These members of the Home for Wayward Souls regarded them as welcome houseguests and guides for spiritual and sexual symbiosis.

Suddenly all eyes turned to the fire, which took on the appearance of a vision of Darcy doing the Bandaloop Dance with Mark and Frederick surrounded by literally hundreds of primates who followed her every movement in precision as if she was their queen, their goddess. Their numbers grew as the vision progressed until they were shoulder to shoulder all the way to the horizon.

Ash, Kali, and Merle had witnessed a similar more singular vision when they were instructed by Boop-Oopa-Doop (aka Betty) to seek additional members to complete their group.

From the mists of the cauldron arose a vision of what started as a swirling Yin and Yang symbol that transformed into two children, a male and a female.

With that, Darcy’s belly seemed to glow with an inner transparency until it looked as if you could see two developing babies within her womb.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Funny Thing happened to me on the way to my Blog

A Funny Thing happened to me on the way to my Blog
I recently read a comment by one of our fellow bloggers that acknowledged the conflict we often face between our imagined obligations to feed this wood-chipper of words and ideas more material against the demands of our everyday lives.
Ah Duality! All is one, even when we don’t possess the eyes to recognize it.
Without all the stuff that keeps us too busy to write, we would have nothing to inspire us. So for that reason I have tried of late to make better choices about what stuff I allow to make me too busy to write. I’m at least twenty years behind schedule to attempt to do any justice to my life so far.
Too often, we act like teenagers who treat every incursion into the never-ending video gaming, texting reality show of their lives as if it was an interruption of our entitled play time.
Then again, it all depends on why you write….
I had just settled in to try to keep up with the story of my latest novel that is unfolding in my head faster than I can chronicle it when there was a knock at my door….
Unfortunately, it was not Ed McMahon…of course it wasn’t…he’s been dead for some time now. If it had been, that would mean that either I was also dead, or that I was dreaming. ..
Once, during a dream I smoked a joint with Sam Kinison shortly after he died. I suddenly realized the dilemma, and asked him how he was. He said he was fine, considering he had just gotten married again….
Instead it was Captain Mike and he was either trying to tell me about Wahoo hitting Ballyhoo in one hundred and sixty feet of water, or giant bull dolphins (Mahi, not Flipper) hanging out under the weed line six miles off shore.
Sometimes when he mixes the rum and the methadone it becomes very difficult to interpret his rants.
The really exciting/scary part is that in either case, he wants me to go with him. It is exciting because he has a very large fishing boat that he sometimes uses to make a considerable sum of money, which allows him to pay his chosen “first mate” more money than I make in a week to go fishing on my day off. I love to fish.
It is scary because in the twenty-five years I have known him, he has shown absolutely no regard for his own personal safety. He is Captain Ahab, The Ancient Mariner, The Old Man and the Sea, and Captains Bly and Queeg trapped in the body and brain of Gary Busey.
I have known him since he was an EMT-driver for the municipal emergency medical rescue service for which I worked many years ago as a paramedic.
He has the constitution of a cockroach and there are more than a few of us who believe it may be impossible to kill him. He frequently puts himself in predicaments that normal humans would never survive. That is where our friendship started…getting him out of trouble and managing to keep us both alive.
I could fill a whole book of short stories about his predilection for chaos. Maybe someday I will.
I also know that on more than one occasion, upon having participated in one of his hare-brained schemes surviving by margins as thin as half a coat of paint the sheer exhilaration of the experience often provoked me with an almost uncontrollable desire to summons the superhuman strength it would take to strangle the last breath from his body.
It has not been an easy friendship, and now shows no signs of getting any easier.
And yet somewhere, out of his considerable body of quirks, addictions, and proclivities for self-destructive urges there lurks a sort of creature that has never been seen in the light of day that hides inside his brain to prompt him to follow his preternatural ability to find and capture fish of every type and size. Shellfish, crab, and every sort of scaly, finny denizen of the great blue alike are the objects of his desire, and none are immune.
Women love him, fish fear him.
For him, the wind is never too high, or the water too rough. On one occasion, he piloted his craft back to dock with no wheelhouse or bridge left, sitting on a milk crate with the wheel trapped between his knees.
When the wheels of insanity are spinning inside his head he has talked me into participating in far too many adventures that involved multiple felonies and serious risk to life and limb.
We were at our best when we were taking huge risks to rescue patients without much serious regard for our own safety. The county for which we worked eventually made us sign a “hold harmless” form in case we got killed or injured doing any number of things such as going into the water before back-up arrived.
I always believed that when I was doing the right thing, or fighting the good fight, that I was somehow “protected”…maybe even invincible. But the rest of the time we were just a couple of red-ass fools who should have known better, but didn’t act like it.
Mike drove us down Blimp Road one night when we inducted yet another woman into the “Code Three Club” (think of the “Mile High Club” except in an ambulance with lights and sirens). She was a videographer tasked with following an EMS unit for twenty-four hours for a documentary she was going to make.
(I later married that last inductee….)
There are times when I miss those days, but today was not one of them.
I had cranked up the word processor to get rid of some nervous energy I was feeling in anticipation of a visit from a fellow blogger whom I was most anxious to meet. I had no idea what she looked like, but she has the spirit of an angel.
She is still a neophyte; quite full of passion and idealism. She is probably the most unabashedly avid/rabid fan I will ever have the good fortune to encounter, and she has a certain way with words that inspires me at times.
She lived a few hours away, but was surprisingly enthusiastic about taking the drive.
Of course, she is married…I have been lead to believe it is a very open relationship, but as a gentleman I am also inclined to believe it would no doubt be best to keep her identity “on the down low” at least until she chooses to break radio silence of her own volition.
I know of but a few things that exceed Mike’s rapacious appetite to kill fish or risk his life, those being Drugs, alcohol, and intimate contact with the opposite sex.
Suki was as anxious as I to meet the mystery blogger and was in no mood to put up with Captain Mike’s nonsense. He adored Suki and tended to be a bit of a lecherous pest around her no matter how hard he tried to mind his manners.
When he is drunk he reminds me of one of those poodles you just can’t shake off your leg when you go visit your aunt.
We were unsure what to do with Mike. I wasn’t even sure we had enough booze in the house to wait for him to pass out, and I had no intention today of all days to go out to sea in a boat.
This does not happen often, so make careful note of the above statement.
As luck would have it, suddenly Peppermint Patty had come knocking on our door to ask to borrow a pack of cigarettes.
There is a term in the Florida Keys called “Conch Borrowing;” there are a number of interesting aspects to it, but one of the most important is that it does not generally involve the obligation to give the borrowed item back which is just as well because once she borrows a pack, she does not generally come back until enough time has lapsed that she can pretend to have forgotten about the first pack.
As medically non-compliant schizophrenics go, she can be fairly interesting company, depending on how bored you really are…especially if you are interested in seeing any of the adult films in which she starred over twenty years ago….In just the right light, you can almost see the resemblance…and the tattoos are in fact, identical…and she loves to spread her talents amongst her fans.
Captain Mike, for all his flaws and scars has one characteristic that has made him a pussy-magnet, even now. He has the most disarmingly bright ice-blue eyes I have ever seen, and few women are immune to his “School-Boy Heart” charm and his skinny body-language that is half Jimmy Stewart, half Michael Fredericks.
Patty’s eyes met Mike’s. With the morning light behind her as she stood in the doorway of our trailer, you could see right through her dress and it was obvious that she was not wearing anything under it.
Little details like that never went unnoticed by Captain Mike (…and he had plenty of cigarettes).
Patty then asked Suki if she had ever seen her do DP before as she shifted her gaze back and forth between Mike and myself until Suki reminded her that she had (it was a lie, but Patty was much too crazy to realize it).
With that, I gave Mike a bottle of Bacardi Select Rum and suggested they take the party over to Patty’s trailer where they could see the ocean from her bedroom window.
Even Patty knew that was a lie, but she just winked at me and smiled. (She had once told me that if I held my ear to her snatch that I could hear the ocean, but I never tried to find out if it was really true.)
As they strolled arm in arm back to Peppermint Patty’s trailer, I could hear Captain Mike telling her how Jimmy Buffet had written the song “Jamaica Mistaka” about him and how he had once flown a small private plane between two pilings on the Seven-Mile bridge, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before she would be showing Mike the first anal video she ever shot with Ron Jeremy.
We were still laughing about it when my friend the lady blogger drove up. She and Suki had talked several times before on the phone, and it was heartwarming to see just how well two ladies who had never met before could strike up a friendship.
I later learned that they had been “pen-pals” for over a month and I really think Suki was as enthusiastic about meeting Ms. A. as I was.
Suki had already plugged in the vaporizer and now promised to show our new friend her collection of Japanese Pillow-books while I called a nearby restaurant to order Tai take-out.
But the real reason I didn’t get any writing done that day was because of what I discovered when I returned with the food….
As much of a confirmed pervert and connoisseur of (nearly) all things carnal as I am, there is a strong streak of Southern Gentleman that runs deeply through my character that prevents me from going into the details of what ensued that afternoon, that evening and for most of Saturday morning…
Nah! I’m just bullshitting you…They just made me promise to let them tell you about it in their own blogs in the next few days, and I am, if nothing else, a man of my word….
…And that, dear friends is the reason I did not have my homework ready for Monday morning…no, the dog did not eat it…no schedule conflicts with graduation ceremonies or final exams. No car trouble. No issues with the Police. I did not have technical problems with my computer, nor did I suffer from some mysterious malady.
And if anyone else has any excuses for why they have not been writing, I hope your reasons were at least as good…and if you have, please honey! I want to hear all the details.
PS: Look for the rest of the story to appear soon in two blogs I hope you have the good fortune to read in the near future.

Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome: THFWS&TTM’s

Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome

“It wouldn’t be your usual kind of miracle…and no virgin birth…that’s for sure! But how?…how could this be?”…she winced as she looked down at the test stick… “this is sure as hell one time that ‘Positive’ does not involve anything positive for me…I’m certain of that…at least I think I am. Damn! The timing is all wrong for this!…Shit!”
She suddenly envisioned some dewy-eyed young Ms. Thing holding a piece of plastic in her piss-stream and seeing a happy face appear instead of a plus sign…and jumping for joy, shouting something like “Yippee!”
But not her…not Darcy Sallye, who vowed years ago that she was not going to be tied to some man who would ruin her life with heartbreak, disappointment, and betrayal or drunkenness and violence by virtue of an accidental union of egg and sperm.
Granted, that was years before she met Mark… and about three months after she got out of rehab.
She decided then and there that she would break the cycle of the chains that threatened to bind her. All the women in her family had been enslaved by bad choices made in a careless moment of lust and passion that fizzled out and faded away a lot sooner than the obligations that remained.
Redneck men…even the best of them, are famous for saying stupid shit like “Hey! I pay my child support every month!…” like it’s some declaration of honor, instead of something you’re supposed to do in the first place, even if they’re not around for the kids they sired with you because they’re too busy with the new wife’s kids…(whether they’re even his or not)…and especially if he thinks they are.
Darcy had never been in love before.
Sometimes she might have been in lust, especially with the dangerous ones…she had a taste for bad boys, but as soon as she recognized it for what it was, she would do something really mean or vindictive first before they got the chance to get the upper hand….
Sometimes it might have even been a strong like depending on how long she’d been too lonely, but it was usually just a case of already knowing she was just settling for what came along, and she was damned if she was going to be stuck…trapped…with no escape and too many regrets.
But now…the first time in years she’d even given it a thought, here she was in love…deeply in love with Mark…but…she couldn’t expect him to raise it as his…without…well, a DNA test for starters…after all, she had fucked all the men in the group on more than one occasion…with Mark’s blessing and encouragement in fact.
This was new ground for her…to be this free and so much in love at the same time. It was exhilarating and empowering to the point of intoxication….but suddenly, she was faced with a serious dose of reality in the middle of the wildest fantasy she had ever known.
“Jesus!” she thought… “What if it was Charles’ or Ash’s…or Merle’s” Charles and Ash were both married…could she…should she…just get rid of it…him?…her?
If Merle was the father, it would probably be more than Mark could take…she could live with it, but not Mark…and she understood why…Mark and Merle had been so close for so long…like brothers…but Mark always felt like he was the runner-up…second place…the one the girls settled for if they couldn’t get Merle, or if they couldn’t keep Merle (and no one but Kali could do that).
Mark was just a little too submissive, and sensitive and understanding for his own good. Women would use him as a doormat if they thought they could get away with it…and they often had. He had learned that all too often, they mistook his compassion and understanding for weakness, which taught him to keep his cards close to his chest and women at arms’ length.
Darcy was the first woman Mark had trusted enough to let her get close enough to occasionally dominate him…(just enough to act out a few of her own kinks about men).
He was an alpha-male to the outside world in all other aspects…he seemed to crave a sort of surrender to a woman like Darcy because he trusted her enough to believe she would never hurt him intentionally, even though they both feared she would one day, in spite of her best intentions….
Part of her wanted to just get rid of “it”…while it was still just an “it”…like it never happened…but something made her feel like there was this miraculous quality to the situation that refused to be ignored…the sperm that wouldn’t take no for an answer…the egg that refused to wither unrequited…what kind of destiny was being played out?
She didn’t know for sure, but those feelings made her question her judgment.
“Dammit!” Her tubes had been tied for years for Christ’s sake! They only “precautions” she had ever taken were just like the label said…“for the prevention of disease only…”
She hated rubbers because she felt like they insulated her from that spark she loved to feel from skin on skin…and skin in skin…and that warm flush from the flood…when the river overflowed its banks…full of electricity and life, just squirming inside her…gushing in and flowing out; a salt tide that flowed as if pulled by the moon herself and so copious she could almost taste it sometimes….
The term galvanic skin response refers to a measurable quantity of electric current registered during polygraph tests that fluctuates according to the emotions of the test subject…(or the level of passion between two lovers) that was insulated by latex, and like rubber gloves on a jewel thief’s hands, left no trace to even prove anyone had even been there.
As soon as she felt safe enough to go bareback, she usually did, which was not really all that often until…well, since she fell in love with Mark.
Every time she looked at a prick with a condom stretched over it, all she could think of was a bank robber with a pair of panty-hose pulled over his head, and it was all she could do not to laugh.
She quickly learned that men are not well-disposed to laughter at the sight of “the mighty sword” because most of them are so insecure that they end up taking the whole experience much too seriously to just relax and have fun.
They were usually so preoccupied with the self-imagined act of her conquest …yeah…as if….
If men had any idea how they looked to women when they were all puffed up with their exaggerated image of self-importance and control they might just learn to pay attention long enough to understand women a little better and really become much better lovers than they could imagine.
Ever since she and Mark were reasonably assured that neither one of them was going to give either of them Aids and die, those ski masks of sex had become a thing of the past…it never had anything to do with birth control in the first place…she thought she was safe…“Now what?!?!”
She told Mark she was going to buy a test kit to find out, so he would be expecting an answer soon, but she wasn’t really sure she knew what to expect from him.
She really didn’t know how she felt, and that would undoubtedly be his first question…what did she want to do? Men ask that question because it sounds like they really want to know what the woman wants, but the problem is that it just avoids answering the question for themselves in the first place.
A baby? She wasn’t getting any younger, so if she was ever going to become a mother, this might be her only chance, given the fact that this pregnancy wasn’t even supposed to have occurred in the first place.
She knew it would change her life forever…was Mark ready for marriage? Was she even ready for marriage? Did they really even need to get married? Was she ready for Motherhood?
Frederick had brought out a strong maternal instinct in her over the years, and she had thought that it was enough…tried to convince herself it was…at least until now.
Now the opportunity had forced itself into the equation and demanded a decision that she thought she was never going to have to make. Whatever choice she made, it ruled out another entire set of possibilities irrevocably, like a great fork in the road of her life.
What if she never got the chance to make this decision again? Freedom might mean emptiness in retrospect and a lifetime of regret, but commitment could just as easily equate to enslavement to a different kind of regret…even resentment.
Mark had gone out to the store to get something to fix for dinner. When she heard the front door close as he came back, she took a deep breath.
Time for the moment of truth.

Blogger’s Tour

I have been invited by Jayne of Diary Incarnate http://jayneayres.wordpress.com to participate in a Blog Tour. The purpose is to see more blogs and learn about the other writers.
I have been requested to answer four questions and then I shall invite other bloggers to do the same.
I wanted to address these questions right away so I wrote this immediately, because I felt that I needed to take stock of the answers.
I will be announcing my invitations shortly.

1. What am I working on at the moment?

My works of late are divided into three groups:
• Erotic Poetry
• Essays and poems regarding Polyamory, Love, Zen, Mysticism, Romance, Kink/Fet, and Anarchy and Rebelliousness against “The Tyranny of Evil Men and The Inequities of the Selfish… ”
• My real love, a novel entitled: The Home for Wayward Souls and The Talking Monkeys; is a tale of Corporate Greed, and Excess, attempting to subvert The Pursuit of Happiness specifically, and the Bill of Rights in general. There is Primate Romance, Inter-Species Erotica, Philosophical Sexuality, Metaphysical Action-Adventure, and Religious High-Jinx set within a framework of Enhanced and Fortified Non-Fiction involving Intrigue, Subversion, Euphoria, and General Rebelliousness conducted in the name of preserving and protecting The Indomitability of the Human Spirit.

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

A Genre is a label which is usually coined by an outside observer after the fact. Most of my writings are so compulsive that I have never stopped to think about how they fit into a particular category, but then again, perhaps I should….
A dear friend from my past named Amy Rogers used to say: “In labeling me, you ‘thing’ me out of existence (by objectification).”

If anything, my works are perhaps a synthesis of what I once read Elene Sallinger refer to as “Literotica” (i.e. I would aspire to write Literature, but can’t seem to avoid the erotic aspects of what I write, and it is not my nature to spare the details), “Everyday Zen”, and an on-going process of deconstructionism of everything I see and experience.

Soooooo…If I were to try to identify a genre, it may well be best summarized as “Enhanced and Fortified Non-Fiction”, as most of it is either biographical or becomes biographical sometime after I write it.

My works center around Bardo Thodol, The Tao, and Zen Buddhism; the road of excess leading to higher consciousness (or the palace of wisdom, whichever comes first); Mysticism, the Occult, Shamanism, and the cunning knowledge of Wiccan/Pagan practices and the waxing and waning of the Moon; “the willing suspension of disbelief”; a layman’s armchair view of quantum mechanics and relativity as it pertains to the “ever-present/never-present present moment”; primate sexuality; the Ascent of Man; Learning, Perception and Behavior Modification; and “the movable feast” of Sex, and Drugs, and All Music (especially Rock and Roll), as well as the influences of Violence and Tragedy, having been an Emergency Medical Services Paramedic for over twenty years.

3. Why do I write what I do?

I write for the same reasons that an alcoholic drinks.

4. How does my writing process work?

As a male, I think it would be presumptuous of me to compare it to gestation, as that is a process I know only by my empathic experiences, but it was what first came to my mind…(considering I have delivered about two dozen babies in the back of an ambulance).

Perhaps it is more like the way a pearl is formed. Some of my best sources of inspiration come from irritation, or discomfort, which I try to make more palatable with layers of introspection, analysis, pleasure, excursions by way of out-of-body experiences and altered states of consciousness, alternating layers of sensory deprivation and sensory overload, meditation, and copious quantities of the universal lubricant of the Soul…Sex.

I frequently try to make sense of the world by identifying the nonsense of it all, and then I try to imagine what it would be like “In my Perfect World”…the adage “Be careful what you wish for” has special meaning to me…the process of “Conjuring” comes to mind…I have seen flights of fantasy come to roost in less than a week, and I was not always comfortable with the initial results, but I do not shirk from facing the truth as it is revealed to me, layer by layer.

But I would be seriously remiss if I did not take into account the role that simple gratitude plays in my life. Some days I wake up and notice wildflowers growing amongst the squalor and I am reminded how grateful I am to have eyes to see them.

Other days when Suki and I fight I suddenly realize that I am either sad or angry or disappointed that my marriage is not perfect, only to realize how fortunate I am in my provocation…after all, if you take away the ups, the downs and the twists and turns, you reduce the thrill and romance of a roller-coaster to a mere commuter train on a straight track bound for oblivion.

And on just the right nights, the distant sound of the highway, or the airport, the wind blowing through the trees, and maybe the sound of my refrigerator resonate in just the right way so as to create a symphony of broadband noise that somehow harmonizes itself with all the noise in my head and a wandering angel or two is inspired to pass by and sing or even harmonize to it thereby reminding me how blessed I am in my madness to possess the sentience to appreciate it.

Thank you, Jayne.
XO,
Chazz Vincent