To Love a Woman (written 9/2009)

Venice Beach, CA

To Love a Woman

Her liquescent cries

Inundate the hollow night

And it is here

In the palm if my hand

That the earth’s story

Is born.

The lotus

The lily

The magnolia

Unfolding flowers

Whose nectars

Form the seas

My fingers

Tickle Her petals

My thumb

Discovers Her pearl

My mouth

Alights on Hers

And as the sloop slips under,

Descending the

Ocean of our Love,

Sweet, salty waves

Rock us

To death

Who knew that

Unexplored reefs

(With the potent power

Of floral coral)

Could produce

Such radiant life?

Orgasmic Journey: Oh The Places You'll Go

I've been reflecting on this past year and I have to say, it's been pretty awesome and in no way what I thought it was going to be. I've moved across the country, sold 75% of my belongings and am in the midst of completely tossing out all the old maps to "getting to where I think I should go" and am learning to follow the moment to moment compass of desire. It hasn't always been easy, but I've magically ended up in some cities I'd never planned on visiting (Austin?! Montreal?!). And it all arose from simply saying "yes" to the opportunity before me. So upon seeing the recent Burning Man viral video, Oh The Places You'll Go, I was inspired to share some photos of my 2011 Orgasmic Journey.

New York City

Times Square, December 31, 2010

Empire State Building, January 2011

Frost on Bush in Astoria, February 2011

59th St and 5th Ave, March 2011

Broadway and 10th St, March 2011

Strawberry Fields, April 2011

Astoria, April 2011

My Stoop Sale in Astoria, April 2011

Washington Square Park, April 2011

Ducks in Central Park, May 2011

Manhattanhenge, June 2011

Street Fair in Astoria, July 2011

Orgasm Is in Union Square, July 2011

View of Harlem from NJ, July 4, 2011

Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn, August 2011

Occupy Wall Street, October 2011

San Francisco

Tulips of Pier 39, March 2011

View of Alcatraz from Pier 39, March 2011

Haight-Ashbury, August 2011

Hayes and Octavia, October 2011

Golden Gate Bridge and fog from the Headlands, November 2011

Yerba Buena Gardens, November 2011

Fill Up America, December 2011

Castro Heights, January 1, 2012

Muir Beach, January 1, 2012

View of Noe Valley, January 2012

SF Skyline from Bay Bridge, January 2012

SF from Lincoln Park, January 2012

6th Street in SoMa, January 2012

Los Angeles

Beverly Hills, October 2011

Rodeo Drive, October 2011

Santa Monica in the sunset, December 2011

Venice Beach, December 2011

Miscellaneous

Washington DC Capitol, February 2011

Little Pond, Bethlehem, PA, August 2011

Little Pond, Bethlehem, PA, August 2011

Place Jacques Cartier, Montreal, August 2011

Notre Dame, Montreal, August 2011

Jardin Nelson, Montreal, August 2011

On the road to Burning Man, August 2011

The Temple of Transition, Burning Man, August 2011

The Man, Burning Man, August 2011

Calistoga, CA, November 2011

Calistoga, CA, November 2011

Austin, TX, November 2011

Barton Springs, Austin, TX, November 2011

On the road from LA to SF, December 2011

Atlanta, GA, December 2011

Falling: A Meditation on Love

View of the peaks and valleys of SF from Castro Heights

We travel initially to lose ourselves and we travel next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel, in essence, to become young fools again, to slow time down and get taken in and fall in love once more--Pico Iyer 

Anyone who knows me, knows that when I say I am committed to doing something, I do it full-out, all the way to the end.

Some may call this perseverance.

Some may call this folly.

I simply call it “falling.”

There’s a reason I’ve worn the guards around my heart for so many years. Yes, I can love the unloveable in a general way—give a little hit of the orgasm drug to the junkies and then scurry off to another corner of the planet. But to stick around long enough for you to see my folly…not on your life!

But I have a secret. Now, don’t tell anyone this, because it’s pretty well-hidden (but not really). It’s this innocent place that, if discovered, will reveal that I’m not really as worldly and jaded and smart as I pretend to be.

It’s this place where, if I acknowledge just how much I love you and how much you mean to me, then I am totally yours. Forever. Deeply, deeply devoted in a kind of full-on surrender that I completely lose who I am in pursuit of knowing and experiencing this one true thing.

I know it in acting. But I wasn’t happy with just one impossible cause.

I know it in orgasm. And yet two also just didn’t seem like enough.

So why not really make a fool of myself? Go for the great triumvirate! The cosmic hat trick! Mind, body, spirit! Father, son, holy ghost! Or whatever fucking parallel you want to make.

The point is this: I am in love with a boy.

There. I said it. I admit it.

I.

Am.

In.

Love.

With.

A.

Boy.

Yup. A mere mortal. No great cause to sweep away the suffering of the world, but an angel in human form that I keep merely for my own selfish pleasure.

Please forgive me that we are already 374 words into this blog post and I have still yet to release my sardonic tone. But the fact is I need it as a buffer in order to get the tiniest shred of love to trickle out onto the page.

Innocence. Right. Change of stroke.

So what does it mean to fall in love in an orgasmic world? Well, for starters, there’s a sort of conscious pride-death that takes happens. In muggle terms, that means I giggle stupidly when he’s around…all the time…even when he is putting on his socks. There’s a way in which he’ll tell me he doesn’t like what I am wearing and I will tear up my boxes to find something we both like. There’s a way in which I can downstroke him, right in the middle of penetration, and he will let that sword in and I will ride the slicing pain of sensation all the way down to the bottom. There’s a way in which he can tell me in the moment, “I don’t want you moving to LA. I want to marry you, move to the suburbs and make babies,” and because he is so honest with me, I feel like I can trust him—which makes me love him even more. And there’s a way in which we have an upturned palm surrounding the relationship. It doesn’t grasp or cling, but it holds itself open, ready to let go (or receive) at any moment.

And it’s for this reason that I keep coming back. It doesn’t mean that he and I don’t get jealous or scared or annoyed or bored or obsessive or whatever. What it means is that our ability to trust and to surrender expands the container of our relationship to include all of that “negative” energy, alchemize it to turn-on and fuel our desires.

He was nervous a few weeks ago to tell me about an interaction he had with another woman. In the old model of relating, we normally hide things like that from our lovers because we think they are too fragile and we don’t want to hurt their feelings (or so we say…many times it’s just our own shame in admitting how greedy we are sexually). In any case, I began to ask him about his makeout. Was it hot? Where did you feel the most sensation? What did that interaction reveal in you? Or was it just a good, old-fashioned, apple-pie fuck? And as he talked, I got more and more turned-on, hungry to feel more of him.

I like feeling his desire. I like knowing what makes him happy. I like that he wants to include me in the ENTIRE landscape of his sexuality—not just the confident, successful façade most men show. The good stuff is in the greasy bits left in the bottom of the cast iron skillet. The angry, hard bits. The unctuous butter. The concentrated salt. The blackened bitter. The way he slaps my face while I roll on top of him and choke his throat. Or in the way I lay my head sweetly on his shoulder and press my hand gently on the dark fur of his chest.

And I love that he’ll ask me “What do you want?” again…and again…and again…and again…patiently awaiting the moment when I finally burn through my shame and pride and simply say, “I want you to hold me in the soft warmth of this bed.”

Or I’ll say, “I want you to move to LA with me and start your business there!”

Or I’ll say, “I want eggs…no I want oatmeal…no I want a green drink…no I want chamomile tea…no I want toast with almond butter…NO! Kombucha! That’s it!”

In the end (if there really is such a thing), it doesn’t matter what it looks like. And that’s what’s most important for me. That’s the part (if this were an OM) that has my nervous system relax, trust that the container is tight enough, and allow anything to orgasmically arise. Perhaps the relationship plays out until I move to LA. Maybe it tumultuously climaxes next time we see each other. Maybe we create a long-distance partnership that spans years. Maybe we move to Kathmandu together and become hermits for the rest of our lives. The point is we are not relating in a way that is rooted in what was or what might be (though these things do come up naturally). But we work to keep our attention in the present moment and on the sensation right now. And we trust that if we feel our way, all will unfold in its divine intelligence.

I have travelled to lose myself, to find myself, to open my eyes and ears, to slow down, to meet my fool and to get swept away. I have travelled all the way across the country to know this place. Might as well fall in.