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April 15, 2007
Summon: Rainbow Monkey Writer Guy!
 Had a bit of trouble choosing a Category for this post...technically, it's an On The Road: Afterword post, but then, everything is now. There's before On The Road, and after. That journey is a clear boundary in my life, like September 11. Everything changed afterwards.
So, I suppose it's in an attempt to reach for the new normal (such as it may be) that I simply throw this into the catch-all Verbiage category.
And what is this "new normal" of which I speak?
Well, it's this apartment I'm sitting in, lined with new Ikea bookshelves that have my familiar books on them. It's furniture that used to be in New York, now in Santa Barbara. It's my music studio, set up in the corner, with Cocteau Twins playing on the Mac. It's looking out my window during the day and seeing the Santa Ynez mountains, or stepping outside at night and seeing tastefully lit palm trees in the complex. It's biking to work in the morning.
Mostly, it's the steadily growing realization that I've done it. The nebulous, fearsome, unknown thing I set out to do back in May of 2006, as I pedaled away from Yorktown. It was this. Uprooting, relocating, beginning.
Which is not to say that I'm settled in. I think I've been unsettled my whole life, and this is no different.
But the approach I'm taking now, ah, that is different. There's nothing like spending weeks at a time in strange places in total isolation to convince you of the value of people, and the wisdom of cultivating relationships. There will be no repeat of my five-year Queens crucible, holed up in a dark apartment in the slough of alcohol and depression.
I was born a few miles from here, and spent the first two years of my life here.
It's good to be back.
April 19, 2007
Decorative Learning
 I have come to realize that one of the primary purposes of my recent journey was to restructure my usual ways of handling pain and loss. To wit: instead of holing up in an apartment with a suitable quantity of alcohol and bad food, I was out on the road, pedaling from place to place. Admittedly, I did hole up in a few motels for several days along the way, and on at least one occasion this holing up was accompanied by mini-mart beer and hand-delivered bad food. That was early on, and it quickly became apparent that such behavior was not at all compatible with actually getting out the door and onto the trike. Somewhere in Oregon, I made the conscious decision to put the bottle down for good, and while I’ve slipped up occasionally since my trek ended in September, by and large I’ve been successful.
Which is a good thing, because I find myself, once again, in the kind of situation that I formerly attempted to remedy with liberal doses of hydrocarbon anesthesia. Granted: I’ve picked up smoking again, for the first time since 1996, but I’m not terribly worried about it because when I did quit, I did so out of lack of interest. I had the same half-pack of American Spirits on top of my television for two weeks before I realized that I had quit, which suggests to me that I am mercifully free of the physiological nicotine triggers that make quitting such an ordeal for most people. A couple of times since then, in times of stress, I've bought a pack, smoked half of it, and flushed the rest. It’s all in my head…a combination of nervous fidgeting with a bit of a kick from the tobacco which, when I’ve had enough, I fully expect I’ll be able to do without.
That said, I have picked up another “habit,” if it can be called such: piercings. I’ve got three at the moment, two you can see while I'm wearing business attire and one you can’t, and this evening I’ll have two more you can’t see. A common question, when I reveal this new predilection, is the basic “Why?”
In my early 20s, when I was a long-haired black-wearing pagan-style person, I had five ear piercings, three in my left ear and two in my right. My original plan, when I left on my trek, was to commemorate its conclusion with a tattoo that involved cycling-related imagery and an indication of the miles I had pedaled. I decided against that when I dropped the coast-to-coast plan, and, in its stead, got my ears re-done by a professional piercer, at the same Santa Barbara tattoo shop that did my mother’s ink. I’ve now got a 12-gauge titanium segment ring in each ear (seen here, although mine are natural, not colored), and they represent the 2,000 miles I did ride, as well as the reclamation of a part of myself I’d put aside long ago.
Then, within a few days of getting my ears done, I went a little further and got a frenum piercing ( NSFPWPANSV)*. That one was less of a reclamation and more of an expansion of self. The nature of the piercing accompanied a more fully-realized expression of my sexuality, plus a bit of aesthetic kink, and a celebration of the changes my body was undergoing as I continued to lose weight. I’d thought about doing such things awhile ago, but it was hard to decorate my body when I found it to be so misshapen and unappealing.
I had decided that when I reached a target weight of 175 (down from a high of 245), I would have both nipples done. I hit 185 yesterday morning, and although I could wait another five weeks or so, recent events in my life have made a compelling case for getting these done now.
There are really three parts to the piercing process, analogous to the tattooing process. There’s the piercing itself, which produces pain, endorphins, and a bit of blood. Afterwards, there is a period of healing, which can also be painful, depending on what sort of piercing you’ve had. Finally, there is the ongoing presence of the jewelry. For me, each part of this process serves a different purpose.
There are hard lessons I have learned very recently, about where I actually am in my personal development and what the patterns in my life have been, particularly regarding intimate relationships. I’ll be thinking about those lessons while I’m in the chair. Every time I need to clean the new piercings and the jewelry, I’ll be thinking about what I’ve learned, and renewing my determination to change. Once the piercings have healed, and I swap out the initial piercing jewelry for permanent, more decorative pieces, they will serve as ongoing reminders of the deliberate changes I have made in my life and how I live it. Nothing says Don’t ever do that again quite like sharp surgical steel through sensitive body parts.
So, in a couple of hours, I will fight pain with pain, and write intention in my flesh.
LATER:
That. Was. Amazing.
I'd read that this was one of the more painful piercings, and it was indeed...but so worth it. They look great, and, as always, Nic Ferrante did her usual precise and careful job.
She also pointed out something that I hadn't really put a name to, when I outlined the three parts of the piercing process above. The second part--the healing process--involves caring for wounds, which, at this time in my life, is singularly apropos.
I am a very happy fellow right now.
*Not safe for places where penises are not safely viewed.
April 20, 2007
Let's Hear It For The Dry Heaves!
Hip hip--yak! Hip hip--yak!
Apparently, I ate something disagreeable yesterday, and so I've been up since 3AM or so attempting to reason with my digestive tract. It hasn't been going well.
It's early yet, though, so there may be some further posting from the depths of nausea. Always an entertaining read, that.
Speaking Of Journeys...
If you want to see a real trek unfold, do pay a visit to Ten Fingers Six Strings right now. Proprietor Doug, a long-time supporter of Astonished Head and a fabulous host when I passed through San Francisco (week 14 and week 15), is going to Nepal, where he will head up 21,000 feet on Everest itself. He's not planning to summit, but what the hell--that's still cruising altitude for some airliners.
Hermaphroditus
 Once a son was born to Mercury and the goddess Venus, and he was brought up by the naiads in Ida's caves. In his features, it was easy to trace resemblance to his father and to his mother. He was called after them, too, for his name was Hermaphroditus. As soon as he was fifteen, he left his native hills, and Ida where he had been brought up, and for the sheer joy of traveling visited remote places...he went as far as the cities of Lycia, and on to the Carians, who dwell nearby. In this region he spied a pool of water, so clear that he could see right to the bottom...The water was like crystal, and the edges of the pool were ringed with fresh turf, and grass that was always green.
A nymph [Salmacis] dwelt there...Often she would gather flowers, and it so happened that she was engaged in this pastime when she caught sight of the boy, Hermaphroditus. As soon as she had seen him, she longed to possess him...She addressed him: "Fair boy, you surely deserve to be thought a god. If you are, perhaps you may be Cupid?...If there is such a girl [engaged to you], let me enjoy your love in secret: but if there is not, then I pray that I may be your bride, and that we may enter upon marriage together."
The naiad said no more, but a blush stained the boy's cheeks, for he did not know what love was. Even blushing became him: his cheeks were the colour of ripe apples, hanging in a sunny orchard, like painted ivory or like the moon when, in eclipse, she shows a reddish hue beneath her brightness...
Incessantly the nymph demanded at least sisterly kisses, and tried to put her arms around his ivory neck. "Will you stop!" he cried, "or I shall run away and leave this place and you!" Salmacis was afraid: "I yield this spot to you, stranger, and I shall not intrude," she said; and, turning from him, pretended to go away...The boy, meanwhile, thinking himself unobserved and alone, strolled this way and that on the grassy sward, and dipped his toes in the lapping water-then his feet, up to the ankles. Then, tempted by the enticing coolness of the waters, he quickly srtipped his young body of its soft garments. At the sight, Salmacis was spell-bound. She was on fire with passion to possess his naked beauty, and her very eyes flamed with a brilliance like that of the dazzling sun, when his bright disk is reflected in a mirror...She longed to embrace him then, and with difficulty restrained her frenzy.
Hermaphroditus, clapping his hollow palms against his body, dived quickly into the stream. As he raised first one arm and then the other, his body gleamed in the clear water, as if someone had encased an ivory statue or white lillies in transparent glass. "I have won! He is mine!" cried the nymph, and flinging aside her garments, plunged into the heart of the pool. The boy fought against her, but she held him, and snatched kisses as he struggled. placing her hands beneath him, stroking his unwilling breast, and clinging to him, now on this side, now on that.
Finally, in spite of all his efforts to slip from her grasp, she twined around him, like a serpent when it is being carried off into the air by the king of birds; for, as it hangs from the eagle's beak, the snake coils round his head and talons and with its tail hampers his beating wings..."You may fight, you rogue, but you will not escape. May the gods grant me this, may no time to come ever separate him from me, or me from him!"
Her prayers found favor with the gods: for, as they lay together, their bodies were united and from being two persons they became one. As when a gardener grafts a branch onto a tree, and sees the two unite as they grow, and come to maturity together, so when their limbs met in that clinging embrace the nymph and the boy were no longer two, but a single form, possessed of a dual nature, which could not be called male or female, but seemed at once both and neither.
Ovid,
Metamorphosis
April 21, 2007
Shiny
 When the eye's rays encounter some clear, well-polished object-be it burnished steel or glass or water, a brilliant stone, or any other polished and gleaming substance, having luster, glitter, and sparkle...those rays of the eye are reflected back, and the observer then beholds himself and obtains an ocular vision of his own person. This is what you see when you look into a mirror; in that situation you are as it were looking at yourself through the eyes of another.
Ibn Hazm,
The Dove: A Treatise On
The Art And Practice
Of Arab Love
April 23, 2007
Onward
So, thou braggart, thou sexy-headed boy…what turns thee now? What seraphim of need descends upon thy fevered brain? "Nothing," thou sayest, in a happy rhyme, with rhythm of the feet a welcome substitute for the flesh and the heart. Thy intention follows thy wounding, and, forsooth, that was the mightiest of my intentions.
Alistaire Whit,
Songs of Windy Days
 Ah, yes. Ye olde Windy Day Voice. It often promises much. When I sense change bearing down on me with full blustery force, the most important thing to hold foremost in my mind is that when I answer “Yes” to the question Are you ready? I must be aware that what I’m saying “Yes” to might not be entirely pleasant. That’s the compact I’ve made with myself (for, of course, the Voice doesn’t come from anywhere but inside of me): when I say I’m ready, it means I’m ready for anything. It doesn’t mean that I’m only ready for stupendously fabulous things to happen in my life, or vast sums of unexpected cash, or perhaps a really nice sandwich. What I’m ready for is change—unknown, and unknowable until I’m in the midst of it. To restrict myself to the merely pleasant is to doom myself to both stagnation and boredom.
Change is a good thing, but it can be painful and wracked with drama, self-created and otherwise. Embracing change means stepping off into the void, with no assurances of being borne up, no real knowledge of the depth of the chasm below or of what lies at its bottom. That gives the act a certain frisson, which I find is motivation enough for performing it.
And so: having weathered this most recent bout of change—and there have been many others, over the past eleven months, brobdingnagian changes, the kind that bruise and delight and terrify—I am, once again, in a place of tottering equilibrium, walking my path along the cliff’s edge, and hearing the voice of the wind. It’s alluring, that voice, and dangerous. The allure and the danger come from the same qualities: the uncertain promise of new things, of growth and expansion, each haloed by the risk of failure, pain, and the embarrassments of sincerity.
There are perilous updrafts along the wind-borne path to the next destination, not to mention downdrafts, and some of the weird vortex-style winds that you occasionally see lofting spinning plastic bags hundreds of feet into the air against the sides of urban buildings. All of that up and down and tossing around can be disturbing, frightening, and nauseating.
But eventually I find myself back on this path by the edge, having moved a little farther along in my journey. I can look back along the path, and see the pastels of the canyon it borders, the distant mesas of my past. Progress becomes manifest, and my stride becomes more confident.
This is my life, and this is how I live it: one leap at a time.
April 24, 2007
Nate Says:
Selfishness is one of those qualities apt to inspire love.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
What More, Indeed?
A cigarette, Oscar Wilde quipped, “is the perfect type of perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”
At the risk of indulging in fatal sincerity, I have attempted, at various time in my life, to bring the aesthete that lives in my head out into the world. It’s a lot of work, and I failed consistently, which is why I have terrible furniture.
This is due, in part, to mere matters of finance. I am not as enamored of debt as Mr. Wilde was, and the era of patronage is over. It also takes more leisure time than I currently have to locate appropriately impressive bookcases, and the siren call of Ikea is strong.
So: I do what I can. I own ridiculously expensive shirts, because the fabrics and colors are unmatched. At work, I wear fashionable jackets, which everyone assumes is because I'm from back East, but is, in actuality, because I don't really do office casual, not the way they do it here in California. It's a deliberate choice, like adorning my body with various bits of titanium and steel. My mannerisms are occasionally epicene, another choice I make: not so much to be effete, but, rather, to not suppress such effects, because I see no need to.
Ultimately, like a cigarette, all of these choices may prove unsatisfying. But I won't know unless I've tried them, will I? At some point in my late 20s, I put many of these characteristics aside, and I've come to regret that. So I will spend some time being more of who I was then, because I strongly suspect that is, in fact, who I am now. And even if the choices do prove to be unsatisfying...they'll still be perfect.
Not that all of this is, necessarily, the stuff of riveting blog-style reading. But: this place has always been about me, really. Now, it is more openly so.
To the dance!
April 25, 2007
A Vice? Perhaps.
Dandyism is not, as many unthinking people seem to suppose, an immoderate interest in personal appearance and material elegance. For the true dandy these things are only a symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his personality. What, then, is this ruling passion that has turned into a creed and created its own skilled tyrants? What is this unwritten constitution that has created so haughty a caste? It is, above all, a burning need to acquire originality, within the apparent bounds of convention. It is a sort of cult of oneself, which can dispense with what are commonly called illusions. It is the delight of causing astonishment, and the proud satisfaction of never oneself being astonished...
Charles Baudelaire,
The Dandy
'Tis True!
There comes a time, in every person's life, when they make a decision about what sort of person it is, exactly, that they shall be. Some are unfortunate, and make that decision before they can even speak. Others, equally unfortunate, make such decisions repeatedly, but never fully, and end up a confused morass of conflict, neuroses, and equivocation.
Despite having been a confused morass of conflict and neuroses for much of my life, I consider myself among the fortunate: I have always known what sort of person I am. Which doesn't, of course, mean that I decided before I could speak. It just means that I've always had a sense of it, you see. My conflicts come from being at odds with external society. My neuroses come from a dearth of confidence within myself. However! The decision has been made. I have come to realize that it is only the actualization that is lacking.
Thus, and so! These pages are mine. They are about me. I am no pundit. At least, I've stopped trying to be one. I am myself.
If that bores you, do move on.
April 26, 2007
Whither Purple Hosiery?
I live in Santa Barbara, California. It's Spring. And yet: nowhere can I find purple socks. That's just wrong, in so many ways.
Purple socks, for those readers uninitiated in the stylistic ways of Me, are an essential. They are a flash of color at the ankle. They perk up a pair of black jeans. They are even literal representation of being somewhat lavender in the loafers. I used to have two pairs, that I picked up from Macy's in the dead of winter. One set in a paler sort of plum, one in more of a lilac. I've misplaced one lilac sock, so now I have one and a half pairs, which is most unsatisfactory as I still have two feet.
Macy's no longer has any. Men's Wearhouse--bastion of ordinary clothing--doesn't have them. Abercrombie and Fitch, apparently, has no socks at all. I will be reduced to searching online for them.
However: this has some benefits, as it is quite possible that I will be able to find more fabulous purple socks virtually than I would hoofing it from store to store downtown.
Socks are key.
The fact that I can't find them here, in April, no less, remains a travesty.
LATER:
Success! Two pairs purple, one pair lavender, one pair "bright eggplant."
April 27, 2007
Fearless
 It is, I think, impossible to be passionate and discerning at the same time. Passion, by its very nature, is an overwhelming sort of force, while discernment is staid, thoughtful, and quiet. Each is the death of the other. When the two co-exist in a person simultaneously, one must of necessity prevail. There is no hybrid that can be made, no transmutation of one into the other, not if the passion is truly passion, and the discernment truly discernment. Any attempt to balance the two will fail, with the scales tipping finally to one side or the other.
Better writers than I have crafted much finer words from this quintessential facet of human nature. In my own experience, my discernment always fails, and usually not by choice. Dorothy Parker—who was certainly in a position to know—wrote that “Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.” The same applies to passion, which is of a different order than love, although it is, for me, a required precursor to it. I have often been, to my continuing annoyance, a clutcher.
And yet: I am also an honest man. My heart is open, and, despite my occasional protestations to the contrary, I lack the cynicism that would allow me to fully veil my heightened emotions in order to achieve a particular end. I am not so deliberate, not so calculating as that. It simply isn’t within my nature.
I have found that any attempt to be calculating—intentional or otherwise—has without exception resulted in a profoundly unpleasant agitation, very much like panic, which I have come to realize is the consequence of behaving in a way that is contrary to my nature. I have never made such attempts out of a conscious desire to manipulate, but only in an effort to follow the sage advice of so many of my literary and romantic betters. To wit: “Only fools rush in.”
Sadly—and, again, much to my annoyance—I have often been a fool. An honest fool, mostly, but a fool nonetheless.
Which brings me to my present quandary: given that the end result of this openness can be so painful—a pain which is commensurate with the preceding passion—would it not be to my benefit to seek to achieve such deliberation and calculation? To hide my depths? To secure my passion, to lock it away and release it in strategic bursts?
At this point, the Reader will observe my self-portrait as that of an annoyed, wounded fool. Which is accurate, as far as it goes. However, there is also my ardor, my open heart, and my hope. These things have caused me no end of trouble in my life, and I have struggled against them, with little success.
I am, now, entirely uncertain about the wisdom of this struggle. How very great is the value of feeling! Not just passion, but its ruinous aftermath. Not just love, but its lack. Who would I be were I to stop all that up, to hide myself away from it even for a moment? I already know what the results of that are, and they are measured out one glass at a time, over the course of years.
I have often thought that, temperamentally, I am not a creature of this age. It is too fast for me, and I regret the degree to which I have internalized its speed. In matters of the heart, above all else, my resistance to modern rapidity is low.
There is only one possible mediator between passion and discernment, and that is patience. John Steinbeck wrote, “Don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens – the main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.” I yearn for the patience required to live out that truth. Instead, I have quickness of passion without the strength required to resist it.
I see but one solution to this problem: I must be fearless. Fearless about who I am, what I feel, and the potential consequences of each. Anything less will produce only anxiety and neurosis. This is not necessarily at odds with Steinbeck’s admonishment regarding patience, for the firm rejection of my honest passion by another is as reliable an indicator as any of what it is that’s getting away. In the wake of that, I will have remained true to myself. Wounded, perhaps, and foolish, but true.
In the end, that’s the only worthwhile thing there is in life.
April 30, 2007
Enough Of This Gay Banter!
I’ve got a post in the works which will use bits of Plato's Symposium to explain just how it is, exactly, that Friday’s post is not an emo recipe for disaster, but my brain is a bit tired right now and I do have to go dancing tonight. Tango, actually. Or, not so much Tango as a series of six steps which, someday, will vaguely resemble Tango in much the same way that I resemble a sensible person. Currently, it's sweaty and awkward, like so much in life.
Right now, though, I have to start a book club. And after I get back from stumbling around with strangers, I'll continue work on the fourth short story I've written in the past five months.
Oh, and laundry. Have to do that, too.
Rich full life and all that.
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