The Green Light District

Reverence and Black Cloths

I had another post ready to go today, but for now, this trumps it. As a lifelong Yankees fan and, even more so, a baseball fan, I offer reverence here in light of the deaths of Mr. George M. Steinbrenner III, longtime principal owner of the New York Yankees, this morning at age 80, and Mr. Bob Sheppard, announcer at Yankee Stadium for almost half a century, on Sunday at age 99.

Though I didn’t always appreciate the impression I had of Mr. Steinbrenner’s actions or behavior, I unquestionably feel deep reverence for the pain and loss the Yankees organization may be feeling with the loss of their legendary principal owner. As well I appreciate and revere the profound contributions both Mr. Sheppard and Mr. Steinbrenner made to a team and to a game I love so much. Most of all, I honor their lives, the form of love they took in this lifetime.

I happen to have just finished reading one of my very favorite novels, The Secret Life of Bees, yesterday for the third time. Though it was my third time reading it, it affected me just as profoundly as it did the first two. The following quote, which I had read just hours before learning of Mr. Steinbrenner’s death, came to me as I reflected on these losses to Yankees baseball and to the world.

As one of the main characters, August, drapes black fabric over her beehives to signify mourning, she says, “Putting black cloths on the hives is for us. I do it to remind us that life gives way into death, and then death turns around and gives way to life.” (p. 206)

To Mr. Bob Sheppard and Mr. George Steinbrenner, beautiful journeys.

Love,
Emerald

Filed under: Not @ Sex (!) |1 Comment

Flow, Breath, and Triadic Offerings

A few months ago my breathworker invoked the notion of the proposed three fundamental aspects of life (according to Hindu tradition, I think) of Creation, Maintenance, and Destruction. Upon hearing it, I immediately felt a sense of my historical relationship to each.

Creation, I knew immediately, had often been hindered in me by the harshness of perfectionism. While having felt oriented to creating sometimes, I knew the scathing internal demand of never messing up or making a mistake or doing something not the “right” way had held me back sometimes from even starting, much less finishing, something creatively. This aspect of the three struck me as the “medium” historical orientation in me.

I have been terrible—terrible—at destruction. That itself was not new to my recognizance, but this triadic context was, so it was an interesting new way to view it. Letting go, on multiple levels and in numerous ways, has tended to feel somewhere from foreign to panic-inducing to me. The idea of consciously allowing something to be destroyed or to destroy it as a part of natural flow has often seemed so unimaginable to me it felt funny to even type that.

It was instantaneously obvious to me that the aspect to which I have felt most heavily oriented is maintenance. Once I have felt familiar with something, known how to do it, and thus something in me has felt satisfied that it may perform as close to perfectly as possible, or at least make relatively fewer mistakes, it has seemed to feel most comfortable.

A few weeks ago I had the incredible opportunity to attend a personal gathering with Adyashanti. I first heard of Adyashanti last summer when the facilitators of the ongoing Inner Work group of which am a part recommended his book The End of Your World. I read The End of Your World last September, at which time it took its place as the second most important book I feel I have experienced in my adult lifetime.

At the event, prior to Adya’s appearance, I was sitting and waiting in silence, as we had been requested to hold upon entering the meeting room. I didn’t feel consciously nervous about anything, but I noticed a tense feeling in my chest. I wondered what I felt tense about.

I kept breathing consciously, focusing only vaguely on the question, and suddenly an awareness flashed through me. It was immediate, lasting only a second, and it was not a suspicion, or a thought, or a figuring something out. It was a seeing—an instantaneous, embodied realization.

My lungs automatically tense upon exhale.

Automatically. Not when I feel a certain way. Not when I feel nervous. Not when I’m experiencing anxiety, or focused on something particular. Simply upon exhale. My lungs tense automatically in the very face of exhale.

And there it is. The most fundamental of letting go.

This feels like a very intimate realization about my body. While in a way it does not surprise me at all, seeing on what a core level this pattern has been ingrained and manifested in me was(/is) stunning. Somehow my lungs/body learned that the fundamental act of exhale, of release, was scary and threatening and that I needed to “protect” myself from it and tense against it. So much so that this physical pattern developed that has likely been in action for decades.

The metaphorical reflections and extrapolations I see of this in my life are innumerable, so much so that it almost seems it would be easier to look at times when this has not been evident. Recently my acupuncturist and I were talking about the element in traditional Five-Element Acupuncture that seems most prominent in me (the main corresponding organ of which happens to be the lungs), and she described this element’s tendency to “hoard,” to hold on to things—which in turn makes it difficult for new things to come in. There simply isn’t room. To recall the triadic aspect of “destruction,” this, as I understand it, would be its basic purpose: to clear out/destroy what no longer serves. To never destroy or release anything interrupts the flow of life and the Universe. Destruction allows room for creation, offering the opportunity for maintenance…and so on.

Ultimately, I feel enormous, deep gratitude for the exquisite opportunity to have seen something so profound and intimate about myself/my body. So much so that really it feels indescribable.

I am scheduled to appear at F-Stop: Expose the Naked I (the blog founded by Neve Black, Shanna Germain, and Donna George Storey) this coming Sunday. I know what I plan to write about (or at least what has come forth so far), and I have attributed the nervousness I have been feeling about it to the feeling of wanting to impart what I’m saying exactly right…to do it justice, perhaps? I have felt some resistance to working on it for the reasons described around “creation” above. And, of course, when it comes time to finish it, which does seem to me a form of letting go, I may see challenge in that as well. I suspect the unconscious in me has most often felt most comfortable at the “maintenance” stage of writing, this middle/”working on it” phase allowing some relaxation of the vicious standard of perfection—if there is no finished product, there is nothing that has to be “perfect.”

The “maintenance” stage is where my piece for F-Stop is right now. This (somewhat rambling, I suppose) exposition may be serving as a precursor to the openness and clarity writing it feels like it is going to take from me.

“Take a deep breath” has been a mantra of mine for some time. No matter what I am doing, it is where I begin and to where I return.

And so, breathing consciously, I go.

Love,
Emerald

“There’s no one else to make the moves that you can do…your every breath becomes another world…take a breath, take a deep breath now…”
-David Gilmour “Take a Breath”

Filed under: Not @ Sex (!), Sex+ Spirituality |9 Comments

The Breath of the Ocean

I’m in Florida this week (Sanibel Island) on vacation with my family. It’s my first voluntary beach/tropically-oriented vacation in years.

When I was a kid, we took a few family vacations that involved beaches. Unlike many people (it seems), I never felt much of a fan of the beach. I found the ocean 1) dirty, 2) scary, and 3) something I wasn’t personally interested in but felt forced to visit because that’s what my family “did” on vacations. This impression of beaches has generally remained in me as an adult, and I really haven’t deliberately spent time on a beach since those vacations when I was a kid. There was a small post-midnight excursion in San Diego in 2001 during which I was, um, distracted, and though my sister got married in St. Lucia in 2006, I don’t remember going to the beach much except during the actual wedding.

My family searches for seashells so seriously that “shelling” is a verb to them. This was something I also remember being forced to do engaging in as a kid, again because it was just what we “did” when we went on vacation. At that time, it also seemed necessary to the powers that be (read: my father) to get up literally before dawn to have first pick or some such thing at the shells washing up on the shore. I clearly recall feeling resentful that I had to get up earlier on supposed vacation than I did when I had to go to school.

So yesterday was the first time in probably more than two decades that I went on my own to specifically spend time on a beach. Especially given that most of my life I have felt a resistance or non-attraction to this environment, I felt surprised by the way I experienced it.

I wandered in the afternoon down to the beach by myself. I stood staring at waves, watching their swell, hearing them break, smelling the salt. I knelt and dragged my fingers through a smattering of seashells and instantly recalled how much I love the sound of shells clicking together. I grasped a fistful of wet sand and noticed there is no other feeling like that. When dry, I found sand feels in its own way like velvet, and up close the grains look as sparkly as crystal. I stared at it covering my skin, aware that it was a result of an eons-long process of dissolution into this foundational powder that fills beaches and provides the whole floor of the ocean.

Then last night, I chose to look for shells of my own accord. Having been away from them in their natural environment for so many years, I was struck by how astonishing I found them. Even the shells considered “common” or “dull” looked extraordinary to a shell amateur (or at least one way out of practice) like myself. There is a stunning quality to me in all of these shells, these amazing intricate extensions of animals that have created and live in them. I find it truly fascinating.

The simple opportunity to observe and ponder waves in the context of “shelling” further fascinated me. Like the breath of the ocean, the constantly forthcoming, uninhibited waves deposit each time a display of unpredictable uniqueness. Nothing is the same each moment as it was; it is a tangible invitation to an orientation toward Now. Sometimes something may come forth that isn’t quite reached in time, and it is let go. But there is no knowing what new may then be offered in the next breath. There is a forever flow, invariable opportunity, constant beauty, always unknown.

It reminded me of writing. And sex. And life.

As I wandered in the dark shining a flashlight on the waves, the realization was consise: The ocean is fucking phenomenal.

I won’t say I don’t still find the ocean dirty and scary. But it is phenomenal encompassing those things, its mystery, danger, glory indivisible as an entity foreign to yet universally connected to us. I appreciate this opportunity to be so close to its energy.

Love,
Emerald

“Gotta find a way to flow, in a host of things that grow…the mouth of god is wide, so let’s just fall inside, and let every damn thing go, and flow…”
-LIVE “Flow”

Filed under: Not @ Sex (!), Sex+ Spirituality |11 Comments

Safe for Work, Best Birthday Wishes, and Assorted Other

Both my blogging and my reading/visiting of blogs has slowed down a bit the past few weeks, in part due to travel and holiday plans but also in deference to the season of Winter, which according to the tradition of Five-Element Chinese Medicine(/Acupuncture) is the season of stillness and silence. I have struggled in the past to truly be and stay with this depth, silence, and mystery, and in aiming to do so this year I have felt called to relax the frenetic feeling of needing to relentlessly read and post blogs and feel guilt or anxiety if I do not.

Stillness. Silence. And a deep breath.

That being said, I am delighted to post this particular entry at the end of this calendar year in order to announce something non-sex related, wish a very special figure in my life a happy birthday, and throw some other odds and ends in between. Here we go.

1) First, for any readers here who at some point feel like reading about something other than sex, or who would like to be reading about sex but whose day job’s technological environment does not allow the perusal of such Internet-related places, I want to let you know about a brand new blog that has both bases covered: PostHumorous. Run by a good friend of mine, it launched earlier this month and is designed to be first of all entertaining, and secondly a place to hang out when one is supposed to be working. (For me this latter description sometimes seems to encompass the entirety of the Internet.)

I myself have frequently experienced the proprietor of PostHumorous — found at www.PostHumorous.org — as amusing, entertaining, and politically incorrect (not always necessarily simultaneously — I recommend reading the site’s disclaimer!). Rumor has it he is also open to allowing guest writers, though remember, the subject matter focus there is funny, not sex. (Not to disregard the existence of demonstrated expertise at combining the two! The site owner just wants to keep the site fully safe for work.) On that note, while I am mentioning PostHumorous here, that will not be mutual, as the site is rated PG-13 and is specifically designed to be safe for work, whereas mine is…um, not. :) So you may very well see no connection to me or this blog there whatsoever, and that is as it should be.

2) Next, it’s now a little bit late this year, but I want to mention that I just finished reading Alison Tyler’s anthology The Merry XXXmas Book of Erotica and highly recommend picking it up for next year. I myself liked some of the stories so much I suspect I may find myself perusing it throughout the year despite my historical lack of enthusiasm for focusing on the Christmas season when it is not said season (and sometimes when it is…). I enthusiastically enjoyed the vast majority of the stories in Merry XXXmas, and about half a dozen of them fell into the category of my very favorites, including Alison’s own closing story, “Christmas Past.” Overall it may be one of my favorite erotica anthologies I’ve read, holiday-themed or not.

3) Speaking of holidays and while I’m recommending things, I’ll also give mention to a lovely story I read a few days ago by P. S. Haven that he generously posted on his blog. It’s titled “If You Love Something, Set It Free” — scroll down on the page to read it.

4) Lastly (but certainly not leastly), I want to take the opportunity to wish one of my inspirations, most-admired erotica writers, true friends, and really favorite people a very, very happy birthday today. I consider the presence of Ms. Donna George Storey in my life a gift itself, and I am delighted to wish her here a happy birthday, which she happens to share with New Year’s Eve. :)

I started this blog just a few days into the 2009 calendar year, and I want to thank everyone who has been here, read, commented, lurked, or in any way supported this Internet presence of mine in 2009 (hey, that rhymes). Truly, thank you, so very much.

Happy new year and always to all.

Love,
Emerald

“Six on the second hand, to New Year’s resolutions…”
-OneRepublic “All This Time”

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The Overwhelm of Literary Afterglow

I spent most of my Thanksgiving reading The Age of Innocence.

That seems deeply appropriate to me now, as I feel such gratitude for the book I don’t know how to express it in words. It was my second time reading it, the first being in late 2005 or early 2006. I liked it then, I remember, and vaguely classified it in the category right below the category of my “favorite books.” That category doesn’t really have a name/label, but it just means I much liked the book but not quite enough for it to be one of my favorites.

I’m not sure what I was thinking. It seems difficult to me to describe how differently I experienced the book this time. I know I was in a different place then, and perhaps the circumstances I was experiencing at that time really affected how I perceived what I was reading or even distracted me from it, but I feel and felt astonished by the nuance, insight, and implication that I just did not seem to get the first time reading it. Similarly, of course, the circumstances I experience presently likely affected my reading of it this time as well. Such is art and such is life. I simply was/am taken aback by the degree to which, this time around, I found these previously missed nuances and implications stunning.

A few days ago, when I knew I wanted to write this post but felt poignantly ill-equipped to do it justice (as I still do), I mentioned on Neve Black’s blog my interpretation that The Age of Innocence may be one of the most beautiful products of human creation to which I feel I have been exposed thus far in this lifetime. I miss it. I have been missing it since I finished it, and even as I was reading it I felt a poignant yearning that at some point I would likely finish it, and its immediacy and involvement would be gone from my experience.

One of the things I remember not feeling resonant with when I was pursuing an MFA was what seemed to be the movement away, in the academic setting, from the subjectivity of creativity. It has occurred to me before — I seem to recall it occurred to me even then — that since I have historically experienced a tendency to not recognize and be with feelings, when I encountered something that did allow or even force me to do that, on some level I appreciated it deeply. Art or perhaps the response in me to it has been one of those things for as long as I can remember. So the feeling of that being lessened or even taken away felt particularly daunting/dissonant to me. (Incidentally, that is one of the reasons it makes so much sense to me that others may not find this aspect of artistic academic programs disagreeable or even necessarily experience it that way. They may not have experienced this particular relationship of art/creativity and affect/emotion the way I have. Whereas for me, it felt paramount.)

The way I felt as I read (since I did vaguely remember how it ended, having read it before) and when I finished The Age of Innocence epitomized the overwhelming affect-via-art experience for me. It felt like it broke me open — and in the understanding that I am really one with the Universe, being broken open can be a way of further experiencing and realizing that.

A. H. Almaas says of beauty:

“The more a manifest form expresses and embodies true nature with its timeless features, the more the eyes of the soul behold it as beautiful. Beauty is a reflection of truth, and truth is ultimately true nature.”

So seems to be the beauty that has struck me in The Age of Innocence, and I simply bask now in silence and utter reverence in the afterglow of this experience I don’t know how to describe. It is a book that feels like it has done something unique to me, something no other thing could ever quite have done.

In the beginning of the edition I have, there is an introduction by a noted critic and scholar of Wharton. I did not read it before I started, frequently preferring to read such things after I have finished the work so as not to be affected beforehand by another’s perception of it. Last night I turned to the introduction and considered reading it, and I noticed I still felt hesitation after skimming the first paragraph. At this time I have deemed that I just don’t have an interest in reading it yet.

I was considering why I felt this distinct yet inarticulate feeling. I recalled hearing Wayne Dyer, in an audio version of one of his books years ago, talk about analysis being “intellectually violent.” He said to analyze was the opposite of sythesize — the tearing apart of something rather than the merging of parts into a whole. I remember finding that description so gorgeous it took my breath away.

Historically there has seemed a tendency in me to analyze, which could quite be related to that one resisting emotion and affect. Analysis could serve as a distraction — breaking things down and/or tearing them apart in order to feel more in control or to not let the “whole” really affect me like it does/will on some level anyway. Analysis may just water it down and allow the historical personality structure in me to seem not so affected by dealing with something one piece at a time.

Art, sometimes, has blown right through that no matter what the historical tendencies in me may want to do. And I love it for that.

So it occurs to me that the introduction might analyze the work in a way I feel like I don’t want to be exposed to — as if it will interrupt some fragility, some beauty that is perfect in the form it currently is.

Interestingly, as I was pondering this again today, I went to the Erotica Readers and Writers Association website after reading the newsletter today and read brilliant Ashley Lister’s piece titled “Broken Rainbows.” I was struck that the topic of his piece is almost this exact subject from a writing rather than a reading/experiencing point of view.

Perhaps the most striking similarity is that Ashley says this:

“There are laws of communication that have to be obeyed to transform an idea into an experience worthy of being called literature. And, just like science [and its explanation of a rainbow], the efforts of examination and inspection offer the dullest explanations and invariably threaten to break the rainbow”

— when it had crossed my consciousness last night that to me reading the introduction right now felt like smashing a prism, taking each color and examining it as a separate flat strip, the glittering whole no longer in the form of its original dimension.

Ashley also says,

“Regardless of the mechanics that create a piece of fiction, whether it comes from a writer steeped in knowledge about the tradition of the novel, or a newcomer with a burning desire to tell a story, the results can be (and often are) a beautiful experience.”

That experience is in what I still feel deeply immersed, so deeply I don’t even know how to articulate it. I feel too close to the work still to feel at all interested in its deconstruction; it seems interruptive of the experience I feel such indescribable gratitude to have been offered.

In short, I am not ready to cut apart The Age of Innocence yet. Its sum is too beautiful to me.

Love,
Emerald

“In a flash it takes hold of my heart; what a feeling…I can have it all…pictures come alive, now I’m dancing through my life…”
-Irene Cara “Flashdance - What a Feeling”

Filed under: Not @ Sex (!), Sex+ Writing: Others' |7 Comments

A Musical Interlude

(Beautiful photo is courtesy of Scarlett Greyson.)

Last night I was taking a drive and listening to some songs I have found supportive either now or in the past when I have felt challenged. As I have mentioned here, I have felt that way lately, and music has seemed quite an important support for me in this context. As I was listening to it last night, I thought of some others I know that have specifically felt challenged recently, and it occurred to me to share here some of the songs that have felt helpful and supportive to me. Perhaps some of them will resonate with anyone who may read this.

The iTunes playlist on my computer for this general category is 99 songs. I’m condensing it here to 10 that resonate with me right now and/or that I have found particularly supportive in the past during times of struggle. If audio/video was easy to find on YouTube or elsewhere, I included the link.

(Note: I do notice that almost half of these songs are by Live. That is likely because almost anything by Live fits into this category for me — I particularly recommend the albums Songs From Black Mountain and The Distance to Here.)

Lastly, I know this blog is generally about sex and this has little to do with it. But you know, there’s a reason I included a “Not @ Sex” category. I hereby exercise my reserved right to use it.

In no particular order:

1) Walk On - U2 (lyrics)
2) Love Shines (A Song for My Daughters About God) - Live (lyrics)
3) Wings - Live (lyrics)
4) Overcome Live (lyrics)
5) Run to the Water - Live (lyrics)
6) Let It Be* - The Beatles (lyrics)
7) Broken - Lifehouse (lyrics)
8) Someday - Rob Thomas (lyrics)
9) Into the West - Howard Shore & Annie Lennox (lyrics)

The last one, which feels particularly resonant to me right now, I’m embedding here. And it goes out to every single person reading this, whether I know you personally or not.

I can tell by the way you’re walking
That you don’t want company
I’ll let you alone and I’ll let you walk on
And in your own good time you’ll be

Back where the sun can find you
Under the wise wishing tree
And with all of them made we’ll lie under the shade
And call it a jubilee

And I can tell by the way you’re talking
That the past isn’t letting you go
There’s only so long you can take it all on
Then the wrong’s gotta be on its own

And when you’re ready to leave it behind you
You’ll look back and all that you’ll see
Is the wreckage and rust that you left in the dust
On your way to the jubilee

And I can tell by the way you’re listening
That you’re still expecting to hear
Your name being called like a summons to all
Who have failed to account for their doubts and their fears

They can’t add up to much without you
And so if it were just up to me
I’d take hold of your hand, saying come hear the band
Play your song at the jubilee

And I can tell by the way you’re searching
For something you can’t even name
That you haven’t been able to come to the table
Simply glad that you came

And when you feel like this try to imagine
That we’re all like frail boats on the sea
Just scanning the night for that great guiding light
Announcing the jubilee

And I can tell by the way you’re standing
With your eyes filling with tears
That it’s habit alone keeps you turning for home
Even though your home is right here

Where the people who love you are gathered
Under the wise wishing tree
May we all be considered then straight on delivered
Down to the jubilee

‘Cause the people who love you are waiting
And they’ll wait just as long as need be
When we look back and say those were halcyon days
We’re talking about jubilee

Love,
Emerald

*Years ago I avoided this song because of what I interpreted as the overt reference to Catholicism in the mention of “mother Mary.” Then I realized the Catholic church doesn’t have a patent on Mary, and if I want to interpret it simply as a reference to the feminine Divine, I will. (And do.)

Filed under: Not @ Sex (!) |4 Comments

Living Into the Answer…

Greetings.

A beautiful individual I feel blessed and honored to know commented (in part) the following on a Facebook status I posted a couple weeks ago intimating that I was hurting greatly:

Perhaps Rainer Maria Rilke carries a message.. “i beg you…to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, bec you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer…”

In a comment replying, I shared that I found the offered quote beautiful and heartbreakingly relevant. So much so that it takes my breath away to read it, and commenting on it right now actually feels like it interrupts the silent reverence I feel toward it.

I have been absent from the online world in large part for the past few weeks. Not only have I not posted here, I have also not often visited the blogs I have been known to frequent. I have felt very concentrated during this time on, among other things, staying with pain and alignment with the Universe. While it is hard to explain, in my experience such takes an exquisite attention that (for me at this point) allows little distraction.

It is Fall, the season in Five-Element Acupuncture that offers reflection, respect, and acknowledgment. Acknowledgment of what is. Not what we want to be, or what we think should be, or what used to be. What is. I myself have felt called in the past few weeks to face some things the ego in me had not wanted me to, and doing so not only resulted in considerable pain but also required (in large part due to said pain) utter awareness and attention in staying with what is and attending to pain without trying to avoid it as the ego wants us to do. One of the acupuncture points I received at my treatment last week offered the invitation to “Face everything, avoid nothing.”

Such is absolutely the aim in me.

Right now unkowing pervades me. It feels exquisitely, precisely beautiful. The unknowing is a lovely foreshadowing of Winter, which in Five-Element Acupuncture begins October 31 and holds the offerings of mystery, depth, stillness, silence — ultimate unknowing.

There is more, of course, but I just wanted to post a hello and acknowledgment (heh, spirit of Fall) of my absence the past couple weeks here and elsewhere online as I slowly reintegrate an online presence. I wish everyone well, as always, and thank you for coming by.

Love,
Emerald

“On this essential level, the facts of your situation take on a sense of meaning, of richness and of depth, because they usher you into the realm of what really exists, beyond the surface of things. An essential truth is not a thought, an idea, a reaction, or an action . . . . It is self-existing.”
-A. H. Almaas

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