The Green Light District

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”

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

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

Filed under: Not @ Sex (!) |13 Comments

Motivation Unknown

I have no idea why I’m doing this, really, but inexplicably I have felt moved recently to post a poem here. Erobintica just posted on her blog that she finished a chapbook on which she had been working hard (congratulations!), and I was reminded of a little chapbook I put together a few years ago just for myself. There was a particular collection of poems I had that seemed to want to be together. I only created one copy (again, it was just for me), and it still sits on my desk. The chapbook’s title is “Delicacy Masquerading as Invincibility: Poems of a broken heart.” It contains 11 poems that were written from about 2002 to 2004. None of them is erotic (I’ve never written erotic poetry), but again, while I have no idea what is moving me to do so, I share one of them here now.

At midnight
we walked through this parking lot

so many times.

Motionless in their clusters, the peonies
splashed invisible through the air
dictating all we inhaled

and everything that told me not to be with you
when you weren’t there
was taken by the darkness

every time.

Until one week ago when
the starlight finally told me
I can’t keep doing this to myself
just because I love you.

Today, it’s my birthday
and I guess this is it for us.

I stand here now alone
watching the stars clear and certain above me,
and I know (whether you see it or not)
         I may not have been your only one
         but I will always be unique among the rest

even as the smell of peonies
makes me want to stop breathing.

Love,
Emerald

“I’m in the moment, the one where nothing matters and everything’s all right…”
-Sister Hazel “In the Moment”

Filed under: Not @ Sex (!) |7 Comments

I Like Fireworks

It has come to my attention that the lovely Alana Noel Voth (author of the poignant “Rock Stars in Particular Order,” a recommended read from me) nominated me for a Kreative Blogger Award. This nomination apparently means that the nominator finds the nominated blog worthy of such a label/nomination. Thank you Alana. I feel quite flattered by this nomination as such, especially since I find Alana truly and deeply inspiring.

As I understand it nominees are invited to nominate seven blogs accordingly for the Kreativ Blogger Award and also list seven things that they like. Alana also nominated Nikki Magennis, Donna George Storey, and Craig Sorensen, all of whom would likely have been on my list of nominees along with Alana herself. In addition, Donna and Nikki have already nominated themselves a number of the blogs that would also likely be on my list. Probably I should thank all these people for making it much easier to narrow any list of nominees from me down to seven.

Seven blogs I have appreciated/enjoyed include the following.

Kristina Wright: Musings of an Insomniac Writer
Marina St. Clare
Scarlett Greyson
Neve Black: Foreplay for Your Mind
Cora Zane: Stars Will Cry
Tony Comstock: The Art & Business of Making Erotic Films
Oscarelli

Seven things I like —

Fireworks
Bees
Butterflies
Circles
Glitter
Baseball
The smell of indoor pools*

Looking at that list, I can see why I like summer so much too.

Speaking of summer, and of fireworks, happy Fourth of July to all celebrating it as a holiday, and to all who aren’t, happy fourth of July as, you know, the fourth day of the month of July. :)

Thank you again Alana!

Xoxox,
Emerald

* Yes, it is the chlorine smell I like — not by itself, as that can be quite hazardous to one’s health and, in my experience, rather unpleasant. But when diluted in a swimming pool, I find the smell sublime.

“I know you know it can’t get much better, fireworks flying whenever we’re together…we’ll see fireworks tonight…”
-Plain White T’s “Fireworks”

Filed under: Not @ Sex (!) |7 Comments