(May 2005) Friday the 13th. Huh. Maybe that explains why my laptop went bonkers and started typing Arabic numerals when I tried to type words today. Yeah, I’m sure some random date on my calendar and not an accidentally pressed button is to blame for that one.
Now this is going to seem like a picaresque leap—which I can assure you my poetry pals and I do love to make—but give me a few sentences and it’ll make sense.
Joy Harjo replaces the hierarchical system typically presented in Christianity with a vortex, a spiral-shaped “pattern of survival,” and says,
I think where theologians get into trouble is that they’re working out of a hierarchical structure. There’s God sitting at the top of the world, in the image of a man, no women around in that trilogy of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I propose a different structure; it’s not original but what I’ve learned from being around tribal peoples, and in my own wanderings. The shape is a spiral in which all beings resonate. The bear is one version of human and vice versa. The human is not above the bear, nor is Adam naming the bear.
No Great Chain of Being for this poet, and no masturbation-punishing graybearded old god either.
I like this notion of a spiral, which suggests interrelationships, going back and forth, nonduality.
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Now, since two people have recently told me that they’re abstaining from sex, I’m posting 3 excerpts from a popular ABSTINENCE ONLY program (as compiled in the February 2005 edition of Harper’s):
• Occasional assistance may be all right, but too much assistance will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess
• While a man needs little or no preparation for sex, a woman often needs hours of emotional and mental preparation
(You don’t say? Me, sometimes I like those unexpected quickies that make us late to something.)
• Sexual relationships often lower the self respect of both partners.... Emotional pain can cause a downward spiral, leading to intense feelings of worthlessness. Depression [from a break up] may lead to attempted or successful suicide.
Oh that’s ripe. Think I’ll use that as my reason to never have sex again—“Sorry. I can’t have sex with you. It’ll make me kill myself.”
SANG IN SHOWER: “Wilder Than Her” by Dar Williams
READING: details of my home warranty insurance policy
SELECTED SPAM (Subject Lines): r u little? • Fix your situation Mamie
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