It's Safer Not To Go Slow

There was the soft friction of his entry, of his stubble against my cheek, the smell of his waking breath.  Attentive fingers met my clitoris, gentle, morning paced.  I knew he was about to come and it turned me on.  I was so close.  But I didn’t postpone his release.  I let him come because I liked it and it meant I could leave the scary slowness.

Awkwardness is lost in speed, as are the subtle transitions from one flavor of pleasure to another.  These whiz past in a race to finish.  There is so much more in the slow.  It overwhelms me.

After the orgasm he collapsed on me.  I love this, love the heavy surrender.  My sensation continued to swim above there, delighted at the cessation of stimulation - free to feel, to stretch and expand without urge to continue.  The unprovoked dance of shape-shifting pleasure… pulsing contractions and g-spot lightening bolts.  Untouched, I almost came.  But then it all fell - in a lovely way, much like his fall - the pulsing and inner squiggles fell asleep.  I was still aroused, but he was sweetly dead on me and for a while I didn’t want to move. 

When he rolled over, I lied there, supine, idea-filled and wet.  I brought fingertips to nerve button and resurrected secret intensity.  My eyes, when I opened them, tracked dizzily across the ceiling.  There were lake sounds, the call of loons.  Rolling eyes and rolling mind, sorting through thoughts. I felt a little girl, breaking rules.  Was I betraying him by not sharing this?  It fueled the speed of rubbing.  I made quick, tiny circles.  So wet I could have been underwater.  Faster faster, on the edge of orgasm.  So close. 

Back and forth, little taps, quick circles.  My body sweating and tense.  Any moment I would melt around the point, I would dissolve into sensation.  I paused, then returned to it.  Thoughts swimming, drowning, swimming - broken into pieces.  Faster, finish, go, go, go, go, go!

Covertly touching myself with a promise of orgasm.  (It would mean success, freedom, perhaps even a morning nap which I desperately need).  Come, come, come, come, come, come!  

But it wouldn’t happen.  The forced-ness prevented its arrival.  How bad would I be anyway if I came on my own as he slept next to me?  

“Oh!  I’m sorry to wake you.  No, um, really it wasn’t that I didn’t feel satisfied, it was just that I didn’t want to bother you and, well, I thought it would be easier this way.  It would have taken forever.  You would become ambitious and then I would start to feel bad for not delivering after all your effort.  It might get awkward, you’d be bored and I would force some sort of apologetic smile.  

“And if that weren’t to happen?  Well,  if we were to go very, very slowly…I don’t know, the consequences could be even more serious.  I might cry.  I might remember something awful.  I might fart or fall in love with you or, who knows what?  I might just die.  No, better this way - fast and alone.  I know what to expect.  It’s safer not to go slow.”

Maybe I Should Have Sex With All of You

It happens in the moment I step out of worry.  When I stop to feel the breeze slink down my sweater and whisper across my thighs.  I start to feel pressure.  It isn't the kind of pressure that weighs down.  It doesn't descend from "out there."  It swells up inside me.

It builds as I listen to the satisfying clop of shoes on the sidewalk.  Sometimes it is in the passing of half-opened lilacs or the silver in her hair.  It gets bigger and bigger until I don't know what to do with myself and I crawl back into the safety of practical concerns.

Sometimes I fall in love with everybody.  When it happens (and I'm strong enough to feel it) I cry a lot.  I laugh at myself.  I cry because I'm laughing so hard.  If I'm out in public, I wonder if people  think something is wrong with me.

When I fall in love with everybody, I get confused about how to express it.  The geyser that erupts from the base of my spine and the warm, sloppy feeling that spills from behind my heart, make it hard to do anything.  My brain tries to make sense of the experience, tries to fix it.  It thinks, "Maybe I should bake cookies or write love poems.  Maybe I should give foot rubs, plant flowers, sing a song.  Maybe I should just have sex with all of you."

That's it!  I think of how much I would love to pleasure people and how much I would love to feel closer to them.  If I am naked and you are naked and we press ourselves together and rub noses - if we breathe into one another's mouth, drag our fingers lightly along the soles of our feet, if we get inside each other, maybe that will come close to a physical expression of this feeling.

Okay, maybe not everybody.  I only want to have sex with those who want it.  Not everyone is into laugh-crying crazies.  But that still leaves a lot of people.  I could be engaged for a long time.

I ponder my solution.

I don't realise at first.  I'm wrapped in fantasy.  Then I grow cold and lonely in the absence of expansive pressure.  The feeling has gone away, replaced by all these thoughts. 

The intimacy I crave is in the experience of unbearable sensation.  The pressure I'm trying to fix is the very thing I seek.  The sex is already happening inside me.

Feeling it is hard.  But in the moments when I can bear to be alone in the erotic heart-pain, I make love with everybody.

Before Breakfast

What happens in six minutes?  Somewhere an egg fertilizes, somewhere somebody dies, somewhere a person experiences orgasm.  Somewhere there are people crying, people shooting, people sneezing.  Somewhere a tree falls.  Somewhere a bird hatches.  Somewhere the grass on the side of a hillside burns.

These are moments that all occur - outside the moth-ridden world of our minds.  Our minds, like mad false light, to which thoughts come like the deluded bugs of summer.  Our attention is clouded and we forget that somewhere, here, all is happening, all is profound and mundane and everything we long for is already real.

Love, work, partnership, understanding, liberation.  This is all here, somewhere.  Somewhere there is no pain, only the awareness of pain.  Somewhere there is no suffering, only the awareness of suffering.  Somewhere there is no soul mate, there is no dream job, there is no lottery - there is only imagination.

Somewhere I wait until the timer on my phone plays the digital harp sound so that I may stop this writing exercise.  Somewhere - here - I wonder about the worlds within me.  Somewhere I am.  I am somewhere.  There is a jar of tea near my computer.  In another world I am drinking coffee, sweetened with coconut sugar, frothed with milk.  Somewhere (in another world) a lover passes me and kisses the top of my head, unconcerned with my greasy hair and the strangeness of my morning.  Somewhere there are babies calling for me, there is money in the bank, there is a project that takes me out of the mothy madness in my mind.  In this place I take a break, wondering if somewhere, I sit without obligation, in a tiny apartment above a garage with chickens making chicken sounds and the freedom of nowhere to be.

He Bit The Head Off Of A Baby Chicken

I was invited by the professor Nyoman Sedana to see his performance in the story of Calonarang.  Its enactment is seen often at the temples of Ubud, in the digestive quiet following soto ayam or nasi goreng.  It is a wonderful spectacle enjoyed by many visitors on a nightly basis.  This performance, however, would be part of the village ceremony.  I was not aware, at first invitation, how this would differ from the dinner theater version.

Now I don't know the tale exactly, but my understanding is this:

The queen consort of a kingdom's ruler was banished for practicing black magic.  When the king died she was further disgraced, a widow living in the wild.  She sought revenge on the kingdom, on her son, now ruler of the land.  She cast a plague on the people, unleashing demons and disease. Her son had no choice, but to fight her.

A battle brewed and the witch called on evil spirits.  Her son brought his army to the forest and they faced one another.  Fuelled by the power of Durga, the witch queen, now called Rangda, reigned terror on the battlefield.  The king would have been defeated, had he not called upon a mythical creature of great strength and light, the Barong.

Using layak, black magic, Rangda cast a spell on the soldiers, making them want to kill themselves.  They pointed their daggers at their chests.  Barong countered her spell by making their bodies resistant to the sharp edge of their weapons.  In the end, Barong, the spirit of good, proved stronger than Rangda and she ran away deep into the forest.

This confrontation, a fierce dance of light and dark, is the climax of the village ceremony.

***

It is near midnight in the temple of Tegallinggah.  My two friends and I sit at the edge of the stage along with over one hundred Balinese people wearing sarongs and temple shirts.  Children line the stage, candy wrappers in hand, many of them yawning.  It has been several hours of sitting, watching dancers and comedians tell stories leading up to this.

Men and women dressed in white come out and douse us with holy water.  We bow our heads and open our palms.  Conscious preparation is required for the invitation of great spirits.

The klingkong of gamelan music has been keeping rhythm for hours.  The musicians are trained, the notes practiced, but they do not respond to script.  They listen as they play, engaged in percussive conversation.  The metallic sound vibrates through the crowd.

Rangda appears.  White hair erupts from her wild head.  The mask is alive - its gaze penetrating.  She looks at me through wooden eyes and chills pass through my bones.  Her long fingers twitch with gross elegance as the gamelan orchestra plays.  Striped with red, black and white, the legs of her dancer pound the stone, toes alive and pointed skyward.  The sound does not dictate her movements - changes in tempo and urgency arise spontaneously between she and the musicians.

A woman stands in the open space behind the witch.  Her eyes are glazed and she cries, wails, shaking.  Another man screams, he punches his chest and throws his body hard on the temple cobblestones.  They are in trance.

Barong stands at the entrance of his holy perch.  Flanked on either side by priests, he prepares for battle.  Shivering upon the stone staircase, trembling with animal presence, he descends.  Two bodies animate the sacred being.  The people watching breathe more deeply, their eyes open wider.  The creature's gold and mirrored headdress flashes with each movement.  His mouth opens and snaps shut.  There is wildness in the colorful mask, its bulging eyes and giant fangs.  It is not static, despite its wooden architecture.  He is alive and watching.

More people are moved by the divine spectacle.  Men pace beneath the stage, tears streaming down distorted faces.  A woman lies prostrate at Barong's feet.

The gamelan players ride the animal's gestures.  They translate movement into sound.  It's like church bells, their movements as intoxicating as the holy sound.  Incense burns in clusters, its earthy smell thickening the air around us.  A charge moves through the audience as Barong and Rangda meet.

I feel it.  I feel electrified.  Here, we are - all of us - privy to a living myth.

Sacred daggers are scattered across the ground as Rangda and Barong circle one another on the stage.  To my right men scream, bodies tensed.  They lift the daggers, and drive them into their chests.  There is no blood.  The rusty implements bend as they meet flesh.  They have Barong's protection.

A shirtless man enters the space.  He beckons for something.  Another brings back a fat bundle of burning incense.  The man whacks himself, brushing his face with glowing embers.  Again and again he orders more, beating himself with the burning end.

Some of the entranced scream.  Terrifying screams.  Rangda's profile meets that of Barong.  Their confrontation erupts in flashing moments of wild movement, stomping, bursts of energy.  Percussion builds, then quiets as the movement settles into predatory circling.  Tension is felt throughout the organism of the ceremony.

There is a break in the dance.  Another scream.  The gamelan orchestra explodes and Rangda runs from the stage, guided by her consorts.  The crowd parts like a Red Sea, falling aside to make way for her defeat.  The sound of bells rises and Barong ascends to his world, lovingly escorted by holy men.

I look around for an indicator of the ceremony's completion, but nobody moves.

An old and wrinkled man, weaves to the stage.  He appears drunk and soft bodied, but these watery movements are punctuated with electric charge.  He screams and passes out.  His caretakers lift his head and place seven eggs by his side.  He wakes again and reveals a baby chicken in his hand.  The boy behind me says, "Excuse me, but I think you do not want to see this."

"Why?" I ask, "Will he kill it?"

"He will eat it."

I turn back to the man.  He wakes and wails, bites the head off of the young chicken and passes out again.  The chicken's body flaps desperately in front of me.  I could reach out and touch it if I wanted.

Disgust and wonder.  A priest comes and lifts the man's head to give him holy water.  Repossessed, he grabs the eggs and shoves them into his mouth.  Whites and yolk spill from his mouth in slimy drippings.  He gags and spits more onto his shirt.  He grabs the chick's body and tears into it, making periodic whining sounds as he consumes.  He falls back once more and a group of holy attendants carries him away with reverent dignity.

The gamelan stops.  People get up quickly and walk to the area designated for prayer, the space from whence Barong and Rangda came.  I look to my friends and slowly rise.  We follow the stream of people and kneel.  Another chicken is sacrificed.  I look around me for clues as to how to behave.  Heads down, genuflecting.  The image of the man burning himself with incense flashes in my mind.  When I look up. he is there walking by, unburnt and smiling, his once was blackened face washed and clear.

People begin to rise and depart.  I do not know how to leave, how to be normal, how to thank everyone for allowing us to be part of something this intimate.  We put our hands together and bow our heads to those we pass.  Smiling openly, casually, those that speak English bid us goodnight. "Thank you," say the people of Tegallinggah, "for coming to our ceremony."



 

This Happened:

I'm in the woods of New Hampshire with my family.  I'm preparing for a three-month stint in Southeast Asia, I'm preparing for my 30th birthday, I'm preparing for the last trip before I really settle down and (ahem) grow up.

My brother, who will also be embarking on a great adventure in the next week (he's traveling to North Carolina with a teardrop-shaped trailer that fits only his comfy bed and a few electronic devices), yells to me, "Frones!" (nickname), "Frones!  In ten minutes come out to the trailer.  I have a surprise for you." 

I wait ten minutes and walk outside.  The moon is large and the air smells like wet leaves.  He waves to me from his trailer.  "C'mon in," he says with a warmth that already sounds Southern.

I squeeze into his cubby hole - it's a full size bed with a tempurpedic mattress and a sea of fluffy blankets.  It's like being in a secret playroom fort.  We're sitting next to one another, just like old times, propped up by the pillows behind us.  Maps of national parks and family photos decorate the walls.  There are small, white cabinets that open to eye level.  Our legs stretch out underneath them.

"Joey, it's awesome in here!"

"Thanks," he says.  Then he opens one of the cabinet doors.  There, sitting in the little square space, is an itty-bitty television, perhaps the tiniest I've ever seen.  He flicks a switch.

I hear a song that transports me to a time of innocence and simple joy.  A pure feeling arises, unsullied by the worries of adulthood.  The baby tv screen comes to life and there he is...

It's Mario.  He is jumping, in all his glory, to reach a mushroom.  Not just any Mario, it's SuperMario of SuperMarioWorld.  And Yoshi appears, hatching from a green speckled shell,  and he makes that sneezy sound and I'm almost crying it's so exciting. 

Joey hands me the controller.  We enter into the magical and viscous world - where fish will kill you, flashing stars offer moments of invincibility, and our loyal steed is a ravenous dinosaur that sprouts wings upon consumption of blue turtle shells.

For the better part of the evening we play, nestled in the bedroom trailer, beneath the soft moonlight, among hoots of nearby owls.

Good Food is a Gestalt

It isn't what we eat, but how we eat that makes it part of us. 

A woman lives in a warm cottage at the foothills of the Swiss Alps.  She stands on a stool over a pot of boiling water.  On tiptoe, she carefully places pierogi into the water.  Each one was wrapped with care earlier that afternoon.  Each one stuffed lovingly with garden potatoes, wild mushrooms and the cheese she made fresh from the cow's milk.  It is her neighbor's cow and the milk was offered in exchange for her famous tomatoes.  She whispers to the boiling water - a soft song she doesn't know she is singing.  The dumplings, clearly a staple in her diet given the form she has taken over the years, bubble on her alpine stove.  Meanwhile, she continues her preparations musically, placing bread on the table, stirring the butter and parsley, pulling pressed kraut from its dark corner.  It is late summer - too early for apples, so she takes the remaining apple butter from last autumn and puts it into a bowl.  The dumplings are ready.  On tiptoe again, reaching with her ladle into the pot, she pulls them steaming from the water and places them with the same care into a large bowl.  From here she lets them sizzle momentarily in the herbed butter.  On to the plate they go, bouncing one by one, a dance that, after decades of similar ritual, still gives her childish pleasure.  She makes the sound they ought to make with their rubbery skin and pudgy insides.  When she is satisfied with their arrangement, she goes to the basement and pulls out her grandfather's wine.  It's a sweet and tart wine - her favorite, made from the juice of summer mulberries.  She wraps the bottle in a piece of cream-colored lace she crotcheted ages ago, the delicate beginning of a tiny dress.  As luck would have it, she bore only sons, so now it serves as decoration for special occasions.  She eyes her table, once a heavy tree in the nearby forest, then pauses, realizing the absence of onions.  How could she forget the very thing that made her back ache so with their harvest, that made her kitchen smell so delicious?  They are perfectly caramelized, waiting on the stove for their vessel.  She sets them in their place and calls to her guests.

We are ripened through the seasonal experience of growing and cooking and enjoying.  The loving exploration of feelings we register as uncomfortable, infuses life with gratitude and youth.  When we embrace a curious and affectionate relationship with our bodies, the question that plagues our young and privileged culture - what to eat - goes from being a distressing mystery to a playful opportunity. 

Good food cannot be quantified by measured units.  Good food is a gestalt.

The Stories We Wish Were True

Listen.

There are consequences to the unconscious repetition of stories.  Regurgitated narratives harden into what we think is true.  This is the disease of seriousness.  It reproduces history we have already learned from.  Dreams and artistic manifestation require the integrity that is built on a foundation of innovation and trust.  How do we grow these?  We tell new stories.  We resurrect mythology.

Remember that joy and sacrifice are paramount to heroism.  Healing from a history of narcissism, war, trauma, and consumerism can be playful.  Maybe it has to be. 

Bringing wonder to conflict helps sustainably restructure harmful patterns.  Imagination transforms problems into gorgeous complexities.

Listen. 

There are fairy tales wound through the magnificence of our anatomy.  Listen to them.   Celebrate the sensual experience with presence and curiosity.  Eat good food.  Smell the air.  Say thank you to everything.  This builds strength, encourages the intrinsic ability to heal.  This is how we grow ourselves, how we unlock our superhero abilities. 

In doing so, the world around us transforms into the world we dream.  The stories we wish were true become our reality.

Listen.

Healing and learning are the same thing.  Play is medicine.  Storytelling is curriculum.