bi_janus
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Posts posted by bi_janus
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"brilliant with naiveté" — very nice!
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From an essay in the NYT by Roy Peter Clark:
As a writer and teacher, I try to learn something about the craft every day. A gold coin of inspiration may come in my reading, in a conversation with another writer or even in the process of revising this essay.
I learned an important lesson, somewhat unwittingly, on July 19, 1975, while watching an interview with two of my favorite writers, William F. Buckley Jr. and Tom Wolfe. Mr. Wolfe was making fun of an art critic who had begun an essay with the sentence “Art and ideas are one.”
“Now, I must give him credit for this,” said Mr. Wolfe. “If you ever have a preposterous statement to make … say it in five words or less, because we’re always used to five-word sentences as being the gospel truth.”
The five-word sentence as the gospel truth.
The full essay is here:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/the-short-sentence-as-gospel-truth/?ref=opinion
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David Levithan's latest, Two Boys Kissing, has a number of plot lines connected by the device of a sort of Greek chorus, in this case a group of ghosts all of whom died of AIDS-related illnesses in the anni horribilis. The main plot element is an attempt by two high school students to break the Guinness World Record for the longest kiss. Short and worth a look.
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A Day's Work
Bi JanusOnly those who have let go
every possession,
every dear heart,
every belief and doodad,
every desire for more,
every desire for less,
every friend and lover,
every parent and child,
every tenet of faith,
every grasping,Only those who have let go
every valuable and raiment,
having nothing more to lose,
are not cowed in fear
at the dawn of day,
at the end of days.Yet, this evening,
with relaxed hands
I carry with me still,
just on my fingertips,
her and him.
Perhaps the groan
in the last exhalation
will be worth their weight. -
And what a silly difference to punish people over. A nice description of the greater ocean of our similarities to others. Thanks, Camy.
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An interesting essay by a bedrock catholic conservative intellectual:
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Here' Woody's take: "I'm a practicing heterosexual, although bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night." Saturday night is a whole different ball game. The last lines refer to comment my mother made to me in 1965 when I was bemoaning my fate. Comments like that one are why I survived, along with Friday nights.
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Mom’s Advice on How Bisexual Teenagers Should Live(1965)
Bi JanusSticks and stones
may break your bones,
but not their confusion.They see you here,
they see you there,
your target always moving.In Darwin’s joyous revolution,
survivors pressed by evolution,
you have no perverse bent.So, stop your weepy whine.
Without dichotomy to define,
you have an enviable fate,
twice the chance of a Friday date. -
Sometimes I despair of humankind. A disturbing article in today's NYT regarding "corrective rape" in South Africa.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/07/26/opinion/26corrective-rape.html?hp
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Ann is a devotee of crime fiction, and when she read a review of this book, she ordered a copy, read it in an evening, and enjoyed it although she found many of the reviews a bit too effusive. Many reviews said the the book was particularly accomplished for a first novel. I'm now having a go at it. The rest of the story is below:
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DOMA had far-reaching effects beyond marriage itself including effects on immigration. I have a relative living in the UK with his partner who is a British citizen. One probable immediate effect of SCOTUS's ruling is that if they come to my home state and are married, ICE will process my relative's application for a green card for his partner, which it would not do prior to the ruling. Since federal immigration law preempts any state attempt from regulating immigration, only a finding that Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional would the immigration system change in this regard.
However, they would probably have to reside in one of the states that recognizes their marriage at the time of their application, and the effect of moving to a state that doesn't do so on his partner's immigration status is unclear. A state by state approach here isn't very helpful.
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Pec is quite right about the book's setting -- American's think everything's about their country or maybe that error was due to my addlepated state. In any event, I hope people will read Kathleen winter's book, Annabel, to which I compared this one as I was reading it (apparently not all that carefully).
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A newspaper book reviewer I know sent me a copy of this book. The thing is frustrating. The story treats an all-american family with a secret -- one of their sons in an intersex child raised by them as a boy. Although it's easy to cast the book as a polemic about the travails of children like Max, I think it's more about the damage that secrecy in families does. The narrative frame is Rashomon-like, with the same events narrated from the points of view of a number of the main characters (I don't see this as a flaw, Pec).
I'm happy to see a serious attempt at fiction about intersex children (whose genetic anomalies produce a wide variety of expression). The story is warm if a bit melodramatic.
The downsides are that although the protagonist, Max, is finely drawn, the other characters are nearly one-dimensional, especially the mother. I get the feeling that the author set out to create a novel acceptable to mainstream readers, perhaps not a bad approach since little fiction is available on the subject (the notable exception is Annabel by Kathleen Winter, a better book, I think). This one seems almost aimed at the young adult market. The author is from the UK but does a good job with the American high school environment.
The author's been on an American book tour, and recently read at Powell's on Hawthorne in Portland and at The Tattered Cover in Denver. All in all, I'm glad I read it, and if you're interested in the difficulties of intersex children, it's worth a read.
Warning: There is a fairly graphic sexual assault scene early on.
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Rudnick is pretty funny.
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Virtuoso!
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Elias Ascends
Bi Janus
The middle country seemed right,
full of spines and deserts,
for a liaison neither of us
thought wise given our parting.
We thought we would age together
at a distance, perhaps finding
others to help soothe the wolf,
love being tended fruit, not miracle.
We did, though twenty years
together insinuated
in our souls comforts
all the loves we ever made.
A glistening joy, every liquid
we could exude clinging to us.
Enough about that, the room.
We were boys and old men.
As your namesake did, you ascend
in the whirlwind but on a fiery plane.
Here is what I know of you –
upon my face, an unsighing smile.
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The poem is certainly not written as anything other than a consideration of that moment on the threshold of death. Nagasaki is the setting because of the few conversations with my father that I remember, the ones about his presence in Nagasaki after the bombing and surrender are clearest to me. When Kurosawa released Rhapsody in August in 1993-4, the film became fodder for the continuing argument about whether the bombings were necessary. He was roundly criticized even in Japan for not balancing the film with information about Japanese atrocities and militarism. I saw the film as treating one woman's experience of the catastrophe. The poem describes a particular instance of a universal experience.
The firebombing of Dresden was as horrific as the fission bombing. The politics of war aside, we should consider individual humans caught in the inferno.
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Nagasaki
Bi Janus
Sun bleeds to the line
where sky melts into sea.
The end moves ahead,
a mirage in verdure.
The heat on my back
turns me for an instant,
the flash long passed,
before the fire consumes.
Few see my mouth,
corners turned up,
the grin blossoming
in the sweet psyche
And lost to the world
in the dispersion of vapor.
Nothing is harder than
speaking old verity newly.
Life and death
vary not one whit.
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Scar (1978)
Bi Janus
Your stare has as its focus
not some distance of dissociation
but me as I peel the dressing
as I would the skin of an orange.
Your aspect is the one you
show when seeing something novel.
We have turned half-circle
caregiver and caretaker,
changing poles as we age.
You, father and mother both,
loving to me in my difference,
now in disease submit to me.
Perhaps you raised me
just for this employment,
but not for yourself alone.
The lesson here is almost
the last you impart to me.
You are unashamed at needing
intimate help.
You do not seem weak as you ask
this favor of me.
I know you would find a way
if I, in favor of your motherhood,
found myself unable.
The livid gash where once
your right breast lay,
knitted as a moccasin is sewn,
is the outward sign
of your life course,
jagged, a peregrination.
Now my erotic compass
is oriented, and you
are more friend
than idealized womanhood.
The peroxide, the careful
examination for suppuration,
and then, a fresh, sterile skin
is replaced, carefully taped.
Still, the touch of your hand
comforts me as it did
when I was only your child.
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Tulips and Daffodils
Bi Janus
We worked the bed at noon
and in early evening twilight,
consigning tulips and daffodils,
surprised by the excavated
claws and canines in the dirt
until supine and side by side
at twilight in the backyard,
a thin blanket between
grass spears thrusting
against our skin
the darkness comes on
relentless to cover us
and you keep us uncovered
In a world translated to ghosting shades,
the wolf's spirit resurrected circles in shadow,
eyes aglow with the moon, stars on the ground,
your song living in his blood,
and he inclines to you always as
your breath in his nostrils sustains him
At rest on the grass
your breath I draw
into my mouth
until shades are but
shadows awaiting the dawn
Next to me even soft edges
of your familiar form
are but reminders, whispers
of your flesh in daylight
as the wolf keens in the night
of what drives us to silence
and rituals of flesh and spirit
in which eyes are superfluous
as they are in dreams
We dream in the twilight of morning
coming on, reaching to the clarity of dawn,
though enough brilliant light
conceals as much as night
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Apparently, when Republicans no longer have to run in primaries, some of them have an amazing evolution.
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Very nicely done, James. I wish a splash would do the trick.
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Thanks. Those of you hailing from Florida may recognize the event at the heart of the story, the destruction of one span of the Sunshine Skyway across Tampa Bay by the Summit Venture in May of 1980.
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John Patrick Shanley's take on the man and the church. Shanley is the playwright of "Doubt" and others.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/opinion/farewell-to-an-uninspiring-pope.html?ref=opinion
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More of us and more of them? Or, the perils of interpreting social research
in News & Views
Posted
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/09/study-polls-may-underestimate-anti-gay-sentiment-and-size-of-gay-lesbian-population/