bi_janus

Snake Creeps Downward Bi Janus 新年快樂 What a pity to mistake low things for evil things. That which creeps upon the ground is the spine of what blooms in the clouds.

Here is the other transgressive painting mentioned in the poem. http://www.rembrandtpainting.net/rmbrndt_1636-1654/susanna_and_elders.htm

Who gives a s**t about the Niners or the Ravens. Let's hear it for Calvin Klein.

This must be why fame eludes me: http://olive.columbi...ish-skin-custom

On Viewing Two Sailors Urinating by Charles Demuth, 1930 Bi Janus We are cast as the Elders ogling Susanna at her toilet. But you put us on our knees confronting the cocks instead of leaving us in the greenery peering down. Are you bringing us to concupiscent silence at one man holding both members? Susanna and all her sisters seem to sigh in acquiescence. As men we should perhaps understand the transgression, strictly a crime, but understandable. You gave not the sailors to women as Rembrandt gave Susanna to lechers – they are for our eyes. Only in this way could you make equal the transgressions, as the sailors sigh but not in acquiescence.

What is this "Windows" of which you speak?

I am currently working on the third installment of the Goldendale trilogy. One of the characters is an adolescent M2F. I see no reason why, given enough research and sensitivity, such characters shouldn't appear in our work. We write straight characters, don't we? Granted, we probably know more straight people than transgendered people. If you find yourself guessing what such a character's reaction might be in a given situation, more research might be indicated. The issue of what age is appropriate to begin transition is controversial as is the place of Gender Identity Disorder in the DSM-IV-TR. What amazes me is the complex array of gender identities any of which may match with various sexual orientations. Chris, you may well find resources in your community who will help you with the accuracy of your portrayal. One thing I've learned is that many transgendered people are tired of being asked to explain their situations and feel the burden of education should rest with those seeking education.

The beat goes on. http://nyti.ms/WIfBkd

If you haven't watched this locally produced documentary by KUED in Salt Lake City of all places and supported by the B. W. Bastian Foundation, you'll find it worthwhile. The short film explores homelessness in LBGTQ young people. http://www.kued.org/...ns/outside/film

The remarkable film director Oshima Nagisa has died near Tokyo. In his 1999 film Taboo, he dealt with the strong current of homoeroticism present in training centers for young samurai during the Shogunate. I must say that the most beautiful male film actor I have seen is Matsuda Ryuhei, playing one of the trainees. Taboo was in some ways a follow-up to his sensational In the Realm of the Senses. His obit in the Times calls him an iconoclast, and he was all of that in the culture of Japanese film from the late fifties onward. If you can find Taboo, take a look, although the subtitles are poorly done.

Recently I read an opus on Nifty recommended by VWL. I thought one of the main characters' voice was much like that of the characters in a book I read in 2001 just after it was published. I'm rereading it now, ten plus years later. The book remains a jewel, a story of friendship, struggle, and setting small goals (in this case involving swimming). The two main characters are poor Irish lads living during WW I and through the Easter 1916 Irish uprising; they discover friendship that turns to love while helping one another define themselves. Life in a very Catholic Ireland of that time coupled with Irish nationalism and poverty made for a difficult life. If you like Joyce, you'll like this.

From today's NYT: http://lens.blogs.ny...-in-vietnam/?hp

Sex, the Animal Bi Janus Sex, the animal, is but a small part of us, he says. Which way we are pulled is no great matter, the soul weighing what it does, he says. I wonder aloud at him. You’re a fucking liar, afraid to admit how much your prick weighs against your soul. Or, you’re not pulled so much as stuck. Sex, the animal, says he, is an appurtenance, a dim signal of magisterial humanity. Let’s pull it out as we might a vermiform vestige. You twit, I moan. Sanctimony draping pure electric body won't give you respite from looking over your shoulder to find the wolf in your eye's corner and your fields all overgrown with lavender.

Loowit (2003) Bi Janus Loowitlatkla (Lady of Fire) was, in the myth of the people of the middle Columbia River, an old woman who was made by a powerful spirit immortal, then beautiful, and finally a mountain that white men call St. Helens The hard paths vouch us solitude and we need solitude to find what is in us. On the hard paths we carry everything important on us and we need to see what is in us. At the end of day at the midpoint of the hard path we are stripped, as the thinning forest is, to necessity. Unsheltered in solitude we reach in to see what we can do here, naked to each other on the mountain, on the hard path where no one other will come. Your scent and mine on the hard path begin an enquiry in the ancient brain, the brain of mammals startled in an act. We wonder who takes whom on the hard path by the meltwater, the meltwater almost flashed to vapor by what we find in the solitude of the hard path on Loowit’s flank.

Not sure where to post this. Interesting idea and interesting sound of 3,000 odd voices individually and in different parts of the world singing parts of a composition. They upload their performances to YouTube and the videos are combined and the audio scrubbed to achieve a single huge choir. At the first URL, the composer explains the process; at the second URL, one of his compositions sung by a virtual choir. http://www.huffingto..._b_2175526.html

Human Thanksgiving Bi Janus I, having waked, feel you stretching in contented sleep as I have felt men do in contentment, though you are not a man. Whether with yang of men or with nothingness that is woman’s yin, I flow to the opposite pole, and the contentment just before waking is the same, something in the spirit, if spirit exists, is the same. Beneath the heated blanket, not waking alone, but not strictly aware that I am with you, the sigh and the reach of your arm to mine as I draw a breath is our thanksgiving.

A Single Word Bi Janus For Jack Gilbert The Orang said he never thought a single word enough for a line. I did it often enough that he reconsidered, but I flim-flammed him by not pointing to you.

John Schwartz's book Oddly Normal has just been released. The book, written with his son's help, details the travails of raising his third son who happens to be gay. The book is really about how we treat the different among us and in particular how the school system treats different children. Coming out is only one problem Schwartz's son, Joe, confronts. The story of how parents navigate a system intent on diagnosing and usually medicating every difference brought me to thinking about the uncertainties of deciding when our children should be medicated and when they should not. What degree of difference is pathological? Fortunately, no one suggests that the boy's emerging sexuality is a pathology. The diagnostic issues have more to do with the autism spectrum. The book is a nice read, and the last chapter is charming.

Apparently high school locker rooms are not as I remember them. http://www.nytimes.c...ml?ref=magazine

Some days are just too wearying. http://www.nytimes.c...ng-program.html

Moon on the First Day of Autumn 2012 at the Columbia River Bi Janus Moon in moving water Moon and water shimmer Water stained clear No longer look heavenward Explication: In the moment before you complained before you looked heavenward you were beyond now and then Chasing that moment now is useless yet you cannot put it out of mind and deserve what you get

Tenuously connected to the post in another forum about a seven-year-old and a t-shirt, this in the NYT ahead of National Coming Out Day on the 11th. The results of the less than rigorous surveys cited in the article point to the difficulties kids are still having. The writer of the piece is soon publishing a book about raising a gay son. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/fashion/helping-a-gay-child-to-come-out.html?ref=fashion

I like your use of the word, "Missing," which can mean lost, failing to connect, or longing for, particularly as a whole line. The plasticity and ambiguity of the English language makes it superior tool for poetry. Thanks for posting this.

If you are concerned about controlling the ripples, you had best not drop the pebble into a large pond.

I have been often enough misunderstood that I feel obligated to short-circuit some reflexive knee-jerking. The following is not a paean to suicide, quite the opposite. The poem comes from an internal struggle about whether or not refusing treatment might be considered suicidal or weak. The struggle isn't about what others might think, but about my own uncertainty given that I reject suicide as a solution to any problem. As well, I want to be clear that I intend no insensitivity to those affected by suicide. If the subject seems painful to you, pass on before reading the verse. Metaphysics of Suicide Bi Janus for Abe Sensei The oncologist glares. I’d like to fire you; refusing treatment is craven and suicidal, says he. No, I tell him -- your equality is in error. Suicide itself, an error born of misperception that the rest of painful life is more than fleeting, that its own end is distant though it comes the next instant no matter what one does, though not an unforgivable error. But, my way kills your hope, not mine.