DesDownunder
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AHa Yes, I knew the Debussy quote, but mine is different in that it is a play on the word 'still'
"The silence between the notes is still music."
So the silence is still music in the Debussy sense, but it is also "still (as in silent) music"
Oh, never mind me, I'm getting old. older, elderly.
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Ah, the signs of a perfect world. Utopia here we come...
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I wish... LOL
I was hoping for a threesome with Daffy Duck
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Bruin, thank you so much. I love hugs and always hug back.Some years ago I was on holidays and went to Warner Bros. Movie World theme park on the Gold Coast (in Queensland). I was approached by Sylvester the cat who wanted to have his photo taken with me, so he gave me a big hug and turned us towards the camera. Just as the photo was about to be taken, Sylvester put his arm around my body and tickled my ribs. Never one to miss out an opportunity I did the same to him. Such thin ribs.
I believe he is still recovering, from shock, in a nice room at the back of the theme park...
And yes Sydney is a long way from Adelaide, some 1,400 km by road.
have another hug.
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There you go Jason, the text is no longer baby poop yellow.
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Aww Mike, I used to think I had the most ordinary childhood, filled with the usual horrors of family life. Had I known that my folks were working hard to keep me entertained I would have paid more attention.
On the otherhand I think they were suffering from the same social taboos that keeps us all in the dark until we dare to break free and look at our lives, ready to laugh.
Thanks for the comment, I appreciate it.
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Jason, How many guests at the party? I tire easily these days.
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Not sure what you mean by "speaking to my people?" My life observations are well and truly outside the mainstream and decidedly left of centre.
I can say that Australians are of a culture that has that suspicion of bi-sexuality that seems so common to both heterosexuals and homosexuals. In other words no one trusts a bisexual.
For myself I have become aware that my discovery of my capacity for homosexual relationships at an early age was in an era where it was a criminal offence to have such relationships. I and my peer group grew up believing that if we enjoyed sex with other males then we were by definition, homosexual.
No one told us that just because you enjoyed sex with other males that you might be bi-sexual, or even capable of sex with the opposite gender.
It should have been obvious, but only after some 50 years of happily and luckily living as a homosexual, I realise that in those far off days of civilised ancient Greece that was supposed to be devoted to pederasty, (not paedophilia) those Greeks had a chlid birth rate that was slightly higher than the surrounding city-states, and the men were married to their wives. It is also true that some men did live together beyond the customary years of their adolescence. What I didn't see as a lesson from this was what I now think is a clear indication of the sexuality of human beings being far more than a label.
There is no reason other than religious dogma, for human beings not to have sexual relations with each other regardless of gender. I do think there is a tendency for us to gravitate to settling with a person for whom we develop a deep and abiding affinity, or if you prefer, love. But love does not restrict, it should expand, and that may mean, for many people, loving and varied relationships beyond the need to think of themselves as described by a sexual label.
Of course this invites criticism by those who feel the need to label themselves because of their experiences, and it is necessary to be quite clear that sexuality whether influenced by genes or experience is a human right. Sexual expression of the feelings we have for each other should never be dictated by the culture. The culture must permit individuals to express their love with those who consent to join them in a sexual relationship. If the culture does not permit such expression then individual freedom means very little and human rights are forfeit. Religious edicts which proclaim sex as sin are patently fatuous.
To sum up, being gay must be acceptable, but so should being heterosexual or bisexual, but here also, is an inherent demand in such acceptance for us to recognise that expressing our affection for each other in consensual sex is perfectly natural, regardless of gender. We don't need to think of ourselves as being anything other than able to express ourselves sexually with those we love. If we feel only capable of that expression with one gender, then that too is our human right.
As for me I'm way too long in the tooth to regard myself as anything other than a gay man, but I at least know now it wasn't my choice, but whom, I was told I was. My genes were intent on me being sexual. Isn't that hysterically funny? Human rights demand that we have the opportunity to love. Who we love is up to each of us, and our culture has no right to tell us otherwise.
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bi_janus, the little blobs, you refer to, are the motor and changeover cues for when we had to change from one projector to the other every 20 minutes. (The spools of film were around 20 minutes in length.) They have been phasing them out for a number of years now, but are still visible on older prints.
Interestingly in the days prior to the invention of acetate safety film which was slow to burn, the highly flammable nitrate base film was shipped in ten minute reels so that if it caught fire it would minimise the amount of damage it did.
Digital projection is unnerving for some people because it lacks that small movement that comes from the projector, and just happens to coincide with our own internal human jitter as we perceive the real world. This is similar, again, to the imperfections in vinyl audio discs which suffered from a background noise that many people became accustomed to hearing. Digital recording can be deathly silent and that silence is worrisome to those people who are used to hearing the reference hiss from vinyl or the optical soundtrack on film.
For a long time the digital image lacked resolution in the blacks, making it difficult for viewers to discern shadows in dark images.
A lot of effort was put into achieving high contrast rates that would overcome this problem. It is now very reasonable. However the whites 'shimmering' is a dead give-away of a digital image, even if it is released as on film. Also look for the night sky scenes in which the sky has a certain luminescence almost impossible to capture on film stock without great care.
Many of the older generation of film-makers, technical artists, and projectionists find the digital image lacking in film's ability to diversify the director's artistic 'vision'. I have little doubt that this will be met, in time, with an even greater range of aestheticism, but for the moment both digital sound and image do suffer from being neutered in the artistic emotional sense when compared with the heights achieved in analogue recording.
Expect to see rich vibrant colors back in the movies (near you) as soon as they can do it.
Cole, yeah they pay the projectionist, the manager, and the cleaner.
I scare small children even without the costume and the makeup, - no charge.
I'm not sure what you would throw at me if I sat with you in the darkened theatre, but I am sure we can shock the patrons sitting either side of us with little effort.
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One can always tell a rational. intelligent person because they use the word, Eschatology, instead of saying, 'the End Times'.
We share a similar moment at our 17th year of age, EleCivil. I had been raised to believe and pray to God etc, as a protestant (Aussie mode). But it became apparent that my praying had not cured my congenital hole in the heart, and so began a series of questioning that accompanied my already established investigation of why I liked other males rather than girls. This strangely led me to trust the surgeons at the local hospital who repaired my heart.
When the cardiac surgeon, a very intelligent, humane and caring man, told me I could go home and expect to live a normal life, I thanked him for using his skills to help me. His demeanour changed, his aloofness melted as he shook me by the hand and thanked me for thanking him. "Most people," he told me, "were too busy thanking, Him up there, " as he pointed to the sky, "instead of me and my team. Thank you."
I later learned he was an atheist, and I would agree with you, Ele, that had he been a believer in a god, he would still have extended my life with his skills as a surgeon. But there is another interesting factor in this man's attitude to his work. He was a heterosexual man with a family, but he had staffed his ward and surgical team with many people who were gay, because they were the ones who would drop everything to attend a medical emergency to help save a life.
From that moment of my surgery, my questioning of the reason for life spiralled towards my firm non-belief in gods.
Yet in those dark days of criminal prosecution for committing homosexual acts, and the pressure to believe, it still took me 5 years to undo all the indoctrination of my childhood. Indeed so-called 'Enlightenment' means, in some sense, to constantly be overcoming the conditioning of one's own culture.
Most important was this extract from a book written by an ex-Anglican minister who had also been influenced by Zen:
“If, the scientists would say, you believe in God, you must do so on purely emotional grounds, without basis in logic or fact. Practically speaking, this may amount to atheism. Theoretically, it is simple agnosticism. For it is the essence of scientific honesty that you do not pretend to know what you do not know, and of the scientific method that you do not employ hypotheses which cannot be tested.” (-Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity.)
This leaves the honest person in the somewhat precarious position of unsatisfyingly having to admit that he just doesn't know. Neither belief nor non-belief can alleviate the uncertainty of the agnostic, but accepting reality as we experience it, without imposing mindful misinterpretations or myths, brings us close to the physicist Eddington’s idea that, “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what.”
To cut short this long intrusion into your blog, I will sum up with this observation. A religious man is one who seeks to know himself, to know the truth about life, and doesn't let the discovery of 'knowing that he cannot know' from ever stopping him from seeking the answer that is only ever knowable for the moment it exists.
I have to agree with Ben, keep being your awesome self.
And I agree with bi_janus who posted whilst I was writing the above, the world is indeed a lovelier place with you in it. You have brought me much pleasure and contentment with your stories and posts.
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oh, okay, Impertinence Day it is.
You couldn't have meant Impotence, could you?
![:flasher[1]:](https://forums.awesomedude.com/uploads/emoticons/default_flasher%5B1%5D.gif)
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Of course you could just teach him Australian, we communicate in most dialects of English, even if we don't have any idea of what they mean.
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Zen and the art of crane dancing?
Your words shared the experience with me, thank you.
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Thanks bi_janus. A national holiday for impudence.; Impudence Day. I like it.
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I am not the least bit surprised by your dispatch. I remember a guy explaining to me when I was just an enthusiastic young gay man that the world does not understand those who love both women and men.
I have come to consider that consenting human sexual encounters are all perfectly normal, but we were led to believe otherwise. If we have a homosexual experience at an early age or discover that the male form is sexually appealing then the rule imposed on us, until quite recently, was that we must then be homosexual. If instead we only made love to the opposite sex then we must call ourselves heterosexual...or 'normal'.
I look back and think how I should have seen through that concept; not that I feel any regret or guilt for having lived as a gay man, I don't. No one told us it was possible to gravitate towards loving either or both sexes, and from that, form a bond with one person in love; one person who might be of either sex.
Genetic determination may be no more than a propensity, stronger in some than others, and stronger for one sex or the other. Alternatively, or even additionally, it is possible that genes determine that we love and seek sexual expression exclusively with one gender denying the other, but also influenced by our experiences.
The problem with solely citing the genetic factor for sexual orientation, is that it not only offers the bigoted a temptation to try to alter the determining gene, but overlooks, even denies, the fact that with whom we practise consenting sexual expression is not a sin, but a human right; the inalienable individual human right to love and express that love sexually with whomever consents to join us in that expression. That is what is 'natural'.
Some of us will only want to do that with one gender, others will be perfectly happy to vary their sexual encounters, while I suspect most will find a partner with whom they bond for life, or at least a very long time. Love is the determining factor.
The thing is, that thinking about sex, and acting on our thoughts about sex is different from our natural instinct to have sex. We are as humans, all potentially attracted to each other sexually, in my opinion, but we are told we can only be attracted to one gender or the other, and only more recently has it become somewhat acceptable to like both genders.
I am not referring to being bisexual, or even asexual, just that we are perfectly capable of finding ourselves attracted to each other despite our predilection for one sex or the other, or both.
It may well be that we are still escaping the religious contamination that condemns our natural inclination to make love to whomever will consent to making love with us. Overcoming those religious influences will require a shift in our cultural values, including primitive jealousies, to accommodate our natural sexual expressions as well as finding acceptable models for child rearing whether they be anything from single parent through to biological family to village child rearing.
At the moment I would be happy with a movement that sought to do away with the concept of consensual sex as some kind of 'sin'.
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Aha ... Zen and the art of being Jason.
Wonderful.
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Thanks Ben for your posts on my blog thingy.
Your insight into acceptance of obviously different views on religion is wonderful to read. You and I both shared our thoughts and attitudes being expanded by young Codey, who I think understood what it meant to love diversity of opinion. And he was beyond his years in his ability to inspire, forgive, love and let live those around him. Codey showed us it is possible to never stop adapting and evolving ourselves by learning about life.
The difficulty in addressing the bullies and the bigots is that whilst it is not difficult to show them up for what they are, it is virtually impossible for their critics to hold a rational discussion with them without being accused of being a force for evil, or violating their rights of free speech and religious belief. That of course is a Constitutional discussion in itself.
Still, I dare to point at the pending attempts to reinstate the Inquisition with condemnation, and sometimes that means being a lot sadder for them than they so often deserve. I'll probably write something on that one day, and hope I don't upset too many peaceful believers. After all things are what they are, or as a friend of mine once wrote, "It rains, it does not rain, and still the flowers grow."
Thanks again for your comments Ben.
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What an epic blog entry!
In fact it is too good to be a blog entry, and too long to be a Flash Fiction, even if the flashing was not fiction. Maybe you should consider just publishing as a real life story.
It would surely be the best selling autobiography of the decade.
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So I clicked on the link and was shocked to see that the Dudeists have a similar symbol to my DesDownunder Award. Obviously great minds think alike. I may have to join and start a Knights Dudelar Retreat for old Dudes in Australia.
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Searcing has provided the information that Carrots and Celery may have been continued under the title of Quasi-Gay. In addition Karla wrote another story called The Preppie and the Punk, which at least one person thought was better than Carrots.
The above fits in with my recall and I sort of lost interest when the Carrots and Celery title was continued with chapters called Quasi-Gay.
I think I remember starting Preppie and the Punk, but something happened to stop my pursuing it.
Anyway, all of the above seem to be have taken off the net. So much for the phrase, "Once it's on the Net, it's there forever."
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I remember that story, and I liked it a lot.
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It could be worse, I could make a recording of me imitating Susan Boyle.
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My God, I have missed reading your writing, Jason. You are one talented thirty-something twink on a train.I agree with Camy, Jwolf's story couldn't possibly be as good as what we are reading here in your blog. I mean, you give reality life, and we love you for it. So many deviations in your story and yet you make us, the readers, the deviants for wanting more. Tantalizing, teasing, tormenting twinks need to be trained and you are just the man for the job. Hugs,
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Camy, from your description of your neighbours it sounds like you moved to Australia. Or perhaps the girl was from Oz; she certainly has the language down pat.If she is still there on Monday let me know and I will get the Australian secret police to pick her up and ship her back to whichever drongo suburb she escaped from.I have this image in my mind of an emu peeking around the curtains with wide-eyed astonishment at the carryings-on. I imagine a cup of tea was much needed afterwards. Perhaps you can get the broadband supplier to provide some cucumber sandwiches.
Bruin, thank you so much. I love hugs and always hug back.
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Vampirism
in (Ele)Civil Disobedience
A blog by EleCivil in General
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I want to enrol in your class, Ele, do you take mature age students? Can I pay admission fees and just watch?
(Transitive properties, for a Transylvania defence.)