Kelli vs. Miley or "Yuck" vs. "Enchanted!"

The collective social concept of sexuality is "devolving," no?

Uh, no. 

To borrow a phrase once used by someone I know: I knew I was heterosexual at a very early age. From as early as I can remember, I was powerfully attracted to the opposite sex. It was silly, really. (Isn't it, always?) 

Ask any man, and he will agree: sometimes, you felt like Curly from The Three Stooges in the episode in which he was conditioned to a Pavlovian response to a bell: ding, and he started boxing. Except, for us, a pretty girl was the bell and you couldn't just start...uh...boxing. So, then, you were the cowboy from the old movies jumping out onto the team of horses to the stagecoach to stop the whole thing before it fell off of the cliff.

The Tasteless Joke of Fate

Once, a young student stifled my instinctual and unshakable belief in the afterlife -- when I had mentioned my inability to grasp the idea of oblivion -- by pointing out the feeling of being under anesthesia; the complete absence of the perception of the passage of time that one experiences before and after an operation. It was an eye-opener, even if I wound up still believing, in the end, after some real intellectual trials.

Now, I'm given very solid reasons to question the idea of the state of existence, itself.

Dementia. Many of our elder parents and grandparents fall victim. They lose themselves. They can't think; they can't express themselves. People we know to have been brilliant, creative and sharp-witted, often take their last bows on life's stage not to applause while juggling knives and playing concertos, but in a state not knowing how to accomplish such simple tasks as buttering their own bread. Sometimes, their personalities change, altogether. A mother we know to have been patient and kind might accuse a son or daughter of vile transgressions; she might throw a sandwich across the room -- a sandwich that was lovingly made. A father who was a guide on every difficult front becomes one who needs guidance, himself -- maybe even to get from the bathroom to a chair.

The Distant Ones (A Parable)

When the Traveler returned from his journey to the future, he staggered into the room, unshaven, exhausted. His clothing was rumpled and his skin was pale. My first instinct was to somehow discern, by the twitching in the corners of his mouth or from the removed look in his eyes or from the slight quivering of his hand as he filled his glass with port wine, what it might have been that he had endured.

His expression was not one of frantic horror, but of a frozen kind of terror; better still, it was one born of a draining fear that had depleted him of the ability to scream out. He was an emptied vessel. He was a ship under shredded sails.

I let him sit back in his chair and drain his glass and then another. It wouldn't do to force him to talk. He would need to come to it on his own. What idea could I have as to the trials he had endured on his journey into the distant future? What monsters had he seen? What horrors of human evolution had he witnessed? Maniacal genocides? Rampant oppression?

We sat, without speaking, amidst the clicking din of the numerous clocks in his parlour. As he sat, his forehead balanced on his right hand, a third glass of port dangled from his left, tilted to the brink of spilling. I tried to let my gaze fall on anything other than him, so as not to pressure him into speech. I surveyed the handsomely bound books that lined the room; the guttering oil lamps that sent delicate ribbons of black smoke into the shadows on the ceiling and set the red wood of the desk aglow; the clutter of notes, drawings and papers thereon; the arabesque Indian patterns in the carpet below my shoes; the fine Havana between my fingers...

In Defense of Dr. Phil (and of Women Everywhere)

There are many times when I look at what is going on around me and think it must be some elaborate hoax staged for my benefit. Then, I realize I'm not that important and go back to wondering what the heck everyone else is thinking.

Dr. Phil, for instance. Have you heard about the tweet? Here it is (was -- he took it down):

"If a girl is drunk, is it OK to have sex with her? Reply yes or no to @drphil #teensaccused "

People flipped out over this. Twitter users attacked him. I even just looked at a TIME magazine article that called it the "disappearing rape tweet" and that says: "Outrage after TV therapist asks if date rape is justified."

Seriously?

I'm no Dr. Phil fanatic, but the guy does a TV show and he discusses sometimes controversial interpersonal topics about which he expresses his opinions. The tweet, above, looks like a pretty straight-forward. 

(Maybe we English teachers are to blame, for teaching people how to "interpret" things -- to read below the written word. Maybe more English teachers should make a point of doing what I do with young readers of poetry: teach them to grasp the literal concepts before they start jumping to messages about life, love and death.)

C&D Bike Repair (A Memoir Parable)

On a sprawlingly long, deliciously cool summer day, when I was about eleven or twelve, my friend Dave and I decided to put in some hard work. We were going to open a bike repair shop.

We dug in to the work, clearing out and organizing my parent's aluminum storage shed in the back yard. We put things where they belonged and hung things on pegs. We swept. We gathered up the available tools (not that many were around in the home of a trumpet player/arranger, but we made-do) and put them on a shelf, neatly lined up. If I'm not mistaken, we polished them with our breath and a rag, too.

When we were finished organizing, we examined the fruits of our labor -- must have been five-hours' work -- with fists on evaluative hips. I remember bending to pick up a small piece of dried leaf from the concrete floor. It wouldn't do to have the alabaster interrupted by some deciduous intruder, after all we'd done.

We looked at each other. What was next? We snapped our fingers: the sign.

We walked to the nearest store and purchased poster board with the change I kept in my room in a nine-inch high, toy Mosler safe (with a real combination lock). We gathered up markers and paints and pencils and rulers. I, having already been recognized as the neighborhood bohemian (despite my modestly impressive talents as a third baseman) was given the task of creating the sign. Dave reclined in the shade of our walnut tree, a blade of grass between his teeth, as I set to work. Eventually, he fell asleep, no doubt dreaming of the wealth we would accrue as bicycle repair moguls.