On Coming Out

Reflecting on Sundance and the films that really moved me. Love Free or Die about Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopalian church who broke ground for the myriad other clergy who came out as a result. It was powerful. Hearing talk about "the truth will set you free" was so emotionally charged for me. The risks inherent in taking a stand are great when you are the first or one of the first.

Also so moving was Question Bridge: Black Males, an installation in the New Frontier section at Sundance. It's "a transmedia art project that seeks to represent and redefine Black male identity in America. Through video mediated question and answer exchange, diverse members of this "demographic" bridge economic, political, geographic, and generational divisions."

Sitting in the dark with about a dozen other people watching this conversation among black men on five tv monitors was so mesmorizing and profoundly moving. The men are looking directly at you (the camera) asking really hard questions, and talking about what it's like to be black - really talking to each other. It such a privilege to be part of the inner thoughts of these men - who are all ages and come from all walks of life. Men in prison. Men who are clearly very successful. All different shades of black. In total the piece is about three hours long, and I stayed for almost an hour. There's a section of the conversation about being gay and black. I'm not sure how many black men participated in the whole project, but it seemed like 50 or more. Not all were gay. But those who were discussed it, and the theme of "the truth will set you free" was there, too. As well as the risks one takes in coming out. The courage these men embody made me cry.

Being in the closet and coming out. I'm so fascinated by people's decision to come out, how they do it and how it changes their lives. How they feel afterwards. How they find their communities and are able to live their lives more fully, and find their expression and right livelihoods. On one hand it baffles me that our sexuality is such a big deal - that it defines us so profoundly even though sexual activity takes up really such a small amount of our time each day - say relative to work and sleep. On the other hand, it's so core to who we are and everything we do. As the filmmaker Marialy Rivas said, "Sexuality drives everything. The only certainty is death, so everything we do is against that, and sex is one of the things we do. It’s there all the time."

Sometimes, often, I feel like a freak. I've been reading an interesting blog called freaksexual by Pepper Mint, recommended by one of my therapists. Also some great essays on pepperminty.com. Connecting some dots with the queer movement.

Sundance Quotes

Great quotes from panelists at the Cinema Cafe this morning: Terence Nance (Oversimplification of Her Beauty), Marialy Rivas (Young & Wild) and Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild) with John Nein.

Ben Zeitlin on voice-over rules for Beasts: Hushpuppy never says how she feels or what’s going to happen. The voice-over is the result of conversations I had with six-year-old actress about what she thinks about the world...So it was a window into my head.

Terence Nance on voice over rules for Oversimplification: All the voices are mine, all of my nine selves. Most of the time it’s omniscient narrator, but sometimes it’s first person, sometimes it's second person, depending on what I want to communicate. It's tough to be really self-aware when you are talking in first person.

Marialy Rivas: Sexuality drives everything. The only certainty is death, so everything we do is against that, and sex is one of the things we do. It’s there all the time.

Ben Zeitland on the process of choosing collaborators: Everything matters. If you have an original idea but approach it with a generic process, it’s going to end up tasting like a Subway sandwich. If you make a point to choose exactly the right butter, people may not be aware of it, but it makes the film taste exactly the way you want it to.

Ben Zeitland: You have to be willing to pull the boat yourself, because you start out with a big crew, but it ends up just you, with your own time, resolve and stamina.

Marialy Rivas on how to keep the vision over the long haul of making the film: I always remind myself of why I fell in love with this. And if it doesn’t fit, I throw it away.

Ben on how to keep the vision: I do a lot of screenings. I am most focused on what I want something to communicate to my audience – not whether something is shot a certain way or has a certain color. So I watch the way a scene screens with an audience, and whether are reacting to a scene the way I want them to. 

Self-Care

A colleague very unexpectedly died on Monday. Not someone I knew well, but someone who touched the lives of many people I know. He was the boss of my close friends at the San Francisco Film Society with whom I'm staying in Park City. Bingham Ray.

Navigating Sundance after a tragedy such as this has been tough. You have to be on your game to get to the right places at the right times, and to make all the decisions that result in a full day of the best films - or even just films.

Yesterday I did not feel on my game. I saw a shorts program that was disturbing and mostly bad, did a bunch of remote work that had accumulated, and then went to a panel that wasn't a panel - just people congratulating themselves one at a time. More work, which must be done wherever you happen to be, then had dinner with a group of bright-eyed St. Mary's College students: probably the best part of the day.

I took a break this morning to ski with my friend Joanne. It's what I wanted to do. It was a day of self-care, which would make my therapist proud.

My son Joseph's friends hooked us up with free equipment and lift tickets, which was awesome. Made me feel good about my son, and even better about skiing.

Skiing...The quiet. The challenge of getting down the mountain as fast as you can without eating shit (a face full of snow and/or breaking something). Sitting at the top of a beautiful Wasatch mountain under a blue sky with big puffy clouds and seeing for hundreds of miles in all directions. Then finding ancient muscle memory, from when you were much stronger and bolder, and allowing yourself to give over to it, to trust those muscles even when they burn, and you are saying out loud in your mind, "turn! turn! turn!" and sometimes can't really see because everything in front of you is white.

There were hardly any people.

We skiied so hard my legs were shaking like jello afterwards.

I just escaped to Kashmir with Valley of the Saints, a small, beautiful film. The rest of the week, starting right now, I will focus on seeing as many films as I can pack in. The crowds are diminishing, which is nice.

This Sundance isn't about parties for me. It's been more serious. Today was somewhat frivolous and such a wonderful break from the gloom brought on by Bingham's untimely death.

Sundance

It's an odd phenomenon. Tens of thousands of people leaving their fair-weathered homes to come battle a snowstorm to see movies. And meet other people who love movies. It's seeing your people, but not all of them are your people. They are all your people when you are sitting in a dark room and you are all moved together by the art of filmmaking in a spectacular demonstration of the human spirit. They are not your people when you are on the shuttle and they are talking shit about a film you loved. Or vice versa.

This year I'm seeing mostly docs and all three I've seen so far have been really strong. Which is typical. The one narrative feature I saw, Spike Lee's new film Red Hook Summer, was not good. I wanted to like it, but it just didn't work. The acting was overwrought. Too much Jesus, and the signature Spike Lee direct camera dialogue with social messaging was just too on-the-nose. Overall clunky. Too bad.

My favorite so far is a film by first time director Alison Klayman Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, about the amazing Chinese artist known for giving the finger to his motherland. His conceptual art work/sculpture/installations and use of social media to spread the word to engage his audience are all brilliant. Simple, compelling works. Super inspiring in itself, but also because he is embraced by so many Chinese citizens who want change. And that art is playing a role in changing people's consciousness. It's upsetting that the Chinese government has for now shut him down.

The House I Live In is a devastating portrait of the War on Drugs by Eugene Jarecki. Everything you thought about when you were paranoid about this stupid "war" is correct, apparently. See it if you can. It connects a lot of dots about poverty and class and the use of laws to isolate unwanted populations, criminalize them, and where that fits into the spectrum of war crimes. It's chilling.

Same with We're Not Broke. It helps put the Occupy movement into context and inspires me to find ways to protest. For example, I will move my money from Chase to a credit union as soon as I get back to San Francisco. It's a small move, but I won't cringe every time I hit the ATM at the brand new and ubiquitous Chase retail outlet purchased with bailout money.

It's cold here. Just getting ready to go outside is a big production. My usual preflight check to leave the house is a much longer operation. Because you might be going to four movies in a row and might not have time to eat. But I'm not complaining.

Orgasm

Love. Lovers. Husbands. Men who want to own their women. Men who don't.

What are the benefits of nonmonogamy?

What does a man really want?

What does a woman really want?

What do our anatomy and physiology tell us about our true nature as human beings?

What do our sexual fantasies tell us?

How have the 10,000 years of agrarian and urban society changed what appears to be a promiscuous human past?

Is it possible to incorporate what these things tell us into 2012 everyday lives?

What would I want to incorporate?

I, perhaps like you, want it all.

I want freedom and I want security.

I want family and I want independence.

I want independence and interdependence.

I want to work hard and I want to play hard.

I want it to be okay that I have the killer instinct. It means I want to play hard, like I really mean it. Which I do. I'm that person that dives for the ball as though my life depends on it, then gets up and laughs and shakes your hand. Whether I succeed at getting the ball or not.

I don't mind getting hurt a little in a good game. And you might get hurt a little, too. It doesn't mean I really want to kill someone. I just like to play hard. And to be honest, I only want to play with others who want to play [and work] hard, and who have the killer instinct.

I'm not talking about the psychopathic killer instinct. I'm talking about a focused will. I'm just not interested so much in tossing the ball around. Maybe as a warm up...

It's okay to have sex and not have an orgasm once in awhile. Like when you don't have time, or someone has something on their mind or has a little erectile dysfunction. But it's so much better to get that fully oxygenated release. GOAL! Game over. Right? [See MRI of female brain]

Who likes games that ends in a 0-0 tie? It's like, fuck! I just needed a little more time!

Sometimes you need to take a time out and readjust your strategy. Something isn't working. Something is preventing you from feeling your focus. It takes focus amidst all the stresses and pressures to have an orgasm. So you have to adjust the blankets, or try something different for a minute then get back to business.

It's so worth it. It helps make your day, that is full of phone calls and emails and convincing and apologizing and hoping and accounting and reporting and 'doubling down' on the right things, a little bit better. A good orgasm puts all of that into perspective.

Plus there are major health benefits. Yes to orgasm!

If you are not sure about this, I suggest you do your own, personal research...

Privacy

Wo. Blackout. I just tried to look up "Privacy" on Wikipedia and it's blacked out in protest of SOPA and PIPA. So I contacted my elected officials to let them know I'm very against those pieces of legislation. Just look at who supports SOPA and it's clear who wants this and why. Please take some action today, even something small like tweeting your legislators.

So I have to define Privacy myself today. Privacy...is it a right? It is an effort...to keep some pieces of information about one's self or one's interest contained. The opposite of public..publicity? Privacy is something that needs protection. Privacy is something that once you lose, you never really regain. Especially these days. If you disclose something or someone else discloses something about you on the internet, there it shall live forever, even if you take it down. It may float in cyberspace in some form an haunt you forever.

That's why we now hear ads on NPR for "ReputationDefender" and "Reputationmanagementconsults.com" We can't control our reputations without specialists, apparently. Because we may say something to someone somewhere, or say something in a blog post that we don't realize could be damaging. That's a sad but true fact. And something I have to think about every time I post here.

Mostly I have decided, Fuck it. I am not planning to run for political office in the future. Then I remember I hold a political office. If I should decide to run again, and my reputation hurts me, so be it.

Beyond my political aspirations, what else should I be considering in terms of my privacy? My family...My work...Not small things and all things I do consider.

But if I think about these things too much I would not write anything. Thinking about these things too much is what I did for so many years that I could not publish anything at all.

So I'm trying to think about privacy just enough. And still be real with you.

The Pill

I was always suspicious of it.

When I was in my early twenties my friend Melinda said, "Ovulating is core to my experience as a woman, as a human being. Why would I let a pharmaceutical company fuck with it?" That resonated with me. 

Sex at Dawn on the Pill:

Every woman knows her menstrual cycle can have profound effects on her eroticism. Spanish researchers confirmed that women experience greater feelings of attractiveness and desire around ovulation, while others have reported that women find classically masculine faces more attractive around ovulation, opting for less chiseled-looking guys when not fertile. Since the birth control pill affects the menstrual cycle [preventing ovulation!], it's not surprising that it may affect a woman's patterns of attraction as well. Scottish researcher Tony Little found womens' assessment of men as potential husband material shifted if they were on the pill. Little thinks the social consequences of his finding may be immense: "Where a woman chooses her partner while she is on the Pill, and then comes off to have a child, her hormone-driven preferences have changed and she may find she is married to the wrong kind of man."

Let me say I have no idea how this all works for lesbians (in terms of attraction to men), but it seems that during ovulation women's sense of smell is especially heightened, and (if we are in childbearing years), most women are attracted to the scent of men (or people?) whose major histocompatability complex (MHC) differs from our own. This preference functions to help us select someone with immunities different from our own, so that the offspring benefit from broader, more robust immune systems. Remember the "Sweaty T-shirt Experiment"?

But apparently women taking the Pill didn't show the same responsiveness to the male scent cues. "Women who were using birth control pills chose men's T-shirts randomly or, even worse, showed a preference for men with similar immunity to their own."

I don't know about how the testers could differentiate "random selections" of sweaty t-shirts from selections of t-shirts worn by men who in fact had MHC's that differed just the right amount from the womens' for the offspring to be robust. Just saying. But it does make a case against the Pill. Why fuck with something so core as your primal sense of smell and thus your ability to detect the right match in a mate? You don't want to wake up pregnant and married to a guy who smells wrong.

This may also be a case against antiperspirants. And it's true, I'm against them. Blocking all human odor is just wrong. But I'm for deodorant from Tom's or otherwise made with natural ingredients. Just don't block my pores with chemicals and tiny particles of aluminum. Did anyone say breast cancer?

Also, our smells can tell us if we need to adjust our diets. If deodorant isn't enough to cover up a really strong or bad smell, I have to ask myself, am I eating too much meat?

And this is for Jenna: There is nothing right about men's cologne, and I would be extremely suspicious of any man wearing it.

I never took the Pill. Consequently, I never experienced being completely free of the worry about getting pregnant when I had sex with a man, until Joe had a vasectomy.  I never got to plan having children, or have sex with the conscious intent to conceive a child. I regret that. It sounds very sexy to me.

From the time I became sexually active I spent decades trying not to get pregnant...

I have three kids. And now my childbearing years are over (thankfully!).

I remember so distinctly the first time smelling Joe's strong scent, and it was different. It spoke to me. Apparently when my nose was in his underarm I sensed a range of immunity to various pathogens. The message was: "Good genetic match. Strong offspring." It also said, "Never mind that he has no job and doesn't want one. He is a surfer. He is intimate with Mama Ocean. Who cares that he lives in the basement of a downtown LA tenement and takes a lot of drugs. He has a great body. He's a great kisser. He shall be the father of my children."

Thus, I never experienced the sadness so many of my friends feel at not having a baby, and/or trying for years to have a baby.

I wonder if the Pill played a role in the lives of my friends who wanted babies and have not been able to find the right partner or get pregnant.

How do you feel about the Pill?

Lighting your own fire

Lighting a fire on your own, for only your own comfort is a revelation. I can do this. I want to do this. Yes, it’s work. A “man’s work.” Building fires and all. It can be such a goddam turn on to have a guy light a fire for you. It doesn’t have to be a guy. It’s really pretty sexy. So of course it’s sexy to light my own fire. I don’t need someone else to survive, is the message.

So you know, you are crunching up the paper and you want to take a short cut and you wonder if you do really have a girlscout in you anymore or maybe you have allowed yourself to become handicapped and don’t have the goddam patience like your cavewoman foraging foresisters who apparently are not so distantly related…It’s entirely possible that you did allow that skill to atrophy because you always had a fire-loving man around. Or a man who knew that’s what you expected of him. Or both.

Turns out my fires are different than my mate’s fires. His are more about pyrotechnics than mine, which require periodic blowing and repositioning of the wood, and sometimes don’t work, really.  Tonight my fire is just right. And this cedar A-frame house is starting to warm up.

I wanted to get away from my home in the Loin. Not because I’m afraid, but just wanted some nature to counter-balance all the urban decay and death. Plenty of death in nature, too, but it feels different. I’m trying to allow the presence of death in my life, not in a necropheliac or super dark way, just make it normal, so it’s not like that big bad fear that unconsciously drives actions. That big gnarly beast that is gnawing away inside us all. Maybe only if you are fifty or older, but you know what I’m talking about no matter what age you are.

So I came to Bolinas. It’s like coming out to see a lover. You skulk a little, because you don’t really want to see anyone you know. You don’t want to fritter away any time chit-chatting on nonessential business.  You resolve to avert your eyes if you run into someone, because you know they will want to know what you are up to. But you don’t want to talk.

You want to get right to it. You want to be alone. You have the keys to your friend Anny’s house on the Mesa. You are practically low-riding because you just want to get there without being seen.

Alone at last in the A-frame. There is no one who could possibly see you. You take off your top. You leave your pink bra on because it’s sexy. You sit in different chairs and simply take in your aloneness. You check out the fridge. Of course, the best everything, fresh, nothing packaged, a perfect avocado for later.

You take a hot tub by yourself, the hot water, sky darkening, you can still see remnants of orange light on the ridge.

You walk down the new terrace road and you are uplifted…You walk down into the eucalyptus grove and the canopy sways above you like the mother you always wanted…protective and distant but not too distant…The comforting creak of the trunks and branches that allow you to see the sky above, but hold you, until you emerge onto the meadow. The amber light becoming lavendar and the feeling that you belong to this land, that you are connected to it on a soul level. 

That’s what I keep coming back for.

When I send this post it will be from my Stevenson perch, looking out on the old 9^th Circuit Court building that now houses some forgotten or perhaps top secret beaureacracy. But here, while it lasts, my soul is resting by the fire.

Tenderloin

January. Death is always hovering.

The first homocide in San Francisco took place about 28 hours ago on 6th and Stevenson. Our block. A stabbing. I don't know the details. There were about 50 homocides in San Francisco last year, 48 in 2010, and 98 in 2009. Probably quite a few in my neighborhood every year.

Yet I am not afraid.

We are on the edge of the Tenderloin. I have grown to love it here.

Tenderloin in beef or pork is an oblong shape spanning two primal cuts: the short loin and the sirloin. The tenderloin sits beneath the ribs, next to the backbone. It has two ends: the butt and the "tail."

Tenderloin, a song by Rancid, a musical from 1960, a film in 1928, a novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams, a neighborhood in Manhattan or San Francisco.

Tenderloin, a new play premiering at the Cutting Ball Theater in April. In the Tenderloin.

Death came close to taking my son a month ago. His friend was driving him home from work on a country road and they hit a tree going 50 MPH. No seatbelts. The airbag saved his life but broke his first anterior rib, very near his heart, and there are other injuries still subtly plaguing him.

But he is alive.

I asked him if that was the closest he'd come to death and he said no, and told me about another close call involving cars.

Death in the eyes of the people who live on the street.

Life prevails.

For now.

Waiting for the push of spring to move my thoughts in that direction. For the newness to push up through the soil.

Evolution of Consciousness

Feeling so inspired. Even though "evolution" does not necessarily imply "improvement" in strict anthropological terms.

When I say "evolved" I definitely mean better, smarter, not just newer.

Consciousness evolves, not just genetics. What does is it mean for consciousness to evolve?

Last night at dinner my youngest son said that attending Burning Man was a major turning point in the evolution of his consciousness. That he "saw the light," and realized he no longer wanted violence in his life. He had been in a few fights, and had grown to believe that fighting was a natural, unavoidable behavior. He no longer believes that violence is natural or unavoidable.

I watched my other son listening. He, too, somehow grew up into a belief that violence is acceptable. He's incredibly social, diplomatic and beloved by many people, but if someone crosses the line with him, he will take a swing. I don't want to think about how many times he has done that.

I wonder about how that happened. He grew up in a town where in general the consciousness is very high and evolved, where people are dedicated to working together toward the common good, yet fighting became acceptable. Does it have to do with the perception of limited resources? That is one of the theories put forth in Sex at Dawn. That wars only came about with the advent of agriculture, land ownership, the perception of limited resources and consequent greed.

If a young man who grew up into a belief that fighting is acceptable (and I mean serious fist fights where people get injured), what does it take to change his consciousness?

For Ian, who was 18 last year when he attended Burning Man, it was experiencing a cooperative community where violent behavior is totally unacceptable. Or perhaps that isn't correct: where violence is contained and only expressed in ways that are consensual and not harmful to anyone involved.

Burning Man is a week long experiment in a different kind of society, where freedom of expression is celebrated, money is not exchanged (except for coffee and ice) and shared resources flow freely.

I was so moved to hear Ian talk about his commitment to nonviolent communication.

At the end of the conversation we went to the Burning Man website and registered to buy tickets. It will be Joseph's first year, and the first time all five Benders will be there.

If you hope for an incremental change in your own consciousness in 2012, how do you envision that happening?

Over the Hump

This phase of my life is bout shedding and focusing on what is most important. It's about redirecting the energy toward the second half of my life. Which I'm in. I'm over the hump, I think.

The exhaustion.

Walking on the beach yesterday with Anny, my friend of 35 years. Tide going out. My home beach. Lying naked with no one else around in the January sun letting it heat up my legs and chest. Telling each other about our families, how hard it is to keep all the communication clean. How our birth order configured our wiring and how we still work against that to try to be whole. I as the first of six, and Anny as the fourth of five. How our mothers couldn't possibly meet all our needs.

How our sisters can see one reality, the reality that they want to see, and how different that reality is from our own experience. How over time you see that about your sister, and you don't care, you just want her to live closer to you. How you know your parents won't be around forever. How you know that there's only so much time left.

Climbing into the hot tub with Anny and Bob. We are so grateful for the life we have. That we are sitting outside in a very hot tub in January, with the clear sky above and the beautiful garden, drinking kombucha that Anny and Bob made.

Visiting my house. It's beautiful. It is the place where so much has happened. And now it is empty again. Waiting patiently. The garden needs tending.

Seeing Judith and Arianne. Friends who give me strength to go on in spite of all of my weakness. They prop me up and make me feel stronger.

It's Joe's birthday today. He turns 52. I turn 52 in April, but I always feel that I turn that age when the new year happens. So that it isn't a shock when my birthday actually arrives.

For Joe's birthday we will have a small family dinner. That is all. That is all he wants, and I am grateful.

I Love Nina Simone

I'm not really for those YouTube collages that people remix from internet imagery to illustrate a recorded artist's work, but I should probably get over it.

I mean, does the fact that 10,376,897 people have watched this video of Nina Simone singing Feeling Good mean the collage is any good? Or any better than this one that has only been watched by 1,025,093 viewers (at the time of this publication)? I can tell you for sure that the downloadability of one isn't ten times better than the other.

But damn! It doesn't fucking matter. Nina Simone simply cannot be ruined. She is so dignified in her declarations. I kind of want to inhabit her for a little while.

I just watched ten of these videos and am feeling a weird kinship with the millions of others who didn't give a damn how dumb the collages are: it's Nina Simone!

It's a new dawn. It's a new day. And I'm feeling good.

Matriarchy, please!

I'm kind of obsessed with Sex at Dawn. Reading about so many indigenous cultures, both contemporary and in the past, where women were/are respected and have sexual autonomy. Matriarchies. Places where there are no words for murder, war or rape.

Consider authors Ryan and Jetha on the "universality of marriage":

"Marriage," "mating," and "love" are socially constructed phenomena that have little or no transferable meaning outside any given culture. The examples we've noted of rampant ritualized group sex, mate-swapping, unrestrained casual affairs, and socially sanctioned sequential sex were all reported in cultures that anthropologists insist are monogamous simply because they've determined that something they call "marriage" takes place there. No wonder so many insist that marriage, monogamy, and the nuclear family are human universals. With such all-encompassing interpretations of the concepts, even the prairie vole, who "sleeps with anyone," would qualify.

The next chapter is on jealousy. Should be good.

Come on, hasn't anyone out there read this book? What are your anonymous thoughts?

One more good quote:

"The anachronistic presumption that women have always bartered their sexual favors to individual men in return for help with child care, food, protection, and the rest of it collapses upon contact with the many societies where women feel no need to negotiate such deals. Rather than a plausible explanation for how we got to be the way we are, the standard narrative is exposed as a contemporary moralistic bias packaged to look like science and then projected upon the distant screen of prehistory, rationalizing the present while obscuring the past."

Finally:"Societies in which women have lots of autonomy and authority tend to be decidedly male-friendly, relaxed, tolerant, and plenty sexy."

Big surprise, right?

Ruminations on Happiness

Random quote from Sex at Dawn, in a chapter called A Closer Look at the Standard Narrative, subhead Male Parental Investment (MPI):

Underlying each of these theories, as well as evolutionary theory in general, is the notion that life can be conceptualized in terms of economics and game theory. The objective of the game is to send your genetic code into the future by producing the maximum possible number of offspring who survive and reproduce. Whether or not this dispersal leads to happiness is irrelevant. In the best-selling survey of EP (evolutionary psychology), The Moral Animal, Robert Wright puts it succinctly, saying, "We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones. (Of course, goals--sex, status, and so on--often bring happiness, at least for a while.) Still, the frequent absence of happiness is what keeps us pursuing it, and thus makes us productive."

Happiness...Tough to define. A feeling of contentment and purposefulness, of flow, of being seen and being heard by those who surround you. Feeling relevant. Of accomplishing your goal of surviving each day. Having a warm place to sleep. Being able to sleep. Knowing your kids are okay, that you didn't fuck them up too much. That chances are that they will survive, and yeah, I suppose, reproduce.

There is something deeply satisfying in imagining that they might want to reproduce. But it's not  essential (for me, at least at this point) that someone special might want to reproduce with them. Sure, if they want to, that's fine. But is my happiness contingent on my kids giving the world another (hopefully better) replica that will have a fresh look at the world's problems and maybe try to help fix them in some tiny way? I don't know if it's essential for my happiness or feeling of success in life. Is that the privilege of someone who has three chances? Maybe it's the payoff for years of sacrifice.

Happiness...Some say it's not the point. Now that my genetic purpose is fulfilled having raised three offspring, is this all early 21st Century angst about finding a new purpose? Am I biologically irrelevant? In short, yes. Is my purpose now just to gather and store food for the future young of my children and the other children in the village so that they will not abandon me? Or to gather and store food for my solitary future when everyone I know has either died or moved on and forgotten about me?

I seek something more. A new kind of relevance. Is this urge to write a quest for relevance, one that acknowledges imminent death and is battling with mortality?

Sex at Dawn

Have you read it? A NY Times bestseller subtitled, How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships. I'm in the middle of it now.  A bunch of people I know recommended it, including my daughter, one of my therapists and the cashier at Good Vibrations.

So far, it's a pretty convincing argument that for most of human history, when we lived as foragers, we did not live in single pair-bonds but lived in societies that shared resources, including mates. That agrarian culture, which is relatively recent, is responsible for the ascent of monogamy as an ideal and brought with it the notion of women and children as property.

I recommend the book. It's sometimes repetitive, but the evidence is compelling and it makes you think about living more cooperatively with others. If you've read it, please comment.

An anonymous reader commented on how difficult it is to let go of societal expectations brought on or reinforced by one's family of origin. That really resonates with me. You work so hard to create something and have to ask yourself, is this what I want?

Happiness: a mental state of well-being characterized by positive emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Or this definition: PERMA

1. Pleasure (tasty foods, warm baths, etc.),
2. Engagement (or flow, the absorption of an enjoyed yet challenging activity),
3. Relationships (social ties have turned out to be extremely reliable indicator of happiness),
4. Meaning (a perceived quest or belonging to something bigger), and
5. Accomplishments (having realized tangible goals).

What is your definition? 

Lovers again

Thank you for your comment, Anonymous. Deciding to be lovers again is such a bold move. I still wonder if it's possible.

I wonder what it takes for a person to make such a transition from wife to lover. A person like me, who is so programmed to please others, but also, I have to admit, so programmed to manipulate the lives of others from behind the curtain: how does one strip away fifty years of behavior patterns?

I don't know the answer.

To let go of the role of caretaker is to give up control.

To let go of the wife and mother who places everyone else's needs first...AND to let go of the reins and see what happens...requires tremendous faith. Faith that each person can take care of him/herself.

Beyond faith, for someone like me, it takes a core strength to take care of oneself. I'm great at taking care of everyone else and making their lives work. To refocus one's attention on one's own life requires way more strength than supporting a family...for me.

Even as I declare my desire to make this change, I see how hard it is. How deep and old the patterns are. Even though I do know how to be a lover, too.

I draw strength from you, reader. Thank you.

Lovers?

How do lovers treat each other?

Lovers kiss.

Lovers surprise each other.

Lovers go out of their way to do small nice things for each other.

Lovers don't necessarily see each other every day.

Lovers...have special dates that mean something. Dates that can be short or long. They have quickies but also take trips together.

Lovers do not consider each other one another's property...[This needs more exploring.]

Lovers are enthusiastic, even sometimes fanatical, foolish and freakish, according to Merriam-Webster.

Lovers don't talk about who does the dishes. They just do them, lovingly. Or maybe they don't even have dishes to do.

Likewise, lovers don't do taxes together. They do those themselves, on their own, and don't complain to each other about it.

Lovers, in fact, do all the boring things away from each other on their own time, so that when they are together, it's just about love.

Lovers know life is very, very short, that there is no time to waste. That their time together is precious.

What if...Two people who have been married for a long time decide to be lovers? What would that mean? Is it possible?