Whitman

Quarter of nine at night.

Gloria called and canceled her workday tomorrow morning because a friend of hers is visiting and it’s her last day here tomorrow. So I said okay. The air quality was “unhealthy” in Eugene this afternoon and I could feel the difference in my well-being: my body ached and my head hurt so I needed to rest a while. They said it would rain Tuesday or Wednesday this week, which should help clean the air.

This afternoon I peeked into the book of Walt Whitman that came last Friday. It’s a selection that zeros in on the personal side of his poetry, but still I’ll go back for a closer look later. If he was gay, then I can see why he would swear off Christianity and sort of replace Jesus with himself in his cosmos. Bloom’s language isn’t totally lucid in critiquing Whitman’s poetry and his life, or else I’m dense as a reader; but I think I tend to be more obtuse and blunt, as well as direct and perceptive… Maybe I shouldn’t mess with the book, yet I’m quite curious to understand more about it. I’m reminded of the song by John Lennon with The Beatles, “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” It would’ve been even harder for a guy in 1855 to be gay. How much of himself did a very great poet want to share with the world? It’s hard enough in 2022 in the more jerkwater places in this country to just be yourself. It’s worth thinking about. 

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Closer to Freud

Ten thirty at night.

I am absolutely sick of spiritualization in this country, the way it eclipses everything else, especially sexuality. We spay and neuter more than just our pets anymore. It’s time that someone with balls stood up and spoke out against this dehumanizing trend. We need to shift the balance from Jung back to Freud and the pleasure principle. Even if no one else does this, I will be the first to boycott the church and strike out on my own… I remember when people were still allowed to feel horny. It was about 18 years ago, before the holy wars engulfed our imaginations. But since then we’ve all been anesthetized to sensations below the neck, and for no good reason that I can see. Somewhere along the line we were steered towards a grand delusion, and we deferred all happiness to this mirage beyond the horizon. Some of us are wide awake but dare not speak our minds. At the risk of being unpopular, I’ve decided that the buck stops here. 

Freudian Slip

Quarter of noon.

Desire is a hard thing to live with, yet unless nirvana is for real, it is ineradicable… I had a dream last night about V—: she was having sex with a middle aged man on camera. I don’t know what has gotten into me lately. Is it bad or good, or maybe neither? I’ve been repressed for a long time, since I quit drinking. Now there’s an itch that’s driving me nutty.

One o’clock. Particularly, it was Pam’s voluptuous body I loved. I’ve had a breakthrough just today, where before I was blocked due to a bad experience with talk therapy. The therapist downright declared me a gay man, and this messed me up for three years. I believe that male clients should have male therapists, or perhaps the female therapist I had was just very bad at her job. Whatever, I’ll probably never be a fan of psychotherapy, and my digression to this four years ago was all a mistake. There’s no cure for schizophrenia, especially not from the inside out. I feel inclined to call up my old psychiatrist and renew our relationship… 

Sometimes I feel that there’s no place where I belong; but it could be that I simply don’t belong with WordPress. I don’t care for the conservative attitudes I keep running into here. And needless to say, the church is someplace I don’t fit with anymore. Sex is for more than begetting children, in my opinion. I’m just very sick and tired of repression wherever I turn. Our time is the Victorian Age all over again, and for this reason we’ll be seeing cases of “hysteria” cropping up anytime now. 

Missionary at Midday

Eleven thirty five. I’m beginning to feel better. I took my gabapentin and a Vitamin D3 and now I’ve donned my hoodie. I felt a little chilled in a T-shirt. Today I’m going to withdraw into myself for a while, as if I didn’t do that enough. During the wee hours I read a little about the French Revolution out of my old history textbook. But I don’t know why it was important to me. Maybe I’m just curious for the sake of curiosity. I wasn’t feeling well. I’m thankful for Aesop’s company today. The clouds have rolled in and covered the sun. Acorns occasionally hit the roof, and the squirrels go nuts over them… I still don’t feel very well mentally. The phone call from Polly really shook me up. I hear voices just a tad. I felt like I wasn’t alone inside my own head.

Quarter of three. I lay in bed for a while. My thoughts were preconscious, just below the surface, and difficult and torturous to me. Then I had my lunch, followed by taking out the trash. Aesop’s behavior is much better now when I do this. I’m trying not to be afraid of my sister’s opinions on sexuality and her missionary attitudes in general. Maybe the best thing to do is to someday talk to her about it all very plainly. Can she be reasonable and respectful? Or will she say I’m possessed by the devil or something else hurtful? Because after all, people have erotic fantasies. Mine started when I was two or three years old. In the end, my sister has no right to judge me.

Apocalypse

Warning ⚠️: Sexual content

Nine o’clock 🕘. From something T— said it sounds like he’s a virgin. He sounds inexperienced with sexual nuts and bolts, just the rudiments that give a man an erection. He lacks this much self knowledge, whereas I’ve seen a lot more of life than he has. Maybe he won’t know anything until he gets married. I’m a little embarrassed for him and his overrated religion which precludes the human experience we all deserve to know. Or maybe I should feel embarrassed for myself for not being chaste and innocent? Sheryl didn’t know anything about male sexuality either. I can’t think of anyone who does know besides me. Rather than keep looking for external verification of what I know about myself, I should just act based on my own experience. It seems to me that human beings are losing touch with their instincts, which would be a very sad condition for humankind. D H Lawrence could have predicted a day such as this. Or perhaps I’m just alone with the knowledge that I have of sexual stuff. I know that my sister is a complete prude, denouncing anything remotely sexual, and maybe that’s why she doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. This makes me feel ashamed of myself a bit, or should I condemn her for being cold as an icicle? It is strange to be ostracized over sexuality, but then she got a divorce over something sexual. I guess I’m willing to accept my solitude with the truth I possess. But it still feels awfully strange…

Obscure, Boring Post about Myself

Quarter of two. I really like my new bass. The pickup configuration makes it sound like the Fender I owned over thirty years ago. I was very creative with that instrument and it was a good time in my life. I feel younger again today, more alive, fresher and more human. I don’t feel repressed or suppressed, but give myself the license to just be who I am. I’ve opened the back door to let in fresh air. If it turns out that I’m gay then I’ll live out my fate. The most important thing is fidelity to myself. I want to remember everything I once hid from my awareness. My senses are open and receptive, and I feel as if the sunshine belongs to me equally with everyone else. The god of nature is my friend as he is everyone’s… I’m doing the food pantry tomorrow morning and it should be fun… I am quite convinced that the unconscious exists, though it has been given many different names. I also believe there is a superconscious, a mode of transcendence of the natural world. The ability of the human will to override physical existence I think is very interesting. When I was 21 I experienced the full spectrum of mental states, with the natural instincts kept in a box down below and my reason creating an ideal of what ought to be. This condition was both Platonic and Kantian. And although it may have been self deluding, it made me feel happy for about a year.

Quarter of three. And you know, the tradition of speculative philosophy in the West has been consistent with regard to rational transcendence of nature. Since Plato, the concern has been with self control and restraint. Renaissance writers like Sir Philip Sidney echoed the Platonic notion of reason ruling over the passions and weeding out impulses that didn’t make sense. Or maybe Sidney was ironic with his allusions to Plato? I need to go back and read all of The Old Arcadia as I was assigned to do in college but didn’t. Sidney took some risks by hinting at the potential for homosexual love… Youth was a difficult time for me. It took me until I was 26 years old to begin to admit the instincts locked up in my box. But by that time I was already diagnosed with schizophrenia…

Out—?

Three twenty. I tried to sleep on a bed of nails tonight. I feared falling asleep and having nightmares, or strange dream thoughts that fuse religion and sexuality, pushing together and pulling apart. Definitions and descriptions are very difficult for love and sex, and the way religious culture impacts these. There was the dream I had the other night…

Quarter after four. Homosexuality is not a crime. I see why I clash with the Church, which has persecuted gay people for centuries. The local music community doesn’t like gay people either. But I can try networking through the gay bars in town, I suppose. Or go to a social group… Sheryl thought Oregon sucks, and I’m inclined to agree. But I’m stuck with this property in a once conservative neighborhood. For many years I’ve been watching the changes, biding my time, awaiting the auspicious moment to come out. The gods favor the bold and the brave. Everything is different now that my parents are twenty years gone and my family has deserted me. I stand alone with the world… until I meet others like me. The next door neighbors are probably a lesbian couple. Eugene may be adaptable and teachable, but I need a little more evidence of this.

Severed Heads

Nine fifty five. Aesop and I slept in. He gets his breakfast in three minutes. Yesterday I flipped and scanned through Another Country and began to suss it out. It’s really about romantic love and sex as opposed to spiritual love, and maybe for Baldwin there’s no distinction… The gabapentin is great. I feel a lot better since taking it. I used to have back pain, but now it’s virtually gone… Another Country explores the meaning of love, and it seems not to be a Christian love. It is a wanting and needing kind of love. Desire and affection. I don’t see anything wrong with that. It’s probably very true. I see a lot of repression in society nowadays, however. Some people hate sex, though it makes no sense to me. There ought to be a continuity of the head with the body, as if we had no neck. But this is a matter for debate. What is spiritual love, anyway? Is it a condition of being a severed head? I’m beginning to remember my Whitman and Lawrence: the body is the soul. Spiritual love is where the head dominates the body, rules it with an iron fist. The healthy way to live is for the head and body to be whole and in harmony with each other. I hadn’t thought of this in many years. I believe it’s true.

Androgyny

Quarter after four. Well the book came. I marked my place in it where I left off… Tomorrow I’ll call in a refill for my medication, as I am down to my last three pills. It seems to me that my life would have been totally different if I had flown the nest at 18 years old. What if I had gone to Columbia University in New York? Would I have learned that I was a homosexual? And then what? My mother was protective of me while I went to college here. She judged that one friend who came over was gay— and she was probably right. He and a circle of his friends tended to be androgynous. They had wanted me to join their clique… and what would have been wrong with that? The bunch of them used marijuana frequently. I figured out later that must be why one of them had tits like a girl. They were not good students. But why did they want me in their group? I belonged to another group of friends, mostly musicians, who were all heterosexual. The network spanned multiple high schools and ages. This was the reality I chose, and which my mother approved. It appears quite clear to me now… Moreover, when I looked up Sheryl on the web, I noticed that her name was preceded by a “Ms.” I don’t think she’s ever been married. On the other hand, Beverly is a mother and a grandmother.

I’ve been mistaken for gay since junior high school because I never had a girlfriend. My illness made me shy of dating when I was young. Some people accept that schizophrenia is a biological disease, and that’s that. You treat it with meds just as you would a physical illness. But others go in with a psychic scalpel and try to find meaning in the nonsense, a method I disagree with. The controversy between psychiatrists and psychologists will likely go on long after I’m gone.

Closer to Home

Four thirty.

I did a lot of dreaming about my neighbors across the street. In reality I don’t see them much, and now with the Coronavirus I don’t see them at all. The blinds in the front window are perpetually closed. It’s a houseful of women over there, Diana and her three daughters. I can understand if they’re feeling paranoid. Still, I would really enjoy interacting with them more— and then I remember my gender: I’m a guy. A lot of people make a sharp dividing line between the sexes. I guess I am unusual in not doing so. I grew up not distinguishing between men’s things and women’s things. I find that gender roles and stereotypes are mostly fictions made up by society. Not even psychologists are very perceptive of this artifice, but believe that men are men and women are women. Worse, they assume that men with anything feminine about them must be homosexual… I think my dreams about Diana’s family are innocent with a childlike innocence. What do babies perceive, I wonder? Do little boys want to put on lipstick? Do little girls want to use tools? Who’s to tell them otherwise? In my utopia, these distinctions of masculine and feminine wouldn’t exist. Everything would be free and equal, and what the baby sees is what the grownup would see as well.