32 thoughts on “View from the Earth – and a hang out session”

  1. Amanda — actually, you’re supposed to go to bed before 11 so that you can be fast asleep by twelve! A toughie I know.

    One time my Chinese doctor told me that I had an excess of yin — actually he was speaking really broadly about issues almost all human beings have — and I said oh but I always thought I was an extra yang type of person and he looked gravely at me in his a little too grave for a 35 year old Chinese doctor way and said, “That is a false yang.” I guess there’s a lot of that in TCM — compensations for weaknesses. And I can see that that definitely has implications for the emotional/psychological realm as well.

    But yeah, the human body is mostly water and hence the body itself belongs to yin. The mental/emotional part belongs to yang. But then from there you can subdivide to no end. Which is I think the point Eric makes at some point in this thread.

    I’ve only barely studied this stuff, but my recommendation for anyone who wants to get into it is to start from medicine rather than from philosophy because it’s so much more tangible. I also recently started to study taiji, and my teacher takes a very practical approach, talking in detail about how each body part should move or not move at any given time. He also mentions how certain moves relate to fighting — “this move is for grabbing someone’s arm like this.” I’m not into fighting, but it helps to imagine grabbing something concrete while moving my hands in that certain way. He never talks about yin and yang or qi. But of course it’s all there and as you learn how to move your body you stumble upon some of those transphysical concepts in a really cool way because you’ve already embodied them. Probably we’re so battered by a denial of the metaphysical in American culture that we tend to go overboard and a bit airy fairy out of insecurity. That’s not a critique of Planet Waves, Eric I’d say you’ve got your tangible and intangible fairly well integrated. Hell shit we’re battered by a denial of the physical too. Maybe it’s a false airy fairy 😉

    Hey Wandering Yeti if you’re out there, just wanted to mention the stuff you’ve written about taiji in the past was in the back of my mind inspiring me when I got the urge to study. Thanks.

  2. sam —
    thanks for the additional nuances of yin/yang. i’m one of the many who still feels a bit clueless about the subtler points, having never dived into studying it. i just know i’ve been frustrated by a friend who once told me i was “too yang” for him by way of a criticism — like, not nurturing and feminine enough and too… combative or something.

    maybe it has something to do with spending time outdoors. but then again, in summer i do love to swim in all the yinny water around me….

    ha. still clueless here, i’m afraid. though i have to day, i’m terrible about going to bed before 12:00 am.

  3. ::::humor font on::::

    “come on’ peeps, lets use this Goddess Virgo energy for a better purpose (and there are many) for something other than nit-picking & doing a word by word critical critique on something”

    ::::sputtering in indignation:::: But…but…but…that’s what Virgo does and I have it rising so I do it ALL the time with everyone and everything (with myself the MOST).

    “beautiful that was trying to be shared with us- the mystical, somewhat exciting energy and atmosphere of a powerful elemental force, as well as Eric himself, …..
    anyone else getting that?”

    Well that goes without saying. I love what he shares….mostly. :::grin:::

    “the guy has a structured 50 sheet to-do list every day and works his ass off-”

    Ditto here; I do the same so I know how THAT feels! :::laughing:::

    It is ok, Stell. I think he is able to handle any nit-picking we throw at him. If not, he will let us know (outspoken as he is).

    Don’t you love how we discuss people as though they are not in the room? :::another grin:::

    ::::humor font off::::

    Sorry if it feels like picking…it isn’t meant that way. {{{{Eric}}}}

  4. Enjoyed following the whole (interesting thread) of this from start to finish. Found Sam’s piece very amusing. Kat. Soulport. Lots of directions.

    Like the ying yang in Kung fu Panda 2: divination creates yin and yang symbol = black and white threat/victor, = (interpreted as) panda = panda (in fact) = ying and yang symbol literally. Equally rich unfolding. Full.

    These are lovely films. Having seen the first one I saw it again straight away to see what I had seen (that was so astonishing)

    Thank you so much!

  6. But Eric I want to keep harping on the yin issue!!!

    Seriously, though, I have a tangential question I’ve been thinking of asking several times recently — does anyone have any ideas on why yin/yang seem to be defined almost exclusively as dealing with the feminine versus the masculine in North American culture’s understanding of the concept? Obviously that’s part of the original concept in China too, but there’s so much more — maybe you’ve heard it all before: yang is function, yin is substance, yang is light, yin is shadow, yang is dry, yin is wet, yang is activity, yin is passivity. I have never heard anyone in China discuss something as being really yang and mean that it’s some kind of leather face goat-y Bon Jovi thing or that something really yin means some kind of watery crystal lavendar moon goddess thing. It’s more like, hey you should be sleeping at 12 AM because that’s how to keep your body in synch with the peaks of yin and yang. Or how the Chinese doctor I know says that most modern people lack yang because they don’t spend enough time out of doors. In a high altitude place like where I live, it makes a lot of sense since indoors is often about ten or fifteen degrees colder than outside in the sun. While I could wax poetic about how my home is thus a cold damp pussy lair of the dark goddess and outside is the raging sunshine fire of the cock king, that seems like it might just distract from the health guidance I’d otherwise derive from the concept.

    Certainly masculinity versus femininity is a crucial dichotomy in all cultures that I know of, so that’s probably why it’s handy to have the terms yin and yang around when we need them. But nonetheless I wonder if there’s some distinctly American fixation that’s been projected onto this foreign couplet. I’m curious what that is.

    And of course it’s always relative. Every yin and every yang can be broken down into their respective yin and yang parts out into infinity. The kidneys are a yin organ belonging to water, a yin element and yet they possess something called a Vital Gate which burns a fire between them and is an essential ingredient in the creation of qi, like the dragon that must live in the ocean in order to give it life. Uh oh that might offend some feminists… but try living without that fire in your kidneys. C’est la vie.

    I guess that actually the division of the sexes across the yin/yang spectrum is the most problematic part of it — problematic both because it codifies a divide in humanity and also because it brings into our awareness this divide, which we’ve mostly yet to resolve. And that maybe that’s why so many are fixated upon that particular definition of yin/yang, to the point of distraction. Can’t put down the hot potato. I think hot potato belongs to yang, by the way. And I therefore conclude that the entire yin/yang concept in our culture is Mick Jagger. The end.

  7. (((Eric)))

    the “hang out session” to me implies a loose, unstructured, free-form flow–

    come on’ peeps, lets use this Goddess Virgo energy for a better purpose (and there are many) for something other than nit-picking & doing a word by word critical critique on something
    beautiful that was trying to be shared with us- the mystical, somewhat exciting energy and atmosphere of a powerful elemental force, as well as Eric himself, …..
    anyone else getting that?

    the guy has a structured 50 sheet to-do list every day and works his ass off-

    there was a chill-out lounge vibe goin’ on…….

    feel the love, is all I’m sayin’

    peace.

  8. Yes well, I would caution everyone that not everything I say is a pearl of wisdom to be kept in a little box. It was an unpremediated metaphor off the top of my head.

    That said, a hurricane mixes all the elements. Everything mixes all the elements; lightning is a kind of fire.

    An ordinary fire is part earth and air, and water is released by some fires as well.

  9. “The hurricane over the water analogy is double yin,”

    Double yin? :::scratching head:::: I also didn’t get the hurricane=lesbian masturbation symbology. That’s because a hurricane is a mixture of air forces with water. Air is usually said to be masculine (at least that is what I learned in astrology and Witchcraft/Wicca/Paganism/Tarot symbolism). So a hurricane would be the masculine forces of air churning and picking up the feminine forces of water and then dumping both on the feminine earth.

    Still sounds like sex to me; just not lesbian sex or double yin (except where the water meets the earth part but the masculine air is still present).

  10. Maria, I think the author’s intention was to beat the girl up (I’m pretty sure this one is not a fantasy scenario btw). So if her intent is to commit assault, well, that is what it is; there is no politically correct way to clobber someone. The verbal “abuse” (i.e., speaking her mind) could be construed as criminal conduct in many jurisdictions as well. But there are those days when the people just have to work it out, and this was one of them. It is perfectly legal to call the dean, and one who does so deserves to get slapped around if no other approach works.

    And then comes sex. It seems like the aggressive lesbian was only being sanctimonious as a ruse to conceal her jealousy.

    I think we have some coming to terms to do with the inherently violent nature of sexual desire, as it usually manifests. We try to dress this up in romance, but the clothes come off pretty quickly. I mostly hear the sexual fantasies of women, and you might be surprised how many of them involve some form of transgression, violence, humiliation, “inappropriate” sexual contact, anonymous sex, forced sex, etc. Fantasies are as-yet-unexpressed desires. The mental/emotional/imaginal sphere is much closer to the physical than we think, and consciousness all springs from the same source.

    When arguing the case that sex has to be politically correct (i.e., the Antioch rules, getting consent at every “escalation,” of sex, etc.) one must of necessity overlook this fact. There are complex dynamics, such as directly giving consent being equal to taking full responsibility for the sexual experience, which many have no desire to do. It’s “better” when it’s something that “just happens.” So when we talk about desire we need to remember that these dynamics exist and to some extent we all have to deal with them.

  12. In fantasy and erotic writing, the “I could tell what she REALLY, secretly wanted” element is hot. In real life, if you don’t ask before you touch, you’re an asshole–or worse. I’m never gonna penalize someone for a fantasy.

  13. Hi B.C.!

    Love the scythe vid. – they are awesome! a best-kept secret that really shouldn’t be kept a secret. as you know, it’s a misnomer to say it is tragically hard work- are you kidding me? if you are doing it correctly it is very Zen and effective, but I will say you need the proper equipment, and, the Austrian blades are crazy awesome, can’t be beat.

    I was fortunate to learn scything while in Austria, on a friend’s farm. I will never forget going outside in the morning after the grass had dried fr. the dew and having Wolf hand me a scythe, pace out this 5 acre field and tell me we were going to have this all cut down before mittag.
    and we did! didn’t really take long and no fossil fuel. then we gathered it up all old-style in a loose pile with forks and then it went to the barn. Pluto was transitioning into Capricorn at the time, really it was stationary in Sag for most of 2008. that’s about all the astrology I remember.

    ah. memories. it’s hard for me to remember 1999-2000 many lifetimes ago, but I remember what was brewing, I was at a pinnacle of my research career and needing to make a decision about a Phd program my boss had encouraged me to go into, I was well-liked and supported in this endeavor, recommendations, the whole nine yards-
    but alas, in June 2001, I quit the whole scene and hit the road. yep. On the Road to Oregon.

    now I talk to Red-shouldered hawks and stuff.

    peace Everyone, I love all of your sharings/stories,
    thanks for the space

    ***Burning– we need to get the kayaks out ASAP and start saving people in these muddy waters- and cats and pets, too. I couldn’t just stand there. !! ahhhhhh.

  14. Eric,
    Thank you. Whatever made you decide to do this particular podcast, it was a fine inspiration.

  16. Eric,

    Dig the late-night hang-out session. You should start accepting call-ins!

    Speaking only about my personal life, I starting noticing a sharp resonance between this time & 1999 as early as last fall, and it’s been building steadily. That was a very creatively, sexually, spiritually fertile period of high growth for me, but it was interrupted when I did my duty and left for college. There was a lot of “unfinished business,” the themes of which have all been roaring back into prominence. To give just one small but pertinent example: I was an early Planet Waves reader, with the peak of my participation happening in 1999 and centering around that summer’s eclipse, and ending when I started college in 2000. I didn’t read Planet Waves for 10 years after that (or much concern myself with astrology), until last fall, when suddenly a host of factors drew me to you (& astrology) again.

    I had been wondering if it was just me (though a close friend has noticed it too). It is interesting that we now have a collective event (Irene) drawing the parallel (with Floyd), and I wonder if there are or will be others. I’m trying to think back to what else was happening in the world at that time, and I remember all the hullabaloo about Y2K and the new millennium — but maybe 2012 is our “real” millennium moment. Other things I remember: the earth fly-by of the Cassini space probe on August 18th; the DJIA hitting 10,000 and then 11,000 points for the first time ever (& now we are back to hovering around that level); all the large earthquakes that happened from 1999-2000, the first one being the 7.6-mag quake in Turkey, also on August 18th (sound familiar?); the small plane crash that killed JFK, Jr. and his wife; the Columbine massacre.

    You mentioned in the podcast that the August 11, 1999 solar eclipse and Friday’s Mercury station happened at the same degree, near the current midpoint of the Uranus-Pluto squares, around 20 Leo. That’s near an important natal spot for me (Sun-Moon midpoint & North Node both at 23 Leo), explaining the resonance I’ve felt. I’ve been very curious to take a look at that old chart. I went searching for it through the PW archives a few months back but wasn’t able to find it, and then sent you an email asking what time/place to use to draw it up, didn’t hear back, and never got around to resending. Wikipedia says the eclipse’s “maximum” occurred at 11:03 UTC near a town called Ocnele Mari in Romania. A general question is that I’m not sure what time or place to use when drawing up any eclipse chart.

    P.S.: You may know, there is unprecedented flooding happening right now just west of you in the Catskills that is not (or hardly) being reported by the national media. The Watershed Post is doing a terrific job of covering it:

    http://www.watershedpost.com/
    http://twitter.com/#!/watershedpost

  17. I loved the sound of the rain….that was one of the best parts
    that and the earthy-correlated hurricane-talk of what was transpiring
    have you ever seen a sharp Austrian scythe rhythmically cut down hay or grain?
    (I’ll let you borrow mine!)
    or the field afterwards?
    how about the wheat separated from the chaff?
    now That is harvesting!
    damn right!
    Go Mother Nature! you GO!

    ps. I bet Virgo is involved in crop circles. just a guess.

  20. Read the solotouch article and just thought the bisexual girl had a ‘snap out of it!’ moment with the other girl, definitely snapping, but hopefully helping her also to snap out of her intolerant behavior. I’ve had different responses from lesbian women to my bisexuality depending on how political they are, but definitely remember some frustration with my claiming it. I think it’s interesting how previously disenfranchised people of any stripe seem to instantly try to control the expression of outliers. Controlling sexual expression among the previously sexually repressed, self or society, almost seems to be an effort to exercise previously the unavailable power of exclusion. How can you exclude when you are the excluded? Not that it’s not possible. Seems like it’s pretty human to have an allergy to ambiguity.

    Eric, sounds like PlanetWaves was almost born of a hurricane what with finding your 14 boxes, etc., good for you!! Treasured history you thought was gone forever!

    I reserve judgment on the HAARP weather/natural disaster control conspiracy theory after looking it up on Wikipedia, but your reference did help explain someone’s mention of it on a real-time camera chat out of NYC I saw last night.

    The newest thing I’m noticing since Mercury turned direct is a willingness to tackle cleaning my office–you can’t imagine the dust and mess, particularly since we’ve been doing some remodeling after moving my sister out. Yikes! Just got the floor done, now need to tackle the surfaces, yuck. Procrastination has definitely been a characteristic of this Mercury Retrograde and being patient with myself through it, waiting myself out kindly despite some frustration. But I feel a new energy now. I’m hoping for continue clarity to continue to develop and cleaning my office will definitely help with that.

  21. A better way to describe the New York City evacuation would be to describe it as a kind of “dress rehearsal” for future, worse disasters of this kind. I agree that this is what the evacuation is really all about. In my un-expert opinion, this storm was never going to be bad enough to cause truly serious problems in the Big Apple.

  22. I was opened (literally) to my “mature” understanding of sex upon giving birth. Until then, I thought of sex as the act of sex in whatever form – my definition being whatever brought one to orgasm or not – you know the general catagory of activity.

    Nearing the critical end of the delivery process is called transition. Transition is the time when any illusion of control is totally gone, period, end of story. I realized that life was giving birth to itself, and I was honored to be an observer. Life was using my body to reporoduce itself for its own purposes. My enjoyment of the sex that got me into this fine mess was just one small part of the dance, critical to the particulars of that moment, but miniscule, nonetheless. At that time, I had what was one of my very few moments of true humility – my ego had nothing to say, nothing to do, and any illusion I ever had control was gone. I knew that this moment of birth probably had only one parallel in life – which is the death process, when our number is up, as they say, and any illusion of power to halt the process is dispelled. In the case of birth, the body and the attached ego/identity is being used to perpetuate the species and in the other, the body is no longer useful to the ruthless clear-eyed and profoundly detatched reality. In my opinion, orgasm has some parallels, but is still subject to conscious and unconscious psychological mediation, but I suppose this point could be argued.

    This is a long way to getting to my point; I also realized that my idea of sex had been utterly socially constructed – so limited, so narrow. Now, I saw that sex was EVERYTHING!!! The air we breath, the water we swim in, the process of birth, the exquisite growth and development of a child, what is it not? what is it not? what is it not? What is being stimulated in us when we interact with another human? I am not talking only of the kind of interactions that we have socially agreed upon are “sexualized”, I’m talking about holding a baby, having coffee with a friend, having road rage, going shopping, getting a cabbage out of the garden, meditation, doing the dishes. I am at the point where I fear my ability to write does not meet the concept that I am trying to convey, but enough is enough.

    By the way, I am a heterosexual and monogomous woman. I am a Taurus and like the stability, simplicity, and apparent normalcy of this kind of life – I consider it a choice, as valid as any other. I see there are costs and benefits to any life-style choice – sexual/relational or otherwise. We each choose items off the menu and what is included and what is exluded is ours to eat, not eat, pay for, digest, but ours and ours alone.

    Regarding the masterbating lesbian analogy. I had to think about it a minute, but got the point (confirmed by Eric’s note). At the time, my mind jumped to the ancient image of early goddesses, like Innana, who was called “virgin” even though she was also a sexual being with a consort. The mythological definition of “virgin” meant -alone, needing no other, independent, not defined by relationship, whole. The hurricane over the ocean seemed to fit that image, too. We are all both – relational/ sexual beings and virigin from birth to death. I have a quote I love – If it isn’t paradoxical, it probably isn’t true.

    PS: I have Moon Aquarius 2nd opposite Mars Leo 8th (widely conjoined with Saturn/Pluto Leo 8th)/ t-square to both is Chiron in Scorpio 11th. (Also ASC Sag conjoined Jupiter opposite Geminii Venus/Uranus/DEC – creating a rectangle with the Moon/Mars opposition) My son was born when transiting Chiron was opposed within one degree of my natal Chiron.

    PPS: I now – 28 years later after giving birth – strongly suspect that all of our life is probably closer to, if not identical to, what is only made apparent during birth and death – we are “being danced”, in which case – (paradoxically) why not join in with joy and abandon?

  23. I read the article and my predominant feeling was ambivalence. I recoiled but it was also erotic. I’m beginning to think ambivalence is both undervalued and underrated.

  24. Soulport/Clare,

    What a heartfelt letter you wrote. I thank you for it. I haven’t listened to Eric’s podcast so can’t comment on it, but when I first read the solotouch story about the angry lesbian, I was at once taken aback (my violence radar turned up a notch), sexually turned on and also felt this odd sense of victory that self-righteousness of the most dangerous kind was put in its place. I am a bisexual woman and except for the last eleven months of my life was in two monogamous partnerships with women (one for seven years; the other fourteen) for the last twenty-one years. I still call myself a lesbian at times; it is so much part of not just my identity, but the way I relate to myself. I love women–sexually, emotionally, spiritually. I really understand the feeling of having been patronized to kingdom-come. I’ve experienced it many times in my life.

    For the past two years, I have also been exploring a much fuller range of my sexuality, first intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, and now physically. That is not to say that being strictly lesbian or gay is somehow not the full range of sexuality. Of course it is, and it is a beautiful and complex spectrum for those who are strictly gay or lesbian.

    Part of my exploration has been about how power plays out in sexual relationships from the most subtle to the grossest levels. Between women, between men and women. I am also interested in and have investigated how it plays out between men together. For years I could not tolerate the idea of one person dominating another in sex. I was working through the pain of childhood sexual abuse as well as having absorbed the pain of having worked with survivors of rape and domestic violence. There was no fluidity for me in this matter. It was very black and white. And I am happy I allowed myself that time to reclaim a part of me that had been taken. As I became more comfortable with my own power and with partners I trusted, I could explore playing with dominance and submission in sex. Interestingly, the ‘angry lesbian’ in the story got off on being yelled at and being someone’s ‘bitch.’ It is hard to not see this as being abusive if being a victim of abuse is the lens through which you view the world. It doesn’t have to mean that someone actually raped you. It could be enough that you don’t feel safe walking the streets at night.

    In my experience, sex becomes so much safer when the power dynamics become explicit. And they couldn’t have been more explicit in the story. I am not saying that women (and men) never submit to certain sexual experiences out of a lack of self-respect or self-love. We do. It happens all the time in all sorts of relationships. Eric just happened to post a story about a lesbian on the same night he compared a hurricane to lesbian masturbation. I have found a lot of liberation and personal power in sexual play in which dominance and submission get played out explicitly. Play being the operative word, which implies consent and safety. Personally, I am not into physical pain, but I can see now how some people explore that realm and it does not necessarily mean they are pathologically warped.

    I just thought I might offer my experience to you as food for thought.

  25. I can’t thank you enough for the Iris “oops”! I’ve been walking through some incredibly challenging times for the last 5 years or so. A little over 3 years ago, I asked the universe to send me a sign if I was actually meant to be exactly where I am right now, wading through a lot of tough times. The sign I requested was an iris, and I was open to receiving it in any way, shape, or form. Within 2 weeks of asking for it, it started raining irises and mostly has not stopped. When I later discovered that Iris was also a messenger god that linked humanity to the divine, I felt pretty happy about having selected that flower as my sign. As I still find myself trying to resolve a lot of tough situations in my life, I am so happy to see the Iris pop up here today!!

  26. As long as who/what you fuck is legal and doesn’t compromise your personal integrity it really, in such a so-called liberal culture in the West, should not be anyone’s business to judge. Funny how when you feel like fucking (for whatever reason) whenever another person may become involved a simultaneous worry arises of ‘what will this person think of me if I ask them to engage in an entirely natural process with me?’

    Just how much spontaneity (and therefore, life), dies as a result of this on a daily basis on planet earth, I don’t know – but I wish I had the machine that could meaningfully quantify it. It would be a LOT.

    Sexual expression has been siphoned off from the whole rest of existence and made unnatural. To claim anything else is tantamount to outing yourself as a pervert. Sure, the history of the abuse of power has tainted matters; but that’s abuse not the sexual exchange.

    So, I’m with Eric on the rage driver. Porn is that shadow material writ large and this is why so many puritans officially decry it or make sophisticated arguments about why it is harmful (it IS in its current manifestations because it is cut off and cast away from what is considered healthy – yet still it shows us some visceral honesty we have long since abandoned) at the same time as harbouring their own ‘secret’ depravities.

    What has been done to sex, and all the false delineations made around it, is one of the great evils of our current manifestation of the religious roots of repression.

    Cut honest sex out of our cultural picture and we cut out honest relating. Go figure!

  27. Oops on Iris – one of my favorite models ever in Book of Blue history, who never seems to be far from my thoughts. I’ll post her photo later, electric power permitting.

  28. The hurricane over the water analogy is double yin, with a lot of power to it. A hurricane over land is mixing elements in a way that creates a different kind of effect. Maybe I just have lot of Pisces in my chart but I would be happy to be compared to a hurricane over water.

    As for the link to solotouch.com, to see the humor in the drama and at times utter stupidity of sex takes some flexibility. If we consider the erotic realm and all of the social perturbations that come with it as sacrosanct/sinful/special – (and as far as I can tell, what the writer describes is one of the friendlier, everyday manifestations of people working out their bullshit in a social context) – we can end up like Michelle Bachman or Christine O’Donnell. it’s a short hop to that kind of purism and certain ‘sexual minority’ movements are famous for it.

    I have spent most of my decades writing about sex making the case almost exclusively that all things heteronormative deserve a big bold critique. I give the married – hetero – ‘straight’ – monogamous people who read a lot of credit for being open minded and self-reflexive.

    If anyone is curious about some of the shadow or anger that lurks beneath my response to society’s blatantly hypocritical stances on sexuality, and how people are marginalized, and the double binds that both men and women are put in for expressing desire at all, and how political correctness makes the mere existence of many seem like a crime – I would be happy to cut loose and I just may anyway.

    We could talk about all the sensitive men who had their desire turned against them and legislated out of existence by Women’s Lib. We could talk about the bisexual women who have been been shoved into the corner by orthodox lesbianism, being made to feel existential shame at their own desires. We could talk about all the bisexual people who are forced by the convention of marriage to stuff their feelings and desires. How about the people who say, “I can fuck anyone I want, but you’re going to give me your undivided attention even if I ignore you.” We could mention all the therapists and astrologers who refuse to talk about this, or who are embarrassed to, and the ways in which people have so few places they can open up.

    I personally found the essay a refreshing, authentic and happy moment in the social history of sex, when someone told someone else to get over herself, mind her own business and keep her orthodox [whatever] to herself. As someone who has listened to the sex stories of thousands of people I assure you that the kind of aggressive play described by the writer is as normal as cheering at a football game, and as far as I’m concerned, just as healthy.

    There is a dimension, perhaps a layer, on which my elaborate, self-revealing, humanitarian and donated-for-free approach to sexuality is driven by the rage and the power trips that people put one another through, and the illusions they expect others to worship about them, such as the purity and virtue of their particular views of sexuality. Hey, there is always somebody queerer and nastier and less moral than you.

  29. Just after ten minutes in you called it hurricane Iris……interesting…..that was my mom’s name……where did the iris come from?
    xoxoxox

  30. Hi soulport. As soon as I heard the phrase used I was sort of asking where’s the analogy going! I’m not going to speak for Eric, whatever answer may be forthcoming or not. What I will say is that our subjective frame-of-reference is our truth. Truth not with a ‘moral’ quality but with an experiential quality of the personal, of the life lived.

    I concluded that the sense was that in the popular cultural imagination ‘lesbian masturbation’ would be to what is a normative appetite, something like salted popcorn. I don’t feel that is to disrespect lesbian sexual experience. The problem comes because we are talking of the essences of reality; earth, air, fire, water.

    We need to see Eric the man. It is perilous for him – he’s not Jesus Christ after all. Personally, I’d rather see the odd flaw – did you see how, on a roll, Irene was mis-designated Iris? Hooray!!!

    It would be easy to milk the guru persona. Mr Francis doesn’t in my opinion.

    Saints are boring and being misunderstood is a consequence faced by anybody risking opening their mouth..

  31. Hey Eric,

    I pounced on your unexpected podcast this morning with some interest and enthusiasm, having been wondering how you were doing. I was enjoying your stream-of-consciousness night-time musings rumbling away in the background as I checked out my e-mails, and was right there with you until the moment of your self-quotation from your earlier conversation with Gary Caton, in which you had likened a hurricane over water to “lesbian masturbation”. At that point, something inside me involuntarily froze….

    In the – what, 13 years, maybe? – since I first discovered and became a subscriber to PW, I can’t ever recall having cringed at something you wrote or said. This morning I did and it was a big fat cringe, right deep in my belly.

    So, unwilling to accept (read “in denial”!) that this could possibly be an unconscious display of prejudice and/or an integrity lapse on your part, I took a deep breath; and in that moment or two immediately after having heard your words, when I still had access to my intellectual faculty, I scribbled a few notes which I transcribe here:

    ??! What assumption might be at the heart of his choice of analogy? That a hurricane over water/lesbian masturbation is/are what? – less real? Ineffectual? Gutless? Pointless? Less remarkable? Somehow less worthy of interest/attention/consideration/appreciation/respect than any other kind? I get the ying-yang part – although even that is questionable – and yet –

    At that point I gave up for the moment, walked into my kitchen and brewed another cup of coffee, intending to continue thinking about your analogy when I returned to my Mac… whereupon I noticed that there had been one “response” to the podcast, so clicked on it and found that it took the form of a link you had posted.

    Now I’m even more confused, Eric: the written piece on the end of your link, although illustrating graphically that moment of discovery on the part of a “heterosexual” woman of her bisexual potential, seems to me to describe a relationship of the most emotionally abusive kind it would be possible to experience.

    Now, even after an hour or more, I still feel deep offense, disbelief, confusion, anger; a sense, as a lesbian of mature years, of having been patronised to kingdom-come; a real feeling of sadness – even rejection (now THERE’S something to think about) – and more. I take full responsibility for my emotional reaction of course, and shall no doubt learn much of value from it, on reflection.

    I have followed your evolving ideas and commentary on human sexuality, polyamory and allied issues with fervent interest to date; and I never imagined I’d be moved to use the word “crass” in connection with anything emanating from Planet Waves, and still won’t, since I totally appreciate that last night’s podcast was recorded during the dark hours and in extremis, when all kinds of serpents and shadows will inevitably awaken.

    But I would, in all sincerity, be interested to read a few clarifying afterthoughts upon both your choice of analogy and the web link in the cold light of day, when you have time, and maybe other readers would be too.

    With my love and warmest regards,

    Clare xx

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