Intimate Kisses

Last post of September

I started blogging (more or less) in May of this year, and moved to this site at the end of July. It has been two months over here at Wordpress and I have been fairly pleased, both with their service and at the communities I’ve started to become part of. Those of you who are frequent commenters (esp. Susan, Gautami, Paisley, Liz, and Deb, and everyone else) are the ones who make it worthwhile to continue. I wish I could give as much back to the community as you do, but I feel so guilty for stealing the little time I do for this endeavor. One day, perhaps. So, for anyone randomly finding my blog by some strange combination of search terms: if you have any interest in poetry, definitely check out their sites. Anyway, I leave September behind with this poem, written, appropriately enough, in bed (though alone :( ):

Intimate Kisses

after Wendy Maltz

I start on the back of your neck,
trace your spine with my breath:
a warm mist interrupted by
kisses almost immediately memory.
As I linger on the small of your back,
my left hand tracing your thigh,
my right hand the curve of your side,
You shiver.
The temperature falls on the
sun-lapsed landscape
and you grow ever more flush,
leaving your skin
as playground for mercury.
Soft kisses in the past,
our bodies burn each other
and we throw the duvet from our bed.
Sweat becomes steam rising from us
becomes teardrops as the windows
weep: joy for our joy.

Tags: blogging, kisses, Poem, Poetry

Helen

Helen

When you were here,
when I could take your hand and
gently kiss the tips of your fingers,
you did not need a name.
I called you Love with every glance, touch, exhalation.
Today a body of water lies between us and
without your name my voice goes unraised
in protest at your removal.

Call yourself a siren and I will drown for your song.
Call yourself Circe and beguile me.
Call yourself Medusa and
though it would be my last,
I would tear the veils from your face and
my statue would bear such an expression of ecstasy
you would be lauded as the greatest of sculptors.

And if I should call you Helen
I would call myself a multitude:
man a thousand ships,
set sail for your shore,
lay siege to the walls of your indifference.

If I should call you Helen
I should call myself Ulysses:
it will only be through your surrender
I can return.
It will be no horse,
but something…
something…

The interest is in the shadows

via Notcot

Annie Vought’s Papercuts series

Tim Nobel and Sue Webster take piles of trash and make art

Poetry Thursday: Walking Away

Remembering to look down every once in a while.

Walking Away

Scarlet on grey:
Trampled
By a thousand leather soles-
Discarded roses.

Tags: Poem, Poetry, Poetry Thursday, Rose, Travelling Poetry Show

Yearning

Yearning

You and I
were
cherry blossoms
between
branch and ground.

I would undo Spring
to blossom again
with you.

Tags: cherry blossom, Poem, Poetry

Bloggers are narcissists?

I haven’t much to say about this. It’s a good, if lengthy essay. I found the link on both Mind Hacks and World of Psychology.

Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism

Christine Rosen

For centuries, the rich and the powerful documented their existence and their status through painted portraits. A marker of wealth and a bid for immortality, portraits offer intriguing hints about the daily life of their subjects—professions, ambitions, attitudes, and, most importantly, social standing.

…

Today, our self-portraits are democratic and digital; they are crafted from pixels rather than paints. On social networking websites like MySpace and Facebook, our modern self-portraits feature background music, carefully manipulated photographs, stream-of-consciousness musings, and lists of our hobbies and friends. They are interactive, inviting viewers not merely to look at, but also to respond to, the life portrayed online. We create them to find friendship, love, and that ambiguous modern thing called connection. Like painters constantly retouching their work, we alter, update, and tweak our online self-portraits; but as digital objects they are far more ephemeral than oil on canvas. Vital statistics, glimpses of bare flesh, lists of favorite bands and favorite poems all clamor for our attention—and it is the timeless human desire for attention that emerges as the dominant theme of these vast virtual galleries.

Although social networking sites are in their infancy, we are seeing their impact culturally: in language (where to friend is now a verb), in politics (where it is de rigueur for presidential aspirants to catalogue their virtues on MySpace), and on college campuses (where not using Facebook can be a social handicap). But we are only beginning to come to grips with the consequences of our use of these sites: for friendship, and for our notions of privacy, authenticity, community, and identity. As with any new technological advance, we must consider what type of behavior online social networking encourages. Does this technology, with its constant demands to collect (friends and status), and perform (by marketing ourselves), in some ways undermine our ability to attain what it promises—a surer sense of who we are and where we belong? The Delphic oracle’s guidance was know thyself. Today, in the world of online social networks, the oracle’s advice might be show thyself.

Tags: meta-blogging, psychology, social networking

Agreement across boundaries

According to a Reuters article, “President Hugo Chavez railed against a new trend in beauty-conscious Venezuela, giving girls breast implants for their 15th birthday.”

It seems Chavez disagrees with this practice, calling it “the ultimate degeneration,” and supporting “Western-imposed consumerist icons such as Barbie dolls.”

1. I do not support socialist doctrine. At all. From what I read on the news sites, the people seem to like Chavez. I don’t care.

2. I am rather fond of breasts (on women, go ahead, call me an objectifying, misogynist pig, whatever…) but I have no inherent preference for larger or surgically augmented breasts. Nothing against them either, I consider it a personal choice of the woman (or, in some rare but conceivable case, man) who wants to have her body altered.

I have to agree with Chavez. I don’t think it’s appropriate to be giving 15 year old girls breast implants. While I hesitate to use the phrase “too young” it seems the appropriate one. I don’t know how Venzualan law compares, but, in the US, at 15 a minor cannot enter into contractual arrangements. I think putting them into a situation resulting in permanent and artificial alteration of the body (and not on the small scale of ear piercing) for reasons of pure vanity is exposing a particularly shallow view of women in society.

Eh, the typing is getting terrible and I have little more to say. I don’t like this idea. Now, if these “presents” were given at 18, 21, 35 or 80, I wouldn’t feel as much apprehension about the act, but at least let these girls get to know their bodies as adult bodies before changing them.

Tags: beauty, breasts, surgery, viewpoints

A Threat, but just a little one

You can all torment yourselves by watching this.

Or, better yet, watch this (this one is not a threat).

Tags: neat-o internet tools, sketchcast

I had thought it was a no-brainer…

…that we should responsibly use schools to teach people truths.  Reality has no agenda.

The table depicts the relative risk for abstinence-only education the rate of diagnosis for STIs and rate of pregnancy in comparison to controls. The confidence intervals are also indicated. In this chart a movement to the left would indicate a reduction in relative risk for these indicators and would favor abstinence-only education. Note that not one of these studies shows a statistically significant improvement with abstinence-only education; for all of these studies all but one of these studies the confidence intervals cross 1 indicating that there was no overall improvement in outcomes. (Ed. The one study that shows statistical significance showed that abstinence-only education actually increases the rate of STIs and pregnancy. I missed that on the first pass.)

…

Abstinence-only education is a waste of money and time, and it needs to stop. We should throw that money into more aggressive abstinence-plus programs. Furthermore, we should continue to assess whether and what kinds of abstinence-plus programs are effective at generating improved outcomes. It may turn out that abstinence-plus programs are not effective either, and we need to accept that as a possibility. But for the time being, they appear to be the best option, and I think we should run with that.

Read the whole post over at Pure Pedantry.

Tags: abstinence, education, government, stupidity

Even a half-assed post is better than none, right?

by Kim Keever

Also, two video links.

Evil Bee reminds me of Oddworld, oddly enough.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BXr_4g0o9M]

LaLaLand by Ed Hu is quite good. But I can’t seem to find it embeddable, so take the link.

(links via Notcot)