The Conservation Of Love

4-25-06 Nothing Is Ever Lost




I often forget that every act of love I commit lasts forever. The reason I forget is nobody ever told me that is The Law Of Love except me. Every thought I think has Power. It is instantly transmitted. This world may not be a perfect democracy & probably never will become one. Because not all ideas are of equal intensity or of uniform application. The trouble is bad ideas presently hold sway in the USA. Dirty ideas owned & operated by The Corporate State of Debris & Obfuscation, INC. Still, I remind myself & The Reader: Every single act of love we perform has currency in the free market of World Ideas. I believe the Best Ideas will survive their worst enemies always. Never give up on True Love. Never follow the shadow course of jaded half-assed bought-in-Las Vegas Neon-Love. It is counterfeit coin & will never buy you any genuine Consolation. I know. I've tried every second-hand love available at discount prices. And you get what you pay for and less, considerably less. Ergo, find out what is going on Inside where all the major events of your life begin & end. Trust me on this. I have been inside HELL many times. You can learn something in Hell also. You learn the price of Love is eternal vigilance & never allowing your conscience to fall asleep. What happens in the field of sex will always be determined first by the state of your Inner Health. If you lie to yourself don't expect your epidermis and outer body signals to cooperate in your subterfuge. And don't be too quick to interpret your dreams as giving you The Green Light. As Dr. Jung wisely stated dreams arrive often to warn you of something you are neglecting in your everyday life. Dreams are forms of compensation. They are not pats on the back.


RLG Copyright 2006

"Brokeback Mountain": A Semi-Review

4-24-06 Premature Mutterings & Critical Cant




I watched a long piece of "Brokeback Mountain" at home on VCR yesterday. Let me tell you my Anticipations & Results. First of all two adult women one age 53 & the other past 40 and each of an Independent cast of mind told me the movie is unusual, original, and far exceeding the average fare of film coming down the pike these days. A number of film critics also raved about this movie---including Kenneth Turan who has been the LA Times main reviewer since the retirement of Charles Champlin. Mr. Turan slammed The Academy for awarding Number 1 prize to "CRASH" for Best Film of 2005. Turan raged that "CRASH" isn't even in the same World of Originality & Genius as "BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN" which stars Heath Ledger & Jake Gyllenhaal.

After I had viewed what turned out to be the film's first 36 minutes I checked my stop watch & was STUNNED to note that more than half an hour had passed & Nothing significant or INTERESTING (to me!) had occurred in this supposedly Original movie. I mean nothing nothing nothing. Two cowboys are fucking around watching a huge herd of sheep & one night they find themselves cornholing in a makeshift tent. Decidedly UN-interesting unless you happen to be homosexual which I'm not. There is nothing Universally compelling in any of these 36 minutes. Just utter farm Boredom. And I mean uninterruptedly tedious. SO, I say to myself, what in the HELL is with those people screaming for this film to be Numero Uno---unless they have a Gay-Lesbian agenda? This movie is a downer.

I however decide to watch some more just to find out if Nirvana is in the Middle. And I do continue to watch until each of the cowboys has found himself a wife & sired children---and then the cowboys got themselves back together for some real man to man mouth to mouth resuscitation and Prove themselves true Homosexual dads. At that point----I guess around the 70- or 75-minute mark----- I cashed in my chips and brought the DVD back to the store. I had not been moved emotionally by a single scene. I did find it half amusing when Heath Ledger's wife catches through the upper window the two cowboys passionately embracing & mouth-kissing in a stairwell outside their home---much to her total Astonishment. But that surely does not constitute a movie. I am sure many people of a same-sex persuasion found this movie at least "interesting" even though it had nothing compelling in it for me. But then to suddenly leap in the air & yell Academy Awards, Greatness---Originality! No. Just an average Hollywood cowboy movie with previously repressed homosexual acts in it but contaning not one element of eternal universal drama. A dull movie for the present reviewer. After 65 to 75 minutes it left me empty.

I of course am opposed to any censorship whatsoever. And movie critics should be absolutely free to espouse any ideas they see fit. But let's call things by their correct names. This movie has nothing in it for those like myself who are looking for The Dream of The Prince & The Princess to be fulfilled. And I wonder what Kenneth Turan is doing crushing a movie like "CRASH" with his expletives calling it mediocre compared with this to him utterly triumphant & totally ORIGINAL piece of American Genius rendered us by the GRRRREAT director Ang Lee. "BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN" is not a great movie. It's a so-so movie whose main source of appeal will be to the Gay-Lesbians out there plus those heterosexual women who got tangled up with gay husbands & got their insides pretty well mangled when (IF!) they Found Out the Real Facts. Since so many Other People received such substantial Pleasure from the movie one can still be thankful it was made. Art exists for the Pleasure of The Species! So I'm glad there's somebody out there taking care of the needs of the previously unattended.

For myself however this is a movie that has already been erased from my palimpsest. I vastly preferred "Something's Gotta Give" which I saw on television the night before with Jack Nicholson & Diane Keaton which is about an older man & woman discovering true love in their 60's and really going crazy. That's my cup of tea. And I am by no means an automatic Keaton or Nicholson admirer. I see them as neutral figures on the screen. Just as I also judge the actors Jake Gyllenhaal & Heath Ledger & director Ang Lee to be neutral screen presences.


RLG Copyright, 2006

She Came To Me

4-22-06 Starbucks at Calle Real



I was sitting there writing the autobiography & she walked in the door & was sitting next to me with her back to me & she almost turned to me to reveal her face to me which I had partially glimpsed as she moved toward the table. Good looking. Extremely good looking. Adult. Neatly brushed grayish brown hair. Adult and still retaining her beauty. And immediately I thought of Wendy Reeves. That is who her face recalled. The most beautiful woman I have known in my life who I haven't seen for more than 25 years. A young woman the daughter a university student was with the woman & the husband. And I could feel it was wrong. The marriage the family---wrong. There was complaining by husband father addressed to the daughter about college responsibilities. I wasn't listening but I wanted this woman's attention. But it was impossible. This was a nuclear mismarriage. It felt unhappy. And I thought: Yes, Wendy still loves me. We're still in love after all these years. I'm still in love with her sitting here at Starbucks writing away and glancing at this lovely woman in her 50's with her face still beautiful. Wendy is also in her 50's.

Then the husband and wife and daughter walked out the door and across the parking lot. I watched them walk all the way to the intersection. They didn't even have their car with them. As I do not have a car. Probably staying at a motel a few blocks away and they are in town to visit their daughter who is a student at UCSB. This beautiful mother was wearing a green jacket. Then she took it off as she was sitting there & revealed a striped shirt underneath that was also mainly green. And I said to myself: yes, Mr. Greenfield, there's hope. This lady is Green on the outside & Green on the inside and that means the Green Light for Greenfield. Open Sesame. I was calm by this time. And I continued to pen my story into my notebook. And then I got up & put on my jacket and my scarf & I headed out to the parking lot and up the strreet to the store to buy some popcorn and a movie for the night and I wondered where Wendy is & what she looks like & what she'd have to say to me if we met & what I'd have to say to her. Then I walked home and made myself a vegetarian drink & I began to watch the Clippers win their first playoff game. But then this movie came on "Something's Gotta Give" with Diane Keaton & Jack Nicholson. And it's a terrific movie about this older couple who fall head over heels ass over teakettle in love and they tell it like it is. And this movie was better than the one I checked out at Wherehouse. It's a damned good love story. About the best I've ever seen Keaton. A believable story. And that's where matters stand now---ten minutes after the movie ended.


RLG Copyright 2006

'The Answer'

4-22-06 Blowing In The Wind




The answer my friend is blowing in the wind-----the answer is blowing in the wind. OK. Everybody was telling me to Move On. And these are all college graduates most of them professors and the rest "professional people." "Move on" they keep saying---"get a life." And I looked at them. And they were old. Younger according to the calendars than I am by several years. But these were all Old People. Supposedly Wise. Liberal of course. But starched collar dead in their tracks OLD. I would use the word conservative but that might give them a false glow of style which they did not earn. Stylish they are not. Though they all wear quite creative cloth and drive good cars. In their offices behind their desks they are something else again. Privileged and supervisory. That was a long time ago. Once upon a time, they say to their students. That was a considerable age ago. Before the Golden Age descended. Before The Wedding. The Wedding of Psyche & Eros. Everybody was going to Tom Hanks movies. And attending A Cappella choir recitals by their kids in junior high spectaculars. Where their marriages began to deteriorate at a rapid pace. They couldn't find any anti-biotics at Orchard Supply to stop the reversal. Doubt had completely devastated the original wedding vows. Though this was a far cry from love at first sight in the first place. It was more about money and competition and killing time than about Romance. Romance was something that happened many centuries ago when men were warriors and women were princesses. That was before the white man landed at Plymouth Rock got out his Bible and kicked the Indians off the property. The only good Indian was Pocahontas. She was willing to wear white underwear and do the wash every Monday morning. And have all the ironing done by suppertime. But now that we have Wall Street and the internet who needs white underwear or the Monday morning wash? All the university kids got a new car for high school graduation. So who needs sex? They all hoist up behind the steering wheels of their cars & take off. Nirvana. All the orgasms you can eat. Just drive up to that pump and fill er up to the brim. You are completely set for the whole rest of the night. Did I say The Answer? To whose question? There are no more questions. Why should there be! Everybody owns his and her car. And cars are smooth and cool and they don't hurt. Cars are much more christian than people. And they Come every time!


RLG Copyright 2006

The Gentle Heart

20 April 06 True Love



There can be no True Love without The Gentle Heart. As I let these words fall on the white page they almost feel like a cliche. But they actually are the very opposite of stale or common. Though The Gentle Heart should be common----available to every person. Without it: absolutely no true love. All the lust in the world is just an empty raging field without The Gentle Heart. I have always known this since I began first to like girls and then women. I have experienced it. But then something happened that I can only call "evil" and I lost my Gentle Heart. It got stamped out by emergency situations. It really did get crushed. And it all happened with the beautiful Woman of The Gentle Heart in my vicinity. She was there---though often behind a locked door. But I experienced this actual traumatic loss. I was blinded and dumbed and my senses unable to feel her tenderness. I was turned into a machine and lost my capacity to respond with love and tenderness & power to the woman I loved as I have loved no other woman. I "lost" it but I did not LOSE it. So when I am talking here of The Gentle Heart & True Love I'm talking about Reality. The largest Reality in the human experience. Many apparently never have it. This divine human experience of True Love. I believe life is all about True Love and it is about Innocence. We are forever Innocent in my judgment---or forever in search of its return---always one or the other. If not of course one is after money & possessions and power I suppose. Fill in the blank. All the customs of greed that have forever driven the beast to "succeed." Here's what I know: Once you have encountered the woman of The Gentle Heart, The Irresistible One, then one is forever changed. And that is for the good however friends or family may decide on the matter. Once you have fallen truly & irrevocably in love then you have entered The Gentle World---however dark it was before and however dark it shall become again. You have tasted of The Divine Essence. And you have been made pure. You can never look upon "women" in the plural in the same way again although you may try and try and try. Of course you will lust again after the things of the flesh including this and that woman. But now you have been given new Inner Eyes. And your inner eyes will remind you sooner or later. They are at work deep inside you these eyes. You don't "know" it. They dwell in the Unconscious Zone. But they are infallible. You are The Hero With A Thousand Faces. And you have encountered The Goddess of Love. And you have received her gaze---The Mirada Fuerte. You are a marked man and a marked woman like Romeo & Juliet were singled out---you are the man with a Gentle Heart, the woman with a Gentle Heart. You will never be sorry. Though you will know every Sorrow, every outrage of life, every doubt in the human lexicon. You have tasted the Ecstasy itself, Life's Elixir. And you rejoice in all the nightmares of history which are eternal and unchangeable.


RLG Copyright, 2006

The Potency Of God

4-17-06 She Said




Monday on The Island a cold air coming inside the eyes & ears. The blood listening. The women all indifferent. Ears & eyes & skin wide open. Adrift for answers. To what questions is anybody's guess. Sex is always part of the larger picture & sometimes is The Picture itself. The laughter is always a veil for the deeper sorrow of yesterday or last week or last year---a veil for the individual tragic history. There is no escaping tragedy by money or power or fame or television or the noise of bought propaganda. Though many try to buy significance. The last death was not as magnificent as the first. Of course the second wasn't as splendid as the first either. True Love is rare if ever. I see most of these people have never experienced it & when they meet me especially older women they grab hold of whatever they can get their claws on. They are after The Big Love. In this they are absolutely correct. There is no other love worth getting out of bed for. And True Love is not a thing one can discover in the market place. Though hundreds of millions try to manufacture & sell it there. They are all suffering from the after-effects of The Delusion. A heady disease not easily cured let alone diagnosed. How can you diagnose as a sickness that which you consider The Reason for all human Comfort & Safety?

Yes, I am much impressed with T.S. Eliot in retrospect. His withdrawal into the monastery to prevent the leeches from attacking his epidermis. And not impressed with the present generation who calls themselves poets or actors. They have nothing to say to me. They lie, said Nietzsche all those years ago. That was before The Big Lie of Hollywood. What do the women have to say to me? That of course depends on the individual instance. Lately nothing of value or pristine beauty. Nothing that shakes me out of my coma. Nothing penetrating. Love is in the grave. And Easter did not cause any Resurrections. Of that you can be sure. This is only Monday----- Just Another Manic Monday, as the lady sang compellingly. This cup too will pass, said Jesus, who knew something about manic mondays. But the Name should not be confused with that used by the present famous World religion, Christianity. That was something completely developed by desperate political animals with ulterior motives designed to deceive & defraud the public. Pass goal & collect 200 dollars & don't look back like Lot's wife & Orpheus did. The Future is in front of you not behind you. Why is that so difficult to understand? I think it's because of all those old wives tales about "mother's cooking" & such. Look back & try to imitate the best. But The Best is always in front of you & within you---never behind or deriving from some other source. There is no Promise that I know of guaranteeing you will see True Love again if you have ever Seen Her in the first place. It is very much like God. The gods stop visiting Earth apparently because humankind was so tedious & so comatose. Corrupt of course. So with true Love. She got bored with us. She couldn't stand The Tedium. So She returned to Her Web of Silence & Solitude. Can you blame Her? She needed to feel the Unadulterated Passion. She needed the fire of Eros itself. And you thought it was Her Business to feed you. I understand perfectly your divine & mortal confusion. It comes from The Absence. The very Source of The Nightmare of Emptiness & Banality. You have to Create it yourself ex nihilo.


RLG copyright 2006

Letter To Wendy Of Nashville, Tennessee

4-12-06

Dear Wendy,

What a miracle to receive your email regarding my blog yesterday concerning Eros & The Catholic Church & my intimate relations with movie theaters. Everything you write is accurate. Your sense of wit & the comic is so rare & so totally free of cant it stuns me. No, I have never visited Nashville. I'm an Angeleno. Though I started out in the middle of the country. Glad to get out of The Winter Zone. Like you I also admire the myth & legend of Abraham Lincoln-----notably, his 360-degree Man-For-All-Seasons wit. It was so quiet & dry it snuck up on you as your beautiful letter snuck up on me this morning. Your kindness is large. And you are correct to fill in the open spaces of my Catholic education lacking in so many respects. But how unerring of you to remember the humor necessary for any true appreciation. I am keeping The Faith as you requested by not quoting you at length. And the only reason I'm posting my banal response here is to let readers know it's ok to respond as you did. Thanks for staying up all night to make your reply. I'm glad it was so electrical an experience. Your devouring a breakfast of waffles & ham by candle---sweet-smelling candles!---that is Extraordinary & goes well with my blog piece. And, YES, I anticipate receiving the rest of your totally original response when you finish your novel. That tells me Everything. I look forward most excitedly to receiving a copy of the novel in my mail----I certainly do. And what an absolute surprise to know The Subject of your novel which I shall not at this time disclose to my readers here. My God, I LOVE the photograph of yourself you mailed, Wendy. You don't look a day over 21. Thanks for reading not only but Understanding the Sensibility underlying the whole piece. Biography is Destiny, that's for sure.

LOVE

RLG Copyright 2006

Love, Sex, & The Blessed Virgin

4-11-06 Straight From The Horse's Mouth


I love The Catholic Church. I don't mean Papal policies or Church Law. I mean the sacred symbols, & the sexiness, the holy sexiness of The Virgin Mary. But I also mean all those things my ultra right wing Protestant family taught me to hate about Catholics that made them "Unbelievers." They worship idols, count beads, pray to The Virgin, wear lovely esthetically pleasing crosses around their necks. O yes, those sexy Catholic symbols. Plus this: Mary, a Catholic beauty in my high school & about 3 inches taller than me asked me to my first Sadie Hawkins Dance in high school. Can this be Evil? My parents & their church told me it was a Sin to go to dances. Too bad for them. I snuck away to that dance & loved every minute of it. Do you know what? I still love it now telling it to you. It's sexy even now as my Memory warms it up in the good old Greenfield Cooker. Sin Twice so that Grace may abound! What made those Catholic girls & later women so sexy to me is their secret religion. Going to The Confessional is a clandestine act! All those brooding female secrets heard only by the sacred ears of the holy father. I love the NAMES of Catholic churches. They are so Romantic. So Renaissance cool.
Cunnilingus is Catholic. I'm sure of it. It has that poetic classical concealed-meaning sound & flavor. The priests & the Confessional made it Necessary to enhance the erotic experience in the sacred bond of Marriage. It's so Irish Catholic. It's so Roman Catholic. It's so English Catholic. It's so Holy Roman Empire Greek Classical Catholic. So Yes, Catholic!

I consider nothing sexier and more erotic than the movies. The movies to me are The Ultimate Love Parlors. The delicious dark room where young men & women meet & mingle. Well, actually they usually meet first & then Go to the movies and mingle there in that lovely darkness which to me always signals The Erogenous Zone. I think sexy thoughts in the cinema house. Almost as sexy as the thoughts one gets in church in The House Of The Goddess. That's it. The Catholic Church had the guts to tell the truth about women. They put The Virgin Mary into the order of Worship. Who made Mary pregnant with Jesus? Well, of course, rumor has it the Holy Ghost knocked up Mary while she was sleeping. But good Catholics are no fools. I have never ever met a Catholic who wanted to convert me. Have you? They are much too worldly & knowledgable to mess around with such fool's errands like suggesting to other people what to believe. I still wonder about how it is with Catholic women. I mean this & that particular female. They contain Mysteries that were never part of my bald & Bible-pounding Dutch Calvinist tedium. We didn't have any incense. No candles. No beautiful statues of Mary The Mother of Jesus. No Hail Mary's. No perfectly symmetrical crosses. Goddammit, we were robbed of the whole kit & caboodle of The Roman Catholic Ceremony! Yes, CEREMONY! Catholics got to memorize some good lines. They had a direct way to pay for their sins Now! No messing around with some future forgiveness after you're dead & buried. But these people believe in results. And their sexual intercourse thus lasts longer. So I am given to believe. They have mantras to chant to eachother between the sheets. Beads, crosses, emblems, images, textures, aromas. O yes, what is sexual intercourse without the whiff of a few burning candles dripping & hissing & shedding perfume in the background? Might as well go to a brothel as commit Protestant sex. It's all straight Gideon's Bible sex. Without supersensory interpretations.

But how did we ever get off the subject of movies! Well, of course The Virgin Mary distracted me & took me our of my rhythm into her beloved arms. It's not the first time. Movies I said are the great House Of Love for me. How is that? Well, again, my family banned movies from my life. They were considered SIN by The Christian Reformed Church that owned my parents & their entire social lives. But luckily for me we didn't have a Calvinist high school in my home town so I got introduced to movies in the public high school which was like my first visit to Paradise. And I was hooked on Hollywood from that moment on. The interior of the cinema house even today contains something magic---a texture as it were. Something about the ceiling & the indirect lighting. The fall of the images down upon the face from The Magic Screen. The only other prerequisite is one lovely woman to be sitting next to me. This is IT. The Ultimate Occasion for Cupid to haul out His quiver & His arrows. This is the place to do some real Erotic damage. I mean to come to serious purpose with the lips & eyes of love. The hands and ears of love. The legs & mouth of love. In the beautiful large expanding cinema house itself with the magic celluloid all aflow with sensuous images. Help yourself to a dish of True Love. Don't go to the movies unless you bring with you at least the possibility of True Love. Everything else is for Unbelievers. This is for true Catholics. Catholic in the sense of UNIVERSAL!
RLG Copyright 2006

Love In The Dark Room

4-9-06 In The Dark Room



The cinema is the best place for love. I suppose it's partly because movies were verboten for me until I snuck into the theater when I got to high school and immediately became addicted to them. Took my high school date to every movie that came into town. I have kept the habit up. In fact increased it to extreme degrees. The point is Woman & I were sitting in the cinema house watching an anniversary showing of Blade Runner. It was Sunday afternoon. The delicious darkness surrounded us. And her face smelled pure. Her hair was falling down about her face just a little and her ears were tingling with romantic excitement. And I was excited too. She said, 'I love you.' She had never even come close to that subject. She leaned against me and her lips were on my ears when she said it. It hit me hard. And I took a sudden deep smashing breath. It really kicked me in the solar plexus. Her lips were breathing inside my ears very warm almost hot breath. I have never been in a more sexy place in my life to hear those unexpected words. Which I didn't know quite what to do with but I was kissing her then. And that was the first kiss. You don't need to know that we had spent almost zero intimate time together before this beautiful trek to the movies. This movie Blade Runner was going on in front of us and I did not care. We had this place to ourselves. And I could smell the purity of her skin her face her freshly shampooed hair. And the amazing taste of her mouth her kiss was going through my mouth and head and blood. I was burning up with fever at that precise minute. I was on fire. And I didn't know how we got to that place. She is the first to say I love you to me in such a situation so unexpectedly. It aroused me. She kissed me before I kissed her. That was something. That really penetrated my groin & heart. Like a fist of love. So sweet & confident. We didn't say anything after that for a long time. Just sat there watching Deckard, also known as Blade Runner, while he performed his weak magic tricks against the replicants. And then seeing Sean Young wrap Blade Runner up in cellophane & eat him for lunch---raw salmon on rye. Just nothing to it. Sean playing the sexiest most irresistible of the replicants who have come back to earth to get a life extension from The Company that holds the patent on their genetic structures. Yes, but I wasn't paying attention to the replicants after that debut 'I love you' kiss. I couldn't get back into the film after that hot-breath kiss on the mouth that was still exploding inside my flashing memory. Later, as we were driving home she behind the wheel something new began to happen---a whole new conflagration. The first kiss led to something quite profound in the front seat of her car. We had to pull over to the side of the road. And then later of course we went up to my pad. But that is the subject of the next chapter. We were watching the movie. But we weren't really hearing anything anybody said to eachother on the screen after that first kiss burned out all the lights of art inside my vessel. Ask me if I care.

RLG copyright 2006

Innocence & The Alone

4-8-06 The Pursuit Of Innocence




It is also the revelation of Innocence. Its discovery as the Essence of life. What is all this crazy pursuit of money about? How much money do we need for LIVING? What happened to human communion? The same question in blue ink: What happened to True LOVE? Did it disaapear from the universe? We know The repressed always returns though frequently in disguised forms from the original. I know Innocence is the point of life. That is why I headed to L.A. in 1962 at the age of 24. Because I was following my destiny to The City of Angels. Yes, I sought those warm winter days in the Los Angeles sun. I couldn't stand the insanity of winter in Wisconsin which lasts until the end of time. And I have never regretted this singular move. But I am finding that innocence spreads. It invades the psyche. It has nothing to do with age exactly. It is true many people associate it with childhood & youth & refuse to indulge in the Romance of Life after 21. But I have found innocence to be a stable force in my life---a wondrous power that keeps rising up out of the dust of my old dreams and my seemingly old love affairs.

The very best love affair I ever had has yet to culminate in a Brave New World of Grand Celebration. The Wedding Feast is still on hold after all these years. I am alone. I have been alone since 1975. Every once in a while I find the true company of a fellow traveller. It happens so rarely. These were all Angelenos in the beginning. A few of them found true love. Or something approaching it. They married and had one child. I don't know what happened after that. Everything became clandestine. As it always was for me. Though I got lassoed into divulging my dreams to a handful of the faithful back in 1975 and 1976 & 1977. I believe this could not be a success. They needed to know my intimate feelings for one & only love. And I considered it an outrage they would make such to me obscene demands. These were far from obscene people. And therein lay the contradiction. It could not happen---not even under their coercion. I could not yield though I tried. I ended up in jail. And the woman of my dreams was crying alone in the halls of the apartment house she managed. Everything went to hell in a matter of months. And stayed that way for several years. It is impossible to trace the exact contour of love's journey.

Then I disappeared into the desert. And I kept disappearing. I found here and there the angelic face of a woman. And made some half hearted attempts to draw her close to me. But with little success. There were 4 such women. And they expressed tremendous immediate interest. I believe each one of these four remarkable women was living in very unsatisfactory romantic conditions at the time I met them. Yet they were so completely inaccessible after the first few casual meetings I find it hard to evaluate our situations. I live in a separate world from them & therefore have had no real first hand information of their intimate comings & goings. I mean zero information. So that I have been living in a romantic & sexual vacuum. It would be not too much to say that I am innocent of the most trivial facts of their lives let alone signal events if they experienced such. I know nothing save that they have exerted a tremendous influence on me based solely on the fact of our very early encounters when they pulled at my emotions so powerfully with their Love Eyes. And this means to me they were sending very intimate messages to me at that stage which far transcended the words each of these women spoke to me. I must believe each of these women was actually in a crisis mode when I met her. So I think now. Things surely are not what they appear to be. How else could I have evolved into such hells so suddenly & so unintendedly.

I could write ten thousand pages but would not find any fresh material to improve on this slim sheet of data. Save with The Original-----Wendy Reeves. She was a living Revelation & a transforming Beauty who was my Equal in age as well as in the emotional virtues. In fact she is the reason for the title of this essay: Innocence & The Alone. To encounter true Love is to encounter The Loneliness Itself. For one can never be the same after that. And that is why all this penny ante marriage & family love is often so repulsive to me---for all its hard-working community-worshipping self-sacrificial rant. There is something Pure & Sacred that is missing in this whole operation. Something that drags every extraordinary thing down to the common level and immediately tramples upon romance. I have heard some of these cynical ladies even advertising their views that every woman should be forced to live as they do. The woman who told me that now has two children. She is a drop-out. And has disparaged everything in the world having to do with anything but radical politics. She is however happily the negative exception. The women who have been my companions sought to take the high road but found it simply was unavailable to them. They thus joined forces with a silent (for the most part) society. Innocence & The Alone make sweet companions as Thoreau once wrote so accurately. But now I am not thinking Thoreau's thoughts but my own: to wit, that Love made me Alone. That after the woman of singular Beauty walked into my life and looked into my eyes with the Mirada Fuerte Gaze at that moment I became, at her absence, The Always Alone.


RLG Copyright 2006

Jesus VERSUS "Christian" Doctrine

4-5-06

I was brought up on The Bible & Dutch Reformed Calvinist doctrine. And I found out something through long & arduous study. Jesus & The Bible do not mix. Have nothing organic and honest to do with eachother. St. Paul took the teachings of Jesus & tried to turn them into hard and fast DOCTRINE. Jesus was a POET and a MIRACLE WORKER. St. Paul was a nit-picker trying to intimidate the various churches he was trying to establish. Jesus taught one thing only. LOVE EVERYBODY---friends & enemies alike. St Paul threw out Matthew 5-7-----the entire Sermon On The Mount which contains everything Jesus believed.

Jesus was no believer in Bibles. Period. He was an iconoclast. A Revolutionary of the mind. There are people who believe that belief has something to do with getting something after they are dead. Namely, a free trip to a place called Heaven. Welcome, to Las Vegas, folks. There is nothing Christian about that particular Fairy Tale. When Jesus said "The Kingdom Of Heaven is within you" he meant it. It's not a place. It is inside of every person willing to discover it & reveal it.


Orthodox Christianity ought to be called Paulinism. THAT is exactly what it is. Dragging Jesus in by the tail but pounding people over the head with St. Paul's neurotic sermons which are totally absent of Jesus' sense of the comic & the poetic. Turning water into wine. Or making a few loaves & fishes stretch to feed 5000 people---that's Show Bizz & at the same time it is unadulterated Compassion!

Enough. Just take a look around you. As a kid forced to go to church twice every sunday to listen to 2 lousy sermons I got a good look at what's true & what's phoney. You can't fool kids. They know Goodness when they see it. Well, look at all these hate-mongers demonizing Arabs & Muslims in the name of Christ. O yeah---The Axis of Evil. The CHURCH plus a few Roman soldiers saw to it that Jesus got Capital Punishment for, among other things healing the sick & the wounded on the Sabbath. Has anything changed in this regard? The Orthodox Christian Church is not stopping the genocide in IRAQ--- not the Orthodox Evangelicals. They are still working for St. Paul.

How are we ever going to get LOVE at the very center of our schools & our government our Business, Our LIVING? I say Love, not Bibles. Human compassion & mutual Respect as The Centerpiece of our entire Civilization. People who resort to The Old Testament or The New Testament or to The Koran or the Bhagavad Gita---these kinds of "true believers" are looking for salvation in scriptures that are forever Mysterious & in some very basic sense forever Unknowable. Yet these "believers" are at the front of our wars & the thirst for revenge---totally Anti Christ Anti Buddha Anti Humankind.

I say it is time to get on the road to Love & quit bickering about scriptures.

RLG

Love & The Clothing

4-2-06 Every Choice Is A Destiny



There's a beautiful poem by Ted Hughes concerning his late wife Sylvia Plath. And there is only a mild pun in my phrasing. The title of the poem is "RED." But the real title of the poem should be' BLUE' in my opinion. I'm recalling the poem now to memory. I don't have it at hand. The very last word of the poem is blue. It's a lovely poem. It uses colors so Effectively. The poem is from Hughes' collection "BIRTHDAY POEMS." And all the poems are about Ted & his first wife Sylvia Plath who had taken her own life by sticking her head into the oven in her kitchen in her home on the outskirts of London---as I recall. In this last poem Ted mentions that Sylvia used to splash her canvases with white paint. Then she'd dump roses onto the white. More & more & more & more roses---to jam the painting with red. She plastered everything over with red, according to Hughes---furniture, walls, clothing. And Ted found this forboding. It signalled trouble ahead. Once he says she put a bluebird onto her white canvas and that was a powerful symbol of Freedom & Hope he notes. In reading this I felt the exact emotion Mr. Hughes is conveying. A lovely blue bird on a pure white canvas surely signifies Hope & Radiance & Love to me. What a forceful thing colors beautifully applied can be. Blue is the color of love-----a certain shade of pure sky blue and not the glaring kind. Reader, read this poem some day when you get into a library. Look up the book "BIRTHDAY POEMS" by Ted Hughes and find the poem 'RED' at the very end of that book of poems. It is a very healing poem. A truly Effective poem.

Dr. Johnnson the great sage of England's Augustan Age or The Age Of Reason once said to James Boswell: 'Grief, Sir, is a species of Excess.' I mention this now because this aphorism or homily has been running through my mind the past couple of days. By that statement Samuel Johnson was lining himself up with the Classical Doctrine sometimes known as The Golden Mean which I have mentioned in a previous Blog. It simply means that a truly wise person will avoid extremes & follow the middle course advocated by a life of Reason & sound judgment. Stay away from Excess is the 18th century over-interpretation of The Golden Mean. That's because 18th centuryists like 21st centuryists don't have to be told to stay away from Deficiencies---the other half of The Golden Mean. We automatically recoil from Poverty, Ignorance, & Disease----all of which are forms of Defect. Johnson in the above quote was warning aginst spending much time grieving the death of a loved one. He considered it to be a form of indulgence whereby weaker minds prey upon themselves by giving in to Passion as opposed to sound judgment based on Reason. Or, as we say nowadays: It's just a way of laying a guilt trip on yourself. MOVE ON! Quit sulking & sinking into the depravity of self-abuse.

The utter beauty & immediacy, the sensuousness of Ted Hughes' use of the individual colors red/ white/& blue in the poem 'RED' are unforgettable. Totally free of any political suggestions as you will find out the minute you read this simple & remarkable poem. In all events, maybe Dr. Johnson (1709-1784) & Ted Hughes (1930-2001, poet laureate of England) have more in common than being Englishmen. They both were active instruments in the perfection of the English language as well as voices of Inspiration and Intelligence. What more can we ask of an Author? Sylvia Plath on the other hand is more famous in America than either Johnson or Hughes. She died a suicide in London. But before she expired she left us her poems---including the remarkable book 'ARIEL.' I have no Romantic attitude however to suicide. I see no reason why I should.


RLG copyright, 2006