Swimming with God

Father Anthony Mercieca has confessed to swimming naked with Congressman Foley when Foley was around 13. (see story: Priest: I massaged young Foley naked)
The priest also mentioned that they sat naked in a sauna together and that he gave Foley a massage. There may also have been some fondling, but no penetration, the good father recalled through his foggy memory, no doubt still a bit steamed up.
So what's wrong with skinny-dipping with your priest? Isn't it a little like being baptised?
What better way to get right with God?
So it was from the church that Foley was inspired to titilate Congressional pages with emails about getting naked and comparing penis size. Like a good church steeple, the penis should point up to God.
Meanwhile, 72- year- old Father Tony retains his fond memories on Malta, where the age of consent is 14.

Pederastic courtship scene

Athenian black-figure amphora, 5th c. BC, Painter of Cambridge; Object currently in the collection of the Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich, Germany.

The bearded man is depicted in a traditional pederastic courtship gesture, one hand reaching to fondle the young man, the other grasping his chin so as to look him in the eye. The youth is putting up symbolic resistance only.


Happy strokes...

Jameson

"Shortbus"

(click)


Review from Salon:

Photos: ThinkFilm

Shanti Carson, Sook-Yin Lee and Jan Hilmer in "Shortbus."

"Shortbus"

What's shocking about John Cameron Mitchell's new film is not the real sex -- gay and straight; solo, duo and beyond -- but its Midwestern friendliness.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Oct. 04, 2006 | At a screening a few weeks back I overheard a fellow critic describing to another colleague, in derisive detail, one of the numerous (unsimulated) sex scenes in John Cameron Mitchell's "Shortbus," which I hadn't yet seen. The sequence in question involved a somewhat awkward threesome and the humming of "The Star Spangled Banner" right into that spot where the sun don't shine, but never mind that for now. This critic, who writes for a mainstream national publication, had decided not to cover the picture at all, reasoning that it was a bad movie that wouldn't be opening in most towns anyway. Why bother?

Decreeing "Shortbus" unsuitable for the masses seemed a little weird, considering that so many critics had already come back from Cannes talking about how notably unsexy, if charming, the picture was. (My colleague Andrew O'Hehir, writing from the festival, summed it up perfectly as "a sad, sweet openhearted work.")

But after I saw "Shortbus," the notion that the good folk of America had to be protected from it seemed even weirder. "Shortbus" does feature unsimulated sex, both gay and straight (solo, duo, trio and beyond). Yet the sex is the most unremarkable thing about it. What surprised me most about this gentle-spirited sprawl of a movie, set in post-9/11 New York City, is what I can only call the friendly, Midwestern quality of the filmmaking. It's as if Mitchell -- the thoughtful, mischievous faun behind "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," one of the only truly swinging rock musicals ever made -- were calling out to one and all, "Come on over, kids -- we're having a sex party!" This may be a movie made by a New Yorker (albeit a Texas-born one), yet it's anything but insular. Gregarious, neurotic, maybe a little guilty of oversharing: "Shortbus" is American right to its nonexistent short shorts.

Mitchell is credited as the director and writer of "Shortbus," but he's really more of a conductor, a maestro in charge of overseeing the picture's multiple stories, which were conceived and developed by the performers. (Listen to Mitchell discuss the film here.) Mitchell and the actors, many of whom are his friends, rehearsed on-and-off for two and a half years, which helps explain the movie's relaxed, improvisational feel -- and also why it sometimes feels like a bit of a mess.

But sex isn't so neat, either. And considering the pitfalls that lie in wait when you attempt a free-form process like this, "Shortbus" hangs together surprisingly well. Mitchell opens the story with a naked guy in a bathtub -- we later learn that his name is Jamie (the actor who plays him is Paul Dawson) -- who's part of one of the most adorable couples in New York, the kind of couple that most people, coupled or not, straight or gay, envy. These two are known as Jamie and Jamie (the other Jamie is played by PJ DeBoy), and they are truly adorable, but they're not quite happy: Dawson's Jamie has suggested, for reasons that somewhat puzzle DeBoy's Jamie, that they open up their relationship. So they seek the guidance of couples counselor Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee), who has her own problems with her husband, the goateed, underemployed Rob (Raphael Barker): She has never had an orgasm with him, or with anyone. As she blurts out -- inappropriately, but this is a movie about dissolving boundaries -- in the middle of her tense first session with the Jamies, she's pre-orgasmic. (One of the Jamies, trying to wrap his brain around this wholly foreign concept, innocently asks her, "Does that mean you're about to have one?")

The Jamies find themselves in the position of wanting to help Sofia, a crisp, efficient, overachieving Asian-Canadian who really does need to learn to let go. So they invite her to Shortbus, an underground salon hosted by swanning bon vivant Justin Bond (played by the real-life Justin Bond, who's also part of the cabaret duo Kiki and Herb), a combination performance space and sugar shack, where people get together to talk, hang out, eat hash-enhanced snacks, and, if they're moved to, have sex -- possibly with the partner they brought, or maybe with somebody (or somebodies) new. (The salon's name, as Mitchell explains in the press notes, is a reference to the shorter yellow school bus often ridden by "special needs" kids -- a vehicle for outcasts and misfits.)

At Shortbus, new people drift into the Jamies' orbit, and into Sofia's: The guys meet a gorgeous, self-absorbed yet not completely empty-headed young model and singer-songwriter whose name is pronounced Seth, although he's quick to point out that it's spelled with a "C" (the actor who plays him is Jay Brannan); and Sofia makes the acquaintance of Severin (Lindsay Beamish), a professional dominatrix who's not only having trouble making ends meet, but who feels disconnected from everyone and everything around her -- a scowling, eyebrowless crosspatch in red lipstick, she can barely make friends, let alone forge any deeper emotional bond.

"Shortbus" isn't a movie with a point to make or an ax to grind: It's a warm, amorphous shape stretching out in many directions, touching on the neuroses and anxiety everyone, at one time or another, feels about relationships, and the connection (and the disconnect) between sex and love. Mitchell's New York is a place where young and not-so-young people come to make art, to do cool stuff, to find a mate, for the night or for life.

But even if New Yorkers are sometimes guilty of believing they're the center of the universe, it's useful to remember that New York is really just a patchwork of small towns. "Shortbus" understands the sort of urban loneliness that can strike any of us, whether we live in a coastal village or a borough that's almost the size of a small country: How we can feel completely alone even at a rollicking party, or feel jolts of loneliness even when we're wrapped in the cocoon of a secure relationship. Mitchell and his actors sketch vignettes of loneliness and connection: One minute, we think a character is just a goofy thrill seeker; the next, we catch him crying furtively, and we know something is terribly wrong. Another character has a moment of panic when it dawns on her that the city she so desperately wants to live in is expensive and cruel, and she's not sure she can survive it. She blurts out her fears to a new friend: "I want to have a house, and a cat that I can pet," she explains through her frustrated tears, in a non sequitur that clicks like a perfect algebraic equation. "Do you know what I mean?" she adds, although she doesn't have to.

Sex may be "Shortbus'" raison d'être, and it certainly figures in the movie's funniest scenes. And yet the sex becomes so integral to "Shortbus" that eventually you barely notice or think about it. Mitchell isn't going for the end-of-an-affair melancholy of Michael Winterbottom's "9 Songs," or the cherry-bomb bravado of Catherine Breillat's "Romance." Mitchell is hip to the way sex, supposedly the most natural thing on earth, is often actually quite ridiculous. The movie is so open about sex, and approaches it with such affectionate bewilderment, that it feels like an anomaly in our so-called sex-obsessed culture: I've felt sleazier looking at ads for Captain Morgan's rum. When Mitchell trains his camera on a sea of naked bodies of all colors, shapes and sizes, grinding and undulating on the floor of a very large loft, he sees both the humor and beauty of this writhing tableau. These sequences are aesthetically pleasing to look at (Mitchell isn't going for the tattoo-and-cellulite realism of, say, HBO's "Real Sex"), but they also embody the spirit of a Roz Chast cartoon: Group sex may be a beautiful thing, man, but it's also a jumble of wobbly lines and arms and legs heading the wrong way.

Of course, one man's explicitness is another's indiscretion, and there are places where "Shortbus" may be a little too free with the sharing. A friend of mine, referring to one character's saga of sexual angst, called it "TMI" -- more than he wanted or needed to know -- and he has a point.

But I think Mitchell would rather blurt too much than too little. He doesn't want to make a baffling picture that people won't understand; he's reaching out to everyone here, and in a world more perfect than the one we live in, "Shortbus" would be a bigger hit than the dismal indie-juggernaut "Little Miss Sunshine."

There's a sense in America today that our sexual freedoms have been restricted, and in some ways, maybe they have been. But even if this country is still idiotically hidebound over the no-brainer issue of gay marriage, we're still better off than we were 50 years ago, when anyone who didn't fit the hetero mold had to live in secret. "Shortbus" is a movie about the joy, frustration and sadness that are inherent in freedom -- sexual freedom, or any other kind. Let us sound the ass kazoo of freedom! is Mitchell's rallying cry. He's got a bell, and he's gonna ring it: This is his song about love between his brothers and his sisters, all over this land.

-- By Stephanie Zacharek

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2006/10/04/shortbus/index.html?source=rss


Embrace.

Jameson

Birds Do It; Bees Do It...

It's a Bloomin' Gay World:




Bees sucking pollen from a wild flower in the morning in a deserted area in Amman, Jordan, May 31, 2005. The birds and the bees may be gay, according to the world's first museum exhibition about homosexuality among animals.

Here's the story:

Birds and bees may be gay: museum exhibition

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent 47 minutes ago

OSLO (Reuters) - The birds and the bees may be gay, according to the world's first museum exhibition about homosexuality among animals.

With documentation of gay or lesbian behavior among giraffes, penguins, parrots, beetles, whales and dozens of other creatures, the Oslo Natural History Museum concludes human homosexuality cannot be viewed as "unnatural."

"We may have opinions on a lot of things, but one thing is clear -- homosexuality is found throughout the animal kingdom, it is not against nature," an exhibit statement said.

Geir Soeli, the project leader of the exhibition entitled "Against Nature," told Reuters: "Homosexuality has been observed for more than 1,500 animal species, and is well documented for 500 of them."

The museum said the exhibition, opening on Thursday despite condemnation from some Christians, was the first in the world on the subject. Soeli said a Dutch zoo had once organised tours to view homosexual couples among the animals.

"The sexual urge is strong in all animals. ... It's a part of life, it's fun to have sex," Soeli said of the reasons for homosexuality or bisexuality among animals.

One exhibit shows two stuffed female swans on a nest -- birds sometimes raise young in homosexual couples, either after a female has forsaken a male mate or donated an egg to a pair of males.

One photograph shows two giant erect penises flailing above the water as two male right whales rub together. Another shows a male giraffe mounting another for sex, another describes homosexuality among beetles.

BURN IN HELL

One radical Christian said organizers of the exhibition -- partly funded by the Norwegian government -- should "burn in hell," Soeli said. Laws describing homosexuality as a "crime against nature" are still on the statutes in some countries.

Greek philosopher Aristotle noted apparent homosexual behavior among hyenas 2,300 years ago but evidence of animal homosexuality has often been ignored by researchers, perhaps because of distaste, lack of interest or fear or ridicule.

Bonobos, a type of chimpanzee, are among extremes in having sex with either males or females, apparently as part of social bonding. "Bonobos are bisexuals, all of them," Soeli said.

Still, it is unclear why homosexuality survives since it seems a genetic dead-end.

Among theories, males can sometimes win greater acceptance in a pack by having homosexual contact. That in turn can help their chances of later mating with females, he said.

And a study of homosexual men in Italy suggested that their mothers and sisters had more offspring. "The same genes that give homosexuality in men could give higher fertility among women," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061012/sc_nm/environment_homosexuality_dc_4


So Bee it.

Jameson

Foley's Folly

It is easy to revile Mark Foley as a monster. He took advantage of his power to abuse teens who were under his watch. He clearly knew what he was doing was wrong. His contribution to legislation to protect children is a sad irony. How, I have to ask, could he fall into such a moral abyss?

Daily, I work with teenagers the same ages as these pages. They are in my trust as a teacher. Some know I'm gay; some don't. Ultimately, I think it better that they do know, though that may cause odd questions and expectations. Gay students have confided in me their own private gayness on occasion. I never forget my responsibility or my place with them. These students need to learn about trust and honor. Even friendship is not an option as long as they attend my school or are under 18. Ultimately, being gay has nothing to do with it-- it is the same for the straight teachers and students of the opposite sex.

If Foley were to befriend a page and have a relationship when the page left Congress and was over 18, we would have no grounds for criticism, however much we might not like such a tie between people of different ages. What is horrible about Foley's actions is NOT that he is in his 50s. It is that he betrayed the trust of those who served him, and who needed to learn about honest government.

Foley may well go to prison, whether he actually had sex with a minor or not. Internet soliciting for sex would be a crime. Yet, it seems clear to me that if he didn't actually have sex with a page, that what he ought to have is psychiatric care. He needs to learn how to love. No doubt the pages he wrote were old enough and educated enough to see Foley as a lonely, desperate man. I doubt they were damaged, other than to be more cynical and cautious in their dealings with those in power. Face it, 16-year-old pages can be clever and calculating themselves, as the email responses also reveal. It is sad that they were not given wiser and better role models. But they are not helpless children.

The cover-up of the Foley emails is in many ways as bad as the emails. They show Republican leaders afraid of the consequences of revealing the truth. Foley needed help, not a cover up. The House leaders show less regard for the pages than Foley had. All they wanted was the preservation of their power.

Is it possible to have leaders who put honor and integrity above greed and the lust for power-- or just plain lust? Jimmy Carter may have been our last honestly altruistic, benevolent leader; though perhaps local Congressman John Lewis still is. What must we do to have more citizens like them running the nation?



Jameson

Stop the Corruption

October is the month of Change. This October leads us right up to the election of 2006. Isn't it ironic that some of the Republicans' most powerful names on the 2006 ballot are those they want removed? From Tom Delay to Joe Foley, these disgraced leaders epitomize the corruption and the arrogance that have grown like a disease in our government. Truth and goodness have been replaced with lies and greed of the worst sort. Republican fundraiser Abramoff's crimes are but a symptom of this governmental power run amok. Our nation needs us all to remove the Corrupticans from office and restore integrity to Congress.

Foley, like Governor McGreevy of New Jersey, is the latest victim of his own closet. Only in Foley's case, his repression has led to his preying on teenage pages of the House of Representatives. At least Jim McGreevy has seen the light and emerged from his cave a wiser man. Foley seems more like an abusing priest, preying (pun intended) on the most vulnerable.

What is the antidote to all the corruption and greed?

If nothing else, I'd suggest art. This month we shall enjoy a show in Chattanooga at the Tivoli by Leslie Jordan, traditional art from the Louvre at the High Museum, and some excellent films, including an Almodovar retrospective and the new film Shortbus.

Here's how this particular film addresses the problems of the day:

Sex film "Shortbus" finds distributors world-wide

By Rachelle Younglai

TORONTO (Reuters) - Hard core sex in a mainstream movie? No problem.

Three months after John Cameron Mitchell showed his sexually explicit film "Shortbus" out of competition at the Cannes film festival, he said it had attracted distributors in dozens of countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan, France and Singapore.

"People are ready for change. There is a thirst for something different," Mitchell told reporters on Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival, where "Shortbus" was set for its North American premiere before an October opening in the United States.

Mitchell aims to use sex as a metaphor to tell a story about people looking for solace and searching for something more in their lives in a post-September 11 world.

"What pissed me off was that it was ... generically identified of as porn," Mitchell said of his film. "We are not trying to do anything salacious here. That is just the language which we speak."

The film is graphic: Scenes include a man being whipped by a dominatrix as he masturbates and a straight couple having sex in a variety of positions.

But pornographic? Mitchell argues not.

"Porn is really to arouse. This film explores the other areas of sex," he said.

The story revolves around two couples, one straight and one gay, accompanied by a few other lonely souls.

One couple seeks counselling from a sex therapist, played by Sook-Yin Lee, who works for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. as on-air host of a show about popular culture.

It turns out Lee's character has never experienced an orgasm, which leads the couple to invite her to a salon called Shortbus, where everything goes -- from group sex and voyeurism to cabarets.

Lee said there were initial reservations at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. about her being in the film.

"Once they were re-educated, they allowed me to do this movie," she said at a press conferen
ce.

"I don't know if I would have been able to do this if I was working at CNN."

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2006-09-09T141714Z_01_N09401827_RTRUKOC_0_UK-LEISURE-FILMFEST-SHORTBUS.xml



Happy changes...

Jameson

The R word

"Bush is the Devil."

"Saddam is evil."

"The Pope is the Anti-Christ."

Whatever the charge, it is all Pure

Superstition.



http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/shared-blogs/ajc/luckovich/index.html

Superstition, otherwise known as the R- word: Religion, is the true root of all evil.
The Pope's quotation from a Byzantine Emperor could easily be expanded to include all religions:

"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The man Benedict quoted was Manuel II. He was one of the last emperors of Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire finally fell to the Turks 28 years after his death. Manual II failed to convince the West to save Byzantium. He was himself, at times, a prisoner of the Ottoman Turks and was involved in various failed intrigues with them.

Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos



The ultimate irony is that Manuel II-- and Benedict by referring to him-- argued for the use of reason. Reason over blind faith. Reason over irrational and violent zealotry. It is just such reason that should have inhibited Bush. What the Christian Fundamentalists say about Islam is just as true of themselves: Use of the sword (and bombs) to spread ideology and religion is wrong, no matter the religion and no matter the ideology (We can't force freedom).


And so, let's take the Pope at his word:
Let's use our reason, use our heads.
We are all Hamlet's Yorick.
We are all this daughter of Lucy --
half ape, half human,
far from being angels.

Little Girl, 3 Million Years Old,

Offers New Hints on Evolution

N. Y. Times

Reread Sailing to Byzantium.



--Jameson

Public Privates

The happy couple - Photo EFE

Happiness triumphs in Seville, Spain as the first military wedding between men takes place on September 15.




Here's the scoop from

© typicallyspanish.com

First gay military wedding in Spain By h.b. Sun, 17 Sep 2006

Spain’s Air Force has seen it’s first gay wedding. 27 year old Alberto Linero from Seville married 24 year old Alberto Sánchez from Madrid at a ceremony in Seville carried out by the city’s mayor, Alfredo Sánchez Monteseirín. He described the day as a dream made true and an answer to a demand from society at large for equality in diversity.


Congratulations to the grooms.

--Jameson

PS More details from the Baltimore Sun:


SEVILLE, Spain -- The Spanish military - once a remnant of a right-wing government closely linked to the Roman Catholic Church - got its first public taste of gay marriage last week as two male air force privates wed, sealing their union with gold rings and a long kiss.

Alberto Linero, 27, and Alberto Sanchez, 24, wore dark blue dress uniforms with red and gold epaulets as they exchanged vows in a reception room at Seville's town hall, the first known wedding among same-sex members of the military since Spain legalized gay marriage last year.

The men declined to say whether f they are being harassed by commanders or colleagues, but the Defense Ministry has said it considers the wedding a personal matter and that the men will be allowed to continue with their careers. It had no comment on the wedding.

Spain has no law against gays in the military, and other service members have acknowledged their homosexuality in the past.

In the United States, the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy prohibits the military from inquiring about the sex lives of service members but requires those who openly acknowledge being gay to be discharged.

The men were married by Seville Mayor Alfredo Sanchez Monteseirin, who said their wedding marked a victory for gay people everywhere who have suffered from discrimination.

"This is not just your wedding. You symbolize millions of people who are not here and suffer from homophobia," Sanchez Monteseirin said. "The city will protect your rights."

After they were pronounced spouses, Linero and Sanchez placed gold rings on each other's fingers and kissed. The 100 people in attendance clapped wildly. Sanchez later wept as he hugged his younger brother Sergio.

The mayor is a member of the Socialist Party, which oversees a government that legalized gay marriage last year and has pushed through laws including fast-track divorce and easier terms for medically assisted fertilization.

The laws have irked the church and the country's conservative establishment, which has accused the government of eroding the nation's traditional values.

Addressing reporters after the ceremony, Linero said the wedding was a small step toward equality for homosexuals.

"We've done our little bit. We hope society realizes this," he said.

About 4,500 same-sex couples have wed under the gay marriage legislation, which took effect in July 2005, according to the Justice Ministry.

The wedding is believed to be the first marriage between two same-sex members of the Spanish armed forces, said Beatriz Gimeno, president of Spain's Federation of Gays and Lesbians.

She welcomed the wedding as something the military and Spaniards in general must get used to.

"I don't think the army in a democratic society has to be conservative," Gimeno said.

Besides Spain, the Netherlands, Canada and Belgium have legalized same-sex marriage. Britain and other European countries have laws that give same-sex couples the right to form legally binding partnerships.

In the United States, Massachusetts is the only state that allows gay marriage. Vermont and Connecticut permit civil unions.

Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun |


http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.hope17sep17,0,5443148.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

911, Savannah, and the Collective (Un)Conscious

Today, as the Multimedia news world attempts to gag us with platitudes about the horrors of 911 in New York, many of us are switching off the televised photo ops and political posturing that seems to be necessary for those in the public eye to maintain their status in the Collective Conscience of the nation. Maybe we should get more in touch with the Unconscious, the groundwork of far more than one catastrophe.


Bridge to New York
photo by Jameson

This blog contains plenty of images that ought to give us pathways-- the clay tablet from Uruk depicting tortured prisoners in Mesopotamia, the image of Saladin, defending Moslems from the horrors of the Christian zealots, Delphi, the Oracle of which should remind us of the irony of misleading predictions, Munch's Scream which transcends time and place... Or San Martin, horseback, the image of a leader virtually unimaginable among the world's puppet masters today.


Bridge to Savannah
photo by Jameson

In Savannah, over Labor Day, Dar and I read Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore (click). That novel spoke to the Jungian Soul, and portrayed a rich reality deeper than the holes left in New York. Read another review (click).

It is as tragic that those holes have become cliches as the lie that has linked them to Iraq. To the extent that we have given in to fear and yielded our freedoms and our common sense, the terrorists have won.

Thousands of people tossing tiny packets of shampoo into the bottomless trash of our airports-- that is the archetypal symbol of our defeat.



Flying With Scissors,

Jameson



P.S. here's the whole review of

Kafka on the Shore from the Washington Post:


washingtonpost.com

As the Crow Flies

Reviewed by Steven Moore

KAFKA ON THE SHORE •

By Haruki Murakami.

Translated from the Japanese. By Philip Gabriel

Knopf. 436 pp. $25.95

If bizarre things are happening in Japan, then there must be a new novel by Haruki Murakami. America's favorite Japanese novelist could publish this anonymously, and his fans would instantly recognize it as his. And for first-time readers, Kafka on the Shore is an excellent demonstration of why he's deservedly famous, both here and in his native land. He writes uncanny, philosophical, postmodern fiction that's actually fun to read; he's a more serious Tom Robbins, a less dense Thomas Pynchon. Like those two, he mixes high and low culture, especially ours: Two of his novels are named after Western pop songs ("Dance Dance Dance" and "Norwegian Wood"), and his characters are more likely to see a film by Truffaut than one by Kurosawa. In this new novel, characters may occasionally discuss The Tale of Genji and the novels of Natsume Soseki, but the presiding influences are Plato, Sophocles and, as the title indicates, Franz Kafka.

It would be easy to make this novel sound goofy: There are talking cats, sudden downpours of fish and leeches, a ghost that takes the form of Col. Sanders pimping in a back alley of Takamatsu, another character who dresses up as the Johnnie Walker whiskey icon and collects the souls of cats for a magic flute, a gorgeous prostitute who quotes Henri Bergson and Hegel, and an "entrance stone" to another dimension. It would be just as easy to make the novel sound ponderous: There are many discussions of Greek tragedy, Plato's myth about the origin of the sexes, predestination, various metaphysical systems, musicology, the nature of symbolism and metaphor, the ways of Buddha and the Tao, and grim memories of atrocities committed during World War II. The wonderful thing is the mash-up Murakami creates from this disparate material, resulting in a novel that is intellectually profound but feels "like an Indiana Jones movie or something," as one character aptly notes.

Or something. The novel consists of two parallel narratives told in alternating chapters. One features a bright but unhappy 15-year-old boy named "Kafka" Tamura -- he adopted the name partly because he likes his fiction but also because "Kafka" is Czech for "crow," with whose solitary nature he identifies -- who runs away from home because of an Oedipal foreboding that he will murder his father and sleep with his mother. (His mother abandoned him at age 4, and he hasn't seen her or his older sister since.) He leaves Tokyo for the southern island of Shikoku and spends most of his time at a private library run by a 21-year-old "hemophiliac of undetermined sex" named Oshima and a mysterious, elegant woman named Miss Saeki, old enough to be his mother. Both of them play key roles in helping the runaway find himself and come to terms with his dark destiny.

The other narrative deals with a retarded, illiterate man in his sixties named Satoru Nakata, who as a child underwent an inexplicable experience during World War II that erased his memory and stunted his intellectual growth. In recompense for that loss, however, he has the ability to communicate with cats and control the weather. (He's the one responsible for those downpours.) He gets involved with the cat-soul collector and commits an act that forces him to flee Tokyo. He hooks up with a truck driver named Hoshino -- just a regular guy who favors aloha shirts, Ray-Bans and a Chunichi Dragons baseball cap -- who agrees to help the old guy. They too make their way to Shikoku on a kind of metaphysical quest for an "entrance stone" that Nakata must open and close. As another character says (this is a very self-conscious text, frequently commenting on itself), it's "like some film noir science-fiction flick."

On one level, the novel is about a 15-year-old boy's rite of passage into the adult world, but on a larger level it's a meditation on Plato's notion (voiced in the "Symposium," as Oshima explains to both Kafka and the reader) that each of us is looking for a soul mate to complete us. Hoshino finds one in Nakata, who reminds him of a dim-witted but devoted disciple of the Buddha, but who also fills in for a beloved grandfather. Kafka finds one in Miss Saeki, who appears to him in dreams both as the 15-year-old girl she once was and at her present age. And though Kafka and Nakata never meet, their parallel actions complement each other on a metaphysical plane. Hermaphroditic Oshima -- the most self-possessed and knowledgeable character in the novel -- exemplifies the original state that Plato said the soul enjoyed before it was split into halves.

Murakami's spin on this theme and the Oedipus myth is daringly original and compulsively readable, enabled by Philip Gabriel's wonderfully fluent translation. Kafka on the Shore is warmly recommended; read it to your cat. •

Steven Moore, the author of several books and essays on contemporary fiction, is writing a history of the novel.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Gay Daddy and Naked Teens

What a day for news. First, we learn that Karl Rove's stepfather, whom he thought of as his only father, came out years ago as gay.

Book: Rove was close to gay stepfather

He hung with the Palm Springs crowd and was proud of his Republican son. Not only did Karl not mind his Dad's being gay, rumor has it that Karl is also an agnostic. Tell that to the Fundamentalists Rove has been so good at rounding up for Bush by promoting a Constitutional Amendment forbidding same-sex marriage. Who expected that amendment to pass? Not Cheney, not Karl Rove (or his Dad) and not Bush.

Later today we learned that the city council of Brattleboro, Vermont (one of our very favorite towns --where we celebrated our civil union in 2000) absolutely, positively refused to ban public nudity. See the local news: SunJournal (click)

Here's what the Washington Post had to say:

Real, Strange News

Nature Vs. Nudity

Following up on the delightful tale of Brattleboro VT, where summer heat and naked teens aroused the ire of certain prim residents and caused one reader of this blog to insinuate that I thought civil unions were to blame: On Tuesday, the town's Select Board decided to take no action on an anti-nudity ordinance, hoping the upcoming Vermont winter would put the issue on ice. The Green Mountain State has no laws against public nakedness and Brattleboro has long been a birthday suit friendly town, with clothing optional swimming ponds and the annual Breast Fest. Still this summer's heated escalation of nudity (which in my opinion was caused more by global warming than civil unions) brought unwanted global attention to a vibrant New England town, where most of the 12,000 citizens prefer seeing teens naked than wearing gang colors.

Source: Vt. Town to Let Nature Deal With Nudity

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/offbeat/2006/09/nature_vs_nudity.html

The naked teens in the parking lot cheered their enlightened decision. Autumn and Winter will clothe the kids soon enough. Leave it to Nature.

Lets hear it for Brattleboro!


Unabashed,

Jameson

Scream

After two long years, we have our Scream back.

Not only were the Stolen Munch paintings found safe,

as the BBC reports, but now our collective psyche can scream again in horror over the

War
Ecological destruction
Poverty
Disease
and Inhumanity


All of which come from Ignorance, Religious Superstition, Capitalism, Ego and Power struggles, and Bigotry.


Munch: The Scream


Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
Iris Murdoch


Be Loud.

Jameson

Too much Foie Gras

Who deserves the attention of our mass media? Our culture is obsessed with freaks and monsters. In particular, we are currently seeing daily the image of a man who is clearly worthy of no fame whatsoever. Here is my current letter published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Celebrity status goes to wrong crowd

John Mark Karr is a symbol of serious problems in our culture ("Karr won't face charges," ajc.com, Aug. 29). JonBenet Ramsey herself was a victim because of misguided ideas about celebrity that fueled a psychotic mind.

Our worship and envy of celebrities needs tempering by a more humanistic realization. Even Karr was made into a celebrity by the news media. His status was confirmed as he flew here from Thailand as an elite, drinking champagne. No doubt he'll soon appear on "Oprah."

Instead of putting pretty little girls on a pedestal, instead of glorifying criminals and the criminally insane, we should praise those who make the world a better place: those who work for Habitat for Humanity or fight AIDS or reduce global warming. Extol compassion, not notoriety.

http://www.ajc.com/wednesday/content/epaper/editions/wednesday/opinion_445f13c0c52da04f009a.html

Here's to Jimmy Carter, Larry Kramer, and Al Gore.

--Jameson

Death

If anyone is heir to the nihilism of Nietzsche, perpetuator of the Beats, and son of the angst of the existentialists, it has to be Gus Van Sant. Last Days , the embodiment of the death of Kurt Kobain, has all the nothingness that Sartre sought to comprehend in Being and Nothingness.
Van Sant plumbs the dire depths of the psyche once again, as knowingly as he has done in Elephant and in My Own Private Idaho. The World War II of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir held no more nausea than the Northwest U.S. or the high school halls of Van Sant.
William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg throb in the veins of the young, despairing souls of these films. Eros and Thanatos are indistinguishable. Drugs and alcohol are not the cause, but rather a part of the sacraments, the eucharist host, providing profane rituals that momentarily dispel dread. The emptiness and horror come not from the lost psyches of these characters, but from the ordinary, commonplace worlds they inhabit: the shopping mall, the American Empire of oil, corporate capitalism, the mindless schools of social wasteland, the suburbs, our happy television world-- valueless, amoral, Bush country.
It is revealing contrasting Van Sant's beings with those of Pedro Almodovar: a contrast that, in part, reflects the difference between hopelessness in America and exuberance in Spain. Almodovar's individuals are fully alive, passionate, and no less mad than those of Van Sant. Their situations are equally desperate and existential. Yet they are able to find joy in life, to create meaning rather than destroy it. Creative defiance may not rid the world of its horrors; but the romanticism and brief ecstasy in Almodovar surpass the futile deaths depicted by Van Sant, however sublime and frightfully gorgeous they may be.

THREE OCEANS AND A MOUNTAIN RANGE: Sensations of Summer

Summer begins with a scheduleless day.
Awake; but no need to arise. The sense of possibilites.
Before our experience of the oceans, we ascend the mountains:
First days of summer bring the drive to Pisgah,
to the Blue Ridge. Blue smoke brings
Dreams in Asheville.
Dancing. Sipping red martinis. Getting
Thrown out of the Out bar of Asheville
for brandishing a martini glass. Sensational.

From the hiking trails at 6000 feet,
We descend to the first ocean.
An ocean of memory brings waves of our emotional past.
Old friends sensing old age. Recalling past sensations.
After scotch and weed with the now grown children,
A secret cracks open ungluing the sticky memory of a
long buried indiscretion-- lust in the heart.

That disturbing ocean of lost sensation yields
To the ocean of contentment-- to Cape Cod,
To the sensation of hot buttered lobster,
The sensation of luxury in the Morrocan Tower,
The sensation of sun and naked men in the high dunes--
And intellectual nights with editors and poets.
The sensation of cool ocean breezes as we sip wine on the
Expanse of open porch,
Or watch parades among the tiger lillies.

Again, mountains precede the ocean as we hike
in Cloudland, nieces charging ahead.
And drinking champagne with Starr deep into the night.
Then we are airbourne. More champagne on our pampered morning flight of mimosas
to Mexico. To the Pacific. To the Night of the Iguana.
What a wealth of sensations: the glittering beachside pool, dazzling;
the freezing cold room scented with eucalptus, then mint, then orange.
The thousand thread Egyptian cotton sheets.
The taste of pre-Columbian Mole' sauce. Or shrimp flamed at our table.



The third ocean gave the most sensations.
Boating over the sea in a thunderstorm to watch Aztec dancers,
An ancient wedding dance in the jungle, fiery torchs and rain.
Boating to Yelapa, the air fragrant with marijuana smoked by
Workers building a bridge below the waterfall.
Sand between the toes. Ocean waves knocking me over,
Handblown blue-green glass holding a marguerita.
Dancing on the boat. Absurd music. Fountains of tequila from the open bar.
Blue Chairs. Jazz at Garbo's. American breakfast at Kit Kat.
An erotic massage with satisfying fingers in the mornings.
The glimpse of an Iguana among the banyon trees.

The Atlantic, Boston Bay, Pacific Pelicans, and The Pacific Ocean
Photos: Jameson




Summer ends in sensations.

The top-flight home, served with mango cocktails from Finland,
Pampas fed beef from Argentina...
Even a smile from the customs man.
Today, a thunderstorm wets the yard, the oaks, the parched lawn.
Rumble and flash,
And the summer is over.
Autumn is on the way.


Seize the Season

Jameson

Iguana Bliss: August in Mexico

To add to the July 27 entry, below, Puerto Vallarta provided us bliss for ten days.

Click here for a few photos.


Senora de Guadalupe Church
photo by Jameson


A few of our Favorites: (all clickable links)

Huichol Art

The Blue Chairs

The Premier

Archie's Wok

Paco Paco
Garbo's

The Red Cabbage Cafe

Manana

Kit Kat

Barcelona Tapas

Xitomates

Rito's Baci

Las Palomas

Los Muertos Beach, Live Cam


for reading, try the Banderas News.




Hasta Luego...

Jameson

Return to Mexico

Tomorrow we fly to Mexico again, this time to the land of the Iguana...
Puerto Vallarta.

The film version of Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams has always been one of my favorite stories. Google will give you all sorts of reviews of the play and the film, masterpieces both .


Guanajuato
photo by Dar

Unlike Streetcar, Iguana offers hope. The kind, wise words of Hannah Jelkes give defrocked priest Shannon calm, and bring him back from the end of his rope-- literally-- to the realization that Maxine Faulk is his perfect mate. Maxine, likewise at the end of her rope, realizes that Shannon, not Pepe and Pedro, is what she needs. It's quite a love story in the midst of a tempest of gringo tourists. The story shows how marvelous Mexico is as well, a place with real humanity and values lost to much of the U.S. It is Tennessee Williams (and director John Huston) at his best.

PV is no longer the outpost it was when the film was made. Yet it still offers Mexico's unique qualities...

for an enjoyable account of Puerto Vallarta, read:

Even the whales are gay down Mexico way

(click)


Swimmingly,

Jameson