christmas in venice

The holiday season has finally caught up with Venice. It's raining and cold outside. I'm sitting on a bar stool at Hinano's listening to live blues, waiting for the moment when I'll have to get up and dance. I've seen Satin Blue perform before. They're usually on fire by the end of the first set. Until then, I nurse my Guinness and take stock of my surroundings. Christmas lights dangle from the awning across the street. People coming in have wet hair, pause to brush off their shoulders and take in the warmth. In the corner a couple are locked in an open-mouthed kiss. They have a small, protective entourage of beautiful people with them. At the table beside them two regulars in dirty jeans and plaid flannel shirts play pool. One of them bobs his head approvingly to the music while the other, taking a shot, exposes his fuzzy plumber's crack. I appreciate the juxtaposition. At the end of the bar a woman with braided hair, grinning madly, looks up from her notebook as the white-haired musician to her close right bends a note plaintively on his guitar...

coins

I woke up feeling a little raw this morning. I've been trying to place myself within the scheme of things. I suppose there's some big picture I'm in. Sort of a Where's Waldo type scenario where I can't seem to locate my self. I walked down to my local Starbucks, where everything and nothing takes place all day every day. An opportunity for kindness presented itself. A clear moment in which to act. But kindness is not the right word. It is too big of a word. To give and receive simultaneously. So it was also his gift to me, both of us recipients.  

I've been reflecting these last few days on my motivations. Specifically the ones behind efforts I make to improve or better my self. It seems there are two wells from which this impulse springs. One is inwardly arising, a voice of compassion and command. The other a reactionary ripple from my childhood. A habit. A hole in the development of my world view I'm still trying to fill or give meaning.

I must have always believed in the existence of unconditional love because I've spent a lifetime torturing my self for not being "good" enough to receive it. My desire to become worthy of love is paralleled only by my distrust of it. At some point we're all told something we believed existed doesn't, like Santa Claus. Love can be like this.

Interesting how two impulses to do something at least outwardly similar completely threaten to unseat each other. If I learn to trust my self and my impulse towards compassionate self-acceptance and growth I necessarily have to let go of the one centered solely around my belief that I am undeserving of said love. If I keep holding on to my distrust and need to "become" worthy I will always have a vested interest in my own failure - proving to myself once and for all there is no such thing as god. I mean love. Interesting how these are two sides of the same coin.

Everything you touch touches you back.

Amendment to the Prostitution

What I mean to say is that, in my view, sex and the process which results in sex (whether it be for recreation, for love, or procreation) should never be dehumanizing. And if it is, something has gone not just a little, but terribly wrong - for everyone.

alpha FAIL

A guy who needs to make other guys look bad in order to impress a girl or who thinks trying to make a girl feel stupid is going to raise the likelihood of him getting laid is a common, over-inflated, blowhard who needs lessons in self-respect. A woman who beds this kind of man is either actually stupid, comprehensively naive, or desperately attached to the act of sex as a means for personal validation. I don't know which is worse.