This is for all the lonely people...

I've been listening to lots of music and most of it has been great for elevating my mood, but then my iTunes shuffle hit "Lonely People" by America, which is actually supposed to be uplifting, but sounds so damn sad you can fall into a funk if you're not careful.

"Lonely People"

This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by
Don't give up until you drink from the silver cup
And ride that highway in the sky

This is for all the single people
Thinking that love has left them dry
Don't give up until you drink from the silver cup
You never know until you try

Well, I'm on my way
Yes, I'm back to stay
Well, I'm on my way back home (Hit it)

This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by
Don't give up until you drink from the silver cup
And never take you down or never give you up
You never know until you try

My antidote for the bluesy blahs this inspired is to put on "A Horse With No Name;" it's so deceptively vague and lazy in description ("there were plants and birds and rocks and things," "the heat was hot" and "the ground was dry") it's almost funny, plus I just like the song a lot so I'm already feeling better with all those "la la la la la"s and "don't harsh my mellow" vibes.

I love to see people try and figure out what it's about:

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1310

And, of course, "Sister Golden Hair" is so pretty and nice to sing along to, that's another non-bummer.

Meanwhile, I'm still reading Married Love by Dr. Marie Stopes and her theory on how two people come together goes something like this:

To use a homely simile – one might compare two human beings to two wires through which pass electric currents. Isolated from each other the electric forces within them pass uninterrupted along their length, but if these wires come into the right juxtaposition, the force is transmuted, and a spark, a glow of burning light arises between them. Such is love.

I don't know that I necessarily believe it's true, but it kind of sounds scientifically romantic.

“The human heart: its expansions and contractions, its electrics and hydraulics, the warm tides that move and fill it. For years Art had studied it from a safe distance from many perspectives..."


I love Faith by Jennifer Haigh. It's beautifully written with a lot of things to say on everything from its title topic (faith) to what is true about someone versus how they are perceived by others to the difference between celibacy and chastity.

Maybe because I made a conscious decision (a promise, not a vow, as one of the characters in Faith would say) decades ago to be celibate my entire life (this is probably too much oversharing, I'm sorry!) I am fascinated with Haigh's examination of what it means to be both celibate and chaste.

The first is easy if you've always believed in waiting for marriage and love (and neither ever happened to you). Chastity (pure in mind _and_ body) is a little harder, especially if you're prone to daydreaming and wonder if you're missing out on something that everyone else on earth seems to have experienced.

It doesn't matter if a person's gay or straight, if he or she believes that sex is absolutely meaningless without love, commitment and (ideally) marriage, then hook-ups have no appeal whatsoever, not even for a nanosecond.

I think I've been in love before, though never with someone who loved me back. I felt strong romantic emotions, plus the kind that just made me want to know them more as a person and someone to go out and do things with while also having conversations that made us each think.

When you get older and then older you start to think it would have happened by now, somebody would have loved you at some point. And, instead of getting bitter about not finding your soul mate, you wonder if maybe that's just how it is and you look at your friends and all the things that interest you and get you excited about life and you realize...things are going to be okay...friends and good books and music and a job you truly enjoy are more than enough.

I still think about Fringe, probably my favorite sci fi show of all time, whose ending almost breaks the tv side of my heart. 

In the midst of re-watching season 5 I'm feeling the dystopian edge even more than I did when it first aired on Fox in early 2013. I like dystopian (and apocalyptic) fiction for the survival aspects and (quite selfishly, and even irrationally, I suppose) because bleakness in a made-up world is my mental comfort food.

I have re-watched Fringe more times than I should admit. The cast, especially John Noble as "Walter," was the draw for me, right from the beginning. How can you not love a man who loves cows?

Season 5 is so different than the previous four seasons that it almost feels like a reboot of the series if not for how carefully seemingly small things eventually tie in.


I'm not sure if it's neat or scary to discover there are over 3,400 stories on fanfiction.net's website:

https://www.fanfiction.net/tv/Fringe/

Pulp's more than paper

Today, for the first time in ages, I did not feel a relapse coming on when I was around X, but a stronger resolution, one I think is finally going to stick.

Nothing quite helps you in your determination to get over the way you feel about someone as knowing she would most likely despise you if she knew you had feelings for her. It's not that this person is mean, but that it's a burden to be on the receiving end of an unwanted crush. I don't know for sure she knows, but I worry she does.

I'm not sure I can keep make up for my past moody and moony behavior, but I think I can be better than I have been from now on...it takes a lot for me to get past something this stubborn, but knowing I make someone else uncomfortable is not something I can live with on this day or any day. 

So in trying to ground myself once and for all, trying to get past this silliness (because isn't a crush basically silly when it persists despite your age and reality's daily intervention?) As usual, it's a book that's helping, a book that's over fifty years old and archaic enough in attitude to be downright insulting.

I absolutely hate the cover to Queer Patterns, though it's rather typical of the time period it was first published. Lesbian pulp fiction covers often portray gay women as either "predators" or "weaklings" who are totally led astray and "mistaken" in their emotional "attachments."

Lesbian pulp fiction I read for a weird combination of comfort and punishment, with a little bit of reinforcement thrown in; lesfic romance I read for pleasure and when I dare to believe it's okay to be gay...the former is no friend to the modern gay girl, even if there is sometimes a surprising amount of sympathy found within the pages of pulp. 

The bulk of modern lesbian romance is astonishingly and blissfully (even for these modern times) unaware of homophobia...on days I need to pretend I head for the romance. I mean, come on, the main character always accidentally "meets cute" with a woman who just happens to live in the same small town and also likes women, even though there's a one in ten chance a woman is actually gay (though that figure itself may be too high) in real life.

As much as I find the pulp fiction variety despicable for its treatment of women (gay or straight) I unabashedly love the writing style and rare and useful (unintentional) advice I can use in my personal life. I don't really think of it as advice, it's just that I relate to the pulps far far more than modern lesfic because it's more realistic and applicable to how I see things.

In Queer Patterns, one of the ladies has decided she's not going to give in to her feelings (which can happen in modern romances, too, but for completely different reasons):

The magnetism of this lovely being gripped Nicoli, making her remember the years she had fought to keep in check the side of her nature that she was determined to control--to sublimate--forcing herself to lead a loveless existence that she might adhere to a principle. 

She would need that principle now as never before, because she knew that in Sheila was a woman whose lightest touch could forever destroy her staunchest resolutions.

Perhaps it would be best, she told herself, not to assign the role to her. How could she hope to stand the weeks of anguish which close proximity to Sheila would cause her?

I don't get Nicoli's exact sentiments as much as I do her desperate need to fight her true nature.

Which leads me to this op-ed piece I read yesterday that made me try and see things from a different viewpoint. It is a sympathetic and insightful article on the difference between being gay and "acting on" one's gayness, two completely separate things. I wouldn't say I'm ready to agree with Rick Perry, but I can say where the writer is coming from, at least a little bit.

I would be tickled if even the most hardened of homophobic people could understand just how separate the two states are...how one is intrinsic and the other is voluntary, even if the cost of not really being who you are can hurt one's heart terribly and be wearing on the soul:

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/latest-columns/20140615-gays-focus-on-perrys-alcoholism-reference-misses-real-debate.ece

Of particular interest and help for me is this link, which rather nicely captures what I've always believed...that you can't "turn" straight (no matter how much "ex-gay therapy" you engage in), but just "refrain" from being gay, if that makes sense:

  http://www.christiananswers.net/q-cross/cross-gaychange.html

 

I swear books "fall" into my lap just when I need them the most. Feeling a bit down one day last week after earlier overhearing an acquaintance use a very harsh anti-gay word, I stumbled onto Love Devours:Tales Of Monstrous Affection by Sarah Diemer and immediately downloaded it to my iBooks app.

 

Authors such as Ms. Dimer actually have the power to save lives

...and I am perfectly serious here, saying something anyone who grew up knowing he or she was gay and not having a soul to talk about it with will understand.

 

The most vital part of Love Devours is the introduction where Ms. Diemer writes:

 

I was born a monster.
 

That’s what the protesters at the Pride Parade told me, anyway, bellowing into a megaphone while they held up a sign that announced "all gays go to hell."

 

I was born gay. This is considered, by many, to be monstrous, which is, of course, the opposite of truth. But from the very beginning, I knew I was strange, different, so it’s no surprise, of course, that I turned to the monsters of myth, of legend, of fairy tale, devouring their stories as their stories devoured me.

 

Explaining quite eloquently a bit more why monsters so appeal to her Ms. Diemer adds:

 

This book is for every girl and boy who has ever been called a monster. Every woman and man deemed monstrous for being different.

 You are wild. You are strong. You are fierce and free.

 

If there had been books like this around when I was younger, I might have had a whole different way of seeing things and not believed through most of my teens and early 20s I was doomed to eternity in Hell, no matter that I desperately tried to ignore who I was inside.

For authors like Sarah Diemer I am grateful, especially because there are kids living in today's world (gay friendly society or not) who still desperately need to hear what she has to say.