New York: Museum of Natural History

we arrive later than intended at the
americanmuseumofnaturalhistory.
only a couple of hours to take it in.

the first floor we explore has
dioramas of dead stuffed animals in their habitat.
he says he doesn't like to look at that.
is that for my benefit?
me the vegetarian, he the carnivore?

he says he really wants to see the dinosaurs,
that they redid those exhibits.
that's what i want to see too,
all the real bones of extinct animals.

as we wander the rooms
i take in the whole
and i look up close.
these fossilized bones,
they once gave structure to flesh.

i think about the flesh attaching to the bones
moving sinuously, gracefully, like animals do.
i think about the teeth tearing or grinding food,
about that food travelling
down the throat to the stomach.

this one must be a plant eater, this mammal.
such a big rib cage, surely it had more than one stomach.
we wander sometimes together
sometimes separately.
he has been aloof,
leaving me wanting some sign that he
does care to be there with me.

as we peer at the dinosaur relics
i tell him about holding in my hand
a bit of dinosaur skin,
that my friend told me this
just as she got me so high
and that it blew my mind that
i was holding dinosaur skin in utah.

he chuckled and said
he didn't think i was into that.
suddenly he was more friendly, flirty.
i said it opens doors. (the short version
of my pot-can-be-a-good-thing-at-
the-right-moment-and-it-was-at-key-
moments-in-my-life speech)

now i am getting so close,
imagining myself seeing those animals
seeing how they fought how they ate how they loved
i come upon a creature that
is sort of like a giant crocodile
i stare intently at the brown bones
and i see myself running from it,
its jaws snapping
but wait a minute i couldn't have been human then
am i another animal?

and suddenly he is there
leans in close and says
are you one with it yet?
and i turn quick to look at him
vision gone, replaced.

he moves around me and says,
i spoke too soon. i interrupted.
i could see you running from it.
i almost squeaked.
you did really?
and our eyes meet for a long second.
i wonder, how does this happen?
how does he know?
and why is he so distant,
but suddenly there's no space between us?
somehow we have a connection
in spite of ourselves.

we continue circumambulating
around the floor with the extinct animals.
now i am feeling very much alive
and wishing to confirm that vitality
through urgent eager pressing of the flesh,
a fucking, sucking, head-exploding makeout session.

i begin to feel too much like prey
among giant teeth with jaws that could
tear off my entire head and torso.
i have made them too much alive in my head
or myself too much in their time
so that i am nervous and wish to flee.

i am relieved when we round the corner
and find giant turtles,
my animal of affinity. i tell him
of my vision during meditation, long ago,
and how my friend (of pot-and-dinosaur-skin)
told me we were of the turtle clan
and that's why we clicked.
that i wasn't trying to take someone
else's spiritual tradition, but it was
an important metaphor to me.
he took my photo with the turtle in the sky.

Horse Parking

I first saw one of these in August. About 4 blocks up the street there's a toy horse tied to a ring embedded in the curb, meant to tie horses in the early 1900s.



Yesterday as I walked to the chichi bakery that landed in my neighborhood (goodbye sportsbars, hello swank restaurants) I found the horse still there, but someone has been taking care of it.



(I sent that from my cell phone to my flickr account. Did you know you could do that?)

That evening, I find out from Steve there was an article about it, and he'd been seeing them since around April. (pause while I look for it) I'd wondered if it was just one person doing that or if the idea was spreading and a bunch of people doing it, a meme. Steve thought it was just one person buying up toy horses at Goodwill and parking them around town.

Article here. Website here. Typical of me. I take a while and have to catch up.

Naked for a cause

My three photos are now up at www.boobiethon.com. Two are in the delicately coy free-to-view section (still not safe for work), one in the donate-to-view section. They've got the history as to why they started this fundraiser here.

You may visit there and get quite excited looking at all the beautiful barely covered boobs and think that is enough. I did. No matter what kind of boob, they're all beautiful. But then because I submitted a photo that they used in the pay-to-view section, they gave me a password so I could see. Let me tell you, that too is breathtaking. So many nipples standing at attention...why didn't I think of that? Part of what makes me so excited is the way women have managed to share their personalities in their photos, yet these are still just photos of their boobs. It really does turn me on, and I hope I turn someone else on in the same way.

But of course if you want to see the erect nipples, you have to donate money for charity, this being breast cancer awareness month.

HNT #3: boobiethon

It is half over already, but here's a hint of what I'm submitting to the boobiethon.

The next Republican meme

About a year ago I noticed Steve had his clock radio tuned to whatever hate radio station that you'll find Limbaugh because I started waking up to the lies and obfuscations of the man. Steve told me it helps him to wake up faster because he doesn't want to hear that.

It doesn't really help Steve wake up faster: either he doesn't hear it and keeps sleeping, or he keeps hitting the snooze button.

It does help me wake up faster, and I get the dubious lesson in the latest Republican meme.

A couple of months ago or so I woke up to Rush savoring some comment about the "Islamo-Fascists". He was probably ranting about anti-war folks coddling them in the same breath. That was the first I heard the term. I told Steve I figured that was going to be the next big Republican propaganda term. Sure enough, not much later I heard that W used it in a speech, and the pseudo-news was crawling with the term, and now of course the lefties are whining that it's a term that means nothing. Fascists were and are not religious extremists. But hey, if you're going to start calling religious extremists willing to allow innocent people to die for their cause 'fascists', you'd better start talking about the Christo-Fascists that have taken over this country. Or would that be Christiano-Fascists?

It was also my belief that Rush was using this term because too many of us were looking at the Bush regime as fascists. Steal the word, and detractors can't say it any more. They do this all the time. There is no other reason that Bush would say in a speech that we are a nation "addicted to oil". Go here for an interesting dialog on this nation becoming a fascist state, including my comments. They also obscure that they do this propaganda deliberately by trying to point out the first time the term was used. I read somewhere that someone first used the term 'Islamic fascist' in the 90s. Big whoop. They're deliberately marketing it now to keep some kind of support for their perpetual wars.

So, the latest meme this morning, a tried and true [not] meme the Republicans trot out just before elections. Will we never hear the end of it? Limbaugh was saying this generation coming up, weaned on 90210 and the expectation that they would get $400,000/year jobs just like that are going to be taxed all out of it and put in the poorhouse by the Democrats. Oh good grief. Democrats are going to raise taxes.

And the next generation aren't going to have their Beemers because of it. Like the robber-baron companies that tell the Decider what to decide have nothing to do with it. Like war on several fronts has nothing to do with it. Like no-bid wartime deals for those robber-baron companies have nothing to do with it. Like a lack of universal health care has nothing to do with it. Like a lack of universal access to continuing education has nothing to do with it. Like nickel and dime jobs have nothing to do with it.

Nope. Democrats are going to raise taxes, and this is the reason the economy will stink if you vote for Dems instead of Repubs. Steve turned it off. I took my shower. I came back, and Steve turned it back on to see if the mouthpiece of the robber-barons was still talking about it. He was.

Poly Role Models

A smart young poly woman encourages us to be more open about being polyamorous: In a Poly Perfect World. We do have a tendency to hide, especially with the US being taken over by conservative religious throwbacks. I am still selective about who I come out to, but go public here and there and let circumstances do what they will. I worry that some conservative Buddhists will come across my relationship status and my activities in the sex-positive world of Darklady and get upset that I've been in such a leadership role, and that I may even be asked to step down. Heh. Step down from volunteer roles. I also figure that if I do not hide who I am, that my actions and my good relations will speak for themselves.

Part of why I came out to my sangha several years ago is so that they would have my back. I thought they would. I know some of them would. I'm not so sure everyone would. If someone accuses me of being immoral and how dare I represent Buddhism, will my sangha be there for me? This is not a small fear for me. Elizabeth at poly positivity is right, we need positive polyamorous role models. It's not easy though, when even among trusted community, some will see this choice as more threatening morally than an adulterous mistake. Perhaps it won't be long and more people will understand we are not mistaken to choose this. The more we love, the more we find we have love, kindness, and compassion to give. I'm a good example. Elizabeth is. Wendy-O Matik is...the list could go on.

At some point I hope we in this poly world will especially be recognized for our skills in loving. Of course some of us will catch on better than others, and some not at all. I'm not saying we're inherently great at loving, but we definitely get to have much more practice at getting it right.

Outlaw Margarine?

Who knew margarine was illegal in Wisconsin in the 50s? My mom and my grandma both remembered this, and told me again about how it came white like shortening, and you kneaded in the red color tab.

Because Wisconsin is the dairy state, you couldn't buy margarine there. According to Wikipedia, Wisconsin the last state to lift bans on margarine. People would go down to Illinois and buy cases of it and distribute it among family and friends. It was bad if you were caught with contraband margarine. I told them how people find it funny that I grew up in the dairy state but that we always ate margarine. Now we know it is bad for you, and butter is actually better.

It makes me wonder if that is part of why Wisconsinites eat margarine, not just for the 'diet' and the cost, but because once upon a time it was forbidden and a delicacy. Mostly I think it was the cost. My grandma still has margarine in her fridge, not butter. They still only have it at the holidays. I hope they figure out how bad it is for the 'diet'.

At some point after I got off the diet merry-go-round and actually was eating quite healthily, nearly vegan, I stopped eating margarine and started eating butter instead. I think I did so because I was told butter didn't have the same allergic effects as other parts of milk and it was right around that time that alternative health sources were beginning to say how bad margarine is for you. I hadn't yet heard the term hydrogenated oils. I lost about 30 pounds without 'dieting'. Hmmm. It was about that time I broke up with my first husband, who regretted that it was just as I was getting more attractive. Perhaps he'd be glad to know I gained it back and then some when I started eating pizza again. He's not missing out after all. Hah.

Interesting that now New York is pondering a ban of trans fats. What, no margarine allowed, again?

OK, if we go in this direction, at least let's be clear: trans fat is bad for us and gives us the bad cholesterol and makes us fat, but it does not mean that if we're fat, we've got bad cholesterol and are by definition going to die from heart disease. Obesity has not been shown to cause heart disease or diabetes, yet the majority of people seem to think so. Trans fat, on the other hand, can be linked. There's a difference. If I didn't have a job that covered my insurance, insurance wouldn't cover me because of my weight. Will they ask potential customers if they smoke, if they eat margarine, shortening, and processed foods? They'll just ask the weight.