Sunday, August 20, 2006

Midsummer Night’s Year of Living Wanderlustly

Start with flirty Shakespearean Midsummer’s plot confusion, add some timely Mel Gibson (Living Dangerously) and you’ve symbolically summarized (without the wedding, drunk driving or ethnic slur) my past year of no-mad(ic-Max) fumbling for domestic/career/relationship stability. (OK, I’d settle for a habitual, mundane sex life, as an appetizer, after a year of this seductive desert).

I’ve been looking forward most of July to write a blog entry for midsummer’s night as a symbolic title for how this summer and the past 365ish days were going. Aug 4th -5th seemed to be the mathematical fit between the solstice and equinox. (Much love and pleasures to Annemarie and Chris who blended their very sexy love-knots into wedded bliss that weekend.) But lo and behold Midsummer is celebrated on the solstice (roughly June 22nd—paradoxically the in between of May 1 and August 1st—the cross-quarter days between the equinox and solstice, which traditionally was the European summer. Who would have thunk? Farmers were already starting their first harvest and the women were already readying themselves for all those bacchanal festivals, and our own midsummer’s blockbuster Snakes on a Plane wasn’t even yet out?

But then again, making assumptions continues to be the source of my continued erring ways of wandering.

August 11th is the anniversary of my final moving away from my past relationship—the inopportune, but truthful, decision that has kept me drifting and unfocussed, still a year later. I had estimated back then it would take a year to recover, but it looks like my finances (and overall neediness) might be entering into a second year. But there’s always a valuable lesson. And like Midsummer’s use of pansy juice to put young lovers under a spell, while steering away censorship under the guise of “life as a dream” (freespeech was questioned back then, too), actual life is maybe the most legitimate reason to dream (relaxing, though messy, wet dreams, most especially). In The Year of Living Dangerously, Linda Hunt’s gender-reversed surreal character Billy Kwan, opened his eyes and camera to his political hero’s true motivations, too late. “If it's in focus, it's pornography, if it's out of focus, it's art.” But like Midsummer’s Bottom character, or the TV series Dallas’ “Lost Season” where the entire “84-’85 season we learned in ’85-’86 was just Pamela’s dream, or ZhuangZi questioning which was the dreamer— him as butterfly or him as human— there’s a time in one’s life that fantasy is the only way to make sense of reality.

So what did I learn from my Summer ’05 through Summer ’06 dream-like vacation?

#1. You love me. Like Sally Fields learned , but in my real life. I discovered my friends and relatives gave their hearts and homes for me. Wow. Whenever I’ve been ready to display the white-flag of defeat from everything else, I remind myself that their love and understanding held my raccoon-puffed eyes looking outward.

#2. Strategist, I’m not. Leading way too much with my heart—to my own detriment. My size 5 foot fits too easily into my mouth, leaving footprints on paper and websites. Yet being emotional is Not the opposite of rational, but tell that to any man.

#3. Balance between isolation and being social is a wonderful thing. Everyone does load a dishwasher differently. And that’s OK.

#4. I need sex. And Freud was mostly right for all of us (see #7). Though it’s kind of nice to be shy about it with first touch or kiss, it sucks (that’s OK, too, if done pleasantly) to not feel that knowing of someone in you life. My former love and I did it way too much for my choice, as routine as brushing one’s teeth, but every 4-5 months, with someone new, isn’t cutting it either. I miss knowing a regular lover, flowing playfully into his arms, with some degree of trust and comfort. Did I ever truly have that trust? Probably not, but “playing” house is worth something.

#5. It’s good to re-connect with men from my past. We appreciate each other so much more. An average absence of 3 to 5 years seems to put the last time in its place. Not romance, but caring friendships (with mutually agreed levels of touch, of course) makes the past grievance worth the learning curve.

#6. Honesty is truly the best policy, but timing is definitely everything.

#7. Women are crazy. Men are stupid. And the reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.
Thanks to George Carlin; CJ, for helping me feel sexy and flirtatious again, too.

#8. Grassroots, though valuable for it humbleness and passion, is overrated. Though it’s a very cool name for a landscaping service ad I saw in South Jersey.

#9. The liberal men in my life are mostly unsympathetic to females in need. The conservative men in my life want much more to be protective. But then I have to deal with their politics….

#10. Self Discipline is necessary for freedom. I learned that in Catholic elementary school and even Bill Maher agrees. September, back- to- school, now, I need to confidently seek a good paying job, or maybe gambling is indeed one of the classic virtues?

Dream on and erotically.

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