Patterns

Patterns had a way of catching and reforming you. Patterns of waking and starting the day, which foot hit the floor first, parts of the body lathered and scrubbed, teeth brushed in never-varying groups, toast quartered and buttered just so, books placed in bag largest to smallest, back to front; route taken to street car, scenery passing by–familiar buildings with familiar colors rolling until you step off and find the same paperboy shouting yesterday’s news. But this too is a pattern.

Case Studies In Dirt

1.

When a boy: his ma cursed him for wild, scrubbing muck from his ears

When a lad: his ma cursed him for sinner, scrubbing foul from his tongue

When a man: his ma cursed him forsaken, crying for the tarnish of his name

Some dirt, so she said, just don’t wash

2.

Before seminary: he was a lusty lad fleeing Ol’ Horny

During seminary: he was a horny lad lusting after the parish priest

After seminary: he was an ol’ parish priest lusting after horny lads

Some dirt, so they said, just don’t wash

3.

Before the war: he buggered boys in the alleyway

During the war: he blew men in the trench

After the war: he buggered out his brains, lips wrapped around a barrel

Some dirt, so they thought, just don’t wash

Tir na nÓg

He’s my rest
My fog veiled terra finally found
Tir na nÓg

His chest an ivory beach
My head, it shores there
The pilgrim’s progress, this boy
Moated high-walled refuge, this boy
God’s own country

My finger runs the lithe bend of his arm
His hand cups my neck’s nape
He leans to kiss, but hovers
Behind bonfire-dancing eyes,
Some secret laughs
Some ancient magic conjured

Fay marooner of men
Place of shipwreck
Place of harbor

And I am cast away
And I am safe anchored
And I am become mortal

Oh happy mortal!
In that immortal land of his kiss
Tir na nÓg

A Rolling Rock Night At O’Malley’s

Were you my very own pint O’ Beer

Lovely fair-haired, hazel-eyed lad

A draught to sooth Summer’s parch

The sole delight O’ my mouth

‘Till swoon drunk I’d have you

‘Till spent by excess

‘Till full undone

‘Till stumbling, mumbling, rambling

Fall down, far gone, pissed drunk

I’d have my fill O’ you

Lovely fair-haired, hazel-eyed lad

De Profundis

De Profundis was written during Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment in 1897, with two years hard labor for “gross indecency” in practicing “that love that dare not speak its name.”  The letter may be described as Wilde’s theology of suffering, and it reflects a process of evolution in self-understanding, and an examination of the role played by suffering in this evolution. He writes, “Sorrow … and all that it teaches one, is my new world.” It is, “the supreme emotion of which man is capable,” and “the secret of life.”

Through his imprisonment this experience of sorrow moves from morbidity, to rage, and finally to a metanoia in Stoic affirmation of life, art, beauty and love. While remaining an agnostic, and in no way repenting his past, he nevertheless pens an affirmation of Christ superior in its beauty and power to any offered by Augustine, Luther, or Wesley. Wilde’s Christ is the “supreme individualist” and artist, whose individualism and art allows for, and is realized in, love. De Profundis is, ultimately, a confession of faith in Wilde’s distinct and wholly owned Imagio Dei.

In De Profundis one is reminded of Plato’s vision in The Symposium; and, even more, Kierkeegard’s Stages On Life’s Way. Where one speaks of love, and the other life’s meaning, both are descriptions of Bildung that have specific potential value for understanding Gay identity historically.

De Profundis, though, speaks to something fundamental and intangible to my work, of which my scholastic ramblings are but one small and relatively insignificant part (“small” and “insignificant” are, after all, pretty good descriptors for most thinking in academia today). Anyway …

Beyond the remarkable similarity between Wilde’s insistence on the power and supremacy of The Individual and the concept of Eigenen advocated by Brand et al., there is something deep and, one could say mystical, to De Profundis. Mystical, in the original rather than cheesy sense of the word (look it up). And while the sentiments expressed in the letter are universally valuable, I’m also struck by the thought that his life also seems to uniquely embody two poles of Gay collective experience that we find throughout history. Specifically, the radical celebrant in community and the penitent sufferer in isolation.

There is Wilde, the individualist and aesthete who, like so many in our past, demanded celebration and pleasure in response to the world’s insistence of misery and suffering into our lives. This has defined us, from orgiastic mysteries of the Ephebe cult of Antinious, to the underground discos and drag bars of the early 1970s: Wilde the aesthete would have been at home in both.

Then there is the shadow of our experience, that Wilde discovered while in prison: suffering, death-longing, laboring without a name, without companionship, without comfort. The experience of the closet that is, for him, realized in reverse of the Gay norm: after, rather than prior to, the freedom of his aesthete life. In this he becomes a Type for Christ. The Gay Christ. The Artist Christ. A a mirror image and incarnation of our shared experience.

In other words, like Christ, the “supreme individualist,” and therefor non-conformist, Wilde has his dark and lonely Gethsemane only after the Passover celebration, a celebration of life. In the process, he miraculously affirms Gay life (and, yes, all life) even in the ‘death’ of his prison (or, an equally applicable analogy might be found in Christ’s decent into hell).

After reading De Profundis, one wants to start a cult to the Blessed Aesthete, the Holy Dandy, Homo Sacrificum.

Gay Essentialist Musings

My study of literature involves a seeking-out of universal, essential, markers of Gay identity and experience in history. This has led me to the late 19th and early 20th century writings of Adolf Brand and the Gemeinshaft der Eigene. Literally: “Community of Self-owners.” Central tenants of the Gemeinshaft were: Bildung, the process of realizing the unique self. And Eigenen, or self-owning which is the (ideal) culmination of Bildung.

In these concepts I see the beginnings of a potential template for interpreting the Gay experience historically, to the degree that some version of what today is called “the closet” is historically evidenced in every historical context (though far more pronounced in some than others). Here are my thoughts so far …

The experience of “coming out” to oneself is an affirming act of Eignenen, after a long and often painful experience of Bildung. In this I do not intend to merely speak to the individual psychological experience, but to the collective historical experience as well. To the degree that Gay men have existed without a public name or tools for self-naming, they have been closeted and thereby unable to self-own, while at the same time “unowned” or “disowned” by society at large. To self-own, in these contexts, necessitates the radical invention of a language capable of reflecting an essential and undeniable aspect of self; an aspect of self that seems, to the individual, absolutely singular (i.e. totally depraved, utterly perverse, completely sinful, absolutely fabulous). In other words, Gay men who “came out” to themselves in contexts wherein there was no available means of understanding their own identity, effectively invented or named “Gay” with each individual act of Eigenen. It is only after this invention/naming of Gay via Eigenen that Gemeinshaft–community–is discovered and the individual realizes that “he is not alone,” while at the same time discovering the collective (and non-essential) language of the Gemeinshaft. The result is a context specific and trans-historical Gemeinshaft der Eigene. Thus, the historical ubiquity of Bildung and Eigenen, and consequent evolution of context specific Gemeinshaft der Eigene, suggests this as at least one essential marker of Gay essence.

See: Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany. Oosterhuis, Harry ed. New York: Haworth Press, 1991.

Digital Dumbing

I recently watched an Episode of Frontline called Digital Nation that discussed the human impact of living in a world that is plugged in twenty-four-seven.

The part that most interested me was where the documentarians examine the impact living digital has on education and our reasoning capacity. For example, Professor Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation, argues that the young are less capable in reasoning than generations past.

Multi-tasking and the need for constant and varied visual stimulation (facebook, youtube, google, videogames, texting … all at once) has produced kids who can’t sit long enough to think through anything. I haven’t read his book, but my experience suggests he is right. The show mentions this, and I’ve seen it plenty: Students who cannot reason through to create a cohesive essay but instead think, and write, in disconnected paragraphs. Write a paragraph, pause to text a friend. Write a paragraph, pause to do a google search. Write a paragraph, update Facebook. And so on.

The curious thing is that, as Frontline points out, these kids–college kids–think themselves master multi-taskers, while in fact they are dreadfully poor at it; the brain simply isn’t designed for it. Great skimmers, perhaps. But even common sense says one cannot think through Plato without sitting, focusing, and working through his entire argument.

The counter argument Frontline offers is that, sure, maybe we have lost one kind of reasoning but we are evolving new abilities. The comparison–and I think it a good one–is with the advent of the printing press. No one would now argue against the advantages to civilization gifted us by the printing press. Yet, we lost a great deal of our mnemonic dexterity in the process. It’s the price of progress, so the argument goes. And it’s hard to argue against that.

Personally, I’m torn. I do suspect that kids are getting dumber in the ways I think most important to the stuff of our humanness. And I’m not being old and crotchety here, since I think my generation and, worst of all the Baby Boomers, are typically dumber than generations past as well. We grew up in front of the television and played video games that didn’t require much thinking at all. A similar 30-second attention span, without the advantages kids now at least have of being informed during that 30-seconds (google!). Face it: when compared to a turn of the last century Brit in a good school, we are a joke in everything except the tinkering sciences. We are historically ignorant, philosophically challenged, incapable of articulating a moral argument even if someone put a gun to our head and demanded we argue the immorality of trigger-pulling. We, even in college, certainly couldn’t discuss Plato in Greek, or Aquinas in Latin.  Here, at least, you can call me old fashioned or reactionary: I think a race that doesn’t know it’s past, a human with a bankrupt knowledge of humanities, cannot long remember what it means to be human let alone figure out how to plot a course for our evolution. I foresee a generation of man who responds to unexpected challenges–political, global, individual–as he might to turning a corner in a first-person shooter: with no reference. Though, to employ a tired phrase that I think someone even used on Frontline: In life there isn’t a reset button. Or better yet, a save feature.

Ultimately, though, the whole argument is academic. What is the case, is the case, and no amount of reasoning or argument will change the game we are now playing. Especially when so many find sitting through reasoned argument a bore. There will always be, one can hope, a segment of the population who resists change and carve for themselves alternative cultures. Whether this is the result of a reactionary instinct, Ludditism, or Vision is really quite irrelevant. Such pockets of resistance serve History even in being “anti-progressive” by reminding everyone else that we are all products of History, and maybe even compelling the progressive majority to pause long enough to reason out a cogent argument in favor of progress.

Rentboy

Set in Portland, 1915, this is actually a piece from my story Lord of Horses, but I think it almost works as a stand alone piece (though there are a couple things that won’t make sense out of context). It is a complete re-write of one of my earliest scenes. You may be wondering if Fourth Street Plaza was a cruising spot then. It was. You may also be wondering if there was a hanky code back then. There was. Finally … free beer to the first among my legions of adoring followers able to figure out the Marlowe reference.

Fourth street plaza, the boy on the bench watches two silhouettes converge on the footpath just beyond the reach of dull lamplight. Not so much as a whisper between them, and off they go: one silhouette, two heads.

Dandies both by the swagger of them, he thinks. The dark don’t hide it. Balls of steel, the sissies, got to give them that. More than the passers with their red ties and hankies. Like polis is color blind. Like they won’t figure on it soon enough.

Two hours now, easy, and nothing to show but a fiver for a quick fetch in The Block. Pissed bastard trying to force a kiss, breath like the Devil. Deserved a punch in the mouth for that one, sure. And hardly worth a fiver for all the work it took to wake the ugly, limply thing. Them’s all predictable and alike: drink to hard the nerves, forgetting that it softs the cock. No, not worth a fiver, but work’s work.

He  considered again waiting in The Block, but then thought better of it: nowhere to run should a polis happen in and say you was showing off at the pisser. And damned if I’ll wear steel bracelets on my seventeenth. Like I told him, you gotta be sharp Boy ‘O. Couldn’t keep him sharp weren’t I sharp myself–And here we go, about time.

A man approached and sat next to him. He pulled a cigarette from a case and after a few taps lit. He offered one to the boy.

“Don’t smoke.”

“Pity. You’d displease Marlowe by half.”

Neither understanding nor caring for the meaning, the boy took his measure: forties by the look of him. Fancy suit. Spats. Leaning back without a care. Adds up: money to spare. “You looking for company, eh?”

The man laughed. “You’re a bold one.”

Not even trying to be quite, like nothing can touch him. No doubt about it, money to spare. “You wouldn’t be here elsewise.”

“And a regular Sherlock Holmes as well. Or, Baker Street Irregular might be more apt.” He threw back his head and let go a long exhale. His eyes rolled over the boy as though only somewhat interested, as though considering some curiosity.

The boy, though, read the look’s underneath. The man had already chosen. Before sitting down he’d chosen. Just like that pissed limpy in The Block, this man needed it, had determined on having it, had dressed in his fancy suit and spats and come here to find it. And that bored look couldn’t hide the fact. Not from one sharp. Not from one who knew better than to let them think they had you. Never let them think they have you. “Best decide because I ain’t waiting.”

“Very well then, why not?”

“Thought so.”

“But not here. I’ve a mind for a full night. I deserve to indulge myself.”

“It will cost you.”

“Obviously.”

“Your place then?”

“Obviously.”

The man stood. “It’s my birthday you know.”

The boy followed. “You don’t say.”

“I do. How old are you, by the way?”

“We won’t be kissing. Don’t get it in your head we’ll be kissing, because I won’t.”

Laughter. “Quite old enough it seems.”

“I mean it, not so much as one kiss.”

“Not so much as one.”

Together they walked: one silhouette, two heads.

Reek Sunday 1922

A revision of a story I posted earlier. Previously “Easter 1915,” the story is now set during the Irish Civil War. Specifically, after the Free State invasion of County Mayo via a sea landing at Clew Bay.

Reek Sunday 1922

There in finger-paint blue water where restless, breaking waves tease the smooth from pebbles. There where milky foam gathers to be swallowed by whirling currents, and delicate weedy fingers reach up to tickle sticks that dance upon the surface. There under old, grey clouds mumbling stormy threats, the boy breached the waters: head thrown back in wild gasp to drink his fill of salty air; eyes shot wide to a welcoming sky. With breath like bellows to lungs afire, he eyed the shore.

“Home stretch now, Collin. The final push.”  Again the lunge, followed by off-ticking ten count to keep steady rhythm of kick and slap, just as his brother had taught him. His heart thumped in violent refrain, while the rhythmic splash of frigid waves against ears made all things dissolve into ringing. At last the bottom was made certain by the squish of sand between toes, and he began undressing himself of the sea: now his shoulders, now his chest, now his privates, now his knees, now the last licking of waves against his heel. Naked and shivering, he looked again at Clew Bay and all those islands. One for every day of the year, legend had it. His heart swelled with joy akin to Mass dismissed: Ite missa est. The whole world shined like a holy thing and a peal of thunder in the distance might well have been God laughing.

“I did it, Collin,” he said, dropping onto a rock and toweling: head first, and then members concluding with the one below. His teeth grinned and chattered as a cool breeze acted on his second skin of wet. Briskly he rubbed the hurt of calves into fingers causing them to prickle with the slow forgetting of numb, though he was yet unready to be completely warm. He enjoyed the ache of his clamoring jaw, and the sore of his arms and legs. He wanted to remain a little longer just as he was and he didn’t care if a soul should stumble by and find him there, cold and naked as the sea. Hugging himself tightly against the shake of bones, he watched as a group of frenzying gulls squabbled and pecked over a piece of scavenged flesh.

In the distance Reek Sunday pilgrims climbed Croagh Patrick, ascending and descending like so many ants. A funny thought, come to think of it. Funny and sad. Just like ants they really are. Climbing up with burdens to unload, climbing back down to find new burdens needing carrying. The things we carry with us. The pain we wear when it no longer fits. He knew it well enough and had himself climbed the holy mountain in hopes the saint would throw that silver bell and chase away his demon. A demon not exorcized by fastings, nor by vigils, nor by acts of contrition, nor even by barefoot pilgrimages up a holy mountain on a holy day.

Saint Mary’s chimed yet another soul released. He imagined a ghost riding the echo as it leaped from island to island and out to sea towards one or another hidden land. For Granda creaking away in his rocker it was the Land of Fairie, Land of the Happy Dead, Land of the Ever Young, that you’d find at the far end of West. It’s people, taller than us, on average. Braver too. And ever since hearing those stories as a boy, he’d imagined Fairie Folk smelling of cherry blossoms because of the thick, sweet pipe tobacco fog that would fill the kitchen whenever Granda was inclined to tell his tells.

For Collin, though, the far end of West was Land of Opportunity, Land of Gold, Land of Rags-Turned-Riches. It’s people, also averaged taller and braver. “Though grit says it better than brave,” he had said one night, appropriating the American slang from an old British Penny Dreadful. “And I’ve grit enough to set us right–eh, Lil’ Monk? I just need opportunity, and they’ve it to spare.”

He could almost hear his brother’s voice hovering somewhere between the crash of waves and the fish calls of gulls. He fondled his Saint Brendon Medal, and crossed himself: “Name O’ the Father Son ‘n Holy Ghost Amen.”

He thought on the instinct of it. Not a moment passed on this island without a pair of lips offering up to the Holy Trinity. But what in the name of? What something was this constant pleading after and warding against? Cross a threshold, Father. Pass a church, Son. See an omen, Holy. Remember the dead, Ghost. Almost anything would do as filler for the blanks between, because you had to be on guard: if some foul luck hadn’t already found you it surely would. Just as it had found Collin. And just as it had found him.

Little Monk. He had delighted in the Christening, pronounced by Collin and then confirmed with a rub to the head. “What’ve you to confess, eh? A Little Monk is what you are.” It had stuck, as did all the titles Collin handed out to his tag-along army of adoring, stuttering boys and blushing, giggling girls. Now he wore his brother’s naming like a scapular vaulting the heart against temptation breaking in, or God breaking out .

The nosier women of Saint Mary’s also confused his strict observances and daily devotions with unusual piety and began to vie with one another to influence the choice of vocation. Mrs. Mooran has a brother who, God bless him, is now assistant to a Cardinal. Jesuit. Mrs. Doyle’s second cousin is a saintly man who has no small reputation in Cork for having the healing touch. Augustinian. And of course, Mrs. Flecky’s son, the pride of Lecanvey, missionary to Africa. Franciscan.

Even Brother Mack had started hinting his preference. “How old are you now son, near sixteen is it?” he’d begin each time. “Ah, but how well I recall it. I was that very age, you know, when the still small voice began to call me in service to Mother Church, Ordinis Praedicatorumr.”

He’d answer the hints with smiles, though inwardly he recoiled with visions of Inferno, and sinners writhing in the seventh’s circle. His gut would twist and knot with the fear that someone might at last pierce the facade and jerk his secret free. Like a sour old nun yanking the ear of a disrespectful child and announcing the wickedness to the whole class. Or like the Cherub waving his fiery sword in disgust at sin-fouled Adam and Eve. Away with you. Away forever with you. There’s no place for you here. Walk the earth in shame. You are fallen. Cursed forever.

Something winked light near his feet. Kicking away obscuring seaweed he found an empty rations tin. On its side, a bleached out Union Jack. Picking it up he gave it a sniff before hurling it into the restless surf, chasing it with a curse. But the curse felt as empty as the tin.

“I wanted to tell you, Collin. And I think you’d of understood.”

Understood why his nights had lately turned sleepless, and his eyes gone dark underneath. “Been smudged with charcoal, like,” one boy had mocked with a slug to the arm. “Even saints sleep, son,” Brother Mack had admonished, pride only half stifled. His father, on the other hand, had suspected another ill behind the lethargy. He sat the boy down one Friday evening and solemnly, stumblingly warned against the dangers of the solitary vice, while never mustering courage enough to actually speak the term. “Men have been known to be taken mad after a time of it,” he had said. “Avoid boys who sport with sin. They won’t be sporting in hell, mind you. They won’t sport.”

But that wasn’t the thing leaving him sleepless. Collin had early explained that if you thought of nothing and no one at all, there was no need for confessing, even should the priest ask you directly. “Covet not, is all it says. Not a thing about the act.” His argument sounded Protestant, but was balming just the same.

After some weeks another question blistered up. He once tried to scratch around it hoping Collin would discern the meaning and offer another cure. “Do you think God ever made someone wicked?” he had asked.

Collin had started to laugh but stopped himself on seeing his brother’s expression. “What’s this?”

“I just wonder, do you think he’d do that? Curse a soul to hell from the start. Before being born even.”

“Well you’d know better than I.” He scratched the dusty catechism from his head. “There was Judas.”

“Judas had a demon so it says.”

“There you have it so.”

“But did the demon make for sinning, or did the sin make for possession?”

“Is everything alright Lil’ Monk?”

He had lied. And that night he dreamed of the Virgin rising up from Clew Bay. She wept rivers of blood that covered the land. He had tried to escape by climbing Craugh Patrick, but the blood kept rising. He’d sought Collin there, but did not find him. “He’s swimming below,” a mournful old man had told him. “So many have gone swimming already. Many more will yet go swimming.”

Then came civil war, and Collin dyed his wool the green of Republicanism, replacing dreams of westward exodus for those of a homeland united. That last night he had sat at the pub with Collin and the as they made pledges between whiskey clinks and sang Dord na bhFiann.

Our fine land in possession of thieves …

And you sold to foreigners!

“The Blacksmith of Ballinalee come to hammer Westport,” Collin had shouted. “Four hundred Staters, like Black and Tans, whoring Ireland to the King.”

They are Irishmen, not foreigners nor Spanish …

And they will rout the foreigners! …

“But on my life, never County Mayo,” Collin had sworn.

Gráinne Mhaol and a thousand warriors …

Dispersing the foreigners!

But no, it wasn’t foreigners who tumbled off those boats at the pier. You’d have been proud though, Collin. Proud of me standing there as they poured out. In your own skin I stood thinking myself painted blue against Saxon mercenaries, for that’s what you called them. But you were wrong. A group of them too sang, sang of Gráinne Mhaol and a fine land in possession of thieves. Some sang it, and some laughed, and some they trudged along carrying invisible boulders so slumped were their shoulders. And some they marched straight and upright with firm-set eyes, and some they looked as though their own hearts had fled them, marching only because there was nothing but marching left to them. And every one, Collin, looked to me as Irish as you and I couldn’t hate them though I tried. For you I tried. But then one, he broke from he fellows and came up to me. He smiled and asked me my name.

“My brother’s Republican,” I said.

“Is he so?”

I stumbled. The blue left, the blush came. For I recognized that look. Up and down roamed his eyes, so bold was his scrutiny, in the bright of day for all to see. I felt naked. “My brother, he–”

“We’re all Irishmen, though some have lost their memory. It will return.”

So tender was his smile that I couldn’t but smile back at him. “You’re to Westport?” I asked him.

“Not I. Some are to remain here ‘till it’s taken.”

“My brother’s there.”

“A pity,” he had said. And I knew he meant it.

He took a cigarette from a silver case, and made me an offering. Three flicks of a lighter and he found the flame.

I coughed.

“First time is it?” he laughed.

“For everything a first,” I answered.

He told me when and where to find him that night. And though I didn’t then answer, I knew I would go to him. I made myself forget you, Collin, that I might go to him.

“How did you know?” I asked him, after. “Know I would come, know I am …”

“We recognize our own. We always have.”

“It’s not my first, though none has ever kissed me.”

“A pity,” he had said. And I knew he meant it.

“I thought it a sin before. I feared to die.”

“And now?”

“I reckon now it wasn’t death or the devil that was chasing me, but my own heart. I was running from my own, real heart.”

“That’s our own peculiar revelation. We all must have it, though some sooner than others.”

“It could be no other, could it? A soul can be no other than what it is, and the only real sin is in trying to make it what it isn’t.”

Then he did a thing so strange I can hardly tell it, though it then seemed the most natural thing in all the world. He blessed me, Collin. Blessed me with the sign of the cross. With kisses he blessed me: my head, my navel, either side of my chest. Father Son and Holy Ghost he kissed. And I felt in me the stir of memory. Older than Clare Island or Craugh Patrick or Clew Bay it seemed. I looked at him for recognition, for a remembering together. He looked back and smiled, and how tender the smile. He whispered that he loved me, and I knew he meant it. Not knowing my name, he loved me. And not knowing his name, I loved him. We shared a language that night, he and I, we of a kind. A language for us alone, we of a kind.

Above the fire hangs your photo wreathed in black. Da, he cries still. I hear him late at night moaning for the son lost, cursing Ireland, proud Fenian no more. In bed I sometimes forget and listen for your breathing and more than once I thought I heard you there. And were you there with me, Collin? Or have you taken to the sea? Have you ridden echos and hopped islands out to sea and the far end of West? Christ, I miss you.

I swam for to find you. I swam the islands of the Bay. I followed your whisper on the wind, seeking that you might learn the truth of it. That the sea it undressed me of a foreign skin and I’ve taken up another, my own. Not Republican, not Stater, not yours, not Da’s, nor Brother Mack’s, my own. No not even Irish, this skin, but Irish just the same, my own.

Like Agnoman I have put on a new form, and my mouth claims his words: ‘Victory and joy are easy to me now where once I was weak and defenseless.’ Like him I stand near cliffs and bear witness to the coming of a new race. My own race from the far end of West. From the hidden land we return to find our own.

Der Eigenen

The so-called GLBTQ ‘community’ has nothing on die Gemeinschaft der Eigenen. I wonder if anyone else cares (and knows) enough about our history that they too sometimes long for rich, deep, authentic community? A true radicalism in opposition to the faux-revolutionary politicizers of the body. A neo-Romanticism. A Gay, male, cultural revival. The love of Whitman, the reason of Carpenter, the balls of Nietzsche. My kingdom for a time-machine, or minds akin.

Photo: Adolf Brand