Archive for the ‘Language and the body’ Category
September 25, 2026
Terrible things happen: the people we love most, and those that we especially admire, sicken and die; our highly competent bodies are overwhelmed by an avalanche of painful disabilities and disfigurements (I can no longer play the piano or assemble collages, among many other things).
But it’s possible to cope with these disasters — not with the blaring of trumpets in resurrection, but in the more modest unfolding of loss, longing, and resolution: Tod und Verklärung on a human scale. In this posting, I’ll wander through several examples from my current life, starting with some things I see out of my big window here at Avant.
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Posted in Art, Collages, Death and dying, Dreams, Language and medicine, Language and the body, Moral worlds, Music, My life | Leave a Comment »
September 8, 2026
🎶 🎶 It’s 9/8, Anton Dvořák’s birthday (1841), which will serve as a lead-in to a fabulous performance of music (by Purcell, not Dvořák) that Ellen Kaisse e-mailed to me as a (9/6) birthday present, stroking one of the passions — for music — that animate my life (two others I have recently posted about: the multiplicity of languages, cultures, subcultures, and life histories; and moral purpose — yeah, that one sounds like swaggering, but I really mean it)
Before I leave AD, a note on him from my 1/27/24 posting “Spillville”:
let me recommend the Wikipedia article on Dvořák, for its detailed telling of a remarkable life, of great talent, a lot of pluck, a fair amount of luck, generous humanity, and the benefit of champions, advocates on your behalf (in this case, primarily Johannes Brahms)
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Posted in Dancers, Events and occasions, Language and the body, Music, Teaching, Writing | 1 Comment »
September 4, 2026
Well, the special birthday zone, embracing my 9/6 birthday and the 10/26 birthday of my first male lover, Larry Schourup, a time suffused with delighted memories of our coming together in the spring of 1969, the way that changed both our lives, and how it led to a lifelong affectionate friendship, rewarding for both of us (we exchanged e-mail yesterday, 57 years after those days).
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Posted in Events and occasions, Friendship, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Memory, My life | 4 Comments »
September 3, 2026
(fecal matters in street talk; you might find it offensive)
Previously on this blog, in my 9/1 posting “Send in the rabbits”:
Made it back to my apartment, at which point the enema kicked in and I pretty much exploded with shit, everywhere, in piles. Vast amounts of cleaning up to do, and I still have to get someone in to scrub my workroom carpeting, which is beyond my (dis)abilities.
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Posted in Language and medicine, Language and religion, Language and the body, Music, My life | Leave a Comment »
September 1, 2026
(bodily unpleasantness, much of it in street language, so likely to be offensive to many readers)
🐅 🐅 🐅 tiger tiger tiger for terminal August; send in the rabbits of September, and we can marvel (with Stephen Sondheim) Isn’t it rich? / Isn’t it queer? — that we should come to this time of the year
Yes, this is getting out a day late, but I have an excuse. It’s both painful to hear about — involving 12 hours of excruciating pain for me — and deeply revolting — well, literally shitty — so I’m having trouble framing the story for you. Then, as a kind of ghastly sideshow, various pieces of essential software (Facebook is mostly to blame) simply stopped working as they should, making it impossible for me to make my blog postings available through FB. All together, giving the Lost Blogging Day of 8/31.
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Posted in Events and occasions, Language and food, Language and medicine, Language and the body, My life, Stories | Leave a Comment »
August 30, 2026
(all the way at the end, we get to some sexual street talk, which I think has exactly the right shock value for its context; but if s*cking c*ck offends you, skip the next-to-last sentence)
It starts with Steven Levine — a sparkling vehicle of joy, enthusiasm, and congeniality — roused to anger and protest, as I reported in the 8/3 posting “Two notes on gay moral purpose”:
SL breaks out in a combination of, on the one hand, genuine pride in occasions of humane concern and (to put it grandly) moral purpose in the gay world and, on the other, righteous anger at a long-standing tradition in psychology, sociology, and medicine of blanketly treating homosexuality as dysfunction and disease. With, as sideshow, celebration of the raw sexuality in homosexuality — recognizing the physical and emotional pleasures of the associated sexual practices — in the wonderful BIG FAG t-shirts created by Steven (which he’d been distributing with abandon at Amsterdam Pride).
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Posted in Art, Clothing, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Moral worlds, Music, My life, Poetry, Social interactions, Social life | Leave a Comment »
August 30, 2026
(images that aren’t actually XXX-rated, but get as close to the line as possible while serving WordPress modesty — so some readers may choose to avert their eyes)
Briefly noted. For charging up the senses — big jolts for someone of my inclinations — on a quiet Sunday, Daily Jocks has sent out a mailer ad for thongs this morning (8/30) celebrating the male body as sexual object, close up, fore and aft:
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Phallicity, Underwear | Leave a Comment »
