I sit on my patio,
Watch the man tug the leash,
The dog tug the man,
Both of them passing by
Faster than birdsong
Can shove a cloud
Across the sky.
Category: Self-Flourishing
The Meaning and Purpose of Defiance
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Paul offers his views on the meaning and purpose of life.
THE CRITICS EJACULATE! “The Grand Fraud of Blogging American, Paul Sunstone, excretes his opinions about the meaning and purpose of life in what can only be considered a shameless act of public urination. Life is fully terrifying enough without the addition of his muddled and confused vision for embracing it. I must insist upon the return of the guillotine. I must insist upon the return of justice to our world.” — Aloyse Leblanc, Le Critique Passionné de Blog, “La Tribune Linville”, Linville, France.
“Leave Me Wild or Die”
(About a 2 minute read)
I’ve got a promiscuous heart. It’s a nymphomaniac. It can’t stop itself from falling for people. Long ago, I tried long and hard to love “an only one”. The heart didn’t like that at all. It went on strike after about two years. It began making me die inside.
It’s a loyal heart. Once it decides to love you, it sticks with you no matter what you do just like a bad family name in a small town. It never falters in it’s love for more than the few minutes it takes you to forget one of my lectures on the epistemology of carnal knowledge. If you abuse me, it will still love you. It will only regret that now I myself have got to leave you. It’s as promiscuous as a cruise ship full of cats, but it’s as loyal as a kennel full of dogs.
But it’s picky too. Paradoxically, while it can’t just limit itself to an only one, it can be really picky about the dozen or so people it loves all at the same time. Sometimes it won’t even love people I like, esteem, and admire. People I would proudly be the first to pick as a roommate on a lonely two year rocket ride to Mars. Sometimes I think my heart is the pickiest heart I’ve heard tell of apart from hearts too scared, too confused, or too stuck up to love anyone at all.
I’ve tried — years ago I tried — to turn my heart into a nice, weedless, walled garden. It just came back to me with an ultimatum, “Leave me wild or die”.
Is the Difference Love?
Break yourself.
Or have someone else do it.
(It’s easy. You’re frail, you know.)Throw yourself into the ocean.
(Don’t be afraid.
It’s like baptism.)Grinding tides
…lullabies…
(with a bite)Don’t fight.
(Surrender.)Seasons scour, gales rend
Breakers crest,
And in the endYou are precious.
(A jewel.)How to Make Sea Glass, by the gifted Carla, Carla’s Corner.
“At least 99.9% of everything good in my life has come to me through the door of pain.” — Dr. Andrea Dinardo, Thriving Under Pressure.
(About a 3 minute read)
It’s curious to me how much truth there is to the notion exquisitely expressed in Carla’s poem that we can come to be better people through adversity and suffering.
It is equally curious to me how much truth there is to the notion insightfully expressed by Andrea that most — or perhaps almost all — of the good things in our lives are in one way or another born of our pain and suffering.
I think both ideas might seem at first to be counter-intuitive. Does not pain and suffering focus us on ourselves, make us self-centered — perhaps even bitter and cynical? If so, how can it turn us into jewels?
Again, how can good things come of bad things? How can blessings enter our lives through the door of pain and suffering?
The Feral Sexuality of Teenage Girls
(About a 6 minute read)
It is easy to fall for the cliché that ours is the most sexually liberated age in history. It might be actually closer to the truth if we were to think of ourselves as among the most sexually complicated ages in history.
Dreams Gained and Dreams Lost, Dreams Regained
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Paul offers his take on the difference between an enthusiasm for something and a passion for something, and on what the difference means to our dreams, ambitions, and visions of ourselves.
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THE CRITICS EXPLODE! “Paul Sunstone knows all about dreams. He knows how to mangle and crush the dreams of his readers. He is the terrifying juggernaut of blogging.” — Arun Ghani, India’s Blogs and Beyond, “The Herald and News”, Hyderabad, India.
Continue reading “Dreams Gained and Dreams Lost, Dreams Regained”
The Morality of Putting People to Narrow Uses
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Paul offers his take on the morality of putting people to narrow uses, such as only being interesting in someone for sex, or only for their entertainment value.
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THE CRITICS GO NUCLEAR! “Once again, Paul Sunstone has taken it upon himself to discuss morality. Hence, once again he has taken it upon himself to load a high calibre rifle with a shotgun shell. Typical Sunstone, he is oblivious to the fact the shell didn’t fit, and he is just as oblivious to the fact his notion of morality does not fit the moral requirements nor standards of human nature. Sunstone is proposing a moral code for bacteria.” — Gus “Gunning Gus” Johnson, The Blog Critic’s Column, “Leper’s Gulch Gazette”, Leper’s Gulch, Colorado, USA.
Continue reading “The Morality of Putting People to Narrow Uses”
Willful Stupidity and the Good Reader
(About a 4 minute read)
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” — George Bernard Shaw
I suspect future historians will now and then speak of us as an “Age of Wonders”. The wonder of our electronics. The wonder of our communication technologies. The wonder of our medical advancements — especially in the field of mental health. And so forth.
But sadly, I suspect future historians will also speak of us as an “Age of Willful Stupidity”.
If so, they will doubtlessly say our age began over 100 years ago with the Stupid Bolshevik Revolution in Russia that was soon enough followed by the Rise of Stupid Fascism in Italy. And the historians are bound to point out that the willful stupidity has continued largely unabated straight through to today’s many Stupid Denial Movements.
I suspect future historians will write whole libraries on that one theme alone — willful stupidity. And I expect — I actually expect — that somewhere in those libraries there will be a book or article with an insightful footnote saying, “The first casualty of willful stupidity is the art of listening.”
Sharon’s Love for the Horny Misfit Boy
(About a 20 minute read)
Many a beautiful friendship has sprouted from awkward soil. In fact, most of my deepest friendships in life have begun clumsily.
I know of no inviolate law of nature that dictates the conservative beige panties of a young school librarian cannot possibly be the start of a profound bond between her and an insufferably horny 14 year old boy misfit. I know of no law that states such a thing cannot happen.
Yet the very last thing on my mind when Sharon’s angry voice shook me awake that Spring morning was, “This is the start of a beautiful friendship”.
A Indelicate Post on the Most Delicate Topic of Simpatico Sex
(About a 5 minute read)
It has long been my personal, tender opinion that the pure Japanese genius for first seeing nearly everything as an aesthetic experience, and for then optimizing the aesthetics of those experiences — that the Japanese genius for that has only been defeated once — and once only — in the entire cultural history of that remarkable people.
The Japanese genius for aesthetics was overthrown when it took on sex.
Continue reading “A Indelicate Post on the Most Delicate Topic of Simpatico Sex”
When It’s Cool to Try to Change Someone
(About a 3 minute read)
In our world
Are things which should never be violated
That are violated.
Is not the question a bit more complex than “to be or not to be”? To live or to die?
For if we chose to live, then question becomes what is the good life, the best life our species of great ape is allowed by the gods to aspire to?
That’s one question no sane person wants to screw up when answering. What is the best life we can live?
In Which I Savage Amanda Reilly Sayer’s Most Recent Post
A kind man, a humane man, a fair and just man would sing to you, Dear Readers. Sing nothing less or other than full-throated words of praise for Amanda Reilly Sayer’s most recent post.
By gods! He’d sing loud of Amanda Reilly Sayer, and of her post! And he’d be doing it for you, Dear Readers, he’d be doing it for your own benefit. He’d say, “Treat yourself today to what deep down you know you deserve now and then: A damn good post.”
That’s what a fair and just man would do — both for Amanda and for you.
Continue reading “In Which I Savage Amanda Reilly Sayer’s Most Recent Post”
