Quixotic Perspectives

Climbing a Tree

Bark returns the grip of your hands.
The press of your calves and thighs,
the pull of your arms,
straining through moist heat
let you know you touch a living thing.
The tips of leaves bite – ever so lightly -
your shoulder where it joins bicep and tricep.
It almost tickles.
The joint of a branch becomes a jagged vice
against the sides of your foot
as your weight presses down, resisting your ascent.
Your hand hooks another branch.
Leaves crackle, joining your laughter
when your bicep and latissimus dorsi compress
against the burn of lactic acid,
hauling upward.

Meditating
Meditating on a cliff overlooking ocean surf
Crashing against worn rock
Grains of sand, baby-powder soft, press the sides of my thighs
and calves – air passes between the sand and my knees
My feet rest half-submerged in the giving surface
Water-touched air dances in a breeze over the naked flesh of my body
Face and forehead, chest and shoulders, exposed arms and legs

Delicate chimes join a distant flute whistling an ethereal theme
The air motion stirs the leaves of trees fifty yards at my back
The music is subtle
Yet seeps through me, saturating my soul
Picking me up
Carrying my consciousness off the warmth of the sand into a different comfort.

I am caught by the flute’s music on the warm wind:
Brought down to caress the sturdy rock of the cliff face below my body
Skimming the froth of waves cresting and crashing.
Soaring up, back the way I came
tickled in my ascent by sparse and dry grasses
and beautiful, stiff, green ocean weeds.
Reverberations of stirred wings counterbeat
the soft flutes as I pass over a rising tern
Over the top outcropping of the cliff face, and heated sand above
A brief shudder in passing through my body.
Rushing over, kicking up sand in my wind’s wake
I’m thrown to play among the boughs
and massive trunks of the forest
Up and around – circling, circling
I follow a gray squirrel joyfully
around half a dozen trees
to the speeding whistle of flutes in my mind
Straight up one last tree
Flipping over backwards upon gaining its heights
and diving at the fragrant, dark soil lining the forest floor.

The music quites to a whisper
I pass over turned earth in reverential silence.
I walk into my body to settle home,
This origin of sensual.

Once upon a time, I experimented with my artistic voice. While I still express myself creatively in a variety of ways, I don’t think I’ve exercised my purely artistic voice since I was an undergraduate. What follows is a poem I wrote in that period of shaping my voice.

For little background, it was inspired by watching the movie Altered States starring William Hurt. I believe it was in the 1950’s and 60’s that experiments were conducted with LSD as well as other drugs and sensory deprivation chambers to research altered states of consciousness. I don’t remember the history as well as I once did, but I think the last major experiments with sensory deprivation ended in the very early 1970’s.

So what does this poem have to do with the move or experiments over thirty years old? To be honest, not much. The movie provided inspiration for a jumping-off point. I haven’t participated in sensory deprivation experiments. Alcohol is the only consciousness altering substance I’ve put in my body, and never in quantities sufficient to get more than a slight buzz.

Sensory Deprivation is a mental experiment exploring the juxtaposition of the removal of sensual experience and the heightened emotional and physical sensations that might lead up to it. Did my experimental journey take you anyplace?

Sensory Deprivation

I.
The first thing they do
is claim guardianship of all your clothes.
To your mind
Hands and fingers not your own
Crawl over your nerve endings
Peeling across your chest in tearing tugging shirt tails from pants
Ultimately removing shirt from your shoulders
Hands of a lover
Opening belt clasp, button and zipper behind
Dragging hesitating on the backs of your legs
In drawing heavy denim fabric off sensitized ankles soles toes
Undergarments – twitch twinge
At the unfamiliar clinical hands embracing
Caressing, demanding sexual arousal
Your mind collapses, shuts off invaded.
But the dressing closet remains starkly empty
As you place the last piece atop the mound of your folded garments.
Your stomach churns twists knots below your diaphragm
And your face grows flush, warm
Dragging the leaden weight of your legs,
Tentatively pushing the door to the three-by three closet outward,
You place your clothes in the outstretched hands
Of the white-coated intern assigned to secure them.
Your glazed eyes note movement of the other’s lips, and you nod
But the void echoes in your ears.
The heavy white bathrobe provided on the hook in the closet
Cannot hide your naked flesh
No matter how you wrap it about yourself or draw its belt tight
With the muscles of your arms straining.
II.
Outside the tank
You notice disembodied voices, in hearing again, attempt reassurance
As disembodied hands – light brushes of wind, insect legs felt then not -
Attach patches guiding wires to data in your brain and heart.
A final word from the voices,
And you pivot on the ball of your foot, calf straining.
The two-feet wide circular hole returns your blank stare
And you inhale your last unstructured breath for four hours
When the two sets of hands
Take even the robe from your shoulders
And a third, pressing the small of your back
Guides you to enter feet first the hole in the surgically cold stainless steel.
It doesn’t matter, your head spinning dizzy in shock.

III.
Your feet descend slightly off horizontal.
Your shoulder blades come to rest on a form-fitted hospital mattress.
You fit snug in the hole, the union of mattress and body reaching
Down your spine from the back of your head
Supporting your neck
Following the muscles of your back
And the groove of your spine
Cradling your buttocks, and the backs of your thighs
Wrapping around below your knees, circling your calves
Closing off over the tops of your feet
To the support of your heels curving down from the top in gliding transition.
Several inches above your head, you catch a glimpse of motion
Regal, learned hands and arms -
You sense they belong to a man you saw standing behind the interns
Who attached the patches
But they could just as well belong to the woman you observed next to him.
The thoughts in your mind thrash that you cannot determine with certainty.
With fingertips leading, the hands and arms snake down
To position the wires from the patches in their guide clamps
To secure a heavy padded strap around your upper chest
and arms below your shoulder
To pivot your head precisely
and affix the air-mask over your mouth and nose
To engage the clamp encircling your head
and double check its adjustment.
Satisfied, the arms withdraw.

IV.
The dim illumination reaching you fades
As a submarine hatch closes over your hole.
A soft hiss and thunk
And you know you’re alone.
In an hermetically-sealed void.

V.
You feel your heart rate grow rapid:
The steady increase of power applied to a sewing-machine needle.
You feel it skip when the clamps press
Against your thighs, light pressure an alien comfort
Constricting about your forearms and waist, immobilizing.
You notice again the strap securing your chest
And the clamp around your head.
Your heart once again slower, but now insistent in your ears and throat
The steady beat powerful of a hammer on nail after nail.
Your thoughts a transfixed raccoon, its eyes twin moons in your car lights
Trapped.
Assured immobility – without hope of escape.

The hours of preparation,
Of being told specifically what to expect,
Your mind still withheld acceptance upon experience.

VI.
You imagine your heart stop completely
When you feel the slimy, chill touch of the gelled saline upon your soles.
Until it races again, fast and hard
The rhythmic, hyperactive throbbing of a jackhammer
As you focus your thoughts on the sensation you still have – while they remain.
Your feet have grown numb enshrouded in the gel.
The clamps and strap about your body press against your naked flesh.
cold hardened plastic.
Chill sweat makes the mattress sticky against your back.
The air is a feather-touch breeze tickling naked skin
as it is forced out by the rising saline solution.
Though absent connection, you feel the clinical steel of the chamber walls
press impose upon your chest.
The air you receive from the mask tastes stale, brittle.

VII.
Your heartbeat slows as the gel engulfs your head.
The seconds and minutes pass into nothingness
And sensation follows,
As the liquid is warmed
Merging flesh
With the gel itself
And plastic
And steel
As even the pressure of clamps and strap pass into oblivion.

Awareness of your body removed.
Your mind, your self, ultimately tumbles -
Foundationless.

Today’s New York Times had a couple of interesting companion articles yesterday about poetry online:

Fibonacci Poems Multiply on the Web After Blog’s Invitation,
And It Goes Like This: 0-1-1-2-3-5-8

From the first article

Blogs
spread
gossip
and rumor
But how about a
Rare, geeky form of poetry?

That’s exactly what happened after Gregory K. Pincus, a screenwriter and aspiring children’s book author in Los Angeles, wrote a post on his GottaBook blog (gottabook.blogspot.com) two weeks ago inviting readers to write “Fibs,” six-line poems that used a mathematical progression known as the Fibonacci sequence to dictate the number of syllables in each line.

Though I’m not much into composing haiku poetry myself, their disciplined brevity can be quite beautiful. I may try my hand at the variation “Fibs” offer. In the meantime, over the next few weeks, I’ll share with you a few free verse poems I wrote a number of years ago.

This question came up at a party I recently attended, and I found the response interesting.

If you could change genders for one week, what would be the first thing you would do?

One of the women attending asked it of one of the men, who was stumped. Not to be stopped by the silence, she said,” I know what I’d do. I’d masturbate.”

Following the pause for more suitably-stunned silence, the conversation picked up with a debate about whether sex with a partner, or solo masturbation would be the best way to go.

To be perfectly honest, I was a bystander to this conversation and didn’t offer an opinion. I’d like to make up for that now. Rather than just the first thing, I’ll talk about a few things I might like to do as a woman.

1. Stand naked in front of a full-length mirror and just study my body. Not as a sex object, but as me.

2. Go shopping. Not to buy anything, but just to try on clothes. Women’s fashion is infinitely more versatile than men’s, especially in American culture. For example or this. It would be interesting to see what would look good on my new body. Colors, styles…
Shoes and undergarments would have to be included.

What would turn out both fashionable and comfortable, and what would be gorgeous but torturous?

3. Sex would come in a bit after I’d become a little familiar with my body. Personally, I’d be most curious about sex with a partner. What really worked and what was ho-hum? I’m not decided about masturbation – whether for early in the process of getting to know my body or after sex with a partner. It would be there somewhere though, I’m sure. All purely in the name of increasing my physical awareness and understanding of women.

4 and 5. I would also have to experience menstruation and childbirth, two physically definitive experiences of being a woman. I’d be happy to forego morning sickness, though. Of course that would take longer than one week.

As for emotional understanding – nice goal, but I doubt I’d be any more or less successful there in a woman’s body than I would be as I currently am. Could be wrong though. Any women with suggestions about activities that would be most helpful in this respect?

What about you? How would you do things differently if you were the opposite gender?

P.S. Just wanted to add a few of links that don’t fit perfectly with the narrative, but I thought they were interesting anyway.

• http://www.dimaggio.org/Eye-Openers/sex.htm
• http://www.dimaggio.org/Eye-Openers/eye-openers.htm (source for previous link, with a number of other interesting articles)
• http://www.dimaggio.org/index.htm (Homepage for both links)

Discover your companion’s world. Two worlds are richer than one.

http://www.ucomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/04/08/

http://www.ucomics.com/nonsequitur/2006/04/10/

Not too long ago, a friend of mine held an un-tech party. She is in a business where her clients and associations are all tech related and she needed a break. She invited non-tech friends as much as possible, and a few tech friends who she thought were most likely to be able to set it aside for an evening.

What: This soiree is an unusual experiment, but a necessary one. It’s the first of the UN-TECH GATHERING, so you can say you attended the VERY FIRST ONE if this event goes down in history. (likely).

The rules: NO TECH TALK whatsoever. You can talk about ANYTHING under the sun other than tech. Who can make it to the end of the evening you ask? I wonder. Others wonder. Even a writer from USA Today wonders (no kidding actually).

The premise was interesting, and it was amusing to see some of the participants dance around computers and technology. “Oh was that tech related? Oh no, that was merely presentation!” right before launching into a conversation about the Poptech conference…

Because of the likelihood that some participants might have trouble avoiding technology-related discussion, non-tech questions were prepared ahead of time. They were distributed as a means to stimulate conversation for those who might be struggling.

Some of the questions:

If you could change genders for one week, what would be the first thing you would do? (future post – I promise)

If you could have lunch with anyone living or dead, male and female, who would it be and what would you ask?

• top two: Da Vinci , Joan of Arc (from group discussion)
• others I might choose: Socrates, Alexander the Great, Martin Luther King, Jr., Angelina Jolie (what can I say – I’m a guy), Halle Berry (another guy one), Nancy Pelosi, Mukhtar Mai, Nicholas Kristof (Read A Heroine Walking in the Shadow of Death. It’s well worth a free sample of Times Select if you’re not a regular subscriber)

If your could participate in any event in history, what would it be, and what role would you play?

• Renaissance Italy – male painter (someone else’s response, but I thought it was interesting)
• Ancient Greece in time of Socrates and Plato – student
• beginning of life in universe/ galaxy / solar system – recorder, scientist
• first contact with sentient, non-human species – sociological observer & translator
• ouster of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, et. al. – Senator exercising oversight responsibility of post (I mean as long as we’re dreaming…)

When you were young(er)/a kid, what did a parent or teacher say to you to change the course of your life? (future post)

One area of conversation that broke the boundary of the non-tech theme of the night challenged the premise in a positive way. What about the humanizing aspects of technology?

Some blogs, for example, are simply personal journals and serve to bring people together. In politics, Howard Dean, Moveon.org, DailyKos are all phenomena of our technological age, yet they bring real people together and give a stronger political voice to the individual citizen rather than monolithic and power-hungry political machines.

I’ve read and heard comments that email is de-personalizing, and computers are making us lose the art of the handwritten letter. Yet, when I’m working on my computer and am thinking creatively, I am much more inclined to use it in tablet mode. Putting my thoughts down in my own handwriting feels like it lowers the barrier a bit between the thought and the recording of the thought. Technology permits more of me to be present. Just a teeny, tiny, inconsequential aside: my new M400 has shipped… IT’S COMING!!!

One of the interesting debates taking place in our internet culture right now is the public vs the private in how we choose to express ourselves in our blogs and in places like MySpace. What opens us to the world more? What of the different masks we wear in our online personas? Where do we draw the lines of safety and how do we enforce them? (Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World, Child Sex as Internet Fare, Through Eyes of a Victim)

There will definitely be more to come…