Suddenly then, on the the 5th of April, 1965, as I recall, Deacon and I moved onto a 40-foot sloop moored at anchor in a marina on Portage Bay in Seattle,

while Hugh found himself a houseboat on Lake Union.  Margo joined us, in the foc'sl of the sloop, a few days later.  There were showers and toilets for the general use of the public at the marina, and an enormous heap of trash firewood for galley stoves.  So I began every day, after toilet and shower, chopping wood for the day's coffee and meals--which, indeed, had to be provided for, because we quickly acquired popularity among the young and otherwise hip people, students from the University of Washington for the most part, who hung out on Government Way ("the Av"),  that ended at Portage Bay, as a decidedly cool, and very attractive, spot to hang out and smoke dope and engage in the earnest, new-fledged art of Intellectual Conversation.  I don't think (poor as we were) that we ever bought marijuana, but we were always stoned. That summer I read The Rape of the Lock (4th or 5th time), Paradise Lost (3rd or 4th time), La Princesse de Clèves (2nd time, 1st time through with all the footnotes), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Essays of Aldous Huxley, the Sermons of Meister Eckhardt, the Tibettan Book of the Dead, and one of the medium-late novels of Henry James--The Ambassadors, I think.

We maintained our connection with Bill and Sue in Spokane--though I think that Hugh did not--and added to it Marcus, who actually moved in the fall to Spokane to be near them, and remained there for the rest of their lives, and still in fact lives there.  In September, when I turned twenty-three, I moved into a cheap but spacious apartment on Capitol Hill and got a job as a courrier/documentations clerk, which paid adequately and (the running whereof) kept me fit.  In October I discovered Vivekananda's Raja Yoga, which was my chief point of reference with Bill Weaver for the next several years.  And throughout the next seven months I made a fun ritual of taking the night sleeper train to Spokane on Fridays, and taking the sleeper back to Seattle on Sunday nights. It was fun, having a job, being middle class, doing what the hell I wanted.

What you can say about us who were young in the 60's

Is that we did what we thought was right, regardless of what the World (which, correctly, we viewed as infinitely corrupt, and whose moral judgement we saw to be worthless) thought of us.  So when Deacon proposed to me that I move in with him and his new bride, Margo, in the fall of 1964, in the upstairs apartment of a house in Spokane--and Margo being agreeable--I did so, without a qualm or a second thought.  We lived, so far as I recall, on scraps, irregular donations from our parents, and  the federal government's surplus food program.  I, of course, was deeply, though chastely,  in love with Deacon, and became quite good friends with Margo--who recently has described my presence then as a life-saver for her.  Mostly, it came down to Margo and me, as innocent as six-year-olds, sitting around the kitchen table in our bathrobes, drinking coffee and chatting gaily and cheering one another up, while Deacon was off on his mysterious, usually fruitless, quests of income and employment--while the long night of winter settled inexorably in upon us.

A friend, Hugh, who spent so much time with us as virtually to be one of us, also not infrequently drove me away with him to spend time at his upper middle class childhood home, to play chess while drinking lapsong souchong and listening to Ravi Shankar and Bachianas Brasilianas, and to partake of his mother's wonderful homecooked suppers--the only sweetbreads I ever really liked, grilled crisp on the outside, par example, accompanied by equally delicious crisp-baked French fried potatoes. 

It was Hugh who first introduced me, then Deacon, then Margo, to Bill and Sue Weaver, a couple of weeks before Christmas 1964.  I say so politely, mentioning Sue from the first as if she were of equal importance--and maybe she was--but it was, in fact, as far as I was concerned, all about Bill; his teachings from the Vedas and the Sutras (what wonderful sermons!), which were my weekly (sometimes oftener) meat and drink thenceforward, for the next couple of decades. All I knew in late 1964 was "Here is a man from whom I can learn something!" And with that as my sole concern, I'm pretty sure that I may have been, at least sometimes, embarrassingly sans gêne. At any rate, I remember Bill, with infinite patience and kindness, saying to me on a fine morning in June of 1965, "You've got something just a little bit wrong here:  I am the Master. It is to me that you bring offerings of dope and ganja. It is your place to get me stoned; not mine to get you stoned."

"Yes, that is so," I said, and went into the bathroom and washed my face.  When I came out, I sat down opposite Sue and said, "I'm all better now!"  And we laughed our butts off.

Being Gay Doesn't Exempt Me From Using the Men's Toilet--Au Contraire,

It merely makes my "use," if anything, more circumspect and more polite.  'Cause that's how men, gay and straight, "use" public toilets: With swift, understated circumspection and monastic decorum.  A "trans man" (i.e., a woman pretending to be a "transsexual" pretending to be a man), if she knew the drill, and avoided the note of conviviality which so often betrays a female presence, could probably still get away with standing up to "go pee" in an adjoining urinal (which, of course, a real man would never do), next to me, without my being aware of her intrusive, defiling vaginality--unless she also, further, gave herself away, as women so often do in such situations, by being effusively and suspiciously apologetic: Then, O God, it having dawned on me that the creature at the next urinal was in fact a woman born, what would I do?  I might speak--I might say, "Get the fuck out of here!" Or I might say nothing and grab something, like a wastebasket or a sheaf of towels to hit at her--as I would at a snake or a scorpion--while avoiding touching it with my bare hands.

A haunting dream....

1968 San Francisco, evening, catching a glimpse of the evening star above the street sign that says Ritch Street--I hadn't realized there was a "t" in it.  I'd been walking fast  down from Market Street. I stopped to catch my breath and reflect.  God, I was alone.  I'd never been in this part of the city at this time of night before.  And a flush of good feeling suffused me as I realized that being alone didn't frighten me in the least--I was so lucky to be a good-looking young man out on the prowl, about to find those steam baths at 330 Ritch Street of which I'd heard such tantalizing tales, and I was about to have promiscuous, anonymous sex with God knows how many other good-looking horny young men. Life was sweet.

Somebody started whistling K. 465, and a half dozen or so joined in, and the Mozart faded and turned into a sort of impromptu Boccherini--delicious.  Laughter.  And somebody said, "So where were we?"

Long Talk with Phil tonight

Discussing: Seymour Hersh's latest revelations about the murder of Osama Bin Laden (in dumbass Salon Magazine, which will be read even by those who don't read), the utter farcical nature of this year's presidential election, the Hookup Culture (and the fact that boys no longer have fathers), the exquisite, utterly non-vocal beauty of BMV 56 ("Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen") which Phil is singing next Sunday in church (for money, of course).  I was, I daresay, something of a salutary irritant in pointing out that the oboe obligato is too idiomatically and ravishingly oboistic to be played merely by an organist, however proficient.

As of February 2015: 70% of Men, age 22-34 (in America), were Unmarried

This is, of course, a nightmare for children--especially boys--and, of course, most nightmarish of all for women; but for single men, gay and straight, it's very Heaven.  It's the "Hook-up Culture."  I do believe they call it Culture.  Wherein women are accorded virtually no natural rights, controls, benefits or satisfying options--and men get to to do whatever they damn want, including fucking one another and not fucking women.

The Day Before Yesterday, sometime before 1:00 a.m., an Old Friend, born November (Scorpio), 1935 Died.

He may have "passed over," but knowing Charles (a Scorpio Gentleman, in Spades), I doubt

it.  I am glad of two things, looking back over my relationship with Charles:  (1) that we had, sort of, sex several times, but most notably full-out, out-right sex on my 24th birthday--"You fucked me, then I fucked you.  And it was lovely."  Quoth Charles thirteen years ago, when I had almost forgotten about it, it having been all so long ago. And (2) sort of off-handedly, about a dozen years ago, I compared a "Pie Jesu" that he had written for chorus with clarinet obligato to Mozart's "Ave Verum Corpus." Which, my so saying, totally touched and thrilled him--as, to be sure, it would have me. Anyway, it showed, or reminded, me, that having received what one treasures as the ultimate compliment is as nothing compared to the inestimable gift of happily discovering and bestowing it.

the sickening inadvertent vulgarity of heterosexuals, even heterosexuals you like...

Understand please, I like Isaac Asimov.  I rarely have the slightest quarrel with him about taste or manners--but his painfully contrived limericks about what he'd like to do with clones of himself are not only not funny, they're icky.  As only an unreflecting heterosexual can be icky.  

Fact is, identical twins are essentially clones of one another--and what everyone wants to know is ¿do they fuck one another?  I think about half do; the other half walk around with strained little smiles, waiting for someone to ask the question.  I was pretty sure that the Patriota twins, Marcio and Marco, fuck one another--Well, why wouldn't they?

But in fact they don't.  

Because, if you follow their first or second two-minute "viral" videoclip to near its end, you see the angelically beautiful twain brethren Patriota responding to the word "beijo" ("kiss"), first questioning, then as they look into one another's eyes hardening with absolute brotherly amused disgust into "no way ever in Hell, kissing or fucking."

You see, my dear Isaac, he who proposes fucking a clone, is proposing to fuck an identical twin, and, in effect, is proposing to fuck himself--which is too close to violation of the Incest Taboo to be borne (by the dominant half of us who would no way, ever, if he had one, fuck a brother).

According to a recent poll, 94% of young Iraquis see the U.S. as their enemy

What's wrong with the six per cent who don't see this is not explained.

CANADA for President 2016

Funnier than a rubber crutch, and perfectly correct.

Well, nice! The silly-ass, but not repulsive 'Lucifer' that I've been watching has been renewed for its 2nd season on Fox (Network?)

I should say that my reasons for having faithfully but somewhat surreptitiously watched such a thing are: (1) High Production Values, (2) Comeliness of Principal Tom Ellis, (3) Agreeable Quirkiness (Not Stupid) of Premise, (4) Pleasantly Ambiguous (Not Overwhelmingly Heterosexual) Gay Subtext

Clever this last episode's playing with the topic of Lucifer's im/mortality.  I like not knowing.

the very first time I saw Paris

I was like dumped, with my luggage, out of a taxi, after midnight, in the 13th arrondissement, a couple of weeks before my twentieth birthday; the hotels all being full due to an auto show in town, I was walking the streets carrying my luggage--after maybe forty minutes getting tireder and tireder, feeling more and more dépaysé, more and more lonely and out of place--suddenly I was accosted by a very polite, good-looking gentleman of French-Armenian extraction in his early thirties, who said he knew of a place where I might stay, which was "far, yet not far." And about an hour and twenty minutes after that, I fell asleep with my penis inside his rectum.  

The next several days, using up my ready money, before I caught the train to Grenoble, were dazzling good fun.  Gérard was a tourist guide who spoke four languages, who knew and was friends with a great many charming, witty and interesting ladies, who lived in exquisitely stylish little appartements  in many different parts of Paris, on the one hand--and was lovers, or would-be lovers, with a great many lovely young men just my age, on the other hand.  I saw my first-ever drag queen one evening in the Bar of the Moulin Rouge.  I got to like the taste of champagne and Calvados.  I was  thinking I might be falling in love; and I was perfectly willing to accept, as a pre-condition, that I have a three-way with Gérard and his new 19-year-old, uncircumcised Algerian "Beur."  Why that didn't happen I'll never know.  Could I have been too eager?  No matter.  It was time to go, and I left, having, in a manner of speaking, seen Paris.

What's Wrong with a Little Misogyny?

Understand, I am already admitting that women play Mozart (and a lot of other things, including Bach and Couperin) every bit as well as men do on the violin and the piano (and on the harpsichord and the organ)--better maybe, on account of the ineffable difference of femininity that they have the advantage of.  That is to say, I am admitting women as my full spiritual, artistic, moral and social equals; and there is no equaler than that.  

But, like the man (Schopenhauer) said, women just can't help "dissimulating"--being liars by nature--and, for that, in addition to the fact that I'm not attracted to them sexually, I don't like them.  Not like I do men (to whom I am sexually attracted, and who, for the most part, actually always do tell the truth).  So, if they can't help having frontal nether orifices that stink and bleed and the sight of which would turn my stomach if I saw them (which, thank God, I never do)--that is something that I can't help.  And maybe I don't wanna help it. So what?  I'm polite.  My indifference and my disgust are never apparent to their female objects, and my amusement at arrant female twaddle and bullshit is always happily misunderstood by women as approval of them. The ladies never guess what (little) I think of them, unless I decide to tell them.

Did Amy Schumer ever say anything funny? Or clever? Or interesting? How did I KNOW that she was going to tell us about her vagina?

Reconsidering that Crucial Couple of Days Nine Years Ago, When I had Succumbed to a Peculiar Kind of Pneumonia, and even the Doctors Didn't Know but what I Might Die of it...

I was amazed, and gratified, to see how my underlying, latent Buddhist Faith grabbed hold--like   pre-paid, no-fault Accident Insurance--and took over my expectations, point of view and mind-centeredness (if that's different), and immediately made everything (including the prospect of dying) not just all right and perfectly satisfactory, but, frankly, captivating, amusing and entertaining.  I hadn't expected to be amused by the nearness of death. In this regard, I should maybe explain (my fellow Buddhists will understand) that it wasn't so much my Buddhist Faith, as such, as the utter Void at the very Center of my Buddhist Faith--the absolute, unquestioning atheism--which made the peril of extinction, for me, a funny, playful joke.  

To Christians, when they die, confronting the Lake of unquenchable Hellfire that their psychotic God has prepared for them, or to "Tyrants fierce that unrepenting die," such irreverent levity must seem incomprehensible, or   insanely inappropriate.  I suppose that those who are guilty of monstrous or vile sins, and who, on dying, descend to the various Hells that they have thereby chosen for themselves, can scarcely think otherwise.  But the majority of us who lead relatively blameless lives are not afraid of the weighing of our souls against the feather of truth, and however spectacular the scenery we might discover in the Realm of the Blessed, the one thing that would ruin it for us--unspeakably trivialize it, and make it hopelessly cheap--would be some self-aggrandizing fool's signature all over things, marking it as exclusively His.

Interesting New Wave, called MGTOW (Men GoingTheir Own Way), sloshed over from the Men's Rights Groups, which is, not Gay, but fiercely Anti-Feminist and, above all, Anti-Marriage (with Women)

Seriously, lately, it's all over the Internet.  Perhaps the operant word is "misogynist."  300 years ago it'd have been "masculine celibacy."  

"6 Yemeni children killed or wounded per day over the past 12 months, by the US-backed Saudi war," says UNICEF

6 X 12 X 30 + 6 = 2,592 dead or wounded Yemeni children (from air strikes and artillery, presumably). "320,000 children in Yemen face severe malnutrition.  14,000,000 Yemenis, including at least 7,400,000 children need health care.  10,000 Yemeni children under the age of five have died in the last year from preventable diseases."

And WHY do we visit this horrific amount of misery and suffering, death and destruction, on the innocent civilian population--and primarily the children--of a country which is no threat to us and has never done any harm to any American?  Well, en fin de compte, because we CAN, because we're EVIL and we WISH to, because the Yemenis are a peculiarly defenseless people--with lots of children--and because (in the words of an American official who was asked about it a year ago): "Our aid (to the Saudi military assault on the civilian population of Yemen) is a message to our partners that we are willing to give them support.  It is a message to the Iranians that we are watching."  Which is diplomatic twaddle based on absurd premises (such as that Iran might be a nuclear threat to Israel or to the Gulf monarchies).

Behind the bullshit, the real reason for for supporting a "war" (obscene military adventure) by some of the world's most oppressive regimes is that: "Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates keep our weapons factories operating full time.  The Arab states recently agreed to buy nearly a hundred billion dollars worth of American-made war planes, tanks, guns and bombs.  And everything the Arabs buy, Israel gets free, since the United States has made a firm pledge to maintain Israel's 'military edge' over its neighbors.  This keeps the profits flowing to the arms industry, keeps employment high in several crucial [?] states, and pleases members of Congress who collect large campaign contributions from the arms makers and the Israeli lobby."  Oh yeah?  And just exactly what is this "arms industry"?  And where exactly is is located?  And what makes a state crucial? And which are those members of Congress who collect large (how large?) campaign contributions from which arms makers and the Israeli lobby??????

How for the best, things, after all, turn out to be:

Having shortly after the first of the month accidentally smashed the lovely two-cup china bowl, so perfect for my morning tea, and having subsisted stoically since, for my matutinal jolt, on  coffee in smaller cups--at last, towards the spare and scrimping end of the month, the day before yesterday, I set about restoring my morning (and evening) tea. First, at the Good Will Store, I purchased an elegant, slender but surprisingly capacious china teapot, and two bone-china Starbucks coffee mugs.  Then, at Kokua Market, I bought a quarter pound of tea (half Assam, and half Darjeeling), half a gallon of milk, and a new tea-ball (double the size of the old one). With all of which I now prepare a morning (and an evening) tea about twice the quantity and twice the strength--and half again the flavor--of my previous tea:  And a great joy it is to me.  My tea now brings me as full awake as ever coffee did, and yet, past midnight, gently lets me sleep.