Still Life With Woodpecker
by Tom Robbins
There is love making that is bad for a person, just as there is eating that is bad. That boysenberry cream pie from the thrift-e-mart may appear inviting, may, in fact, cause all 900 taste buds to carol from the tongue, but in the end, the sugars, the additives, the empty calories clog arteries, disrupt cells, generate fat, and rot teeth. Even potentially nourishing foods can be in properly prepared. There are wrong combinations and improper proportions in sex as well, yes, one must prepare for a f@#$ – the way an enlightened priest prepares to celebrate mass, the way a great matador prepares for the ring: with intensification, with purification, with a conscious summoning of sacred power. And even that won’t work if the ingredients are poorly matched: oysters are delectible, so are strawberries, but mashed together…?!? Every nutritious sexual recipe calls for at least a pinch of love, and the fucks that rate four-star rankings from both gourmets and health food nuts use capfuls. Not that sex should be regarded as therapeutic or to be taken for medicinal purposes – only a dullard would hang such a millestone around the nibbled neck of a lay – but to approach sex carelessly, shallowly, with detachment and without warmth is to dine night after night in erotic greasy spoons. In time one’s palate will become insensitive, one will suffer (without knowing it) emotional malnutrition, the skin of the soul will fester with scurvy, the teeth of the heart will decay. Neither duration nor proclamation or commitment is necessarily the measure – there are ephemeral expolosions of passion between strangers that make more erotic sense than many lengthy marriages, there are one-night stands in Jersey City more glorious than 6-month affairs in Paris – but finally, there is a commitment, however brief; a purity, however threatened; a vulnerability, however concealed; a generosity of spirit, however marbled with need; an honest caring, however singed by lust, that must be present if couplings are to be salubrius and not slow poison.
Don’t let yourself be victimized by the age you live in. It’s not the times that bring us down any more than it’s society. When you put the blame on society, then you end up turning to society for the solution. Just like those poor neurotics at the care fest. There’s a tendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsibility and treat them as victims of social circumstance. You buy that, you pay with your soul. It’s not men who limit women, straights who limit gays, it’s not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don’t have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it. Yuk.
Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.
He have her that uncomfortable half-amused, half-resentful look that people always give you when they’re remaining sober and you’re getting looped. Intimacy is the principle source of the sugars with which life is sweetened. It is absolutely vital to the essential insanities. Without the essential (intimate) insanities, humor becomes inoffensive and therefore pap, poetry becomes esoteric and therefore prose, eroticism becomes mechanical and therefore pornography, behavior becomes predictable and therefore easy to control.
When the mystery of the connection goes, love goes. It’s that simple. This suggests it isn’t love that’s so important to us but the mystery itself. The love connection may be merely a deice to put us in contact with the mystery and we long for love to last so that the ecstasy of being near the mystery will last. It is contrary to the nature of mystery to stand still. Yet, it’s always there, somewhere, a world on the other side of the mirror.
The romance of new love, the romance of solitude, the romance of objecthood, the romance of ancient pyramids and disctant stars are means of making contact with the mystery. When it comes to perpetuating it, however, I got no advice. But I can and will remind you of two of the most important facts that I know:
1. Everything is part of it
2. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood