Easter Sunday

I had to have the last word. I knew that as I kneeled on the ground. I looked straight ahead over my rug to the desk in front of me. There it was my task. La mia scrivania. I had sinned, as usual. I was last on a website that streamed video of a man in a red wrestling suit stimulating himself. That was the last time I was on the internet and it was me exchanging the beauty of intimacy with my Lord Jesus for a lie. Now, I could not just let that be the last time I was on the computer could I?

I thought I was over this whole pornography thing. I know you may not agree, but I know pornography is dreadful. I know it can be addictive – when you cannot stop yourself. So this is my process to pornography, I search first for terms in normal language connected with sex such as ‘ejaculation video’, trying to avoid the pornographic key words. But then after a few minutues of scrolling, I just succumb and go for the keywords I know – jerking offm jacj off, video (what else?).

‘you like to jerk off’ that was what he told me, David. He was a guy on a trip of heroin that I met after I crossed Washington road from the CJL after one Shabbat dinner. David was bubbling and his head was bouncing as he listened to his music and I laughed at him. He turned back and asked me what I was laughing at. I said nothing really and he just was completely frank with me : “I am just this gay guy called David”. I could tell as much. I now think to myself was I just amused that he was smiling and bouncing and loving it in his own way – that was gay – or was I actually checking him out? It does not matter. David was a heroin trip, one which he said he did not want to do, but he also did. Plato, the Republic the three parts of the soul. I wrote my philosophy essay based on my encounter with him,

Dear please help me. Help David. Help us all.

I am human and I do sin.

I think back to when I used wonder the garden of our first house, looking up to the sky, until I one day asked God to show himself to me, literally! I was fed up of hearing about him and I wanted to just see. Naïve as I was, I was ready for him to just do so. I must have been no older than 9. I remember seeing a brown eye just behind a tree. It was brown and it moved, like an eye moves in the socket. What a feeling then of first thinking it was my own reflection – my own eye – and later realizing the blue sky just does not reflect. I ran. Somehow, I was scarred, but not that scared. I kept it to myself, that this had happened. There was just noway to really articulate it or tell anyone. To me, it seems to strange I was not scarred to death. Non ho morto di paura. Adesso, non ho più paura.

Years later I remembered that eye when I visited Bulgaria as a student. At the church at the local park, the Orthodox Church, there is a brown eye peering down at the people entering, just above the doorway, I believe. My grandmother used to take me there often.Today she called to ask if I remember how we used to go for easter – the ‘great day’ as we say in Bulgarian.

My sister is an escort. I will pray for her too. I hope she has really stopped.

Life is difficult. I am wondering how I reached so far! The space in this life feels so tingly and like bags of tiredness under the eyes. Only with dance and art and science can we make it good, for me.

Jesus did die on the cross. So even though I sinned today, I know he has triumphed, even though the day seems ruined. The beautiful Easter Sunday, today, ruined in the last one and half hours, I know that it is not. ‘I am blessed with the gift of just blocking out all the negative things in my life, I can just block it out and I can even forget it,’ said Lurencia, a lesbian woman who lives in my neighborhood, who I met on Friday. I lent her about 20 dollars and I know I probably won’t get them back. I think I will tell her how I feel: I do not want to dwell on these 20 bucks (or so depending on the US $ and NAM $ exchange rate), I want to be her friend. If she can’t pay me, whatever (though its not necessarily ok), I will just have to accept it. I knew that when I lent her the money, people just tend to borrow and never return, especially neighbors.

Life is so tiring. I feel tired.

Time to go to sleep.

Time to sleep.

Good night

Buona notte,

Bonne nuit

Buenas Noches

Leka No6t.

New Year, Old Temptations (what a cheesy title!)

Being human is difficult. We mess up. When we mess up, it is because the three elements of the soul are not in harmony with each other. Reason looses out to desire, usually. We realize we mess up because our spirit, the third elements, points it out to us.

Tonight I feel into the temptation. Now it is 3:11 am, it’s a new day. But just a few hours ago in the last hour of the old day, I watched clips of pornography. I gave in to see those men in their solo sexual acts. And even though I orgasmed, especially after seeing the second video or parts of it (no conozco nadie que ha vista una película de porno hasta la final, es muy dificil – Felipe dijo durante una clase cuando la conversación se dirigió a este tema). I wanted it and I got it. And so it came, spewing out of my underwear and soiling them. But then came my hot regret, much more fiery than the passion that sought out those clips.

So what? Well, I feel unsatisfied. I am still thirsty and from experience, I know porn won’t satisfy this hunger within. Rather, it will only make it grow. Is this what they call addiction?

Was I addicted? Am I? I had not looked “or checked” any porn since more than a year ago. Now I succumb to it. Well better succumb to this than actually letting a man fuck me, something I have also been contemplating.

Plato says my three elements are out of sync. Jesus says “pray that you do not fall into temptation”. They both actually said that, the former being just before the passion of Jesus. Jesus went to an isolated spot in the garden and prayed, came back, found his disciples asleep and roused them, asking them to pray and keep watch. I need to sleep.

“Lord I see you, you are still read to take me, even though even though, even though, that’s gestaldt (Remember that woman from Washington DC?)”

I wrote this just after looking at the second video. The repeated even though was what a woman in the reception of the back packers in Washington DC during the Spring break trip ’08 kept on saying followed by “that’s gestaldt”.

She actually spoke of understanding our bodies. “You want to eat, but is your body hungry? Is it or are you just eating?” I think she said, I may misquote her, to us Princeton students. Was she crazy or just reaffirming something Platonic? That we have different faculties, so it is possible to be at once thirsty and yet bar oneself from drinking. But I think she also spoke of understanding oneself. Did I really want porn after I finished learning some of the R language or was just out of habit – one I learnt at Princeton – to go onto porn late at night? What about my counter habit of listening to streaming Tenth Avenue North Christian music. I guess I need to understand what I want.

I do want to do it. I want sex! Admitting this to myself makes me realize I am just like any other human. So why is not enough for me that I masturbate while meditating on Jesus? Or is it more than enough? Perhaps it’s just that I calculate the sum of pleasure and pain wrongly, like Plato wrote about in the Protagoras. I think it will be great for me to watch the porn, but in reality, it sullies my ability to feel pleasure. So Lord, won’t you clean this up for me?

Apparently, the guy who I was watching on Xtube was (I am not sure if he still is) a student at the University of Hawaai and was threatened with expulsion for shooting one of his videos in a university lecture hall. That university even said students should call campus safety if they spot him! So how good is it watching something that was later someone’s downfall? I followed the paper trail (news) about his activities and the last story read “22 Dec 2010: University of Hawaai student makes it big as a porn star.”

So by clicking onto his video I was supporting the comodification of young man, even though I did not pay for that video.