What’s up with the Mary Sunshine thing?
I feel the wish to express myself in a clearer way, about that and about the whole love thing and mental states and and and…but not here, that increasingly feels like polluting your space – instead on my own blog. I hope I can sort my thoughts out into something less confusing than James Joyce’s Ulysses, and if not that then at least into something entertaining.
I try to manage that within the next ten or twenty years, it would be great to be read by you then and there.

The Goethe is confusing.

I do wish you’d quit insisting I become some online Mary Sunshine, though. What’s up with that, man? Do you have this picture of me like I’m some pissy Fiona Apple type who’s dark, dark, dark all the time, in life as in art, and it stresses you out?!! Remember how Damien was in those interviews you saw. I think he and I are alike in many ways.

1. The signals from your body are always the most accurate
form of discernment. Listen to them.

2. You are a unique individual with unique needs and desires.
Just because a solution works for someone else doesn’t
mean that it’s best for you.

3. If you stay the course, you will always get what you want. It
just might take a little longer than you expected.

Hope you’ll write something again soon, Babe. Take care.

I listened to 9 a few times on the car stereo and animals are gone now replays in my head. Yes, it is sad – sad and beautiful. My heart is hungry for something more uplifting. But I don’t want to annoy you again! Damien’s music is just not designed to be used like daily bread and butter…

Now to the book…
Non-jealous non-monogamy…
A while ago I heard someone talk on the radio about this, I think it was Rosa Luxemburg, he said he is doing it, having a man with whom he plans to stay together for a very long time, but at the same time having sex with others. It seems to work for him, he called monogamy a very bourgeois concept.

Goethe wrote about it in his Elective Affinities:
Imagine an A intimately united with a B, so that no force is able to sunder them; imagine a C likewise related to a D; now bring the two couples into contact: A will throw itself at D, C at B, without our being able to say which first deserted its partner, which first embraced the other’s partner.’ This is shown below:

AB + CD → BD + AC

‘Now then!’ Eduard interposed: ‘until we see all this with our own eyes, let us look on this formula as a metaphor from which we may extract a lesson we can apply immediately to ourselves. You, Charlotte, represent the A, and I represent your B; for in fact I do depend altogether on you and follow you as A follows B. The C is quite obviously the Captain, who for the moment is to some extent drawing me away from you. Now it is only fair that, if you are not to vanish into the limitless air, you must be provided with a D, and this D is unquestionably the charming little lady Ottilie, whose approaching presence you may no longer resist.’

Hm…I’m really not sure if the chemical reactions will occur that much predictably. The precondition was obviously wrong: that the couples were so intimately united that no force could sunder them.

Ok, my time is up – this is an experiment in time restrained book writing can I call this a preface already?
The upcoming topics will be: what is love, what is falling in love, jealousy, indifference, trust, feeling of security…
Couples can be together without being in love, just to be not alone, just to be able to release sexual pressure.
When a couple is really in love it is a totally different story.
But what exactly is love? And may love “come afterwards”? I mean for example you are attracted to someone because (s)he is very good looking, without even knowing the character really too much, and after a while of being together, the chemistry increases…the emotional bond gets stronger.
Or does it have to be clear from the first moment? The smell of the fitting genes we unconsciously recognize? But what if our smell receptors are faulty?
I must admit I can only ask questions…

April is autism awareness month.
Emily Dickinson is suspected to have had Aspergers.
What is normal, what is mental disease and what is just differently wired brain?
Alexithymia, psychopathy, autism – what else?
Maybe a pinch of it in every one of us, the difference just in degree and continuance?
Amygdalae, love and complications…

Stay tuned for my “book”, but give me a little time.
I’ll try to at least put out a sufficient number of lines via inspired automatic writing

I’m not sure I’ll be writing anything else for a while. Blue, you could start your dissertation now…

My theory often derives from practice. In this particular subject, I should say that all of my relationships (which have not been many, admittedly) have been open, and I have in some cases outright advocated that she go off and try some other guys–and NOT becuase of some sexual fantasy or because I want to hear details or whatever. When you get right down to it, all I can really say is that the idea doesn’t bother me. As long as I get some intimacy, I don’t see where I can complain. If I can’t get any intimacy, then there’s a problem, but it’s not one that I feel I can solve by closing off all the alternatives. I can see that not everyone feels that way, and it’s something that I try to understand in others, but I can accept the idea that it’s just an emotional need some people have, to varying degrees. I just don’t.

Who’s the alien now?…

You might like this too.

Russ…this may be a problem of theory and practice.
There’s a LOT to say…especially with respect to mild autism
I guess I could write a book…
Let me know if you’re interested…

Your comments seem to suggest, as I’d initially worried, that you think I’m lacking in some sort of emotional component, that I’m Mr. Spock, or that I’m possessed of/by a “purely logical mind”. And while I guess I can’t or shouldn’t say that this sort of characterization is unfair (I can kind of see it), it’s not entirely accurate and may distract from the point.

So I find myself curious as to the dynamic that makes someone possessively jealous. It’s true, both men and women react this way–though differently, I’ve noticed. And it’s not that I don’t experience emotional triggers, either: I’m still having conversations in my head that began in elementary school. I have something of that whole then-is-now thing you’re talking about, though we must (almost certainly) experience it in different ways. In my own case, it doesn’t seem to manifest any sort of emotional need to possess-or-perish. (I hesitate to say emotional outburst, since I’ve come to realize that part of the stress of living with My Crazy Roommate is that both of us have such good recall that she’ll say or do something that will pick up an argument that left off in, I don’t know, November of ’88 or so.)

Can I point out that monogamy isn’t the norm in most cultures? According to one survey I saw, only about 18% of the world’s cultures are monogamous (mostly deriving from western tradition), with adultery and prostitution compromising a good deal of the single-partner rule. I’ll defer to BM3, of course, but I’m given to understand that Europe, for the most part, treats open relationships with much more acceptance. During the ’92 election and the whole Gennifer Flowers bit, one of the major news sources (TIME or NEWSWEEK) pointed out that sex scandals aren’t as prevalent in Europe, and that a politician seeking office can actually be helped if it’s known he has a few lovers on the side. There seems to be a tacit understanding that your marriage partner satisfies your domestic needs, and that your lover fulfills your passionate needs. It’s what I hear, anyway, and it seems straightforward enough for me.

So glad you got me.