“Have fun burning” — #amreading #faithfullylgbtq

I woke up to the message that just because I don’t believe in hell doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Then the harasser too me to “have fun burning.” I assume that this sentiment was evoked by my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (from Adelaide Books).  Or maybe it is because I am part of the LGBT community.  Or perhaps it is just because I don’t believe in hell. Whatever.

It was “the have fun” part that really caught my attention.

You see, I’m a Buddhist (that’s my root religion which is encouraged in Unitarianism) and I thought that’s nice, my harasser is wishing me to have fun. I am wishing him happiness also.

As Pema Chodron (the Buddhist teacher) says, if people experience true happiness then they are less likely to oppress others.

My partner who is not a Buddhist stopped by my office to admire my red devil sequin studded horns that I am wearing. ( I am having fun.) At first she said “that’s awful” when I told her about the comment. But later she said, ‘Don’t get mad. Get even.”

Exactly.

I’m having so much fun wearing my devil horns that I think I’ll keep them on — maybe all week!

 

 

To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.

 

 

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Everyday is Small Business Saturday —THEY in Quail Ridge Books — #amreading

Every now and then I connect with an independent bookstore.  This time it was Quail Ridge Books located in the North Hills of Raleigh North Carolina.

Quail Ridge Books is promoting November 30, 2019 as Small Business Saturday.  But for those who work for and run independent bookstores, everyday is Small Business Saturday.

So support your local independent bookstore, support reading, support your community and yourself.

 

Here is the Quail Ridge Books link to my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders

To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.

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Now, From Antiquity — a memoir debut, #amreading #ammeditating

My colleague Sandy read this debut of my memoir Now, from Antiquity — tracing my father’s line back to forever.  This reading was part of a larger service on veterans at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration in Philadelphia. You can the excerpt on YouTube or read the excerpt pasted below that.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l99Mgj_yGhs?start=1&w=560&

My father was a veteran. He was in the United States Army Air Force during World War II, and since he was blind in one eye avoided being in direct combat.  I grew up seeing old black and white photographs of my father – a broad shouldered young man with curly blond hair – smiling into the camera when he was stationed in New Guinea and hearing my mother’s anxious tone telling me that he crossed the Pacific in an un-escorted ship. Two years ago, on May 7^th, 2017, when he was ninety-eight, he passed away. When my father died, it was like a library burned down – his life and wisdom contained that much history.

A year later — thanks to our resident realtor, Chrissie Erickson – I sold the home I grew up in.  His death and the sale of the house prompted to write a memoir titled: Now, From Antiquity – tracing my father’s line back to forever.  For today’s service, I am going to read a part of the memoir where I meditate on the flag he was buried with.

I was always proud of my father, but from an early age I did not trust the American flag. This meditation was written when I began to examine my feelings toward the flag.

There is nothing in the history of the American flag – from Betsy Ross onward – that makes me detest the American flag. It was when I was travelling in Greece – about 20 years ago — that I really appreciated being from a country where women could be independent.

My thinking leads me to the conclusion that I don’t really detest the flag. I am enraged by what it has come to stand for. What angers me is nationalism and the idea that I can only salute one flag. What angers me is when one flag is said to be more important than another. In the eyes of some, I might be described as un-American. But the fact is that the flag represents me too. I’m just skeptical and careful about whom I pledge allegiance to.

Every American flag does not evoke feelings of anger in me. One flag also evokes great sadness.  My father was a veteran of World War II. His cremated remains – as he wished – were installed in a veteran’s cemetery and members of the military came and did a flag ceremony for him. A very dignified young military man presented me with the flag after he had folded it.  When I got up to give my tear-filled eulogy, I handed the flag to my partner who doesn’t cry easily. It is the image of Barbara hugging that triangular folded flag and crying that I think of most when I recall that day.

Barbara bought me a triangular case – with a wooden back and sides and glass front — to keep the flag in. The flag in its case sits in my home office bookshelf. For an experiment, I brought the flag in the case out of the bookshelf and put it close to me when I do my morning meditation. The Buddhist teacher on YouTube talked about the value of “softening” toward the thing that causes you to feel aggression.

I sat in front of the flag and meditated with my eyes closed. The first thing that I noticed when I opened my eyes is the American flag from my father’s service. It is folded into a triangle in its wooden case with its white stars displayed on a navy background. On closer inspection, I saw that the white stars are embroidered and raised. They rest on a woven navy background behind them. There are six stars displayed. Two are in the top row and four are in the bottom row. Of the fifty stars all together (each one representing a state), these are represented in their blue triangle of night sky.  I see now that the stars are beautiful, brilliant, and limitless. They represent what is known as “the wild mind” in Buddhism, the vastness of what is possible. I felt myself soaring between them in the midnight sky, reaching new heights and then coming back to myself as in meditation I breathed in and out and wished this kind of freedom and compassion for all who encounter the stars of the flag.

I breathed in and out, doing the tonglen “taking and receiving” practice of Buddhism. I breathed in my own feelings of hostility toward the American flag. I breathed out feelings of compassion for myself. Then I breathed in any fear or hostility that might be stirred up in others by the sight of the flag. Then I breathed in fear and breathed out compassion for all who feel compelled to armor themselves with the American flag.

I exhaled the vastness of the white stars in the night sky. I exhaled my journey through the stars and into the higher realms that they inhabit. I exhaled joy. Then I inhaled again, wishing this feeling for everyone who encounters the flag.

Namaste

To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.

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Jim Cory reading at Big Blue Marble Bookstore this weekend — #amreading #Phillyevents #LGBTQ

On Saturday, Oct. 12, Karl Tierney’s literary executor, Jim Cory, will appear at Big Blue Marble Bookstore in Mount Airy to talk about Karl, read from the book of poems — Have You Seen This Man ( Sibling Rivalry Press) — and answer questions. The reading/presentation starts at 7 PM. Big Blue Marble is located 551 Carpenter Lane in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia. To get there from Center City, take the Chestnut Hill West six stops to Carpenter Lane and the store is a five minute walk down the street. Jim is a resident of Center City, Philadelphia.

 

Jim’s an old friend and I’ll be introducing him at the bookstore. This is a version of a review that is forthcoming from This Way Out, the international queer radio syndicate.

 

When I began reading Have You Seen This Man? The Castro Poems of Karl Tierney (2019 Sibling Rivalry Press), I thought the poems of Karl Tierney might be tragic, but instead found them tragically funny – in a way that often makes the soul snicker. I thought the poetry might be tragic because they were brought to us by tragic circumstances.  The editor was friend and literary executor of the author Karl Tierney who in 1994 became sick with AIDs and took his own life in 1995 when he was 39-years old.  The editor, Jim Cory, is a noted poet and essayist in his own right.

Tierney never had a book published during his lifetime, but his poems were published in auspicious places such as the American Poetry Review and Exquisite Corpse.

Karl Tierney as a poet also had his serious side. In the poem “Gertrude Stein to Alice B. Toklas,” he adopts Gertrude’s voice and writes in part of the poem:

 

 

Our car is …beautiful and blue

and we are beautiful and not blue

and we are fast driving

and do not feel a bit dangerous or dirty.

We have the radio on

 

In his poems about gay life in San Francisco where he lived, Karl turned his keen poetic observations on life around him.  In “Adonis At The Swimming Pool,” Karl starts with:

 

“Who dances his thighs across the pool’s water,

spread on a mattress bloated from his breath.

 

Whose ripe-with-sun skin cuts through the spray

With the alingual grace of a kiss to my brow.”

 

….

And ends with:

“Whose wet curls stroke the evening’s earliest gasp

into naughty tones and murmurs of lust.

 

Who would have me discussed in seedy cafés

and ruin me since I’m deaf to this hiss

behind the teeth in that insipid smile.”

 

From Tierney’s take on “lipstick lesbians,” MacDonna, and gay life in the Castro at a certain point in time, I found Have You Seen This Man? The Castro Poems of Karl Tierney (from Sibling Rivalry Press) to be a page-turner of a good read.

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