As you can probably tell, I've been thinking a lot about sex. It made me think a lot about my principles and values, and I distilled a matrix between 10.50 pm and 11.50 pm today, that would help me to discern the type of man who would deserve to have sex with me-- and by the same token, the type of woman I want to be for myself. While in college, I had one of my best ever conversations with a male stranger named KASHIF. It is his name that was spelled out, quite inadvertently, by my choice of criteria.
K - Knowledgeablility. What do you know about the world we live in? Knowledge is literally the power to survive for us humans, and survival is priority number one. We can't thrive on ignorance, either.
A - Articulateness/Eloquence. Can you tell a good story with what you know? Can you express yourself clearly and beautifully? Humans are gifted with the largest range of speech powers; to be able to communicate artfully is to be truly human.
S - Style. What distinguishes you from others? What makes your soul clear and visible to all? Do you have good taste? Do you know what 'the finer things' are? What's your signature scent, or sense of humour? What makes you you?
H - Health and Hygiene. Are you in good health? Do you have diseases? How do you manage them? Do you eat well, do you live in a disease-free environment? How's your mental health? How well-groomed are you? What about your mental hygiene-- can you think about the right things at the right times?
I - Intellectual integrity. Are you a thinker? Do you value, cherish and use your powers of reason to guide you in not some, but all areas of your life? Do you think through your philosophy and system of ethics? Do you have the integrity to always strive to ensure that what you really believe is what you practice?
F - Fitness. How physically fit are you? Can you lift me without hurting your back? Can you explore the full kama sutra range of sexual positions? Can you respond and react as quickly as possible in a situation of danger, to protect yourself, me, or other defenseless persons? What about mental fitness? Do you read all kinds of things, or do brain teasers? How comfortable are you with ambiguity and chaos? Do you have an agile mind?
If your answer is yes and/or positively affirmative to all these questions, then you can be my lover, if you also wish me to be yours. I have a song I just wrote called "You Can Be My Lover". Stay tuned to www.reverbnation.com/nzingha for the scoop!
Friday, July 29, 2011
On Friends With Benefits
Written July 28th, 12.04 am - 12.58 am
I found myself tearing up while reminiscing on the events of this movie. I guess it reminded me of my own struggle to accept the reality that I have not been able to earn the undiluted, intrepid, informed and inspired love of a man who could also satisfy my physical desires.
I found myself thinking of Mila’s cute-as-a-button Ukrainian-American face, distraught, cracked like a Picasso cubist painting, after having valiantly struggled to be tough, vivacious, not needing compliments or emotional support; after bending over herself like Elastagirl of The Incredibles to protect herself from her own arguably natural feminine desire to mate for life, finally snapping back into that inexorably vulnerable female shape we all know so well.
I found myself fragmented into selves: the young, spoiled one who cried, inconsolable, unaccepting of reality, bitter and sore at her parents and elders who were not bothered to devise a pseudo-marital scheme by which she could find a way to acquire physical companionship on a regular basis when her hormones felt most ready for it, and so exposed her to the degrading option of friends-with-benefits proposals, and to the horrible realization that without seriously considering them, she could possibly never experience a nude hug before her death; the one who, jaded, sneered at that self, saying “Grow up. What did you expect? An arranged marriage? Then you’d be crying about how they should have given you your freedom”; and the one who said: “I don’t even want to write about this—everything I can say has already been said, and I won’t add anything to this that isn’t already there.”
I was right not to go into my past prosaic soliloquys about the insensitivities of current elders and parents to their children’s vulnerability to the sexual imperative in a whole new world where marriage isn’t done as quickly after puberty as it always had been until about a couple hundred years ago. I recently got a dog, and I’ve learned it’s just hard to prioritize anyone else’s needs as highly as yours. We’re naturally self-interested.
And I think a lot of the time those of us who are disappointed about love are simply not self-interested enough. I feel that way about myself. If I had been a better, fuller, more intensely coloured flower, some best bee would have insisted on having me for his own exclusive nectar source by now. What’s more is this: if I had been a better, fuller, more intensely coloured flower, I would feel happier, prouder, more content with myself, satisfied that even if no one ever claimed me, and I was indeed ‘born to blush unseen’ and ‘waste [my] fragrance on the desert wind’, that I was also, indeed, quite a bloom to reckon with.
Further, it’s not unattainable, my perfection as that bloom. There’s a way for me to be the best I can be. And achieving it can make me more visible to, and more capable of dealing with, anyone who really deserves to claim me. I’m happy to take the opportunity to make myself feel better about myself and to make myself a better relationship partner on my own.
But when it comes to sex, I feel that I am a whale…I can go very long periods without it; I must eventually come up for it. Everything in society and religious upbringing tells me to feel guilty about feeling like celibacy is a long period of holding my breath, or exhaling, and feeling that sexual intercourse, properly done, is like an opportunity to inhale fresh air, to be held, naked, vulnerable, not out of pity or concern, but out of love for myself and love for life itself.
I would prefer to experience it married, safe or supported, in the event of a pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease. But there is no one going down on one knee for me. And my ‘type’, a not at all unreasonable profile involving health, hygiene, fitness, intelligence, manners, and financial acumen, is usually taken, or not in my geographical area. In the meantime, my face, buttocks and breasts sag a little more each year, and self-served orgasm tastes more and more like a hot dish gone cold.
My spoiled hopeless romantic idealist inner self may look at romantic movies or read romantic books and think: “All these beautiful rapturous images, shall I experience them when I am old and grey? Shall I never feel love as thunder rolling through my chemically stormy youthful frame?” And tears come to her eyes, while my jaded inner self says: “Oh what melodrama. Small t’ing. It is what it is. You just wasting energy bothering with any of this. When yuh dead, it ain’t gonna matter how many orgasms you had or with whom, just what kinda work you leave behind, and that will only be to a very few people anyhow. It is what it is.”
At the end it all comes down to what you believe about life and its nature. If you believe in an afterlife where you’ll go to hell for fornicating, then no amount of torturous skin hunger will cause you to fornicate. You’ll tell yourself as many times as it takes that it’s only for a time. And it probably would be, because, as we all know, this, too, shall pass. But if you believe that life is to be lived now, while you’re conscious of it in the temporal realm, and since you don't know your day or hour of departure, you’ll try to breathe in as much clean air as you can…nobody likes inhaling smog, and we all know it’s bad for you. But intimacy, the real kind, the kind that lets you be yourself and inhale your love of yourself and life, in body and mind, that’s something you won’t be able to pass up for an indefinite amount of time, with no reprieves or guarantees. It would be like forgoing breathing.
I found myself tearing up while reminiscing on the events of this movie. I guess it reminded me of my own struggle to accept the reality that I have not been able to earn the undiluted, intrepid, informed and inspired love of a man who could also satisfy my physical desires.
I found myself thinking of Mila’s cute-as-a-button Ukrainian-American face, distraught, cracked like a Picasso cubist painting, after having valiantly struggled to be tough, vivacious, not needing compliments or emotional support; after bending over herself like Elastagirl of The Incredibles to protect herself from her own arguably natural feminine desire to mate for life, finally snapping back into that inexorably vulnerable female shape we all know so well.
I found myself fragmented into selves: the young, spoiled one who cried, inconsolable, unaccepting of reality, bitter and sore at her parents and elders who were not bothered to devise a pseudo-marital scheme by which she could find a way to acquire physical companionship on a regular basis when her hormones felt most ready for it, and so exposed her to the degrading option of friends-with-benefits proposals, and to the horrible realization that without seriously considering them, she could possibly never experience a nude hug before her death; the one who, jaded, sneered at that self, saying “Grow up. What did you expect? An arranged marriage? Then you’d be crying about how they should have given you your freedom”; and the one who said: “I don’t even want to write about this—everything I can say has already been said, and I won’t add anything to this that isn’t already there.”
I was right not to go into my past prosaic soliloquys about the insensitivities of current elders and parents to their children’s vulnerability to the sexual imperative in a whole new world where marriage isn’t done as quickly after puberty as it always had been until about a couple hundred years ago. I recently got a dog, and I’ve learned it’s just hard to prioritize anyone else’s needs as highly as yours. We’re naturally self-interested.
And I think a lot of the time those of us who are disappointed about love are simply not self-interested enough. I feel that way about myself. If I had been a better, fuller, more intensely coloured flower, some best bee would have insisted on having me for his own exclusive nectar source by now. What’s more is this: if I had been a better, fuller, more intensely coloured flower, I would feel happier, prouder, more content with myself, satisfied that even if no one ever claimed me, and I was indeed ‘born to blush unseen’ and ‘waste [my] fragrance on the desert wind’, that I was also, indeed, quite a bloom to reckon with.
Further, it’s not unattainable, my perfection as that bloom. There’s a way for me to be the best I can be. And achieving it can make me more visible to, and more capable of dealing with, anyone who really deserves to claim me. I’m happy to take the opportunity to make myself feel better about myself and to make myself a better relationship partner on my own.
But when it comes to sex, I feel that I am a whale…I can go very long periods without it; I must eventually come up for it. Everything in society and religious upbringing tells me to feel guilty about feeling like celibacy is a long period of holding my breath, or exhaling, and feeling that sexual intercourse, properly done, is like an opportunity to inhale fresh air, to be held, naked, vulnerable, not out of pity or concern, but out of love for myself and love for life itself.
I would prefer to experience it married, safe or supported, in the event of a pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease. But there is no one going down on one knee for me. And my ‘type’, a not at all unreasonable profile involving health, hygiene, fitness, intelligence, manners, and financial acumen, is usually taken, or not in my geographical area. In the meantime, my face, buttocks and breasts sag a little more each year, and self-served orgasm tastes more and more like a hot dish gone cold.
My spoiled hopeless romantic idealist inner self may look at romantic movies or read romantic books and think: “All these beautiful rapturous images, shall I experience them when I am old and grey? Shall I never feel love as thunder rolling through my chemically stormy youthful frame?” And tears come to her eyes, while my jaded inner self says: “Oh what melodrama. Small t’ing. It is what it is. You just wasting energy bothering with any of this. When yuh dead, it ain’t gonna matter how many orgasms you had or with whom, just what kinda work you leave behind, and that will only be to a very few people anyhow. It is what it is.”
At the end it all comes down to what you believe about life and its nature. If you believe in an afterlife where you’ll go to hell for fornicating, then no amount of torturous skin hunger will cause you to fornicate. You’ll tell yourself as many times as it takes that it’s only for a time. And it probably would be, because, as we all know, this, too, shall pass. But if you believe that life is to be lived now, while you’re conscious of it in the temporal realm, and since you don't know your day or hour of departure, you’ll try to breathe in as much clean air as you can…nobody likes inhaling smog, and we all know it’s bad for you. But intimacy, the real kind, the kind that lets you be yourself and inhale your love of yourself and life, in body and mind, that’s something you won’t be able to pass up for an indefinite amount of time, with no reprieves or guarantees. It would be like forgoing breathing.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
WHY I WANT TO BE A...
Mother and Wife
It is mysterious, and some would say miraculous, how new organisms come to be. The processes of mitosis and meiosis (in the gene transfer mechanics of sexual reproduction) sometimes seem too simple explanations for the fact that a person can resemble one parent completely and the other not at all, or that a person may combine his parents’ opposing personality traits in his own such set, or that a child can sleep in the exact position that her parent has slept in for a lifetime, without ever having been taught to do so. It seems scripted when it is not.
I view motherhood as a twofold privilege. Firstly, to be an ingredient in this process of bringing new organisms to existence, without having done anything to earn such an exciting capacity, and possessing it automatically by having been born female, is by itself quite thrilling, exciting and yet humbling. Secondly, to help a living consciousness go from helpless immaturity to maturity: to a productive, harmonious understanding of self-sufficiency and interdependence with other living and non-living phenomena—this is power, prestige, privilege defined,to my mind. If the human mind is one of the most sophisticated instruments of consciousness on this earth, then surely she or he who guides it into its best autonomous state-- the parent-- is truly the powerful and the gifted on earth.
A mother is a conduit of life, as her body houses the seeds which give rise to new life in new organisms. But she is also an instructor in the ways of life: she teaches her cubs how to hunt, how to track, how to groom, how to bond. This is true for almost all animal species including homo sapiens. A species, to be successful, must not just be genetically ready for survival, but also must be sure to develop survival skills, and the natural mother, for most of the animal kingdom, figures largely in both. I wish to be able to participate in both processes, although I consider the latter process far more important and vital to the maturity of the human race (and by extension the other species being endangered by its current immaturity), in the long run.
I do not just want to be a mother, as so many modern mothers seem to, in order to dress up my genetic offshoots in the cutest and most fashionable baby clothes and booties, push perambulators, or try to get the alleged results of “Your Baby Can Read” as an experimenter would. I want to raise a consciousness to revere itself, to be fulfilled biologically and psychologically, to have spiritual depth and breadth, and to be a boon, not a bane, to its ecosystem. And to do that requires my best and the best from its father, whose input, though little, can be profound (again throughout the animal kingdom).
I don’t think it is right to have a child without a father present. Notwithstanding the mother’s strength, self-sufficiency or independence, a child needs both parents. Some would go so far as to paraphrase the African proverb and say that a child needs a village full of parents. I am inclined to agree, so long as the village shares the same Weltenschauung, or worldview. As today’s world becomes increasingly diverse and globalized, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, such a village seems more and more improbable, and the need for stable two-parent families becomes even more pronounced.
Thus, I first want to be a mother, but to be the best mother, it seems that it’s best that I also be a wife.
It is mysterious, and some would say miraculous, how new organisms come to be. The processes of mitosis and meiosis (in the gene transfer mechanics of sexual reproduction) sometimes seem too simple explanations for the fact that a person can resemble one parent completely and the other not at all, or that a person may combine his parents’ opposing personality traits in his own such set, or that a child can sleep in the exact position that her parent has slept in for a lifetime, without ever having been taught to do so. It seems scripted when it is not.
I view motherhood as a twofold privilege. Firstly, to be an ingredient in this process of bringing new organisms to existence, without having done anything to earn such an exciting capacity, and possessing it automatically by having been born female, is by itself quite thrilling, exciting and yet humbling. Secondly, to help a living consciousness go from helpless immaturity to maturity: to a productive, harmonious understanding of self-sufficiency and interdependence with other living and non-living phenomena—this is power, prestige, privilege defined,to my mind. If the human mind is one of the most sophisticated instruments of consciousness on this earth, then surely she or he who guides it into its best autonomous state-- the parent-- is truly the powerful and the gifted on earth.
A mother is a conduit of life, as her body houses the seeds which give rise to new life in new organisms. But she is also an instructor in the ways of life: she teaches her cubs how to hunt, how to track, how to groom, how to bond. This is true for almost all animal species including homo sapiens. A species, to be successful, must not just be genetically ready for survival, but also must be sure to develop survival skills, and the natural mother, for most of the animal kingdom, figures largely in both. I wish to be able to participate in both processes, although I consider the latter process far more important and vital to the maturity of the human race (and by extension the other species being endangered by its current immaturity), in the long run.
I do not just want to be a mother, as so many modern mothers seem to, in order to dress up my genetic offshoots in the cutest and most fashionable baby clothes and booties, push perambulators, or try to get the alleged results of “Your Baby Can Read” as an experimenter would. I want to raise a consciousness to revere itself, to be fulfilled biologically and psychologically, to have spiritual depth and breadth, and to be a boon, not a bane, to its ecosystem. And to do that requires my best and the best from its father, whose input, though little, can be profound (again throughout the animal kingdom).
I don’t think it is right to have a child without a father present. Notwithstanding the mother’s strength, self-sufficiency or independence, a child needs both parents. Some would go so far as to paraphrase the African proverb and say that a child needs a village full of parents. I am inclined to agree, so long as the village shares the same Weltenschauung, or worldview. As today’s world becomes increasingly diverse and globalized, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, such a village seems more and more improbable, and the need for stable two-parent families becomes even more pronounced.
Thus, I first want to be a mother, but to be the best mother, it seems that it’s best that I also be a wife.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
On Responding to the 'Threat' of Burning of a Holy Book
It never occurs to people that ANYTHING that could cause all kinds of people from all walks of life to imagine violence as a justifiable, natural or inevitable response to a non-physical provocation, is not something that ought to be dignified with excessive or extreme respect.
Nothing in human life should be allowed to exist that makes people think they should adjust to the overzealous, they should fear the violence of the patriot, martyr or saint. People should recognize, with this most recent threat of Koran-burning and the various claims that it would be sure to endanger others and therefore ought not to be done, that the root of the problem is the over-reverence for religion.
NOTHING is EVER worth taking LIFE, except the immediate defense of it. But people's idea of 'don't touch religion' makes it possible for them to excuse and even expect violent reactions from non-violent provocation!
Desecration is a word that I sometimes think shouldn’t exist. If you choose to see a thing as sacred, then what gives it its sacredness is you. You imbue it with that quality. Nothing is by nature sacred or profane. We, as people, in groups, some larger than others, agree that some things are, and treat them accordingly. So why do you think that if someone doesn’t agree with your assessment of something as sacred, you have a right to kill, maim, torture, execute, judge them? Or worse, destroy or throw away the thing you feel has been desecrated?
If you see something as worthy of your reverence, there are solid reasons for that—or there should be. The potential of a child. The luxury of pashmina. The smell of clean air. But you have to understand from the beginning of your decision to revere it that only persons who share your values will agree with your assessment of reverence-worthiness. But it is you, all of you, who possess that quality of sacredness to imbue it to these things. It is you who are the source, and to me, therefore the ultimate appropriate object of reverence.
A temple can be burned, a woman can be raped, a child can be spoiled, air can be polluted. But it is you, who have the capacity to value and revere who can never be desecrated, because in you is the meaning of sacredness and reverence. In you is the concept of worship. They can kill you, but they cannot change that quality about you. They cannot change it about any of us. And the whole of their lives is dedicated to keeping the wool over everyone’s eyes, especially theirs (self-denial), about that fact.
If you don’t know that, you can be afraid of what they’ll do to you or those you love. You can be afraid of what they’ll do to the point that you forget to revere yourself, to hide your treasures WITHIN yourself, so that there’s very little they can take from you, outside of your mind, very little they can threaten you with, and to teach those you love the same skill. Because truth to tell, nothing can be desecrated, only transformed into what it was not before.
So a human being becomes ashes. A virgin becomes a non-virgin. A beautiful child becomes a killer. Destruction is a negative transformation. But what was revered, is gone before it could be in any way ‘insulted’. What is venerable, remains venerable as long as it exists. When it ceases to exist, its memory should have no less value to the venerator. What it was, it WAS. It may be gone but what it was, did deserve that reverence. And sometimes, it isn’t gone, because WE aren’t gone, although some part or aspect of us may be. We are still capable of reverence, of conceiving it, attaching something to it, and practicing it. And since it adds to our life quality, why shouldn’t we?
So your sister is raped. But is the only thing worth venerating about her, her hymen? Or was it her virtue, her wit, her intelligence, her discipline, her style, her courage? Do these deserve less reverence than a hymen? Are these really worth less, just because the value the rapist placed on them was less? Your hurt feelings, your anger, your grief, are because you DON’T agree with that assessment. So don’t act as if you actually do, shunning that rape victim, cutting her out of our life, even literally, as in honour killings. What you revere is still there. The hymen so long as she was wilfully chaste, was only a symbol of her virtue; when she had no physical power to remain chaste, she still would have chosen to be, so her virtue is undiminished according to your value system; unless you think it was wrong of her to not make sure she knew and practiced self-defense sufficiently to fight him off. And if so, then you ought to have made sure she had that training; she wouldn't be able to learn it, just as she didn't learn how to speak or walk, all by herself.
We must learn to think through our values, and realize that our greatest treasures, within us, are always absolutely incorruptible.
Nothing in human life should be allowed to exist that makes people think they should adjust to the overzealous, they should fear the violence of the patriot, martyr or saint. People should recognize, with this most recent threat of Koran-burning and the various claims that it would be sure to endanger others and therefore ought not to be done, that the root of the problem is the over-reverence for religion.
NOTHING is EVER worth taking LIFE, except the immediate defense of it. But people's idea of 'don't touch religion' makes it possible for them to excuse and even expect violent reactions from non-violent provocation!
Desecration is a word that I sometimes think shouldn’t exist. If you choose to see a thing as sacred, then what gives it its sacredness is you. You imbue it with that quality. Nothing is by nature sacred or profane. We, as people, in groups, some larger than others, agree that some things are, and treat them accordingly. So why do you think that if someone doesn’t agree with your assessment of something as sacred, you have a right to kill, maim, torture, execute, judge them? Or worse, destroy or throw away the thing you feel has been desecrated?
If you see something as worthy of your reverence, there are solid reasons for that—or there should be. The potential of a child. The luxury of pashmina. The smell of clean air. But you have to understand from the beginning of your decision to revere it that only persons who share your values will agree with your assessment of reverence-worthiness. But it is you, all of you, who possess that quality of sacredness to imbue it to these things. It is you who are the source, and to me, therefore the ultimate appropriate object of reverence.
A temple can be burned, a woman can be raped, a child can be spoiled, air can be polluted. But it is you, who have the capacity to value and revere who can never be desecrated, because in you is the meaning of sacredness and reverence. In you is the concept of worship. They can kill you, but they cannot change that quality about you. They cannot change it about any of us. And the whole of their lives is dedicated to keeping the wool over everyone’s eyes, especially theirs (self-denial), about that fact.
If you don’t know that, you can be afraid of what they’ll do to you or those you love. You can be afraid of what they’ll do to the point that you forget to revere yourself, to hide your treasures WITHIN yourself, so that there’s very little they can take from you, outside of your mind, very little they can threaten you with, and to teach those you love the same skill. Because truth to tell, nothing can be desecrated, only transformed into what it was not before.
So a human being becomes ashes. A virgin becomes a non-virgin. A beautiful child becomes a killer. Destruction is a negative transformation. But what was revered, is gone before it could be in any way ‘insulted’. What is venerable, remains venerable as long as it exists. When it ceases to exist, its memory should have no less value to the venerator. What it was, it WAS. It may be gone but what it was, did deserve that reverence. And sometimes, it isn’t gone, because WE aren’t gone, although some part or aspect of us may be. We are still capable of reverence, of conceiving it, attaching something to it, and practicing it. And since it adds to our life quality, why shouldn’t we?
So your sister is raped. But is the only thing worth venerating about her, her hymen? Or was it her virtue, her wit, her intelligence, her discipline, her style, her courage? Do these deserve less reverence than a hymen? Are these really worth less, just because the value the rapist placed on them was less? Your hurt feelings, your anger, your grief, are because you DON’T agree with that assessment. So don’t act as if you actually do, shunning that rape victim, cutting her out of our life, even literally, as in honour killings. What you revere is still there. The hymen so long as she was wilfully chaste, was only a symbol of her virtue; when she had no physical power to remain chaste, she still would have chosen to be, so her virtue is undiminished according to your value system; unless you think it was wrong of her to not make sure she knew and practiced self-defense sufficiently to fight him off. And if so, then you ought to have made sure she had that training; she wouldn't be able to learn it, just as she didn't learn how to speak or walk, all by herself.
We must learn to think through our values, and realize that our greatest treasures, within us, are always absolutely incorruptible.
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