I think this kind of reaction is exactly what the Chapmans are trying, simultaneously, to evoke and disdain. They play a double game, presenting brutal acts and challenging the audience to accept or reject the total nihilism implicit in the acts themselves, and their representation of them.

Imagine the Chapmans saying 'This means nothing. And until you accept that it means nothing, this kind of thing will keep happening. Because violence, as long as it inspires emotion in us, will lead to more violence. Your capacity to be moved by violence in art is directly linked to your capacity to commit violent acts. Your ability to construct noble, humanist meanings out of the completely superficial, flat and nul fact of death on a big scale is, itself, the problem.'

This is undoubtedly true. Look at the current death happening in Iraq in the name of noble, humanist values -- democracy, humanity, peace. Strip those 'humanist' values away and you just have the honest, idoitic fact 'We are killing them. For no particularly good reason'. The 'banality of evil'.

I think the proximity of our violent side to our noble side -- the secret link between superego and id -- is something every tabloid editor knows. Put the gory details of the rape in your paper, while condeming the act roundly. It's what Anthony Burgess meant when he showed Alex, in 'A Clockwork Orange', losing his capacity to enjoy Beethoven at the same time as his capacity to enjoy ultraviolence.

To break out of this vicious circle -- violence leads to 'humanist' condemnation, which in turn leads to 'just wars' and more violence -- we must reach a state where, instead of emotion and catharsis, violence simply leaves us indifferent and cold. If violence is meaningless, it should be shown as boring, banal, as completely flat and superficial as an Andy Warhol car crash painting.

I think in this sense, the Chapmans are trying to say about violence what I remember trying to say in arguments on ilxOr about race (for instance, Dan Perry's 'Are you racist?' thread): that we will only be free from racism when race becomes a non-signifying difference. And that as long as people have strong reactions to the topic, it can never be this.

So the Chapmans are trying, for progressive but not humanist reasons, to 'desensitise' us to violence. In order to defeat death, we must learn to be dead to death, rather than alive to it.

There's a whole other thing going on too, which is a questioning and mockery of the art world. For instance, it's fascinating that Norman Rosenthal built his Apocalypse show around 'Hell'. Is he (a jew) complicit, or is he buying the 'humanist' argument about 'Hell' being a condemnation of the holocaust? Are the Chapmans laughing at him, or are he and the Chapmans laughing at the thousands of people who saw 'Apocalypse', or are we all equally horrified / enthralled, or what? And the fact that we don't quite know the answer to this is one of the things that makes 'Hell' important art.

momus on the chapman brothers

is this american superflat.
how much of this is disney ?

that is 4 m by 3.5

ok thats not the one i was thinking of, a college and not a painting and smaller then the larger works, but it will do.

Laura Owens in reproduction, seems a master of the cute, reductionist landscapes in pinks, greys, greens and blues are intimate and new, and her pictures of monkeys and flowers have the soft pastels and rich creams of bonnard and other french post impressionists. They also have the economy of line that we find in japanese 19th century prints (the french painters of this time would buy imported prints by ream in port markets.) This colour sense, lines, etc. would be enough to recommend her, but their are a couple of other things.

She comes from ohio and lives in LA, and the exoticism of palm trees, lemon trees in the back yard, the sun always shining, not the hollywood dreams but the tropical heat infuse her work with joy. Living through winter, you thank God for the sun/

The other thing, is that if you note the size-they are gigantic, between 3 and 4 meters. The economy, the grace, the consistency-is it easier or more difficult to control in a ten foot or a one foot peice ? Is she grandstanding ?

this is not about oil, this is not about power, this is a crusade, a jihad vs mcworld

this is not about oil, this is not about power, this is a crusade, a jihad vs mcworld

andrew said to me last night you only like to deconstruct the binaries yr not part of.

oh and on the street yesterday, someone stopped me, asked if it was me in the paper, and told me he had AS.
gonna be a fucking rock star.

no interest whatsoever in a piece on fisherspooner, anthony -- we've given them way more ink already than they ever deserved. (see bill werde feature last month.) but you're welcome to snailmail me examples of other music writing you've done in the past. thanks!-chuck eddy, village voice.

alright, getting content notes rather then fuck off and die notes.
problem is that im not sure i have enough music writing to qaulify.
must get portfolio together.

ase

ok, ed out yesterday- drinks at the e&c with craig, amanda and bryan
over to eriks to pick up cds and drop off leauge of extrodoniary(sp) gentleman
aarons party, two and a half hours of scmoozing and more drinking, to celebrate coleen (aarons partners) bday.
brian picked me up ca 1, went to pats, army of darkness-got out of there 3:30, slept at bryans.

ed story.

minna did that of me .

this was enchanting, like the diaries of andy warhol written by an anglo fred rogers.

sitting in front of a display of classics illustrated comics with bryan today, i realized how wonderful they were

i edited last nights, just cause i need to be happy.

ok today, got drunk on someone elses dime, and i made out with and felt katherines tits, went to the washroom and felt davids cock, gave mark a lap dance, it was the booze, of course it was the booze, but it reflected the intrimacy of the class, and it added to the whole hitting on str8 people to the drunk pattern.

i talked to don this morning about baudillard and the politics of the real, and he had an anthony qoute, i have become a cliche.



i feel stupid, and admist the drunken grab fest, people told me that i was smart, smarter then swirski, well read, clever.

i want love, when i held daves cock today, i wanted to make him cum.
not because hes queer, but because i was so close then, so affectionate.
it was almost non sexual.
it wasnt sexual.

did it ruin how we deal with each other.
btw he thinks im big..
bryan wont confirm.

today i needed to go to mass,
i didnt.
i talked to bittner.

maybe why i dont like him, is that he does not make marks, he does not have the line or colour or anything else that i can point out and say, thats like martin or kelly or judd. He doesnt have the theory either, like Andre and the role of the gallery. He doesnt make readymades and he doesnt make pop, but my aesthic sense, really graviates towards him-look at the way these colours work:

and then look at this similar, painted Kelly:

calm, solid minimal stuff, this time with fabric instead of paint, so even the comfort of mark making is gone, unknown to me until this year, and then shows in London (@ Serpentine right now), New York (at Dia) and Frankfurt, two mentions in Art Forum in the last two months, a major presence in auction catalogs. No idea why Blinky Palmero is so hot, not sure I like him, but he is and here is a link. If you dont like it, go look at the cow. I have called him Frank.

its a helian coo or a highland cow
i am in love.

i had a long discussion about the souls of animals today with john, and about krsna.
my theology was so concise and eloquent and conserative, coming out of my mouth, calm and clear about how i viewed christ, with discussions that related to scripture.

he admitted problems and yet belived with such fever.
we like each other alot-or at least i like him, its odd that i managed to be more civil to him, then i did to my brothers in christ.

boys are cute and girls are cool
but havin' to choose is a harsh rule
you say that gender's binary
but what about the butches and faries
can't tell what i am well have no fear
i'm what they call a gender queer
you don't know what's in here! x2
we got bears to the left and fems to the right
we don't give a damn we'll fuck all night

fuck your gender fuck fuck your gender
fuck with gender fuck fuck with gender

boys are cute and girls rule
but if i don't fit in i feel uncool
some days i just feel so bad
but binary gender's just a fad
if you're seein' the world in 0's and 1's
shit - you ain't havin' no fun
if you think you're gettin' all you can get
when my dick gets hard my pussy gets wet
what's your pronoun?
if you'd asked you would have found
i'm not a he, i'm not a she
what i am is up to me

fuck your gender fuck fuck your gender
fuck with gender fuck fuck with gender

i want outreach to be this

in honour of last night

hungover, and really never want to see another vagina in my life.
its not that i nessc. think that its offensive to women (though it may or may not be)
its just tawdry.

covetina:want to play
me: im gay
covetina:yr in the wrong place, sweetie
me: its my friends birthday.
covetina: happy birthday honey

extended report on brians delusions.

brian brought me to the peelers, gay man looking at a womans tits, god my life is unusual

photo shoot was quick and easy, no real problems at all.
dull, nothing like blow up.

everything i assume will be glam becomes workaday.

In a bio sci lab
I watch Valerie take moose shit out of the grow chamber,
and slides from beside it.

Putting the slide on the electronic microscope,
she lets me look through and see
the black spots on the sample in front of me
where fungus absorbing feces
become ferric red and bright pink
when scaled to the proper size.

Here, in a room edged with bees nests, ore samples,
machinery that is alien, no books,
just information on what will kill,
the moose is reduced from majesty to waste.

I ate moose two days ago, processed into sausage,
on a pizza at her brothers house,
while sitting on the edge of the room.

now that I think of it,
the meat was as pink as that slide
artificial, human, easier to see.

that pink marks us as humans,
producers, consumers.
and then in the back of my mind

I remember two years ago
galumphing thru city streets,
a friend called me pink moose.

like that sausage,
like microscoped samples.
like any other human.

i look like a fucking disaster, with a blemish and no beard trim in weeks, glasses askew, but the jnl photog needs a pic for saturday, and well its happening today at noon.

ase

I think the Holocaust vote bloc and the Hey, I've Shagged A 13-Year-Old Too vote bloc magically came together tonight. Do they FedEx Polanski his award or will they be like 'well, you have to pick it up...'

-- suzy

I think I may be an Anarchist- don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those up against the wall motherfucker, we will feast on the corpses of the bourgeois pigs come the next revolution type, nor am I the safe, academic, write a treatise on whatever is happening on the world, develop a cult and then move onto tenure, book publishing, interviews on state media wearing nice cardigans.
Its not the ideology then, it's the lifestyle. I don't view it as chic though, or the fashionable thing to do, and really it is not tied into any theory. The old cliché about Musoloni is that he made the trains run on time, and this made everyone happy, and this level of order lead to other people

night at brians, dinner b/c of brian, supper b/c of brian.
email from ohler, says he wants to make his edit his profile, kept enough of my authorial voice that he cant fuck me out of a cheque and a byline.
liked his edit though, post next.

more war news
cnn, the uniforms on the boats have been mentioned more then a few times, geneva convention.

penatgon censors
journalists at the white house use words like capture, kill, surrender, and call rumsfeild on the pounds of bullshit entering from his mouth, and from the link above, free information is dangerous.

v. good pro war argument
cnn makes the bombing look so pretty, thats what scares me, that and their orwellion use of language.
Ampodour(sp) called it an expedition

well jeremiah is hebrew scripture, and christ did preach peace (cf swords and plowshares)

no one on the left is agreeing that sadaam is a good man, we agree at best he is evil.

the damage done to his people, the starvation and the death, is often UN lead, thru boycotts etc.

I am not convinced, and the weapons inspectors were not given any time to convince me, that sadaam has legitmate weapons of mass destruction.

also, all of yr arguements could be made for North Korea,Zimbobwae(sp), Rwanada,China, some of the Baltic States, and many others, why are we going after Iraq ?

You must remember as well, we armed Sadaam and put him in place, something the americans have done 277 times in 226 years- you guys installed Pinochet in Chile, Noregia in Panama and Sadam himself, it is absurd with that information to assume that this is a war to save the world.

About dissent, the left is built on feelings of pluraity, and of fair play, we often encourage dissent, and i would like more information on the these conseartive newspapers being taken off campus, etc. (see i am a leftist and i am informing myself rather then condeming !)

response to Josh'spro war comments

sasoon base details; masters of war & god on our side by dylan.

i am sorry that i did not protest and i am sorry of the men and women and children who will die.

my prayers feel futile but i will pray

IF I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I¡¯d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You¡¯d see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. ¡®Poor young chap,¡¯
I¡¯d say¡ª¡®I used to know his father well;
Yes, we¡¯ve lost heavily in this last scrap.¡¯
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I¡¯d toddle safely home and die¡ªin bed.

But now we got weapons Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to Then fire them we must
One push of the button And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions When God's on your side.

In a many dark hour I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot Had God on his side.

So now as I'm leavin' I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin' Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head And fall to the floor
If God's on our side He'll stop the next war.

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

i post about allende cause it makes me happy, i talk to jeff who learnt from and then rejected communism, momus is living on karl marx allee in berlin, therefore feeling nostalgia for the old systems, bryan called me an anarchist last night and it threw me for a loop, i have stopped thinking about politics-i reject communism, and i reject capitialism, though i have a fondness for both, thinking about how influential post structalism was/is- the situtionsits, paris 68-fuck paris peroid, thinking how tired i am of protests and spectacle, and people who try to get their names in the paper, looking forward to the oscars on sundays and the ifc awards on friday.

i dont think i have any ideologies anymore.

isabel allende, daughter of salvador, was elected speaker of the lower house in chile yesterday.
i think we have a war, and i think it features infro graphics.

1) You're a fucking anarchist. You dislike power structures. You dislike
authority. You dislike the state. You don't think of nation-states as
relevant or justified or needing to exist. You don't give a hoot about
abiding laws. You believe in the concept of ground-up collective action. In
short, you don't think anyone should have power over anyone. You're a fucking
anarchist. You're not a democrat. Every anarchist I know claims vociferously
they're actually a democrat. You're not a democrat because democrats believe
in the idea of a government entrusted with carrying out the will of the
people. You, on the other hand, believe in simply carrying out the will of
the people without the intermediary. You're a fucking anarchist, admit it.
bryan

You are forgetting a few things:
a) I am Catholic
b) I vote
c) In the words of Jenny Holzer, I belive in using what is dominant in a
culture to change it quickly
d) i am non violent
e) many of my interestis are borgie at best (art history, pop music, the
concepts of taste and artifice), i would be among the first up against the
wall come the next revoultion
f) i am much more of a post structuralist then i am anything, and as much as
you have refused to engage with that discourse, it refutes Anarachism.
g) you are assuming critcsing the state is the same as assuming the state
needs to disappear.
my response.

he is easy and loose and fun, handsome boys fucking and laughing and playing about, rock stars in hotel rooms, the details that others miss-like the shade of green in a hoodie or the curve of haunch, or a sock being pulled off a foot, or the beauty in door frames, slag heaps, details of urbanity that only a citizen of the urban space would grok.

intimate, and funny, and way to easy to dismiss...

the other people that do this sort of thing weight down their work with any number of inapporite references to cultural history (goldin), or make it look like an exotic fun time (bruce le bruce-much more political, though ryan tracked bruce down and forced himself on him), or make everyone seem so fucking misearble (larry clarke, who met ryan while casting kids in washington sqaure park).

mcginley, well.
everyone seems to laugh and be joyful.

often he treats the erotic as something that is common and good-
oh and his first exhibiton is called the kids are alright, and i think he belives that and wants us to as well.

the exhibit is at the whitney, he takes poloroids and digital photos, rejecting craft - he is 22, with famous friends- people get pissed off, that and the famous hipster vibe and the party yr way to the top thing, its all so 80s, but fuck it- he;s good.

(he also works for vice, which is free and naughty and funny and tied into the discourse, and seems so much more democratic then the other art rags, and he works for index, which has one of the best eyes in the biz, and some gr8 interviews, i mean he couldnt work for vouge, but vogue is boring now anyways)

made a snow llama yesterday with jeff, walked arround, went to mass.
today i stayed in.
needed to sleep.
got 85 on my paul assignment,
brian got a 5 and bryan got an 8 on the sci fi assignments
i think i failed, will find out thurs.

swirski wants a drs note and i have no idea how to say, i needed a day off, i was exhausted.
maybe that will do ?

pentonville. islington. canonbury. barnsbury. de beauvoir town. hoxton. shoreditch. east finchley. hampstead garden suburb. finchley central. finsbury park. stroud green. crouch hill. crouch end. manor house. brownswood park. haringey. highbury. highgate. holloway. tufnell park. hornsey. turnpike lane. muswell hill. new southgate. north finchley. palmers green. southgate. seven sisters. stamford hill. stoke newington. newington green. tottenham. archway. upper holloway. totteridge. whetstone. winchmore hill. osidge. wood green. west green. noel park.

camden. somers town. cricklewood. dollis hill. belsize park. chalk farm. hampstead. gospel oak. kentish town. dartmouth park. kilburn. mill hill. st johns wood. swiss cottage. colindale. the hyde. willesden. neasden. harlesden. golders green. temple fortune. childs hill

mayfair. fitzrovia. soho. bayswater. paddington. acton. chiswick. gunnersbury. ealing. hammersmith. ravenscourt park. turnham green. stamford brook. hanwell. perivale. hanger lane. kensington. maida vale. sheperds bush. west kensington. northfields.

spitalfields. wapping. limehouse. shadwell. westferry. whitechapel. stepney. aldgate. haggerston. cambridge heath. bethnal green. old ford. bow. mile end. chingford. clapton. east ham. forest gate. hackney. homerton. hackney wick. kingsland. dalston. leyton. snaresbrook. wanstead. leytonstone. whipps cross. bakers arms. manor park. plaistow. canning town. blackwall. newham. west ham. upton. millwall. cubitt town. island gardens. mudchute. poplar. stratford. maryland. seven kings. silvertown. walthamstow. south woodford.

southwark. borough. elephant & castle. bermondsey. london bridge. abbey wood. blackheath. brockley. maze hill. westcombe park. camberwell. catford. charlton. deptford. eltham. falconwood. greenwich. lee. lambeth. kennington. oval. new cross. peckham. rotherhithe. walworth. newington. woolwich. sydenham. dulwich hamlet. crystal palace. norwood green. thamesmead. ladywell

victoria. westminster. pimlico. brixton. brompton. chelsea. clapham. battersea. earls court. fulham. castlenau. hurlingham. stockwell. vauxhall. balham. barnes. east sheen. mortlake. putney. streatham. wandsworth. southfields. earlsfield. wimbledon. colliers wood.

bloomsbury. covent garden. clerkenwell. farringdon. aldwych. kings cross. marylebone. holborn. finsbury. st lukes. st giles. the city!

(only counted if theres a london postcode)
gareth
london neighbourhoods

(from venice, 1998?)
(the intrepid peice)

vanessa beecrofts preformances, with the thin models, the gucci bikinis, the high heels- all of it seemed to me masochistic, not criticising the world in which they live, but a desperate class scrambling.

they were too thin, too ugly, too obvious, and too ephermal, she was frightened of photography and documentation and not in the same way as 70s body artists were fighting corporate power.

she hated to be photographed, and since the models were her, or her more pretty, more thin, more hairless- ie perfect selves, they should not be photographed. but she wanted to be rich, and non document makes one poor.

i wondered what this was about, and the new yorker this week has a confessional about her lack of eating- she is stuck in permanat adolsecene, scared of food, and she is being rewarded for it.

neurpsios makes good art sometimes, and this article made it all seem like biography, which may be a freudian nesscity, but i am not sure it is useful here

side note- she is moving from the formations of models, to a look at the women in her family, she hates her husband, she lives in the middle of the woods off long island and not the brainard/o hara/de kooning/warhol/pollock neighborhood./

question: what does the peice that featured sailors on the intrepid mean ?

spent the nite @ bryans, oatmeal with his mother in the morning.
4:30 am talking, switching back and forth, comfort.

family.

Electroclash is black tar heroin of pop, and Fischerspooner are dealers hanging around school yards giving away the first taste gratis. Obsessed with their own artifice, it's the kind of music for the night out and the morning after, as well as the soundtrack to washroom sex and k-holes , and useful to those who live vicariously through people who do that sort of thing. They add a bonus DVD with video-some of stage shows so elaborate that they come with wardrobe and make-up credits. This is camp and pop as lifestyle, like what punk is to those with mohawks and directions to the next hall show. With the new major label, write ups in all the magazines and a nation wide tour, expect that lifestyle to be spread with a certain fervour.

camping, pentecostals, cold hard ground.
smores hot dogs, got home exhausted.

ive always thot patty hearst was playing soilder, bored of life as one of the elite, chose to run away and join the radicals, when caught played the poor bambi kidnapped and brain washed.


thinking about smart, i have this feeling that the 15 yr old was bored of her perfect morg family, and so ran away- i am not convinced she was kidnapped, and she was so close to home, and could use the phone at will, and was left alone often, she could have escaped.

stockholm syndrome ?
more exciting t hen home ?

hearst is speaking in favour of smart.
two of them twinned now in reality rather then in metaphor.

writing poems on anti depressents is hard

who gives 5 billion to don johnson

I think that god speaks to me gives me direction, I believe in the incarnation, the immaculate conception, the virgin birth, the ministry of god, the crucifixion and on the third day the physical resurrection, I believe that the host becomes the flesh and body of Christ at mass, I believe in prayer, in the glory of god, in the destruction of ego states.
I believe in the separation of church and state, in queer theory, in discourse, that the pope is hauling us back to the 19th century, in the liberal beliefs of equality, justice, self sacrifice. I believe that much of what is done under the name of god is evil, I believe that other churches have truth, I believe in plurality, I believe Serrano’s piss Christ is holy image link, I believe that you should have the right to speak about anything, and assemble and read, I believe that touching your penis is a good thing, I am scared of augustness view of the body.
I have doubted, and I am not yr ordinary Christian, I am not stupid, blind suppositious, gullible or easily lead.
I wanted to say this, b/c of the tone of some of the people, who grieve me by viewing Christianity as simple thoughts for simple people, and view themselves better then any theist.

ok why are my blogs archives going off and on randomly.
also tatu- how soon is now, the fuck the war shirts on the glad handling leno, the pop a gasket pseduo dyke played as a performance that gives a million indie boys the same hard on as judith butler, turning mopey moz into exquisite synth pop that you bounce along to, their accents, all of it, the conquest of artifice, but in a good way.

i love you TATU

as per my pattern to avoid the real text i get theory out, this time a supplement ot the journal of the old testemant called queer commentary and hte hebrew bible, which contains an essay called Yahweh as Top: A Lost Targum (which means an Aramaic translation or paraphrase of a portion of the Old Testament) , constructed as a dialouge at first b/w yhwh and moses and then later a council of the holy and the perverse (ie de sade, lacan, freud, masoch, yhwh, moses, deleuze), it is dirty, blashpehmous, serious, sacred, frightening, offenisve, moving, fun and anarochnistic.

it also made me think, deeply, about wether my realtionship with god, the god on the cross, and the father figure in the clouds, and the holy spirit who chides and castigates in love could be viewed as a freudian construct. namely, is giving up everything, grovelling at the feet of some one more powerful, begging to die, expected to die- masoschistic in my part. is notcing his aching, and dying body dragging the cross, being whipped, and strung up and left, gaining comfort in him being strung up and begging to be forsaken sadistic ?

am i a bottom for jesus or a top ?
am i versatile ?
when considering christs penis and his sexuality, the erotic compoents of his redemption, why do i call him genderless ?

is their an erotic, a queer element to that love ?
if so how does that tie into the vertical, father and son realtionship i already have ?

today, after prayers, i read romans straight through, and i got to that passage, 1:26, and its commendation and i realized i cannot love paul, for all of his power and grace, for all of his intense desire to do right... but i love christ.


i thot i got over all this, and was a good boy and didnt think about such matters, and it isnt even really paul, it is paul used as a cudgel to knock some sense into us faggots.

i need to view paul not as a tool of evil men in the 20th cent. but a good man in the 2nd.
paul and me, its visceral hatred, unrealted to simple things like reading the text as close to the orignal as possible.

It is like the grunting of pigs
St Bonaventure
Sex is nothing but two minutes of squelching noises.
Johnny Lydon

here now. moz la and bed sit homos

i cant find the roman poets ones.

his leda and the swan, chaos and anger, violent as rape is violent.
his roman poets, the langauge impentrabile, like all will decay.
the blue ones, with the name of the poet in that limestonemarblechalk white, god that blue, the blue of heavens and skys and praries, the blue that agnes martin was scared of.
the scrappy trashy sculptures white washed and renamed so that they maintain all the dignity of history.
god i love him
twombly, i havent thot about him in months, but now on ash wednesday, struggling for breath and calm, he comes to me.
twombly i love you.

the unrivaled joy of the mark making, the elegant swoops, the colours, that rapturus white and that sombre green that grounds it.
the lines remind me of the wcw poem about queen annes lace "taking the wild field by force"

gateway tomorrow.

today on the subway, i met ruby and she asked me why i was catholic.
not of my own volition i told her it was b/c i thot it was the truth.

The Vatican is drafting edicts to bar gay men from becoming new priests, but
thankfully, they haven't gone as far as playing McCarthy, asking the already
ordained if they are now or have ever been a faggot. This is a continuation
of the Catholic Church's anti-sexual doctrines, and they're shooting
themselves in the foot with sexual issues time and time again, all because
of disordered theology and misunderstandings in1800-year-old Christian
scripture.

The theology that the Pope and others are officially giving is that Paul,
who permanently influenced how we view sex and wrote most of the non-Gospel
New Testament, thought that Man and Woman were a perfect pair, descended
literally from Adam and Eve. The Vatican has disavowed Adam and Eve, giving
it up to evolution, bur that pair has grown larger. Being allegorical, Adam
and Eve cannot be refuted with facts; by tying ideology to poetry, the text
becomes even more tangled then it was in the first place. If you read Paul's
letters to the early Church, he is sorting out controversy that has sprung
up, and he is not the most patient man to do that. He was confused by his
own sexuality, hated women, and feared the body.

This is where the fear of homosexuals becomes deeper than the Adam and Eve
view. The Vatican only views sexuality as practical, and they receive this
from Paul and the early Church fathers who learned from him. This leaves
people whose sexuality is more complex in an awkward place, as well as those
who reject Paul as a contrary and difficult man.

It also leads to questions from those who reject Paul implicitly, following
Priests, who have moved past the need for sex, sacrificing it to God. To be
a priest is to recognize that sexuality is not the core of one's being. It
is also a strange recasting of Paul's sexual ethics. Most queers reject Paul
because the idea of man and woman, husband and wife as perfect pair, cannot
be meshed with who they are. Priests reject Paul as a way to move past the
body and onto the spirit. If queers are willing to move from their view of
the body, into the spirit, like everyone who follows that path, then I fail
to see the problem. More simply: celibacy is celibacy.

A complete acceptance of any sexuality, though, is a far ways off. The
problem at hand, is a problem of tradition and history. The dominant one now
is one of fear and loathing towards all things sexual, and the only way
battle that fear is to find other threads in the tradition. If we inform the
world of people like St Theresa de Avila, who received visions while in
orgasmic rapture, or St Julian of Norwich, who talked of the body with grace
and joy, maybe we can make progress towards eventually reflecting our own
sexual diversity in the Catholic Church.

Look at Christ on the cross, and see that he has a penis, as plain as his
arms or hands or feet. Because Paul was fearful of Christ's penis, the
church has been too, so that people who are fearful of it are in power and
control. Those who have acknowledged not only the presence of sexuality, but
taken it as a gift and reveled in the diversity of that gift, are suspect.
To be closeted is to be in fear, to come out is to be whole, to give Christ
your self is to be liberated. I want priests who are liberated.

9 people at shrove tuesday, 3 protestants, 3 catholics, 2 athesits and a Unitarian.
Ash Wednesday, i have been talking to Jeff lately, and he called me troubled, which i guess i am.
for lent, i am going to pray in the mornings, and hope that prayer makes me more mindful, more happy, less vulgar.
i am also going to self affirm. I will belive the good people tell me.
i will stop begging them to love me.

also, fish on fridays. yum.
ase

an aesthete of burly dimension
easton sat in his pew in suspension
for disciples seemed neater
their story much sweeter
when he imagined the sexual tension

-- mark p

i think i am disappointed with the new momus album-too arty, not enough songcraft, the really pretty schubert song i heard live in van is in german.
spent the night at brians with shitty chinese and men with brooms.
i dont think that i am getting into ed, even after ohler promised me.

im in a rut.