We all deserve the freedom to make sexual choices-- even dumb ones or crass ones. As someone who's name I can't remember once said, not all censorship battles can be about Ulysses. And the battle for sexual liberation and the right to sexual expression can't always be about brillant sex-themed performance art or beautiful ecstatic lovemaking in the long-term relationships. Sometimes its about college girls at big drunken parties pulling their shirts off for the video cameras. That's the whole point of feminist sexual liberation-- we don't get to go around scolding other women for their consenting sexual choices.

black grace // the weather and the earth

they were like vapors, darting through the shadows, leaving behind a trail of grey luminesce. fading in and out, with kinetic and rhythmic nebulous. spheres, bodies of grey flirting with lightness, thriving in shadows.

---

funny thing about the earth and the weather... weather works in cycles. cycles that forcasters work very hard at trying to predict. and usually they're right, usually they can predict the weather's cycles with accuracy. but then every now and then there is a cataclysm, an unexpected weather disaster that shocks everyone. it puts us in our place, reminding us that we aren't superhuman, that we can't always predict and that we can't always rely on facts and patterns.

After the storm has passed, this unexpected natural disaster, the earth picks itself back up and moves forward. It moves on, it doesn't linger or regret. The cycle has definitely shifted some, but the earth adjusts, and this is the nature of the earth and the weather's relationship. a give and a take, a pattern of adjustment, both parties meeting each other half way...the weather allowing the earth to rely on patterns and routine for most days, and the earth allowing the weather, every now and then, for an extremity, for the unexpected, for the wild night out, for the occasional date with danger. This is the only way they can live with each other, through this compromise.

but, more and more, weather patterns, weather cycles, are getting harder and harder to predict, are they not? The disasters are getting more unexpected, more unpredictable and more catastrophic. Things are changing, for sure, but what kind of change is it? What does this mean? What direction are we moving in? ...

Process

It's an invention, he said. What's it do? I said. I don't know, he said. It's not finished yet.

no words

mirrors/make-up

private lives

Victor: You're not a terrible gambler, are you?
Amanda: Inveterate. Chance rules my life.

---

Amanda: I'm not so sure I'm normal.
Victor: Oh, Mandy, of course you are, sweetly, divinely normal.
Amanda: I haven't any peculiar cravings for Chinamen or old boots, if that's what you mean.
Victor: [scandalized] Mandy!
Amanda: I think very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives. It all depends on a combination of circumstance. If all the various cosmic thingummys fuse at the same moment, and the right spark is struck, there's no knowing what one mightn't do. That was the trouble with Elyot and me, we were like two violent acids bubbling about in a nasty little matrimonial bottle.

--

Amanda: What happens if one of us dies? Does the one that's left still laugh?
Elyot: Yes, yes, with all his might.
Amanda: [wistfully clutching his hand]: That's serious enough, isn't it?
Elyot: No, no it isn't. Death's very laughable, such a cunning little mystery. All done with mirrors.
Amanda: Darling, I believe you're talking nonsense.
Elyot: So is everyone else in the long run. Let's be superficial and pity the poor philosophers. Let's blow trumpets and squeakers, and enjoy the party as much as we can, like very small, quite idiotic school children. Let's savour the delight of the moment. Come and kiss me darling, before your body rots, and worms pop in and out of your eye sockets.

--
Elyot: [sitting on the edge of the sofa]: Things that ought to matter dreadfully, don't matter at all when one's happy, do they?
Amanda: What is so horrible is that one can't stay happy.
Elyot: Darling, don't say that.
Amanda: It's true. The whole business is a very poor joke.
Elyot: Meaning that sacred and beautiful thing, Love?
Amanda: Yes, meaning just that.
Elyot: [striding up and down the room dramatically]: What does it all mean, that's what I ask myself in my ceaseless quest for ultimate truth. Dear God, what does it all mean?
Amanda: Don't laugh at me, I'm serious.
Elyot: [seriously]: You mustn't be serious, my dear one; it's just what they want.
Amanda: Who's they?
Elyot: All the futile moralists who try to make life unbearable. Laugh at them. Be flippant. Laugh at everything, all their sacred shibboleths. Flippancy brings out the acid in there damned sweetness and light.
Amanda: If I laugh at everything, I must laugh at us too.
Elyot: Certainly you must. We're figures of fun all right.