Met a friend at the Brattle last night for a movie called Word Play, part of the indie film festival there. The Brattle is a not for profit art cinema, but thank God they’ve just gotten new seats. A lot of art cinemas expect you to suffer for their art. They think it’s quaint to have ratty old seats and a stained old bedsheet to project a worn-out copy of whatever movie they’re showing on. Sorry, but it’s not 1942 in a bombed-out ghetto. Would you go to a restaurant that expected you to sit on a sticky floor and eat your day-old dinner off paper plates with plastic cutlery?

So the seating was better than I remember from the old days. I was definitely happy for that. But by the time we got there, the place was already packed so we didn’t exactly have our choice of seats. It’s a small theater and, actually, I don’t think there’s a bad seat in the house, so it wasn’t a problem, except that I sort of hate making people get up to let me pass.

The only thing I’ll say about the audience in my immediate vicinity is—while most were very well-behaved, as you would expect from the seasoned cineastes that would go to the Brattle, the woman next to me was belching through the whole friggin film. Sometimes they were these silent burps, almost like little onion-flavored yawns, but more often than not she did it right out loud. But all through the movie she was doing it.

My friend said afterwards that she must have had a condition. And I say, that’s well and good, but take care of it before you go out, or rent a movie. Let’s get this straight, there is no God-given right to go to a movie and belch all through it. And if you cannot behave appropriately, either on account of a medical condition, mental disorder, traumatic childhood, ill-socialization, whatever, just stay home, where you can belch to your little heart’s delight. Whatever it is, it’ll come out on HBO shortly. You’re really not missing anything. Because, I’ll tell you this: it’s not worth all the bad karma you’re inviting by going out and befouling the air with your toxic burps. It will come back to you. Count on it.

Despite the nonstop burp-o-rama to my right, I did enjoy the movie. It was not a profound or revelatory experience, but it was enjoyable

After the movie we went to the Algiers, a teahouse next to the cinema. We’d been to the place before, and it has this kind of Bohemian feel to it, but, again, Bohemian has just become sort of code word for dirty and expensive. These places in the heart of Cambridge can’t possibly be authentically bohemian—they are faux-bohemian at best.

As if to prove my point: the waitress would not bring me a beer because I could not produce ID, which is ridiculous, the little nazi. I have not been carded since I was about thirteen. I could not be mistaken for a minor by anyone with even a quarter of a brain in her head. And the notion that she’s just following orders, well, that’s almost as disgusting as the orders themselves. That’s the Nuremberg defense, after all, isn’t it? Must we follow orders that make no sense, or cause undue suffering to others?

I drank water and ordered a bowl of lentil soup. But I can tell you this much: This little Bohemian won’t be going back to Algiers.

I have this very sexy writer friend who has discovered podcasting. So she’s podcasting erotica for the masses now. She told me the other day that one of her secret fantasies was that on the T she’d be sitting next to someone listening to one of her racy podcasts. Rrrroowwwr!

I think it’s racy enough reading “Savage Love” in the Dig on the T. The truth is, people read all kinds of smut on the subway. It’s scandalous, really. But for the most part no one seems to mind. People do get a little nosy sometimes, though. I mean, I’m one to talk. I like to see what my fellow commuters are reading as much as the next guy.

But I’ve been more keenly aware of it lately, since for the past week or so my heavy T reading has been Roger Shattuck’s Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography, and I always see people trying to read the title from the cover. It’s a little embarrassing, because the title and the cover kind of look like it could be some kind of sleezy potboiler, referring in the title to “knowledge” in the Biblical sense, when in fact it’s straight-laced lit crit from a well-respected, thoughtful, and sometimes prudish octogenarian (actually he died in December ‘05, and was in his seventies when he wrote the work in question).

I just finished the next-to-last chapter (I was tempted to say penultimate there, but I thought it would sound too snooty)–anyway, the climax of the book is Shattuck’s very frank discussion of the Marquis de Sade, with some unexpurgated excerpts from Justine and Philosophy of the Boudoir. This is not erotica, it’s straight-up porn. Shattuck admits that “pornography we shall always have with us. It serves a purpose and in its traditional forms poses no serious threat to decency and morals.” He goes on to say, “the healthiest reaction [to it] is usually laughter, not outrage.”

But Sade takes it too far, he says, and illustrates the point with references to the horrendous Moors Murders in the mid-sixties in England, and Ted Bundy’s killing spree in the following decade. Both cases involved unspeakable crimes, and murderers who claimed to have been influenced by Sade’s philosophy and works, which became widely available only after loosening of obscenity standards in the ’60s in Britain, France, and the US. (Nowadays with the world wide web, we can hardly imagine codes as restrictive as they were before that time.)

Sade’s rehabilitation among academics, marked in the 20th Century by his inclusion in the canon of great works of Western literature, essentially undermines everything the canon has come to represent, according to Shattuck. It has also paved the way for the mainstreaming of Sade. And while the book was published several years before Abu Ghraib, I think Shattuck would have seen that as the ultimate expression of Sade’s triumph over Western Culture. Quoting 19th Century English Historian Lord Acton, he sums up the Nietzschean ethos of the age we live in: “The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.”

As the title suggests, Shattuck’s study opens with the story of Prometheus, who, according to the Greeks, stole fire from the gods and gave it to man, for which he was bound to a rock, his liver eaten out by a vulture, repeatedly, forever. Try to do a good deed, and that’s what you get.

But that’s not the end of the story. According to Hesiod, Zeus was so hopping mad he’d been tricked that in retaliation he sent Pandora, the first female, with her “box” (ahem) to tempt Prometheus’s gullible little bro Epimetheus. Being the first stupid het, he took the bait, and upon opening her dowry discovered an endless supply of “grief, cares, and all evil,” which nicely canceled out all the mod cons Prometheus had managed to win for humanity. Ouch.

Then of course, there was Adam & Eve. The snake. The forbidden fruit. Crrruuunnnccchhhh. And now we’re stuck with the Marquis de Sade and Desperate Housewives. What can you do?

QOTD: What are you reading on the T, my naughty little minxes and metrosexuals?

COINAGE & KARMA. I got a free ride yesterday from JFK and I still don’t know why, but I wasn’t gonna ask. The token lady was outside her little booth, standing at the open gate, and I had my dollar out to get my token, but I guess she didn’t want to go back into her little booth to get me one just then. I consider it karma for a wait I had a couple years ago on the orange line, for which I wrote an email to the MBTA to get my fare reimbursed, and was told to go fuck myself.

THE EYES HAVE IT. I have definitely noticed that now that we’re officially into Spring, people are perking up a little. There’s been more eye contact out there in the last few days than there’s been in the past six months put together. People are funny. It’s still tentative, sometimes slightly teasing, rather curious than cocky at this point.

I spent many years in Budapest, and people there always make eye contact, and often stare brazenly on the subway. The staring used to bug me, but you get used to it. The eye contact on the street always gave me something to think about, though. On the one hand, it gave every outing an air of possibility, because each little interaction was a tale of its own, pregnant with possibility–visions of romance and violence, fantasies of intrigue–where did she come from? Where is he going? Was that an invitation in her eyes? Was that a threat in his? That’s what I have always loved about city life–that’s what’s missing from the suburbs. Fact is, in the suburbs, even if you make eye contact it’s in a familiar and thoroughly domesticated setting, like the supermarket or the post office, or the drive-thru from the safety of your car–and lacks that primal frisson of connection—and that vertiginous moment of “right now, if I look again, everything could change. Right now if I don’t look away, everything will change.”

Returning to Boston, I found it bugged me that you’d be passing somebody on the street and you’d be looking at them and they’d be looking at you, but you’d get about to where they were in focus, and they’d shift their gaze to the sidewalk. This is before there was any possibility of making real eye contact, mind you. Of course, in primates, the sustained gaze is a sign of dominance, while avoidance is a submissive or deferential gesture.

But here it seemed a sort of wholesale conflict-avoidance. The fact that the potential interaction was aborted seemed also to argue that people you encounter on the streets of Boston, for the most part, feel that conflict is the most likely outcome of interaction, at least with strangers on the street. Which is not so surprising, seeing as Boston is a city with a population widely stratified along social and economic lines. There also seems to be a lot of self-segregating due to race, class, and age, which is not so unusual, either. I think there’s probably more eye contact amongst strangers in cities that are racially and economically less stratified, more homogeneous.

Of course, psychologists and sociologists have a lot to say about these things. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin –Madison studying autism found that “in autistic subjects, the amygdala — an emotion center in the brain associated with negative feelings — lights up to an abnormal extent during a direct gaze upon a non-threatening face.” It could be that Bostonians have hyperactive amygdalas. Only compulsory mass MRIs can tell us for sure.

In New York City, in the days after 9/11, some psychologists-about-town, and at least one journalist(“gawker” Alex Kuczynski) noticed something: “In acts described by psychologists and sociologists as subliminal bonding consistent with wartime, instead of averting gazes when a stranger stood close, many New Yorkers made eye contact. The cultural historian Neal Gabler, who walked Manhattan’s streets for three days after Tuesday’s attack, said that New Yorkers have always cultivated the blank face. “It is an immunity mechanism, an emotional tax that you pay when you live in New York City,” he said. “Now, people have left it behind and are looking at each other with a different kind of civility, looking for some kind of contact.”

Kuczynski quotes Dr. Gordon Bower, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, on the result of millions of years of evolution in facial expression: “We are now able to pass on an emotional contagion, where one sad person can through their body and facial language pass on sorrow and grief to hundreds of other people,” he said. “It is an empathic, imitative response that even little children have.” Indeed, eye contact is so elemental even newborns seek it out.

But, yes, there are real dangers—but mostly inconveniences—associated with eye contact. I can’t deny it. I remember when I lived in Portland, Oregon. There was this big pockmarked homeless Indian in my neighborhood. I was working nights and he used to hang out in a doorway on my way to the bus stop. He was usually three sheets to the wind by the time I was getting to work. He was always very aggressive, demanding money or cigarettes, and because of his usual state of inebriation and his formidable stature, I found him threatening. I crossed the street to avoid him when I could. Whenever he accosted me I flashed him a look and grunted something. But one night I decided to just ignore him completely. This is something a lot of people do with beggars and bums on a crowded city street, but the less crowded it is, the more likely you are to provoke more of a reaction by ignoring them than if you just go ahead and acknowledge them. This was definitely the case with the pockmarked Indian. He flew into a rage, cursing me, throwing an empty bottle, shouting “Hey! HEY! I said ‘HEY!’” Demanding I acknowledge him. I didn’t. I hurried off to the bus stop, and made a note to try a different route from then on out.

Since that unpleasant incident, however, I always make it a point to acknowledge beggars, but I still don’t give them money. For many of mendicants it’s kind of a “gotcha!” game. If they can catch your eye, even for an instant, you lose, and owe them a buck, or whatever. This may be because of the empathy that eye contact seems naturally to engender. But I’ve been on skid row myself and never resorted to begging, so I feel like my empathy for the situation they’re in does not preclude a certain lack of sympathy for the solution they seem to have come up with.

Another danger in the city is that it seems like it’s mostly crazy people who aggressively seek out eye contact. I passed a mischievous-looking guy near the Pru yesterday, and knew I was in for something if our eyes met (but probably even if they didn’t). All it took was a glance as he was passing, and he barked: “John Lennon! Imagine!” at me. I laughed, and without breaking my stride, shouted back: “Double Fantasy, baby!” and passed without incident. He shouted over his shoulder back at me: “You got a fat wallet!” But what he took for a wallet was actually my leather-bound Moleskine notebook, which I often keep in my back pocket.

IN OTHER WORLDS. Anyway, at JFK there were two Asian students, one looked like one of those happy fat Buddhas, talking with great enthusiasm about some computer role-playing game. The whole way to Park Street. You know how people who are really into that sort of thing are. I mean, they can bang on forever about the different characters, their morphology, and their magical qualities. And listening to them, you’d swear it was all very real.

At Broadway, it probably was, an interesting character got on. He looked like he was maybe a Vietnam Vet, wearing what looked almost like a sort of paramilitary uniform. He had on those strangely-fitted pants your school custodian used to wear, the ones that were made out of indestructible rayon. Sensible shoes. A black SWAT-like vest, with some sort of walkie-talkie-like devise attached that would issue bursts of static at fairly regular intervals, prompting him to minutely adjust the volume with controlled competence. He wore a black baseball cap with the emblem of the Dept. of Public Safety Texas Rangers on it, pulled down so low you could not see his eyes, and, in fact, his bearded face was completely obscured. He may have been wearing Unibomber shades, too. Still, I felt like he was on our side, somehow.

Watching him, I thought, aside from the fact that his trousers are too short, and are exposing his white and red-striped (but matching) tube socks, he’s in an absolutely airtight world of his own construction there. OK, to some extent we all are, but his was hermetically sealed, with its own set of signs and symbols intelligible to none but him.

Then, the next stop, a mother got on with four little boys, all around fivish, sixish, sevenish. I think three were hers, because they looked just like her. And they were all lovely. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Squirrely, but in a Beatrix Potter kind of way. The crazies shrank from them immediately, of course, but the boys themselves were so completely good-natured and innocent, they didn’t shrink back from the crazies.

You could tell riding the T was this big adventure for them. And they were bold explorers, watching the goings on with fearless, utterly unselfconscious, good-natured curiosity. And genuinely cute kids are few and far between, let me tell you. But all four of them were delightful.

10,000 JOANS.After the gym I dropped into the Boston Public Library. There’s an exhibition, 10,000 Joans, upstairs in the McKim Building through June 15th. The exhibition, consisting of Joan of Arc memorabilia I guess you’d call it, hints at something, but with no program, brochure, or guide accompanying it, and very little explanatory signage, you’re left to sort it out on your own. There are guided tours, and I’m interested enough in the subject matter to take time out for one. (The exhibition’s title is a bit misleading, though. The number of Joans on display is in the hundreds, not thousands. I think the ten thousand figure comes from the complete collection, impossible to display, obviously, all at once, in the gallery space available.)

Because, truly, the story of Jeanne d’Arc is such a compelling one on so many levels: religious, yes, but cultural and political even more so. Americans don’t always get the deep, enduring significance of national saints in Europe. Sainte Jeanne is, of course, patron saint of France, and as such a symbol of French history and identity on some levels. Does the exhibition explore this? I couldn’t tell.

One thing the exhibition hints at is the incredible appeal and the richness of the material devoted to her story. Up to the present day. But here again, an exhibition of this size can’t even hope to scratch the surface. It did not include any reference to the French military’s helicopter Carrier that bears her name, Jacques Dror’s distinctive Art Nouveau-inflected church in Nice (that has been nicknamed “the meringue” by local critics), or depictions of her by cheeky French artists Pierre et Gilles. This is partly a limitation of an exhibition of an idiosyncratic private collection rather than a more systematic exploration of any certain theme. As a collection of artifacts it’s interesting enough, I guess.

One of my favorite books that takes Joan of Arc as its subject is Michel Tournier’s Gilles et Jeanne. By the way. In fact, I’d recommend about anything by Tournier for a good read.

My, but this has turned into some kind of lengthy discourse, hasn’t it? I will have to save my observations of my orange line journey home for another time. Until then, au revoir, mes petites grenouilles.

Wow, “Missed Connections” on Craig’s List is picking up. Love is in the air, people!

Just a few of the most notable cries for help:

To My Bus Driver - m4m - 20

I hate it when you wear those blue reflective sunglasses - it completely hides your gorgeous blue eyes. I tried slipping you my number that one time - but I don’t think it worked. Are you not into guys - or just not into me? Either way - take it as a compliment - I think you’re HOT.

Karaoke Kween

There we were, at the bar. Karaoke night. You were so beautiful, you look like you could be the daughter of John Travolta. Our eyes connected more than once. Did you feel what I felt?

My Ganimide…

Tonight, our eyes locked and I knew it was love at first sight. Somehow, I feel like I know you from somewhere, like some forgotten realm of the universe where unicorns roam and theives run wild. Will you be my rougue? xoxo Inara

Bitchy Girl Who Tells Lies

Yeah, you. Fucking lying bitch. Had your fun?
You’re why I can’t stand women.

To the woman applying makeup on the Redline today at noon - w4w

1) Pumping your mascara wand introduces air into the tube, which makes your $30 mascara dry out really fast. 2) Using a METAL eyelash comb on the subway is a tragedy waiting to happen. Can’t you do your makeup at home? Or in the bathroom of wherever you’re going?

And finally, a poem (”Missed Connection” poetry is definitely not to be missed, people):

My beloved Tracy - m4w

They tell me you have died
But I don’t believe it, nor do I care
We will always be together

I feel so alive as I penetrate your sex
I can almost hear your moans of lust
I don’t think you are deceased
As I part your lips and feast
The way you smell
Is more delightful than ever
Again and again we consummate our love
Again and again you bring me to ecstasy
I feel you with my lust
You, you, you take it all

I revel in the touch of your flesh
To become one
Warm and cold skin joining again
And again to my desires I will succumb

I don’t care if you’re alive or dead
Lovingly your body I embrace
Your rotten lips still give head
I spill forth my love onto your rotting face

I hear them call me things
Which I don’t understand
But I don’t care what they will say
Your body belongs to me
To carry out my lusts
As I gaze upon your rotting face

(A Boston Baudelaire is born!)

In a couple of days I’ll be back in South Beach with my baby. And then, when I return, it’ll almost be time to get back out in the garden! I’ve got a plot in the Fenway. I’ll be starting a gardening blog, for those of you who might be interested: bostongrows.com. I’ll be sure to let you all know when it’s up and running.

You know, despite all the great fan mail I’ve been getting lately (thanks to “Christopher Walken,” who wrote this morning to tell me, simply: “You’re an idiot”–and a happy one at that, Chris!), I want you to know it’s not all fun and games here at chez T-fureur. We’ve had a mild winter, but a New England winter is a New England winter no matter what, and by March people tend to get a little testy. I know, my babies. I know. But here comes the sun. The thaw’s not far behind.

I mean, spring is six days away. SIX FREAKIN DAYS, PEOPLE! You feeling the love yet?

How about now? Feelin’ it?

Not yet?

There is, of course, no such thing as spring on the internet. And no such thing as love. Both spring and love have a smell, but the internet doesn’t smell like anything.

But guess what does.

That’s right: the T does.

There are all kinds of smells on the T, and with the thaw, and the sap running, soon, very soon, the brilliant bouquet of humanity will be in bloom again all over the Metro Boston area, from Alewife to Braintree! From Forest Hills to Oak Grove! Riverside to Lechmere! Bowdoin to Wonderland!

So get on out there add your stink to the mix!

I didn’t go off and look at porn after all. I mean, who would do such a thing on a special day like today, a day dedicated to love, not sex? Philistines. No, instead of rushing off to my standing date with porn, I went off with a big bag of Necco sweethearts, a bottle of Bull’s Blood, and a book of sonnets from one of my favorite sonneteers, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and bawled my eyes out. I mean, it is Valentine’s Day, after all. And it’s impossible, when you think of love, not to think of Millay’s sonnets, isn’t it? Sure, some prefer Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I love thee,” and blabidee-blah. Personally I’m not all that interested in the body count. But I’ll admit Browning is more appropriate than Millay. Browning is a Romance poet, and Valentine’s Day is steeped in the Romantic’s notion of love, although the tragedy has been wrung out of it for the most part. That’s the wee problem with it, in fact. Romance with a happy ending can hardly be called Romantic at all, can it? Even Browning’s sonnet ends “and, if God choose,/I shall but love thee better after death.” But, details, details. The thoroughly modern Millay puts it all in perspective, that’s for sure. (For some others who do, check out Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s list here.)

Anyway, it’s a pity sonnets don’t fit on your average Necco sweetheart. Guess we’ll just have to settle for “fax me” instead.

Here are four from Millay’s 1920 collection, A Few Figs From Thistles. Jot one down in your sweety’s V-Day card, if you dare.

I

Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,
And drag me at your chariot till I die,–
Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts!–
Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie
Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair
Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr
Who still am free, unto no querulous care
A fool, and in no temple worshiper!
I, that have bared me to your quiver’s fire,
Lifted my face into its puny rain,
Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire
As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!
(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,
Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)

II

I think I should have loved you presently,
And given in earnest words I flung in jest;
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,
And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;
And all my pretty follies flung aside
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,
Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,
Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.
I, that had been to you, had you remained,
But one more waking from a recurrent dream,
Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,
And walk your memory’s halls, austere, supreme,
A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two.

III

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love’s self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now;
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger’s rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you–think not but I would!–
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.

IV

I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And oaths were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,–
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.

This special Valentine was a FULL-PAGE ad in this morning’s Metro! Yikes. I guess it’s romantic, but…it’s the Metro. I mean, imagine telling your grandkids, “I proposed to your grandma in the Metro.” Well, it’s poignant, somehow.

I guess I shouldn’t be knocking it. You take love where you find it. Maybe they met on the T or something. It could be their special place. And it is a special place. A lot of special things happen on the T.

In fact, I have a proposal myself. I propose more people fall in love on the T. I propose making it THE PLACE to fall in love. And Metro the place to tell the world.

I mean, think about it. Love and squalor. The T’s a perfect place for it. And don’t get the wrong impression: I’m not this “down with love!” type. Really. I’m all for love. I say, go ahead and open up that Pandora’s box of emotions. Let it turn your world upside-down! It’s a bumpy ride, but it’s worth it. Because love is transformation. And though life may look pretty good from the vantagepoint of the catepillar, think of how it looks to the butterfly.

That’s my Valentine’s Day thought for you. I mean, today, forget the squalor! Ignore this day the strange physics of the universe of love, where the distance between souls increases in direct proportion to the closeness of bodies. Don’t trouble yourself that I-Thous collapse inevitably into I-its. The incessant agitation of love, the monumental bother of it, the epic moodswings, the misery of separation, the constant angst of anticipating separation when you’re together. The utter incompatibility of love and everyday life. Forget about it. Butterflies die, but not on Saint Valentine’s Day.

Today we celebrate that hope which springs eternal in the human heart!

And on that note, I’m gonna go look at some porn.

I was on the train yesterday afternoon, looked over, and found a poem! You never know what you’ll find when you look up and around you. It was actually a line in a book the brainiac standing next to me was reading, a prose work on Lacan’s Theory (I have put the excerpt that jumped out at me in “poem form,” or “poemized” it):

“As long as you live like this
and weave a tapestry of falsehoods
the truth of your selfishness
will thrive in your heart.”

Ouch. Is Lacan trying to tell me something? No, I don’t think this has to do with me, personally. But I thought it was sound advice anyway, and wanted to pass it on. It would be great for a fortune cookie, too. I mean, wouldn’t that make you think. Maybe give you indigestion after your mu shu pork. Lacan is great for this sort of thing, actually. Here’s another found poem from him that actually rhymes (!):

“By a reversal that is not simply a negation of the negation,
The power of pure loss emerges from the residue of obliteration.”

Perfect for a Valentine’s Day card message, don’t you think? It’s from Lacan’s 1958 essay, “The signification of the phallus”. The passage continues, without the snappy rhythm and rhyme:

“For the unconditional element of demand, desire substitutes the absolute condition: this condition unties the knot of that element in the proof of love that is resistant to the satisfaction of a need. Thus desire is neither appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand for love, but the difference that results from the subtraction of the first from the second, the phenomenon of their splitting.”

I’d like to see that in PowerPoint, actually. I hardly understood a word of it. When I read the essay a couple years ago I thought it would be bawdy and fun, but it turns out the phallus isn’t all that fun in the final analysis. It is, in fact, “the signifier intended to designate as a whole the effects of the signified, in that the signifier conditions them by its presence as a signifier.” Mmm, very sexy.

The phallus is also “the privileged signifier of that mark in which the role of the logos is joined with the advent of desire.” Oh, OK. Well, that explains it.

“It might also be said that, by virtue of its turgidity, it is the image of the vital flow as it is transmitted in generation.” Oh, please stop, Dr. Lacan, you’re turning me on! “I shall also be using the phallus as an algorithm.” Doctor! I bet you say that to all the girls!

No, I guess his point is that the phallus is the signifier of the desire of the Other. Is this anything like Sartre’s “double reciprocal incarnation”? Another found poem, from Being and Nothingness:

“I make
myself
flesh in order
to impel the Other
to realize for herself
and for me
her own flesh,
and my caresses
cause my flesh
to be born
for me
in so far as it is
for the Other
flesh causing her
to be born
as flesh”

Yikes. Let’s fuck already, eh?

Meanwhile, back at Lacan’s phallus. Woman “finds the signifier of her own desire in the body of him to whom she addresses her demand for love.” In other words, if the dude’s got a woody, she’s happy.

For the man the signifier of the phallus “consitutes [woman] as giving in love what she does not have… his own desire for the phallus will make its signifier emerge in its persistent divergence towards ‘another woman’”—in other words, if the dude’s got a woody, he’s happy, too.

So everybody’s happy as long as the dude’s got a woody.

As for the rest of us: “male homosexuality, in accordance with the phallic mark that constitutes desire, is constituted on the side of desire, while female homosexuality, on the other hand, as observation shows, is oriented on a disappointment that reinforces the side of the demand for love.”

I only wish Lacan’s essays were illustrated.

Probably the best poem I’ve ever personally found is from a book called Eros Unveiled by Catherine Osborne. The book is just a little too something. But I thought this bit of prose, which I have poemized, was well worth the trouble of reading the first thirty pages:

“Of course it might seem harder to love,
Or to go on loving,
What ceases to be beautiful and good;
But that need not mean that the love
For what was once beautiful and lovely
Was selfish
Or motivated by acquisitive desire,
Or grasping
Or ungenerous,
Or less love than the love for the less lovely.”

Some words of wisdom I think we can all use this Saint Valentine’s season.

There was a porcine young man with not unpleasing features leaving JFK just as I was getting there, screaming into his cell phone: “tell me you LOVE me!” Well, that’s one way to go about it, I guess. You know, my philosophy is, say what you want. If you love me you love me. What I hate is when you say it, and then whoever you say it to is like, “oh, um, yeah, I, um, I love you, too, um, of course, heh heh. Is it hot in here, or is it just me?” Or when women say it to you, you know what that’s about, don’t you? They just want to shame you into saying it back. If you say, “yeah, me too,” nine times out of ten they’ll be like, “then why don’t you ever say so!” And you’re like, “because you always say it first, lambkin!” And they give you that little pout, and those eyes, and they’re like, “well, that’s because I love you. If you loved me you’d say it first!”

Ah, love. It’s something different to everyone isn’t it? But if you have to beg or order someone to say it, is it really love, by anyone’s standards? Rochefoucauld, the famous 17th century French wit, once wrote, “There are people who would never have loved if they hadn’t heard others speak of love.” And that’s the truth. For most guys, a warm body on a cold night will do. Don’t tell me you love me, because then I’ll have to take you to dinner to make up for the fact I didn’t say it first. Tell me you want to have sex with me! I promise to take you to dinner sometime afterwards. One day.

That’s probably what this bloke meant, wannit? Tell me you want to blow me! That’s how most guys know someone loves them, innit? If you love me, love my mini-me!

Boy, those Greeks had it all figured out didn’t they? They had three flavors for love: philia, eros, and agape: loosely translated as friendship, sexual love, and love of God, respectively. We moderns aren’t particularly good at any of these. We’ve mastered the malignant self-love of Narcissus, but we have some work to do on the others. Personally, it’s my conviction that all true love is, in the end, agapic love. As Buber had it (to paraphrase shamelessly): God is revelation that arises from relation.

Philia is probably the truest and most enduring form of love. Agapic love is the hardest, because most people’s idea of God is as someone or something with a separate consciousness, who can’t be seen, by definition, except by schizophrenics, who can also see the devil (and sometimes the devil pretends to be God, tricky little so-and-so, and maybe God pretends to be the devil, too). But eros. Eros is the most misunderstood, I think. It is not synonymous with sex, as is often thought.

Adler gives us food for thought on the dual nature of eros. “The word that we must examine in thinking about love is ‘desire,’” he writes. “There are two modes of desire, acquisitive and benevolent, desire that leads to getting and desire that leads to giving. The word ‘love’ is misused if it is used for acquisitive desire and, in that connection, carries the connotation of sexual desire.” He goes on: “It is only erotic or amorous love that involves sexual desire and activity, but even erotic love is benevolent in its concern for the enjoyment of sex by the loved one. Sexual activity devoid of benevolent impulse is not love but lust, and lust, like greed, is a mortal sin.” Just something to chew on.

When I got to the station, there were several people milling around waiting for the buzzer or the whistle (the buzzer’s for the Braintree side, the whistle’s for Ashmont, I think). There were a couple of menchen who’d obviously never been there before. And it can be confusing. But that whistle blows, there’s no question what’s going on. Immediately everyone shuffles, zombie-like, towards the Ashmont platform. But when the whistle blew, the more neurotic of the menchen, who was wearing his yarmulke pushed forward, rather than on the crown of his head, blurted out: “that means it’s coming??” His friend, gave him a look, and shrugged. Then they trudged zombie-like down the stairs like the rest of us. At the bottom of the stairs they found a lovely and very helpful young woman to give them detailed directions to wherever it was they were going. Those menschen are clever, I’m tellin’ ya.

I was going to the gym myself. I won’t be able to go again until Tuesday. Not that it breaks my heart, but I like to keep up with it, you know. People get all lazy in the winter, because they figure they’re wearing layers and no one can see them under all those shirts and sweatshirts and sweaters and fleece pullovers and whatnot, and why not pack it on for a little extra warmth? But those are the sods that come rushing in all panicked come April, crowding up my gym, likes their blubber’s my problem, too. Got news for ya: Poor planning on your part is not an emergency on my part.

This time of year, the place is deserted. It’s wonderful. Except there always seems to be some old fart lurking in the sauna. Never seen him in the weight room, but always seems to be in that sauna, sort of lasciviously positioned like a geriatric version of the Barbarini faun.

So at the gym, over the sound system, they were playing one of those satellite radio stations that the FCC doesn’t have any regulatory authority over, apparently. I think this one was called XM radio. Maybe there are several genre-oriented stations in the XM network to choose from, I don’t know. Ever since I started with the saint john’s wort, I just listen to The Sound of Music soundtrack, over and over again, day and night. I can’t stand DJs, is my problem. I can’t stand people yammering on all the time, trying to be funny or witty or smart when they’re not. Morning radio is the worst. It’s always two blokes and a bird laughing uproariously at their own jokes. (Remember in Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule when the Charles Berling character is being instructed in the do’s and don’ts of life in the court of Louis XVI? The most important “don’t”: “Never laugh at your own jokes.” Sage advice.) But that’s on FM radio.

On satellite radio it’s two chicks on one dude, and there’s this (en)forced vulgarity. Because they can, you know, they must. Not too imaginative, but there it is. But if you have to try to be vulgar, just give it up and talk nice instead. I mean, I think the producers have a quota, because the DJs were throwing in these forced “fuck”s like they had a gun to their heads.

And then, of course, the dude was always commenting on the chick’s tits. But it was totally joyless. It was like they’d forget that the contract says every twelve minutes there have to be at least four references to “tit(s)” It was like clockwork. “Oh, by the way, it’s time to tell you your tits are looking really fuckin’ big today,” the dude would say. And the chick was like, “Yeah, my tits are so fucking big! And I’m wearing a really tight, wet tee-shirt! Hee hee hee.” It was like bad phone-sex.

Then they play this awful, awful thing by Korn, cleverly called “A.D.I.D.A.S.” (I looked it up on the web when I got home). The lyrics were “All day I dream about sex/all day I dream about fucking,” (repeat ad nauseam). OK, and? I’ve got an acronym for you: T.M.I. But seriously: you want a medal for thinking about fucking all day? The only time guys aren’t thinking about fucking is when they’re fucking. And then they’re either thinking about the grocery list, what’s on TV, or something like, “God, when is this gonna be over so I can start thinking about fucking again?”

No, the point is, it’s not authentic vulgarity. They’re trying too hard. And have you ever tried to work out to Korn. Jesus God, it’s… just indescribable. Whatever happened to ABBA??

On my way to the Fenway to buy some last minute nonesuch, I saw my waiter from Abe & Louis, where I had brunch Sunday. He was very tall and thin. Not to say cadaverous. But friendly and helpful. One member of our party of four is a little picky. I’ll eat whatever is put in front of me, I’m just happy to have something to eat, after all those years in the Romanian orphanage eating boiled cabbage three meals a day. But in dealing with my picky friend, my star waiter here not only had a can-do attitude, he told us exactly how he was going to enter her unorthodox order in the computer so that the chef would be able to fill it properly. He was like, “I’ll just punch it in as such-and-such, but substitute so-and-so for such-and-such.” TMI. But whatever. He was a good waiter.

At Park Street he had his nose stuck in a book by a writer I have seen a lot of people reading on the T: Nelson DeMille. I’d never heard of him, but a quick google search confirms that he writes crime mystery thriller type books. My waiter was reading Plum Island: “Wounded in the line of duty, NYPD homicide cop John Corey [a recurring character] is convalescing on rural eastern Long Island when an attractive young couple he knows is found shot to death on the family patio.” Happens to me all the time. I just don’t go writing all about it.

So I get on the green line train headed for the Fenway. There’s a respectable-enough-looking woman of a certain age in a fur hat sitting across the aisle. She’s reading the day’s Herald. And I’m sneaking a peak myself. There was a headline I thought was funny and kind of clever: “Left behind: Pastor’s wife kicked off airline flight.” I moved a little closer, trying not to alarm the woman in the process, but I wanted to read the short article. Well, I only got to about the middle of the second paragraph when she saw me encroaching from the corner of her eye, and abruptly snapped the paper, pulling it closer to her, and turning slightly so I couldn’t see the article anymore. Hmph. She paid a quarter for that damn paper, and she wasn’t about to have some bum on the train reading it for free!

Of course Johnny Damon’s all over the papers. I managed to score a Globe on the red line train on the way into town this morning that showed before and after shots of Johnny. People are rightly obsessed with his hair. As I’ve said elsewhere, I think he made the right decision switching sides, especially if it means he’ll finally cut his hair. Here’s what he looked like when he came to Boston in ’02. Like a perfect little gentleman. I mean, aside from the gum-chewing. He’s a handsome bloke, isn’t he? A big, handsome blokey bloke. Mmm.

With the beard (which obscured a remarkable jawline) and all the hair, some thought he bore a striking resemblance to a certain Messiah with whom you might be familiar. But recent scholarship would seem to contradict this. According to a number of sources, Christ didn’t actually have long hair. Unfortunately Pagans and Gnostics infiltrated early Christianity and spread lies about His do. And they stuck. In the 4th century AD, Epiphanius of Salamis broke the story:

“These impostors represent the holy apostle Peter as an elderly man with hair and beard cut short; some represent holy Paul as a man with receding hair, others as being bald and bearded, and the other apostles are shown having their hair closely cropped. If then the Savior had long hair while his apostles were cropped, and since by not being cropped, He was unlike them in appearance, for what reason did the Pharisees and scribes present a fee of thirty silver pieces to Judas that he might kiss Him and show them that He was the one they looked for, when they might themselves or by means of others have determined by the virtue of His long hair Him whom they were seeking to find, and thereby without paying a fee?”

Well, I’m convinced. I mean, it makes sense. And I very much like the idea of a crew-cut Christ, I have to admit. But as for the question of Damon’s Christ-likeness, what you have to ask yourself is, of course, What Would Jesus Do? I mean, if he were playing for the Sox. Would he play center field? I don’t know the answer myself. I have meditated on it. Anyone have insight?