As a teenager, I happened upon a trashy novel called Tidal Wave, the only part of which I remember was a sex scene which went something like this: His fingers explored the tangle of her pubic hair. “Is this a search and destroy mission, captain?” “I don’t have to search for it and I sure don’t want to destroy it.” 
Over the years, I realized that writing about sex was almost always like this. Trite and ridiculous, it just shone a spotlight on the naked stuff – Oh my goodness! Look at that! – destroying the essence of what makes sex rapturous. Whatever the erotic opus – Miller’s Tropic of Cancer or Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being – the writing of the sexual self just fell short. 
The problem is that sex is about another self, a naked self, a self that the clothed self looks at in confusion. What the hell are you doing? Are you really going to do that? You’re completely naked! The clothed self tends to stare and judge, incapable of reflecting on the intimacies of the naked self with any sense or sophistication. 
And yet, it is there, in all of us, the fingers tightening, everything stretching out, the head tilting back, peering into the chasm, ready to fall. Perhaps it is Xaviera Hollander who came closest (haha) to writing of this sexual self in her Penthouse Magazine column only because she wrote about sex and nothing else.
Category Archives: literature
Virginia Adamantine: Prometheus Stripped
My screenplay Sister Prometheus is a reworking of the Promethean myth, utilizing elements of the Oresteia. 
I realize that this is a dangerous and foolhardy pursuit, as any modern work is likely to pale in comparison with the work of Aeschylus, exemplified in the passage below, describing Iphigenia’s death at the hands of the priests of her father Agamemnon:
Rough hands tear at her girdle, cast/ Her saffron silks to earth. Her eyes/
Search for her slaughterers; and each/ Seeing her beauty, that surpassed/
A painter’s vision, yet denies/ The pity her dumb looks beseech/
Struggling for voice; for often in old days,/When brave men feasted in her father’s hall/
With simple skill and pious praise/Linked to the flutes pure tone/
Her virgin voice would melt the hearts of all/
Honoring the third libation near her father’s throne/
The rest I did not see/ Nor do I speak of it.
This sacrifice is said to have appeased the gods and given the Greeks fair winds to Troy and eventual triumph in their bloody quest for Helen. My Prometheus is female. Her name is Virginia Adamantine, and she’s furious with the Agamemnons of the world, ready to fight anyone in her way. And she’s a stripper. 
That’s the part I doubt Aeschylus would have appreciated.
Understanding The Bachelor: Tierra LiCausi’s Sparkle and Brow
There is something remarkably terrifying about the ABC network reality TV show, The Bachelor. 
A man searches amongst 26 pre-selected women for the one who is on the show for the “right reasons” and wants to “take it to the next level”. Adding to the difficulty of this quest, all of the candidates proclaim their love for this man and their desire to be with him for the rest of their lives.The process itself is laborious, involving group dates, cocktail parties, hand-holding, heart-to-heart talks and awkward sequences of kissing. Although the show is predictably structured – with pathetic story arcs, villains and insidious repetition – there are some moments which amuse and surprise. 
Tierra LiCausi, the villain of this season, blurted out a ground-breaking deconstruction of the self near the end of last week’s show. In defending her position on how she might have been seen by others when she raised an eyebrow in an insulting manner, she explained: “Raised eyebrow? That’s my face! I can’t help that…I can’t control my eyebrow. I cannot control my eyebrow. I can’t control what’s on my face 24/7.” 
There was no sense of irony, no sarcasm in her position; this was in fact a bold statement attempting to establish a startling new possibility that the face is an independent entity. Dissatisfied with the simplistic notion of the duality of mind and body, Ms. LiCausi sought to shatter the self into billionths, every cell and corpuscle independent of each other, only of itself, self-governed, self-determined, rarely, if ever, attuned to the body and mind as part of a whole. Ms. LiCausi continued, “I know in my own skin that I am not rude…If I could walk around with a smile on 24/7, I would. But my face would get freaking tired.” 
In other words, it is a virtual impossibility for another to understand the consciousness of Ms. LiCausi, or as she refers to it, her “sparkle”. Other selves, or “sparkles”, can only assume and thus interpret; they are incapable of capturing the essence of another sparkle simply because of the face’s independent notion of self and potentially abrasive manner. Predictably, Ms. LiCausi’s revelations left the other faces and bodies on the show dumb-founded, including that of the Bachelor himself, who decided to reject Ms. LiCausi, eyebrow, face, sparkle and all. 
Greenland Reading: Gretel Ehrlich’s “This Cold Heaven”
Gretel Ehrlich’s This Cold Heaven provides a first-person account of life in the cold and dark of Greenland. 
She recounts the Early 20-Century explorations of Arctic ethnographer Knud Rasmussen as well as the painter Rockwell Kent’s year-long sojourn there in the 1930s, but most interesting of all are the details of her own travels, including her journey with hunters in the far north:
Ahead, the ice foot narrowed like a waist, then widened again. Snow turned to sun; we slid from winter into summer. 
A glittering lagoon of open water came into view, packed with seabirds, ice gulls, and eider ducks. We stopped an gaped. The pond was a living sapphire and the birds navigated through blue glint, bumping from one beveled iridescence to another. What were we seeing? (180)
Ehrlich does have a tendency to repeat herself and romanticize the harsh elements, but all is forgiven for her moments of insight and enduring adventurous spirit.
Knud Rasmussen
One of the greatest thrills in writing is the initial research. The setting for my upcoming novel will likely be in the high arctic. And so I have come across the life and words of Knud Rasmussen (1879-1933), who led six major expeditions over his lifetime, circumnavigating his native Greenland and crossing the Arctic. 
All true wisdom is only to be found far from dwellings of man, in the great solitudes; and it can only be attained by great suffering. Suffering and privation are the only things that can open the mind of man to that which is hidden from his fellows.
December 21, 2012…and all is well.
Okay, it’s been a pretty windy day, rainy too…but I don’t think that qualifies as the world coming to end. And so…now what? We went through the seven stages of accepting this world’s end, and the planet’s still here. 
What are we going to do now? There are so many battles remaining to fight: getting rid of guns, taxing fairly, bringing peace to Syria, Congo, Palestine, Afghanistan, dealing with our collapsing planet, being honest and decent to one another. I mean, really, are we up for this? Or is to be same old same old? I would like to suggest some things to get us on the right track. Not only is Sufjan Stevens’ voice delicate; so are his words. Listen to Seven Swans.
And will I be a part of what you’ve made?/ And I am throwing all my thoughts away./ And I’m destroying every bet I’ve made/ And I am joining all my thoughts to you/ And I’m preparing every part for you
The Partridge Family: Season One is worth watching too. Yes,The Partridge Family. No one gives better moral advice than Shirley Jones. 
People aren’t as different as we think. We may have different beliefs, but we’re all pretty much alike.
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is a fascinating examination of free will and morals, and it’s only 796 pages.You’ve got the time. 
Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us.
And finally, if you’re in New York this week, think about attending Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace event in Times Square. It is on every night 11:47-12:00 midnight until December 30.
What better way to spend the apocalypse?
Survival Guide: The Last Day
Today is your time for measured reflection. During this, the last of the seven stages before this apocalypse, you must learn to accept the reality of your situation. Acceptance doesn’t mean happiness, but rather a way forward…even though the world is going to end. There is no better guide than Martin Luther King Jr. His final speech in Memphis, Tennessee (April 3, 1968) is an incredible collection of ideas and moments, all of it delivered without notes. 
Another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we’re going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demand didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. He was assassinated the following morning.
Watch My Dinner with Andre, written by Wallace Shawn and directed by Louis Malle. Two men talk over dinner, just that, but remarkable so, reminding us that a good story just needs to be told. 
I wouldn’t put on an electric blanket for any reason. First, I’d be worried if I get electrocuted. No, I don’t trust technology. But I mean, the main thing, Wally, is that I think that kind of comfort just separates you from reality in a very direct way. 
Read the poetry of William Carlos Williams. Yes, poetry! He was a doctor by trade, which provides great insight into the good old human condition. It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, because it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define it at the same time. 
It’s time. Take stock of your life. Are you good? Until tomorrow then.
Survival Guide: Two Days to go
Today is a day for personal reconstruction and working through to make sense of this Mayan Doomsday. Your mind should get back to work, and you will find yourself seeking realistic solutions to problems posed by the upcoming apocalypse, such as collecting firewood.
To Hear: Transient Random-Noise Bursts (Stereolab) Looping moments to think and plan. 
To Watch: Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica) It’s sad and beautiful story, and although things don’t work out like you hope, there is promise at the end. 
To Read: To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) Compromise and sacrifice from innocent eyes.
To Do: Reach out to somebody you haven’t been so kind to in the past and try to make good. It’s worth a shot.
Survival Guide: An Upward Turn
As you start to adjust to the imminent end – now just three days away – your life should become calmer and more organized. You are in the upward turn. (That was quick!) Your physical symptoms lessen, and your depression begins to lift slightly. The closing of Mozart’s La Nozze di Figaro just might be, as artist Ragnar Kjartansson suggests, the most beautiful minutes of music ever recorded. Put it on a loop and listen again and again. 
Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox is an absolute treasure, combining sophisticated story-telling with joyous detail and wit. I guess my point is, we’ll eat tonight, and we’ll eat together. And even in this not particularly flattering light, you are without a doubt the five and a half most wonderful wild animals I’ve ever met in my life. So let’s raise our boxes – to our survival. 
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, is also something to behold. It’s short and lovely and there’s pictures too. All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.
It’s time to get out there and do something active. Ride a bike, go for a walk or a swim, do anything but a run. That’s bad for your knees and hips.
Apocalypse Survival: We Must Change
“We must change.” So pronounced President Obama at a memorial service on Sunday for the families of victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. 
He is right. There is no doubting that. We are an extremely violent species with an unconscionable past. And we must change that. But can we? Is there really any way to do this? My money is against. The fourth stage of accepting the oncoming apocalypse is a day on which depression, reflection and loneliness dominate. This is supposed to be a long period of sad reflection, but you’ve only got the day. You realize the true magnitude of your loss, and you isolate yourself on purpose. William Basinki’s The Disintegration Loops is ideal for this state of mind. Created in Brooklyn on 9/11, these CDs document the disintegration of sound on reel-to-reel tapes. 
There are five CDs in all, but Disintegration Loop 5 is 52 minutes well worth trying. Michaelangelo Frammartino’s Quattro Volte evokes a similar feeling; it is a film with a disintegrating narrative of sorts, using an old shepherd, a baby goat, a tree and smoke, in that order. 
It’s a remarkable film for contemplation. Jose Saramago’s Blindness is far more harrowing, starting with a plague of white blindness that gets worse and worse and worse. It is next to impossible to put down. 
President Obama concluded his speech with the following: “We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we are powerless in the face of such carnage? That the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” What are you prepared to do? Genuinely. What? It’s something to think about and act upon. We must change.