September 1

I just read WH Auden's poem on Germany's invasion of Poland, September 1, 1939. Sections of it have become rather famous.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

In his mature and later years, however, he refused to allow publishers to print it, deciding that "it was trash and that he was ashamed to have written it." The oft-quoted phrase, "We must love one another or die" he changed to "We must love one another and die." He knew hope, but not optimism. He remained both a homosexual and a Christian throughout his life, heterodox about both, and maintained a long and very unmonogamous relationship with a younger man, the librettist Chester Kallman, until his death. One of my very minor fears in life is that as I aged, I would get wrinkly in the face like Auden. Here he is as he was at my current age.

I think I'm doing ok by comparison, but it's incentive to keep going to the gym!

After wading into yet another online gay discussion on "homosexual homophobia", I got the punishment I deserved. I had to read it. I am pretty sure that anyone who uses the phrases "bigot" "our rights" "oppression" and "hater" in a single paragraph has not thought, at all, in years. Huge amounts of energy are devoted to protecting the swishy queen. Homosexual men who appear to be conventionally masculine are almost always accused of overcompensation.  The message is that you can never be too femmy but if you're too butch, your membership in the Gay Club is in question. Been down that road before, alas.

I am afraid that too many gay men are stuck in the archetypal world of the hermaphrodite, a kind of hodgepodge of the masculine and the feminine. In the archetypal androgyne, you can have an integration of both sides.

The date, the time of the morning, Auden, the gay screeching...leads me to wonder once again what homosexual men are for.Why does nature and God keep making us? For those who think of samesex eros as wrong, you might as well ask why nature and God keep making schizophrenics. Many men of homosexual bent seem to wind up involved in decorating or mentoring. From great artists (who are always few in number) to the armies of clothing and interior designers. And the number of us in teaching and the clergy has never been small. Jung wrote of such men that they possess

a finely differentiated Eros instead of, or in addition
to, homosexuality. This gives him a great capacity
for friendship, which often creates ties of
astonishing tenderness between men and may even rescue
friendship between the sexes from the limbo of the
impossible. He may have good taste and an aesthetic
streak which are fostered by the presence of a
feminine streak. Then he may be supremely gifted as a
teacher because of his almost feminine insight and
tact… Often he is endowed with a wealth of
religious feelings which help him bring the ecclesia
spiritualis into reality, and a spiritual receptivity
which makes him responsive to revelation.”

 Someone like Auden sort of melds ornament and meaning, a great artist but of words (the province of teachers and priests) rather than plastic images. Then there is the smaller but persistent cadre of homosexual men who are drawn to the military or the police, those classical descendants of the original bands of hunters.
What about magicians and tricksters?

Speaking of which, as I become clearer and clearer that I can't go back to "the way we were" with B, I still miss the many small daily rituals of play and affection between us that provoked so much smiling and laughing. A better playmate I never had.

The Express Checkout with PayPhrase that amazon.com's computer has given me today is "Stephen's Finite Ironies." Perceptive machine!