MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
|
|
MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
|
To read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, copy and paste the complete URL("http://www.g21.net/cc10.html") and enter it in the box after you click through.
| The World's Magazine: g21.net
Event #173: Summer Reading Special 
LAST WEEK's EDITION For Deep Background visit the G21-Barnes & Noble Shop OR get great books at the G21 BARNES & NOBLE SEARCH ENGINE |
Clock hands are felines stretching and yawning on a patch of sun. Sand granules drop somnolently through the waist of a curvaceous hourglass. The longest days of the year in the northern hemisphere are a sepia sigh in Southern California.
I feel encouraged about life and humanity during the summer. Drowsy breezes slightly stir thin textiles and loose hair. Bronze, gold an ebony skins exude more distinctive auras, as if they contain fruit heavy with ripening juice and pulp. Impossible to disguise scents teem, permeating a thickening, luscious clime. Body odors infuse with tanning oils and sweeter aromas that don't bite. Skin, bodies and olfactory stimulation are my favorite features of the summer. The sun warms and teases, loosening inhibitions, relaxing rhythms.
People relate more sensually. At a local coffeehouse a woman gives her paramour a slow, smooth footrub. Many loll and writhe in Aphrodite's foam as she spreads her pleasures along the Pacific Ocean shoreline. Sensuality and soma are masterpieces exhibiting their sanctity in the summer.
Summer is a paean for nudity. Live bodies: your body, my body. Summer urges us to directly experience our bodies, the bodies of others. We massage sensually titillating lotions, salves and oils into our vulnerable skin. We press sweating glasses of iced beverages to our chests, necks and cheeks. We may take a moment longer to change clothes, enjoying cool uncontainment. Perhaps we'll indulge in a skinny-dip within a moonlit pool. Maybe we'll glide out of the shower and loll under the inviting, pureeing motions of a ceiling fan. More of the body is revealed in the public sphere; the revealed physique both challenges and disarms our senses. Somatic seduction abounds.
Nearby a nude beach exists. Ensconced within the recessive arc of a deep inlet, this sacred swatch of sand has, for several decades, attracted a handful of nude-enthusiasts. When I view a map of the local area, the contours of the shoreline resemble the popular silhouette of a nude woman whose robust profile adorns the mudflaps of semi's that growl down hot and desolate highways. The nude beach's location silently refracts civilization in one of the more conservative areas of California. The nudity isn't randomly available for mass consumption, one must trek down a cliff or pass through a tricky strait of water that pulls in and out of a grotto. Many people swim across the strait. I have seen the fingers of Hispanics turn white as they cling to jagged rocks while getting caught in the water that wants to suck them into the cave. There are no homes, mini-marts, snackbars nor tourists at the nude beach; there are only those who like to let it all hang out under the summer eye of a resplendent sun.
The mayor of a local beach city recently suggested that he would be open to a topless ambiance at his city's public beach. This well-timed suggestion aroused city council hysterics and attracted mass media attention as the summer season began taunting us with its tepid fingertips. The residents and city council members commenced with snippy corrections regarding the actual locale of the human anatomy's "natal cleft."
The mayor was featured on Howard Stern's radio show. News cameras investigated the mere suggestion of live! nude! as if it all could be captured on film like naughty poltergeists. A Penthouse magazinemodel appeared at a city council meeting and bared her breasts in order to advocate nude sun-bathing on a public beach.
"Boring!" one city council man exclaimed.
I deem this exclamation as "overcompensation." Was he aggressively insisting, nay enforcing sophisticated posturing? Was he trying to hide or deny an understandable yet tabooed erotic response to live! sublimely proportioned breasts? Was this his way of chiding a salacious, extroverted maneuver?
"Absurd!" would have been more accurate reaction because the breast-baring was imposed upon a usually (boring) conservative atmosphere of political/business posturing and paper-shifting. The mayor is an imp throwing ideologies of purification off-balance while simultaneously sensationalizing his small beach community in the public eye. A topless beach is the gimmickry of potentials.
Public toplessness in America would be an interesting experiment. For practical purposes I am inclined to advocate complete nudity at nude-designated beach locales; when one goes in the ocean, sand tends to gather, thickly and uncomfortably, in the crotch of tight-fitting swimsuit bottoms. Nudity would provide an opportunity for participants to experience, collectively, taboo banishment. Live! nudity! in a mundane setting defies the laws of media; we would be interacting with real people instead of images and situations created by someone else. One can cross the line from sole spectatorship to experience.
Another positive factor for reality is that few physiques are ripe for an episode of Baywatch, thus the reality of mass-imperfections in a public, nude setting could soothe the anxieties of those who suffer because their bodies defy Baywatch-worthiness. The body, in all its stages of development and decay, is a wondrous sight to behold. Due to the initial spectacle-factor of, at least, publicly exposed female nipples, my partner and I envisioned a sudden, surging interest in beach sport participation.
I asked my 60 year old mother for her thoughts and feelings regarding public toplessness. She was receptive to the idea and added that "they should allow alcoholic beverages down there, too." Our individual attitudes toward nudity are formed by both family and society. My mother has had a "functioning" influence on me where the human physique is concerned. She avidly views cable channels that exhibit medical procedures. "I watched a man get a vasectomy last night," she informs me. On the Emergency Room Channel she views procedures that are predominantly tend to "people who get shot or run-over."
When I was a child, her maternal nature was attuned to any rashes, scratches and diseases that would make an appearance in or on the bodies of my sister and I. The hefty Physician's Desk Reference was a multi-faceted presence in our household. In addition to poring over its contents for pertinent drug information, we also stood and sat on the thing when my mother cut our hair or examined our throats. My father recently became quite ill and required a marathon 12 hour operation. My mother suggested that he could "leave his body and watch the operation." My paramour responded "she's gone too far this time."
I believe that my mother is strongly erotic. Photographs of her in adult situations revealed a sultriness that was not evident in my, her child's, presence. I experienced the live! maternal force before me but I also viewed images of her that revealed an erogenous energy that I could not define.
It has always been society that provided me with ample samplings and lessons of erotica. Throughout my life I have perpetually collided with nudity and libido in the social sphere. Flashers, exhibitionists, rogues, scoundrels, cads and coincidental, unintentional nude displays have continuously confronted me--particularly in the summer. Exposure of male genitalia was initially shocking because I had never viewed live! male genitalia. Until my own aroused erotic energy became distinctive and friendlier to me, I assumed my mother's influence and examined nude collisions for rashes, scratches or diseases that may be making an appearance in or on the bodies of the exposed.
Some nude images are embossed into the collective mind. Michelangelo's David and the Venus de Milo proliferate on postcards and coffee cups. I theorize that Venus is the archetype most languishing in post-industrialism. Venus is the archetype of desire and beauty. She doesn't need, she desires. In astrology Venus is co-ruled by aesthetically-discriminating Libra and highly-sensuous Taurus. The potent essence of femininity is represented by Venus. I am not speaking of the maternal mystique, I am speaking of the power of human femaleness. As the roles and behaviors of genders become more modified, we become more unisex, or perhaps "neutered" is a more apropos term. Erotic energy and inclinations are suppressed, nudity becomes unbearable as it defies the unification goal. Sensuality is replaced by mentality, all can be clinically examined and solved, much like when I was a young girl examining live! nudity for scratches, rashes or diseases because my erogenous energy was frightening. Is it a coincidence that the most well-known image of Venus lacks arms, legs and a head? This broken representation of the goddess of desire cannot touch, see, hear, taste nor smell. Only her torso remains for our viewing pleasure.
The senses peak during summer. Fruit ripens for harvest at the autumnal equinox. Life is fuller and looser, enticing the senses. Summer urges us to experience our bodies, the bodies of others. Summer is the season of the nudist; nudists lust to experience their own nudity (rather than strictly the nudity of others). Summer is an ideal time to excavate Venus; she loves to touch, see, hear, taste, smell; the world has much to offer the senses. Your body and senses are masterpieces. Live!
+++ The Previous CULTURECAST +++ THE NEXT CULTURECAST +++
© 1999, GENERATOR 21.
E-mail your comments. We always like to hear from you. Send your snide remarks to rod@g21.net.