THE NAKED ANIMAL

While celebrating my twentieth year of good health with HIV, I found out I had cancer--stage four non-Hodgkins lymphoma--and went through a year of both Western and alternative treatments, thanks to which I am now cancer-free. When I began, body misshapen and in constant pain, I figured that if I weren't going to self actualize, finally, that I might as well use the banana peel at hand to slip on out. Something in me was stronger, though, than whatever was dragging me down, so instead of seeking solace in death, I embraced the process of self transformation, employing all the techniques I had gleaned from my many years of searching for healing to guide me.


As the tumors and grueling chemotherapeutic side effects slowly melted away during the spring and summer of 2005, I had a breakthrough on many different levels. On the physical plane, I felt better than I had in years--my oncologist had estimated that I had probably been growing tumors for close to three years before I was diagnosed (in a state nearer death than living) in the summer of 2004.

And then something happened that still astonishes me: Through an extremely efficient course of psychotherapy, as well as the effects of bouncing back so successfully from the brink, I was finally able to both completely dissolve my festering resentment towards my parents and heal my ego. It may have taken almost forty years of extreme effort, but in the final days of these twin processes, my machinations felt as pragmatic and mechanical as unclogging a plugged pipe. Away went my fear, anger and pain down the drain, and in their place now flourish a great compassion for the people my parents are and an ego that is a functioning partner in my survival and success rather than a petty terrorist.

These two basic but resounding changes have been reverberating with positive energy throughout the several intertwined layers of my being: not only physical, but also emotional, intellectual, environmental, social and spiritual. I have not made it anywhere, nor is there anywhere specific to get to on this cyclical journey we're all taking, but I have made a major shift that I had been pushing for ever since I learned to walk, and because of it I am now changing--yes, and healing--at a faster pace than before. I feel that this is happening on personal, cultural and more etheric levels all over the planet--we are slowly (because it always happens slowly when time is of the essence), slowly evolving to solve inner and outer conflicts by widening our perspectives and courting synergistic, rather than antagonistic, relationships between our many selves and with others.

So...

THE NAKED ANIMAL is an ongoing analysis of my own journey toward multidimensional health and wellness, and an idiosyncratic documentation of humanity's analogous process.

The Naked Animal is concerned with continued human evolution, dedicated to creative exploration for the truth behind longstanding psychic and cultural conflicts, and intent on fusing the schisms they have created.

The Naked Animal courts ever greater universal synergy, makes connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena whenever possible, and never loses sight of the fact that cause and effect work in one great web that spans all dimensions.

The Naked Animal bares himself and the world to total, honest scrutiny because nasty old wounds need lots of fresh air to heal.

The Naked Animal encourages copious comments from all and sundry.

The Naked Animal is a laboratory, information hub and energy source for the many new paradigms that are springing up on the fertile, bowing backs of the dying old ones.

The Naked Animal is stripped down and geared for transformation, hungry and always hunting for further clarification.

The Naked Animal is always what it seems and often what it dreams.

Categories: healing, cancer, HIV-AIDS, psychotherapy, evolution

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Yesterday was a challenging day, as autumn came on full blast to heat up the melancholy swelter that always hits me on Sundays, anyway. I had just spent two relaxed but eventful weekend nights, and I felt like I was just starting to get my mojo going when the reality of Monday dawned upon my still-dreaming brain the minute I woke up to the cold, damp gray of a late-October Sunday. Now, I know it's no use perpetually living in the future, because you end up never paying attention to what's actually going on; but I just couldn't kick the dread of Monday out of my head yesterday, and I spent the entire day on the verge of tears.

One bright spot, though that didn't stop me from wanting to start bawling the whole time I was there, was a baby shower for my friends Lisi and Sandra, who are about to be the proud parents of a bountifully burgeoning bundle of joy. It even got sunny just for a couple of hours during the party. I must admit that I think lesbians make better parents than gay men, from my own experience. I don't like to generalize in general, but generally, women are more grounded than men, no matter what their sexual preference. I know women are the ones caricatured as flighty, high-strung and absent-minded, but men have their heads much higher in the clouds. And then they're also better bull-shitters, so they can make you think they're grounded when they're not. There now, GOD, does that sound stupid generalizing about FIFTY PERCENT of the entire human race! That'll teach me!

In any case, Lisi and Sandra are such a delightful pair that I can't imagine their child having anything but an ever-more-wonderful kind of life. There were babies everywhere at that party, from swaddlin' to toddlin', seemingly falling out of the sky to putter or pule, putting a new twist on the phrase "baby shower." Then there was the non-breeding crowd, who sat around eating ethnic meats and designer cupcakes and talking about the fact that a pet was quite enough, thank you very much. However, one guest with a Corgi (and various other pets at home) admitted she wouldn't mind having a few kids to add to the family.

I was bemused by my own feeling of being slightly left out, since I've always felt that my not procreating was the only smart thing for myself and the public-at-large. But for just a second there, I thought, sheesh, what's my part in this whole chain of life thing? And then I thought, Ah yes, the artist and the satisfaction he or she is meant to get from her or his creations...the progeny of my fevered brain, friends, is what I freely offer to that chain.

(And can we please come up with a non-sexualized pronoun to use someday soon, people?!)

Back home at dusk, I ditched my chores (doing laundry at a Sunset Boulevard laundromat on a gloomy Sunday is not advised for those with a history of suicidal tendencies), flopped down in front of the TV and watched perhaps the most insistently tragic and eerily beautiful movie I could have imagined: Dolls by Takeshi Kitano. The Japanese have a melancholy streak many rivers wide, and this movie explored several currents that run through it using the framing device of a dramatic and stylized Bunraku epic. It was stately, somewhat inscrutable, and full of moments that reflected perfectly the tension between the sweetness and the harshness of human life, and this combination of effects acted like a skeleton key to unlock the cache of tears I'd been collecting throughout the day. I sobbed heartily for a few minutes...okay, it was half an hour...and simply let myself be sad. Okay, I said, it's all right to be sad, cry it out, wipe your face, go to sleep...tomorrow's another day.

And it worked. I slept well; woke up early--but not in any better a mood. I still dread Mondays, and I do hate playing the role of the "Everybody's Workin' for the Weekend" drone. And yet there's something... somehow...soothing... about it, too... ... ...twitch twitch...buzz buzz...the queen is calling!...must feed the hive...buzz buzz...twitch twitch...

Categories: emotions, friends, film, Japan, work

The Naked Animal was present at last week's LA Burning Man Decompression party in a warehouse district under a bridge east of 1st and Alameda, where he shimmied and swayed until his hips could switch no more.


I wore a skirt that I had made with what was available the day of Beltaine 2003 at the Short Mountain Sanctuary. That sunny afternoon, the universe yielded me several large heaps of colorful rags that had just been torn off the recently felled previous year's maypole. They were faded, ripped, shredded and distorted in a multitudinous fashion after a year in the elements, which made for a psychedelic effect once I had knotted over a hundred strips to a string and tied it around my waist. After the new maypole was up, the clouds swirled and burst upon us, and I danced like a slave girl breaking free from her chains for four hours straight while a group of drummers kept the beat going higher...and higher...and higher. It was raining, and we were in a pavilion on stilts in the low, leafy woods. I swear that at the height of our jam session the whole building rose a few feet off the ground and possibly rotated a few times. It was most assuredly vibrating.

My ecstatic dance last Saturday was the supernatural skirt's only other wearing, and though it did not match the intensity of the legendary (in my mind) Short Mountain Beltaine Pavilion Jam '03, I did make the same sizzling connection I had made that May Day. It was a pure, joyous, passionate connection with the part of me that just wants to be a magic dancer, weaving spells for universal integration with the interlocking shapes that my arms and hips describe in space. There was a moment when I was urged to take over the dance floor at the small and groovy breakbeat space near the entrance to the whole shebang, and I did, with aplomb, radiating and concentrating at the same time, flowing in and out of myself and the world around me in a sweet yet demanding convulsion of love, awareness and the beauty of being lost in it all. Meanwhile Kardinall Ofishall chanted "a belly dancer, a snake charmer, a belly dancer, a snake charmer," supported by a super funky mix by the long-haired DJ who'd probably put it on with me in mind--my hips have a life of their own, and I was buck-naked under the lanky strands of my skirt. That song became my anthem for the week, and I've been chanting it ever since like a mantra. Later, while I was waiting in line for a Margarita, a nearly transparent and elegantly wizened fairy named Xanadu dubbed my look and my dancing style "Psychedelic Hula," and that's a pretty good description of it. I do communicate with every part of my body and beyond when I dance, though I have no idea what I'm saying.

And I don't have to, and on that day, nobody else did either, which epitomizes the beauty of this kind of barrier-busting event: We all knew what each other was saying already without having to say it, so all we had to do was smile and hug and dance and chat about marvelous things that tickled our funny bones or stirred our souls. For a whole week after that day, I thought, "Fuck this word bullshit. Who wants to add to the overwhelming chatter that keeps us disconnected from the true flow of the universe? Language is merely an interloper upon this supernaturally synergistic life of ours. Fuck words. Fuck language. Bring on telepathy!"

Then I got caught up in workaday reality again, and saw that there was still a need for words, for language both written and spoken, that not everyone was ready to let go and dance their hearts on at the universal disco, that many were still scared to come out on the dance floor, or possibly didn't even know that there was a dance floor.

If you can feel the rhythm in your souls, I highly advise heading towards the music you hear, whether in your own head or somewhere out there--even somewhere WAY OUT there.

Meanwhile, I'm really sick of getting up early and having to wear a tie to work--does anyone by any chance know of any paying gigs that might be open for a 39-year-old white male self-trained belly dancer?

tra la la....

Categories: psychedelic, dance, faeries, evolution, language, community

...or do you like "expialadocious" (with an a, not an i) better?


Either way, expialidocious (ex-pee-al-a-doe-shuss) is an adjective that can be used to describe anything or anyone who goes beyond the generally agreed upon confines of reality to mine new information from the unknown and enlarge our boundaries of perception. Expialidocious things, people, movements and memes not only push the envelope, but bust through it. Expialadocious people, movements, memes and things are in constant motion both outward and inward. Expialidocious memes, movements, things and people are driven by an intense passion for expanded modes of thought, communication, living and being. Expialidocious things, memes, people and movements keep reaching even when their arms can stretch no more. Being expialidocious means fusing the known with the unknown to make the known that much bigger.

Because being expialidocious expands your frame of reference so much that you see without obstruction that everything is connected, and that all people belong to one grand humanity with one central mission--to live out its life on this gracious planet in peace, harmony and plenty--expialidocious people often push for things like equal rights, the end of war and the redistribution of wealth. They are concerned with synergy rather than separateness, and many believe in magic.

When I was a kid, being expialidocious sometimes got you killed or made you disappear.

Martin Luther King was expialidocious, as were Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez and Mother Teresa.
The Stonewall Inn uprising was expialidocious, as were the early gay pride marches (now they're nothing but porno ads on parade). Dykes on Bikes are extremely expialidocious, and so are all gender-bending phenomena.

Julie Andrews in Disney's Mary Poppins was expialidocious (even if she was of the "supercalifragilistic-" kind).

Prophets are inherently expialidocious; the organized religions that have sprung from their teachings are most often not. (Read here about a recent meeting of world religions, which refutes this assertion.) Art is almost always expialidocious. Doing anything your own way in the face of personal or cultural barriers is the epitome of expialidociousness. Buckminster Fuller is one of my favorite expialidocious human beings.

The world is getting more and more expialidocious by the minute; walls are crumbling left and right; the rigid old regimes of the world that have been so intricately perfected in the last century are shaky on their rotting foundations of hierarchic obfuscation and systematic separation. And the expialidocious energy of the world is stepping in with impunity to cover over the holes with new ideas, connections and constructs.

The Naked Animal strives to be expialidocious in casually, yet seriously, reporting this gloriously fragmented tide as it reaches the beach, and is intent upon contributing to its momentum as much as super-humanly possible. His life has been unwaveringly expialidocious up to this point, so there's no reason for me to envision him giving up now.

Brush off the crippling dust of the last few millenia and rediscover the new human with me.

Categories: visionaries, transformation, glbt, memes

I heard once that Queen Elizabeth espoused the fittingly imperious notion that six hours should be enough daily sleep for any fully functioning adult, and I'm testing that theory, whether apocryphal or not. I've turned into a human whirlwind while weaving my weblet (link to my other blogs in the sidebar) this past weekend, and I'm finding it very hard to go to sleep, though I must be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed before my class of two discerning and enquiring ESL students by 8:30, and the drive to get there is half an hour. Eight hours of dreamtime is more like it for me, and I'll address the issue of sleep in the near future, once I've experienced a fair amount of the stuff for myself.

As I sit here at the stroke of midnight, mind blazing with live connections, I think about another interesting piece of the global puzzle imparted to me this morning by my Turkmen student (see previous post--sorry, I'm usually extremely good about links, but I'm POOPED!). Today I found out that children in Turkmenistan learn in Muslim school that Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed are all equally valid prophets, and that they all say essentially the same things.

Makes you wonder when a country that most Americans don't even know exists is light years ahead of us as far as understanding the interconnectivity of all human cultures goes.

Innit, now?

I am just now barely coherently yours, but eager to forge ahead -
the Naked (and sleeping) Animal

illustration link (japanese)

The title of this post comes from a bon mot one of my ESL students--a postgraduate in finance from Turkmenistan--came up with when I asked him what his first impression of Americans was when he arrived in the US several months ago: "Always smiling, always hungry," he said in a sing-song Black Sea drawl--I laughed for a minute straight; it could be our national tag line.

On the flip side of the happy hamburger culture, though, we have a new report that claims seven of ten American women and nine of ten American men will eventually become obese before they kick the bucket. Work your ass off, get fat, die: the great American way.

Apparently I'm halfway out of the woods: according to the study, I am 50% less likely to get fat from this point on because I've made it to (almost) 40 without ballooning. In fact, I've recently rediscovered my 30-inch waistline (misplaced some time in the early 90s), but it wasn't easy; and that's a different post. My dad had a potbelly by 30, and even today, most straight guys I meet who are over 30 are also sportin' the ol' gut. That's a mystery to me. Can some straight guy or girl fill me in on this? I'd bet you anything that the one out of ten American men who stay lean are 90 percent gay (vanity is an honored and integral part of our culture), and the other 10 percent of that small number is probably dominated by the gloriously undefined "bi-curious" set.

Now, I don't know if being straight was a prerequisite for the study, but it was conducted exclusively within a group of white, middle class, midlifers. What, no minorities?--a group at even higher risk of obesity, as "Fat Ass Nation" on the freestylin' "My Amusement Park" blog perspicaciously points out.

No matter what color they are, the poor are in extreme danger of growing ever larger due to the fact that, calorie for calorie, junk and fast food are cheaper than fresh fare--not to mention vastly easier to deal with for people whose already jeopardized will is wasted on simply making enough money to eat the nasty stuff they feed themselves; oh, and not to mention the fact that the stuff is "as addictive as heroin," according to Princeton University. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd be suspicious, but I'm not (either the former or the latter). However, if you look closely at the evolution of modern industry and advertising alongside the rise in obesity, I'm almost positive you can find a correlation.

Britain is hot on the trail of obesity these days--literally, with National Walk to School Week, as reported by TreeHuggerMum--specifically due to "Naked Chef" Jamie Oliver's recent television campaign against the truly putrid mush and junk that was being fed to schoolchildren all over the isle. The government has pledged a great deal of money to school lunch reform and has already outlawed junk food vending machines on school campuses. Way to go, Jamie - now that's good television! Read all about it here.

Down under, they're making interactive video games so that kids can sit on their fattening little asses for hours in front of the TV and learn about how dangerous and unhealthy it is to get fat (while they're munching sweetened cereal from the box -- yum!). Then again, it is possible that they prize the potbelly in Australia.

And here in the US? Um...well, the government wants to put a warning on french fries, for a start. Hey, it's just a drop in the empty KFC bucket, but it's something. We can always supersize it, right?