Tuesday, March 2, 2010
I'll Show You Mine
I am excited to use this space to share my latest writing project:
I'll Show You Mine
People Talk Candidly About Love, Sex, and Intimacy
Since mid-January 2010, I have been conducting interviews with everyday people as they share their stories and talk candidly about their love lives, past and current relationships, sexual experiences, and views on intimacy.
INTRODUCTION
We enjoy peeking into other people’s lives. My upcoming book captures candid interviews with people about dating, relationships, sex, and love. We are intrigued by these topics, because they tend to be the most interesting, entertaining, and revealing.
The imperative and immutable desire for intimacy universally unites us all. What is the current state of intimacy? How do people define intimacy and what does it mean to them? By examining our love lives and sharing experiences, we can learn a lot about ourselves during those intimate moments when we are at our most vulnerable.
There is value in understanding each other’s perspectives that can assist us with shaping our own viewpoints and might help us erase any stereotypes or misconceptions we might have about each other and how we choose to live. It can also help us grow.
The tradition of oral history lends itself to this project. What Studs Terkel did for “work” in Working, this book intends to accomplish with “intimacy.”
CONTACT ME
If you are someone who thinks you might like to participate in this project, please email me. OR, if you think of anyone else that might be interested (or interesting), please encourage them to email me.
My email address is greg.gerding@gmail.com.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Exclaiming Points
Does the exclamation point mean the same thing now that it did one hundred and fifty years ago? It seems to be the most abused punctuation mark in this, the earliest part of the twenty-first century.
The exclamation point of bygone times seemed hefty and full of weight. The exclamation point of today seems bulimic and sounds of whining.
How was the exclamation point first born? In what year? In what reference? How was it introduced and first used? Did the creator of the exclamation point die instantly afterward, struck dead by the sheer violence of its birth, flayed to bits by its sharp and severe edges?
And what angry bitch bore the use of ALL CAPS? What freak of nature, what abomination? Which two beings copulated to create such a monstrosity? Did the Caps Lock key conspire with the exclamation point?
Please, won’t everyone please just stop yelling? I’ve been rendered deaf and blind by your shit rhetoric and your shit attitude. LIGHTEN UP! RELAX!!!
The exclamation point of bygone times seemed hefty and full of weight. The exclamation point of today seems bulimic and sounds of whining.
How was the exclamation point first born? In what year? In what reference? How was it introduced and first used? Did the creator of the exclamation point die instantly afterward, struck dead by the sheer violence of its birth, flayed to bits by its sharp and severe edges?
And what angry bitch bore the use of ALL CAPS? What freak of nature, what abomination? Which two beings copulated to create such a monstrosity? Did the Caps Lock key conspire with the exclamation point?
Please, won’t everyone please just stop yelling? I’ve been rendered deaf and blind by your shit rhetoric and your shit attitude. LIGHTEN UP! RELAX!!!
Friday, January 22, 2010
Another New Year
I want to apologize to the wind and the rain and the small child that resides inside me. I seek a calm that will not come. I suffer from a restless mind and a damaged heart.
The other day, I envied the glassy, placid river. So smooth, like I could have walked right off the end of the dock across the top of it and been supported.
I have finally been released from prison and I’m already anxious to enter the next one. And I can’t tell if that sentiment pertains to work, or to love.
Is there joy in despair? Is there profit in despondency?
They say, “You should find work that you love.” But the work that I love I suffer at great costs.
The muse, my warden, my executioner, I might notice the axe in her hands, if I wasn’t so distracted by her bare breasts. To think that I could make such a beautiful creature mine. Ha!
I continue committing more crimes, knowing that my only true home is a jail cell. And the only true moments are those that don’t involve paying or watching or sitting, but rather are filled engaging in anything anywhere else.
How many ways do you have to try killing yourself before you simply transform?
I don’t have to remain a prisoner, I do have that choice. No prison guards accompany me, I willfully move myself between routines; my cell, my three meals, my time outside in the yard. I could cut myself free at any time. Why is it that I stay? To whom or what am I bound? Or beholden?
And where went ignorance? Man, I miss ignorance. And naiveties. I miss naiveties too. There used to be so much innocence. So much innocence. And then the world interfered. It got in the way.
The only common denominator through everything, through innocence and our cold, hard lives is a capacity for hurt. We can be hurt and we can cause hurt at every level of our lives, and across every generation. Hurt does not discriminate. Hurt extends to all, and across all borders.
Is hurt a capacity? Or a capability? Or is that the variable? That it could be either one? Or both?
The other day, I envied the glassy, placid river. So smooth, like I could have walked right off the end of the dock across the top of it and been supported.
I have finally been released from prison and I’m already anxious to enter the next one. And I can’t tell if that sentiment pertains to work, or to love.
Is there joy in despair? Is there profit in despondency?
They say, “You should find work that you love.” But the work that I love I suffer at great costs.
The muse, my warden, my executioner, I might notice the axe in her hands, if I wasn’t so distracted by her bare breasts. To think that I could make such a beautiful creature mine. Ha!
I continue committing more crimes, knowing that my only true home is a jail cell. And the only true moments are those that don’t involve paying or watching or sitting, but rather are filled engaging in anything anywhere else.
How many ways do you have to try killing yourself before you simply transform?
I don’t have to remain a prisoner, I do have that choice. No prison guards accompany me, I willfully move myself between routines; my cell, my three meals, my time outside in the yard. I could cut myself free at any time. Why is it that I stay? To whom or what am I bound? Or beholden?
And where went ignorance? Man, I miss ignorance. And naiveties. I miss naiveties too. There used to be so much innocence. So much innocence. And then the world interfered. It got in the way.
The only common denominator through everything, through innocence and our cold, hard lives is a capacity for hurt. We can be hurt and we can cause hurt at every level of our lives, and across every generation. Hurt does not discriminate. Hurt extends to all, and across all borders.
Is hurt a capacity? Or a capability? Or is that the variable? That it could be either one? Or both?
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