Friday, September 20, 2002

Why do I feel as if my emotional attachments are under siege? Why do I feel defensive about the feelings I have about Willie (my sick cat)?

It's probably mostly internalized. It's probably something I'm creating myself--the idea that other people don't take my feelings seriously; in fact I have no reason to think that. Rather, it's really *me* who's having trouble taking them seriously. Chalk this up to another reason why I need to cultivate more patience--for myself as well as for other people.

Anyway, when I took Willie to the vet for the second (or was it third?) time, I sat in the parking lot after I dropped him off and bawled like a new mother. I estimated that I felt somewhere between 25% and 50% of what a parent would feel for their infant child in the same situation. I've believed this for a while now, but only recently has it affected me so personally: there's really no doubt that animal companions of humans ("pets", if you like) are good for you. People with animal companions live longer, they're happier, they're more able to cope with stress, they recover more quickly from illness and trauma. This is no longer really in dispute, in my opinion. It's no longer merely anecdotal lore--it's established fact.

Psychic plants, well, that's another story.

NPR : All Things Considered for September 19, 2002 Your Soul
Commentator Hollis Gillespie says her mother didn't buy religion, but she did believe in repentance -- in a small way. (3:15)

When the surgeons saw the new heart, they cried because it was so beautiful.

Thursday, September 19, 2002

Wednesday, September 18, 2002

From: Darien []
Sent: Saturday, August 17, 2002 11:08 AM
To: 'mellis'
Subject: FW: My quote

I talked with A about some of this just the other day. As you know, this is one of the subjects we're usually not capable of discussing without both of us getting really defensive and argumentative, even when we're not disagreeing. But it suddenly struck us both as quite odd that we'd never said some of these things to one another before now. And she agreed with me, when I said, "If we had met when we were 17, I think I could have turned out straight." At first I was very gratified that she had the insight to see that, but later I realized that it probably just confirmed her view of sexual orientation as a religious mystery, in the presence of which one's only proper response is to avert one's eyes, and never to examine.

This is getting onto a bit of a tangent now, but in talking with Bob and relating this story to him he helped me realize a sadness that arises here and in other places--something I'm sure you can relate to very well. I am a reasoning creature. Reason is a deep, deep, thread in the weave of me and that is never going to change. So when A takes my garrulousness in these matters as a combative move or as an attempt to dishonor her somehow, it hurts me because she isn't meeting me where I live and where I want to be met: in reason and in love of understanding, in awe of the human ability to comprehend without turning away from mystery. Mostly when people do come to see how deeply important reason and knowing is to me, they (sometimes with justification, I admit) assume that it's a defense against feeling, that it's arrogant, that it's disrespectful of them, that it's a denial of their right to be who they are. But that's not what I really want from reason-- its proper use is not a club, it's more like a telescope, something I use to gather, to focus, and to encompass the unfathomably huge for just a few moments before I put it away and marvel once more.

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 6:12 PM
To: Darien Large; Erin
Subject: FW: My quote

In contrast, my best friend, a gay man, found that although he fell in love with and lived with a woman for three years; in the end he really preferred having sex with other men.

So, in both of these cases, our own experiences have been more characterized by biological determinism. However, neither of us are happy with the determinist "party line" and we both speak out against it not infrequently.



-----Original Message-----
From: Darien []
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 9:12 PM
To: 'mellis'; Erin
Subject: RE: My quote



Ah, now you *have* got my attention.

Let me tell you the opinion I've formed over the last few years about my own situation, orientation, what have you. I've come to believe more and more that I *could have* ended up a happily straight person.

Almost from the first time, at age 17, that I admitted to myself that I was gay, I would look back on some formative experiences that I'd had in that direction and try to make sense of them -- they always seemed strangely contingent to me, as if the point that I'd arrived at was the result of chance. It was like I was in the middle of a random walk, but I'd stumbled onto a one-way street.

I'm not going to try to be persuasive; I'll just give you the fully-formed story that I've settled on for myself. (I'll be happy to argue it later, I'm just not in a very rhetorical mood right now :) I started out with a very, very slight inclination towards homosexuality, or perhaps it was simply that I started out with a bit more sexual openness than is typical (in the latter case, this openness could be part of my upbringing, my "environment" just as much as it could be part of my temperament); subsequently I encountered a few opportunities to express or explore my sexuality in a homosexual context and the results were favorable. I gotpositive reinforcement enough times, and negative reinforcement seldom enough, that I continued to move in that direction during a key developmental stage. At the other end, around puberty, out pops a homo.

I admit that this story has been fairly colored by the things I've learned in the last few years about development in the individual organism (biologically speaking; also culturally in a somewhat social species like humans). Many things have the *potential* to turn out any way at all, but once they being developing -- since they can't develop in all directions at once -- a path is chosen somehow or other; and once that happens, it's very difficult to rewind. Think about the acquisition of language in humans, for example. The human brain has an equal capacity to learn *any human language*; but the vast majority of human brains only learn one during the developmental years. Once that stage is over, it'simpossible to attain the level of fluency one has with one's native language.

I think I've expressed to you one thing I've learned about myself and people in general since the time I quit Dell and started having sex again. I've learned that people develop at different rates, and different aspects of their selves develop at different rates within the individual. I joke about it and I exaggerate it to the point where I tell people that I hit puberty at age 30; but there's a grain of truth to that. Extrapolating backwards, I could posit that I went through some key developmental stages as a child at a laterage than most people do, and perhaps that contributed to the feeling I have that my orientation was completely up for grabs until late in the game.

Contrast with some gay people who say that they knew they were gay at age four, or three -- or even younger! One must take these claims with a grain of salt, but I do know that people become aware of (or develop) different aspects of themselves at different ages. (I don't remember *a thing* until around age six.) And you hear these stories often enough that I don't think one can dismiss them entirely.They're talking about *something*, even if they're not talking about exactly what they claim to be. If it can work in that direction, it can certainly work in the other.

This just feels right to me. I don't think I've ever regretted that I wasn't bisexual (or, Heaven forbid,straight!) the way you do, but when I examine my emotionaland sexual makeup, and when I pay attention to the vestigial responses I sometimes have to the opposite sex and recall what it was like for me as a preteen and a teenager, this is the explanation that makes the most sense. And needless to say, there's A. The fact is that we would have broken up even if she was a man; it just might have taken longer. While I was with her, especially at the beginning, the sex was *right* -- and yet, I *never* wondered whether I was bisexual. That's very difficult for people to understand, and part of the explanation is that we were in love. But I know believe that another part of the explanation is that, for the time we were together, I was exploring an alternate world for me; one that could have been, it just didn't happen to be.

So, for me, it could be biological *only* in the sense that perhaps I started out somewhere closer to the middle than is typical. I *don't* think that I started out with a biological factor that means I would have ended up gay with a high degree of probability, and I *don't* think I ever had any chance -- to tell a still-common story -- of ending up thinking I was straight until age 35 with a wife and kids, and only then discovering that I'd had it all wrong. If I'dstarted out down that road instead, I'm pretty sure I'd have ended up a happily well-adjusted hetero.

Well, at least as far as sexual orientation goes.

yr friend Darien

/archives