Morning Light XVIII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

"Don’t Fence Me In"

The following is excerpted from poet and essayist Thomas March’s review of Cathy Crimmins’ book, How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization.

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The only thing inherently gay about any of my tastes is that I require – I insist – that the person I am dating be male. As soon as we insist that a behavior or a taste or an attitude is inherently “gay,” we’re implying that it’s unavailable for a straight man to accept as part of his system of sensibilities. Establishing such a barrier restricts gay men, too – and promotes the same kind of thinking that reinforces negative stereotypes, not just the lovely myth of the well-groomed gay man.

Early in [her] book, Crimmins tells a story about shopping with her daughter and a gay teenage boy who finds her daughter a beautiful dress and then remarks about himself that he “fulfilled [his] function as a gay man.” He laughed, and I hope he really was being ironic. It looks like that kid could make a great personal shopper or have a very successful career in fashion. And good for him, if that’s what he wants. But there are many ways to fulfill one’s function as a gay man. We’re cops and construction workers, too; we don’t just dress up like them. A gay kid needs to know that if he wants to, he can be a good gay man without always helping people pick out clothes. As we’ve learned, it might be hard to be a gay cowboy, but the first step is to say, “Don’t fence me in.”

– Thomas March (The Gay and Lesbian Review, May-June, 2006)

Symbol of Enlightenment

The following is excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson.

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The hare is a symbol of enlightenment, not only of the spirit but of the dawn, the dawn of the day and the dawn of the year which we call spring.

The ancient Egyptian hieroglyph – a picture of a hare – stood for the auxiliary verb “to be,” but auxiliary verbs come late in the development of language and all are derived from words of independent sense. The Egyptian “to be” was associated with creation and had the senses of being, existing, and persisting, which are in mythology often represented by the hare.


Image: Mark Bakker.