Escape

“Escape by a Hare” by Bev Doolittle.

Writes Doolittle: “This painting was practically constructed right outside my window. It’s a painting of the desert, where I live. The prickly-pear cactus, bunch grass and sand take on the long shadows of the early morning and evening — active times of the day for most desert animals. The black-tailed jack rabbits and red-tailed hawks are common sights.

“This is a painting of intense drama. I felt it would be even more intense by not actually showing the hawk, but rather only showing its shadow flowing over the ground and the running hare.”

Morning Light X

Subject: Unknown.
Photographer: Unknown.

Be Like Hare . . . Awaiting Opportunity

“Hare is crouching silently. If you want to avoid being seen, learn from Hare’s special strengths. Taking flight in the center is Raven, whispering by the tiny chipmunk. Fox is peering out of Hare’s thoughts keeping her always alert. The courageous and curious Raccoon invites a kiss from Butterfly. Also hidden in the deep woods is Green Wolf, transforming to sprouting foliage. Be like Hare, and enjoy the stillness in the greenery of nature as she awaits opportunity. Ladybug in flight brings happiness and good luck!”

– Earth Art International.

Gay Consciousness, Sex, and the Evolution of Religion

The following excerpt is from Gay Spirituality: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness by Toby Johnson.

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A gay spirituality is necessarily concerned about sex – and is necessarily sex-positive. People who choose to identify themselves openly as gay are more sexually motivated and more sexually aware than others. If their sexual and affectional urges were insignificant to them, they would never have come out in the first place. Because gay people have experienced their sexual desire as so intense and consuming that it sets them on a different course from their peers, they are more motivated to find deeper levels of meaning for sex and to discover more variety in ways of experiencing it.


Of course, there are highly sexualized straight people. But they do not have a great need to tease out new meaning for sexuality. It comes to them. This is not to deny that for everybody, straight and gay, discovering sex can be difficult or that straight people cannot find new meanings for their sexuality on their own. But the culture supports heterosexuals with a ready explanation of what sex is for, though usually relegating it to a simply biological, reproductive role. As gay people we have to create our own explanations, our own myths, our own visions of why “God” created us this way and what it means to be homosexual. We often have to do this on a person-to-person basis with little help from either mainstream or gay culture.


When we seek spiritual answers as gay people, we are necessarily looking for sex-positive and gay-positive answers. This puts us in a special place in the evolution of religion.

Gay consciousness gives insights into sex by demanding that it be viewed from the perspective of the exceptions, not the norm. What forces a theory – or a theology – to expand and rise to a higher perspective are not the findings that fit the theory, but those that do not. The accumulation of knowledge is founded on seeking explanations for what does not meet expectations and assumptions.


Sex is a state of heightened awareness of consciousness incarnated in flesh, an altered state of consciousness in which individuality is momentarily transcended and consciousness merges with the collective. It is consciousness delighting in its own evolution into human bodies that can feel pleasure and joy.

The most important function of sex in human evolution has been reproduction. You could even say the purpose of sex is to produce babies. A lot of people do say that. Unfortunately, they often go on to say, looking from their own limited perspective, that reproduction is the only purpose of sex, and if sex cannot lead to reproduction then it should not be allowed. They do not see things from a high enough perspective. That there are self-aware and self-identifying gay people tells us that there is more to sex than reproduction. The issue is not what some sort of creator/biodesigner had in mind. The issue is what is real. Homosexuality is real. Therefore, it is part of the design.

It is the homosexuals’ responsibility to create an understanding of functions for ourselves. And we have. This is a major part of our contribution to evolution. As consciousness has evolved, new layers of reality of sex have developed. Certainly, human beings have sex in a much more complex way, more rich, more prolonged than other animals. In addition to a biological process, in human beings sex has evolved into a psychological process.

Modern gay-sensitive research demonstrates broader functions of sex in refuting the notion that homosexuality does not exist among animals. Giving evidence of homosexual activity in more than 450 species, for example, biologist Bruce Bagemihl offers a new paradigm of “biological exuberance.” Nature is driven as much by abundance and excess as it is by limitation and practicality. The conventional model of evolution based in Darwin’s experience of nineteenth century British capitalism presumed scarcity and competition with a winner-take-all mentality called “survival of the fittest.” In fact, perhaps, nature simply delights in variety. Efficiency and cost effectiveness are modern economic ideas. Biological exuberance many be “God’s” idea. And gay people represent the exuberance for fun and pleasure.

– Excerpted from Gay Spirituality: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness by Toby Johnson.

Hare at Twilight

This is where the shadows come to play
‘twixt the day and night;
Dancing and skipping
along a chink of light.

Somewhere in between
the waxing and the waning wave.
Somewhere in between
what the song and the silence say.
Somewhere in between
the ticking and the tocking clock.
Somewhere in a dream between
sleep and waking up.
Somewhere in between
breathing out and breathing in;
Like twilight is neither night nor morning.

“Somewhere in Between”
Kate Bush
(From the 2005 album, Aerial)

Image: “Hare” by Steve Gantlett.

Morning Light IX

Subject: Levi Poulter.
Photographer: Jason Rowan.

Hare o’ the Tabor

“. . . Meanwhile the company talk, and one relates that he has already seen in the Fair, the eagle; the black wolf; the bull with five legs, which ‘was a calf at Uxbridge Fair two years agone;’ the dogs that dance the morrice; and ‘the hare o’ the taber.’”

– Bartholomew Fair in 1614

“Ben Jonson’s mention of the hare that beat the tabor at Bartholomew Fair in his time, is noticed by the indefatigable and accurate Strutt; who gives the [above] representation of the feat itself, which he affirms, when he copied it from a drawing in the Harleian collection, to have been upwards of four hundred years old.”

– William Hone, Hone’s Everyday Book (1826)

Walking the Line

Following are excerpts from the preface of Walking the Line: Photographs by Joe Ziolkowski, a book dedicated to “all men who have challenged and broken the social codes that bar them from loving other men.”

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Joe Ziolkowksi’s figures, tautly framed in empty space, obey a choreography that stems not from the formalized codex of ballet or pantomime, nor that of sportive gesture.

Instead, they display a need for expression that is more restrained and lyrical than exalted and emotional and that appears as authentic self expression.

This nakedness draws us indeed towards the bodies themselves, but the situations are bestowed with something timeless, something elementary. The figures are athletically youthful, like those of a frieze, yet are not exaggerated or exotic sculptures. Almost puritanically the viewers’ concentration is focused on the present body in its entirety. This allows the viewer an identification – although one without clues to time and space.

Joe Ziolkowksi’s work mirrors a richness of feelings. It is a speechless, physical art, directed at signal-like gestures and elementary poses. In a contemporary landscape of voyeurism, it enables a clear vision of an eroticism that is determined by feelings, rather than sexual passion. . . . His theme is the psychic condition of people, which he displays allegorically, sometimes emphasized by a title.

. . . Ziolkowski does not isolate the bodies, but makes them bearers of a sensual self-affirmation, with a subsequent claim to the right of communication. Contrary to George Platt Lynes, whose nudes act upon a stage of desire, these nudes are accessible. They are not an expression of aestheticism, but are articulations of erotic yearning coupled with moral circumstance.

– Peter Weiermair


To visit Joe Ziolkowski’s website, click here.

Resting Hare

“Resting Hare” (bronze finish garden sculpture) by Brian Hollingworth.

British artist Brian Hollingworth has specialized in hare sculpture for many years. His love of hares came from observing and sketching them in their natural habitat.

Writes Hollingworth: “Hares, in ancient times, were believed to be the embodiment of Epona, the Goddess of the Moon. This was because they were observed during autumn and winter months to sit and stare at the moon, trying to see their own image. When spring came, the spirit of Epona had entered them and manifest itself in the wild dancing, chasing and boxing of the Mad March Hare. The Ojibwe tribe of the Western Great Lakes, Minnesota and North Dakota, consider the hare to have been the first teacher of animals and plants, and founder of the art of decoration.”

Morning Light VIII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Epitaph on a Hare

Epitaph on a Hare

By William Cowper

(Written March, 1783. Published in The Gentleman’s Magazine,
Dec., 1784; afterwards in 1800. A copy is in the British Museum.)

Here lies, who, hound did ne’er pursue,
Nor swifter greyhound follow,
Whose foot ne’er tainted the morning dew,
Nor ear heard huntsman’s halloo;

Old Tiney, surliest of his kind,
Who nursed with tender care,
And to domestic bounds confined,
Was still a wild-Jack-hare.

Thought duly from my hand he took
His pittance every night,
He did it with a jealous look
And, when he could, would bite.

His diet was of wheaten bread,
and milk, and oats, and straw;
Thistles, or lettuces instead,
with sand to scour his maw.

On twigs of hawthorn he regaled,
On pippin’s russet peel,
And when his juicy salads failed,
Sliced carrots pleased him well.

A Turkey carpet was his lawn,
Whereon he loved to bound,
To skip and gambol like a fawn,
And swing his rump around.

His frisking was at evening hours,
For then he lost his fear,
But most before approaching showers
Or when a storm drew near.

Eight years and five round-rolling moons
He thus saw steal away,
Dozing out all his idle noons,
And every night at play.

I kept him for his humour’s sake,
For he would oft beguile
My heart of thoughts that made it ache,
And force me to a smile.

But now beneath his walnut shade
He finds his long last home,
And waits, in snug concealment laid,
Till gentler Puss shall come.

He, still more aged feels the shocks,
From which no care can save,
And partner once of Tiney’s box,
Must soon partake his grave.

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From the website of the Cowper and Newton Museum:

On his return to Orchard Side [Cowper] was glad “of anything that would engage my attention without fatiguing it”. Some neighbour’s children had a leveret of which they grew tired. Cowper was offered this and two others. In a letter dated 28th May 1784 Cowper describes the arrangements he made for his pets.

Immediately commencing carpentry, I built them houses to sleep in; each had a separate apartment so contrived that their ordure would pass through the bottom of it; an earthenware pan placed under each received whatsoever fell, which duly emptied and washed thus kept sweet and clean. In the daytime they had the range of the hall, and at night retired to his own bed, never intruding into that of another . . .

A memorandum found among Cowper’s papers dated 9th March 1786 records the last of his three hares.

This day died poor Puss, aged eleven years and eleven months. She died between twelve and one, at noon, of old age, and apparently without pain.


Image: “Brown Hare” by Susan Shimeld.

Gay Identity

One blogsite I particularly like to visit on a regular basis is D. Stephen Heersink’s Gay Species.

Heersink is an excellent (and prolific) writer. His posts are erudite and insightful without being dry or lacking in humanity and humor. If you’re not familiar with his blog, then it’s one that the Leveret highly recommends you get to know.

As a teaser, here’s an excerpt from Heersink’s October 2006 reflection on gay identity – a reflection inspired by his reading of Gregory Woods’ A History of Gay Literature.

Enjoy!

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Other than two men finding erotic pleasures in each other, I’m not sure what a gay identity or a gay sensibility actually entails. Even the actual sexual practices between two men are not sufficiently standard to claim anything more than mutual eroticism in the broadest possible terms is defining of “gay.” And I’m rather insistent of this most basic feature. The erotic interests of “gay” men are not endless, mind you, but nor are they universal. Without going into extreme detail, suffice it that some gay men kiss and some do not. If something as basic as kissing is not a gay universal, then I cannot insist anything more sexual is either. From this vantage, all that is common is a male's attraction for another male, the individual dynamics taking each where each wants to go.

On another front, however, there does seem to be one universal gay sensibility that seems unquestioned and without parallel. Indeed, the absence of male aggression and fighting among gay men is rather extraordinary when juxtaposed against men in general. This is not to say that gay men won’t or don’t fight back, go to the rescue of someone being assaulted, or don’t slap a lover in an extreme situation. . . . But unlike the straight men who killed Matthew Shepard out of some perverse pleasure of exerting they’re own sense of masculinity, or who delight in lynching minorities who appear different from themselves, or fly into a jealous rage over another male’s casual look at another male’s woman, gay men are not prone to engage in violence, mayhem, or endangerment for the sheer pleasure of chest-beating masculinity to prove they are masculine. Maybe they don’t care, or perhaps they have no need to prove their masculinity to others. Whatever the reason, it is a well-documented fact that gay men do not engage in violence for its own sake like straight males.

I’ll add another gay sensibility that may not be universal, but seems pretty ubiquitous none the same. Gay men are neat. Not “personality” neat (although I think that is true), but decorum neat, tidy neat, well-organized, and civil. I’ve never been in another gay man’s dwelling where a typical “male mess” is found. Some straights think gay proclivity towards neatness, order, and hygiene (and if so disposed, toward aesthetics) is stereotypical of gay men, and I think they’re right. Most gay men are hospitable and generous in ways that straight men haven’t the slightest clue. We wash our dishes after using them, wash our clothes after wearing them, and make our beds even though no one else will know or care. We seem to extend an offering of hospitality no matter what. In other words, gay men are generally clean and orderly, and we take pride in our hospitality. If it weren’t for women and gay men, our world would be so disordered, so topsy-turvy, so on the sly, that no one would take any of us seriously. Straight men need women to calm their hyper-agitation to respectable speeds. Gay men seem to come already predisposed.

But before I go into total self-appreciation, other than homoeroticism, non-aggression, and orderliness, I’d be hard pressed to define or categorize gay men any more precisely. Oh sure, we seem to have our fair share of drama and a petulant reaction to suppression, frequently personalizing some extrinsic feature as a personal assault on our dignities, but, hey, after so much hostility by people we don’t know, much less care to know, who want to rehabilitate us in their image, cure us of our afflictions, rescue us from hell, or tell us our natural inclinations are unnatural (450 species to the contrary notwithstanding), we often get testy when we’re told we can’t or won’t be loved, because God, Yahweh, or Allah disapproves. To this day, some men are still threatened by our appreciation of male beauty, the depreciation of our same-sex love, our courage to be “different,” however or whatever form that takes, but the truth is that as every person is different, as every person seeks fulfillment, as everyone hopes for that extraordinary person who will complement us, whatever our unique individual differences, and they are legion, we will not become what we are not.

Admittedly, we’re still finding out what it means to be “gay,” whatever that may mean, but what we won’t tolerate are others’ intolerance of our difference or in exploring what it might mean for each of us as unique individuals to be unique. Maybe “gay identity” is only an illusion, but the delusions hoisted on us to conform to some mythical stereotype of the abstract man according to religious bigots, is an even greater illusion. The current environment of hostility and hate and enmity notwithstanding, we won’t forfeit our freedom to become what others want us to be. If Walt Whitman could be honest, gay, and an unabashed democrat in favor of human pluralism, the courage to be, as Paul Tillich once wrote, is the only courage to have.

To read Heersink’s reflection on gay identity in its entirety, click here.


Recommended Off-site Links:
The Gay Species
Androphilia (Heersink’s other weblog).