I just gifted your subscription to 5 family members and friends. I recommended you as one of the best writers on Substack. The first email my friends and family will get from you includes this headline? What are you doing to me man? Now they all are thinking I am a sinner, which come to think of it feels a little good.
Thanks for the support, Dan, but let's be honest - with FP, there was always going to be a good chance of "anal" being in the title whenever you gifted it.
I once managed to rack up a few hundred new subscribers in one week and the first post that went out to them was about cockroaches 🤣 I immediately questioned my entire existence.
Pro tip: do your sex shopping at a store that caters to a largely military clientele. Discipline + young (mostly male) hormones = some interesting and sinful items, Apple-free.
That’s exactly it- as I work on my memoir, it takes me a while sometimes to get to call myself out. Yup! I never thought of it this way, my sin. Also, this is fucking hilarious : “Apple stores are the opposite of sex. They’re an entirely different kind of anal.”
And part of the pleasure of writing is turning your back on a slew of "accepted", "productive" activities :) - or as my mother used to say: stop wasting your time with that writing thing! I think the posters call that "negative reinforcement"!
I was exactly there this week. My piece was good enough but there was no edge to it, no cheeky laugh, no sin. Thank you for putting words to the process. It fucks! Git shabbes.
It reminds me of that Hemingway line everyone loves to quote, that writing is easy, just cut your wrists and bleed on the page. I think we forget the "blood" part. Not something gory, just something... alive.
I've been thinking about writers who wrestle with questions. Especially Solzhenitsyn, in "Cancer Ward," where twice a character asks in passing, "What does man live by?" And this is the beating heart of the book. The author engages the question seriously, with acuity and humor, without falling into reductive platitudes.
I think there is a correspondence between "sin" and "question." Because to "sin" is to undermine what we aspire to. If you don't think a genuine question is dangerous, read the Phaedo. Both sin and question open voids in the fiction of our lives. They open insidious cracks in the stories we hold to, and we suffer until we realize 1) the story is shit, and 2) we can't fit the story— /no one/ can fit the story.
There is a reason why sex in all cultures is surrounded by taboos. The taboo also makes sex delectable. At the same time, the potency of sex must be tamed, lest it get loose and wreak havoc in society and psyche. Else, through reductive over-familiarity (like that sex store), it become trivialized. That's the doom of culture right there, isn't it?
As long as the questioning is genuine, yes, there's definitely a correspondence between the two. The Talmud, for example, is volumes and volumes of questions. The only problem is the answer to the Big Question is predetermined. No one ever says, "Hey, you know what? I guess that proves God doesn't exist!" The one or two who did were excommunicated. Perhaps that explains my need to question/sin.
I heard somewhere that God can neither be proven to exist, nor not to exist. The totality of the attributes of God, that is, omniscience, omnipresence, eternality, self-sufficiency, self-identity, and all the rest of it, is not intelligible. It's paradoxical. The premise that God exists ends up being self-contradictory, and not only because he's not a nice guy (let us not quibble.) If you're a pure rationalist, that sounds like the end of the argument. But to take oneself to be a pure rationalist is also self-contradictory. We are ourselves at least as mysterious as God.
I discovered literature much earlier than 5 books of Moses(one couldn't find this. I mean maybe somewhere in some uni library, under lock and key. it wasn't at stores). Or New Testament for this matter-they did allow to print New Testament at some point when I was nearing my late teens. I didn't see no virtue or holiness at all-I saw stories, full of relationships and miracles and catastrophies, and just as full of sin as everything else is.
We didn't operate in this world where "sin" is a word-we knew it from books, of course, but we never said it. Of course one could be a bad person, or a good person, or it was anything in between, or a confusion.
I was turned though into somebody who's probably bad, by somebody who was bad on any accounts. So I tried to be good, but I was awfully bad at the same time, and it becomes hard not to be bad because that's how one makes sense of things. When one's too young. I guess.
That's true, people then flock to you-I wonder is it sin or they smell blood or they see themselves in you, or they see a story they want to be a part of, only they don't know the story?
Yet time comes and one's so awfully tired. Because then they want normalcy, you see. You stay their sin, and they lock you in some box, like a glass dildo ot something.
I'm quite tired of being locked in many boxes. I'd rather break and shutter even though it's painful as hell.
In short. Sorry for the musings-I guess I meant to say that's an interesting post. I don't look for sin because sin I have, neither I look for virtue. I look for a story that swipes me like a wave and makes me a part of it. I'm already a part of everything, after all. And in real life I make enough effort to be fucking autonomous already.
I have to say I was shocked when adult stores and fetish events started to appear in my face book feed. It makes it feel so sanitised for a sex shop to be advertising its wares next to my cousins cat pictures. I prefer the literally dark seedy websites that you have click off of your family member suddenly walks in the room than the white perky spaces on social media.
This is hilarious. I know what was wrong with that shop besides absence of sin. Too much Latinate language. All those ‘ation’ words - not sexy! Distancing. Medical! Penetration - not sexy. Fucking - good Old English/Norse roots = fun.
Robert Caro had a note on his writing lamp: "Is there desperation on this page?" He didn't say "sin" but I think it's buried there in the desperation. "Is there sin on every page?" This is primo advice.
I think writers and readers are alike in that regard - we're like sharks. If there's not a little blood in the water, we lose interest. We're just sleeping with our eyes open.
This one gets printed out for frequent accessible re-reading (FAR). I would put it on the shelf next to your books but I need it right here on my desk to keep me going.
You just correlated the risks we must take as writers with sin in such a colorful, memorable way. I’ll never look at sex shops the same way! More importantly, I’m now reminded of the need to step outside of my comfort zone, to take chances and to get dirty. Thank you.
Woody Allen said sex is only dirty if you're doing it right. That didn't age particularly well, but it remains true. I feel the same way about writing.
W. Allen doesn’t have a clue. But it’s part of the gen. Our collective, to some degree. Evolutionarily… I must suppose.
Words (like “dirty” & all really) are the way, tools of writers. It was funny 😁. Sexual pleasure is a realm of its own. No matter how it’s done, w/or without whom (other than Spirit of course which is always w/us ;) helping make sense); & how one sees or writes about it- is only contextual. And sorry if I’m over analyzing. Love you - Shalom. xoxo
I doubt it. Given his physical state, taking off his shoes would add about 45 minutes to the whole process, and that's not counting getting them back on.
I just gifted your subscription to 5 family members and friends. I recommended you as one of the best writers on Substack. The first email my friends and family will get from you includes this headline? What are you doing to me man? Now they all are thinking I am a sinner, which come to think of it feels a little good.
Thanks for the support, Dan, but let's be honest - with FP, there was always going to be a good chance of "anal" being in the title whenever you gifted it.
🤣🤣🤣 Dan! May the force be with you!
I once managed to rack up a few hundred new subscribers in one week and the first post that went out to them was about cockroaches 🤣 I immediately questioned my entire existence.
Pro tip: do your sex shopping at a store that caters to a largely military clientele. Discipline + young (mostly male) hormones = some interesting and sinful items, Apple-free.
My husband is a veteran. I know of what I speak.
Hilarious. Would love to see the posters from those stores.
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
That’s exactly it- as I work on my memoir, it takes me a while sometimes to get to call myself out. Yup! I never thought of it this way, my sin. Also, this is fucking hilarious : “Apple stores are the opposite of sex. They’re an entirely different kind of anal.”
The Apple bite got me, too!
And part of the pleasure of writing is turning your back on a slew of "accepted", "productive" activities :) - or as my mother used to say: stop wasting your time with that writing thing! I think the posters call that "negative reinforcement"!
I was exactly there this week. My piece was good enough but there was no edge to it, no cheeky laugh, no sin. Thank you for putting words to the process. It fucks! Git shabbes.
It reminds me of that Hemingway line everyone loves to quote, that writing is easy, just cut your wrists and bleed on the page. I think we forget the "blood" part. Not something gory, just something... alive.
So spot-on. So strangely uplifting.
I've been thinking about writers who wrestle with questions. Especially Solzhenitsyn, in "Cancer Ward," where twice a character asks in passing, "What does man live by?" And this is the beating heart of the book. The author engages the question seriously, with acuity and humor, without falling into reductive platitudes.
I think there is a correspondence between "sin" and "question." Because to "sin" is to undermine what we aspire to. If you don't think a genuine question is dangerous, read the Phaedo. Both sin and question open voids in the fiction of our lives. They open insidious cracks in the stories we hold to, and we suffer until we realize 1) the story is shit, and 2) we can't fit the story— /no one/ can fit the story.
There is a reason why sex in all cultures is surrounded by taboos. The taboo also makes sex delectable. At the same time, the potency of sex must be tamed, lest it get loose and wreak havoc in society and psyche. Else, through reductive over-familiarity (like that sex store), it become trivialized. That's the doom of culture right there, isn't it?
As long as the questioning is genuine, yes, there's definitely a correspondence between the two. The Talmud, for example, is volumes and volumes of questions. The only problem is the answer to the Big Question is predetermined. No one ever says, "Hey, you know what? I guess that proves God doesn't exist!" The one or two who did were excommunicated. Perhaps that explains my need to question/sin.
I heard somewhere that God can neither be proven to exist, nor not to exist. The totality of the attributes of God, that is, omniscience, omnipresence, eternality, self-sufficiency, self-identity, and all the rest of it, is not intelligible. It's paradoxical. The premise that God exists ends up being self-contradictory, and not only because he's not a nice guy (let us not quibble.) If you're a pure rationalist, that sounds like the end of the argument. But to take oneself to be a pure rationalist is also self-contradictory. We are ourselves at least as mysterious as God.
The truth is, He/She/It doesn't matter.
Like Descartes said, “I have no need of this hypothesis.”
I guess we want what we don't have
I discovered literature much earlier than 5 books of Moses(one couldn't find this. I mean maybe somewhere in some uni library, under lock and key. it wasn't at stores). Or New Testament for this matter-they did allow to print New Testament at some point when I was nearing my late teens. I didn't see no virtue or holiness at all-I saw stories, full of relationships and miracles and catastrophies, and just as full of sin as everything else is.
We didn't operate in this world where "sin" is a word-we knew it from books, of course, but we never said it. Of course one could be a bad person, or a good person, or it was anything in between, or a confusion.
I was turned though into somebody who's probably bad, by somebody who was bad on any accounts. So I tried to be good, but I was awfully bad at the same time, and it becomes hard not to be bad because that's how one makes sense of things. When one's too young. I guess.
That's true, people then flock to you-I wonder is it sin or they smell blood or they see themselves in you, or they see a story they want to be a part of, only they don't know the story?
Yet time comes and one's so awfully tired. Because then they want normalcy, you see. You stay their sin, and they lock you in some box, like a glass dildo ot something.
I'm quite tired of being locked in many boxes. I'd rather break and shutter even though it's painful as hell.
In short. Sorry for the musings-I guess I meant to say that's an interesting post. I don't look for sin because sin I have, neither I look for virtue. I look for a story that swipes me like a wave and makes me a part of it. I'm already a part of everything, after all. And in real life I make enough effort to be fucking autonomous already.
I have to say I was shocked when adult stores and fetish events started to appear in my face book feed. It makes it feel so sanitised for a sex shop to be advertising its wares next to my cousins cat pictures. I prefer the literally dark seedy websites that you have click off of your family member suddenly walks in the room than the white perky spaces on social media.
If you're not slamming your laptop closed when the kids walk in, it's not sex.
This is hilarious. I know what was wrong with that shop besides absence of sin. Too much Latinate language. All those ‘ation’ words - not sexy! Distancing. Medical! Penetration - not sexy. Fucking - good Old English/Norse roots = fun.
Robert Caro had a note on his writing lamp: "Is there desperation on this page?" He didn't say "sin" but I think it's buried there in the desperation. "Is there sin on every page?" This is primo advice.
I think writers and readers are alike in that regard - we're like sharks. If there's not a little blood in the water, we lose interest. We're just sleeping with our eyes open.
Wow.
This one gets printed out for frequent accessible re-reading (FAR). I would put it on the shelf next to your books but I need it right here on my desk to keep me going.
The best by FAR.
You just correlated the risks we must take as writers with sin in such a colorful, memorable way. I’ll never look at sex shops the same way! More importantly, I’m now reminded of the need to step outside of my comfort zone, to take chances and to get dirty. Thank you.
Woody Allen said sex is only dirty if you're doing it right. That didn't age particularly well, but it remains true. I feel the same way about writing.
W. Allen doesn’t have a clue. But it’s part of the gen. Our collective, to some degree. Evolutionarily… I must suppose.
Words (like “dirty” & all really) are the way, tools of writers. It was funny 😁. Sexual pleasure is a realm of its own. No matter how it’s done, w/or without whom (other than Spirit of course which is always w/us ;) helping make sense); & how one sees or writes about it- is only contextual. And sorry if I’m over analyzing. Love you - Shalom. xoxo
Damn you're an amazing writer
“Where’s the sin?” - Great advice!
.. sorry dude.. Auslander.. xtra points for invoking Huck.. on the joyous shortcuts to hanky panky perdition
but i is still in emotional thrall of Stormy’s Sinful Testimony.. of ‘Paid Fake Penetration’ .. or ‘aspirational performance failure’
.. might I add too.. ah no.. unrequited presindential sex failure in a blue suit & red tie.. did he take his shoes off ?
I doubt it. Given his physical state, taking off his shoes would add about 45 minutes to the whole process, and that's not counting getting them back on.