July 15

 I don't really have anything fancy to title this today ...

Just wanted to acknowledge my chaotic feelings today. 

Physically: nausea, headache, sweating, dry mouth, tiredness. my right big toe is sore. 

Emotionally: "sad" (I'm not sure I'm thinking of the right word here), wrung out, emotionally done. maybe feeling a little depressed? unloveable? unwanted? not sure what best describes how I'm feeling today ...

I just feel like I can't do anything right, even when I know it's right ...

BOOK REVIEW: CAMILLE PAGLIA

This is Camille Paglia's first major work, and the work with the most scholarly focus: a survey of Western literature with an emphasis on sexual decadence.

Paglia starts with a view of human nature wherein roles are heavily biologically determined and views all of Western Culture through this lens: all art either embraces the natural or struggles in denial against it.

Throwing her lot with Hobbes and Dionysus, she follows in the tradition of work like Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy," where engaging assertion and overstatement are more important than rigorously proving a case. She argues passionately, with poetic flair: for her, human sexuality is dark, cruel, sadistic, powerful, demonic, perverse, murky, decadent, pagan...

The bulk of the work is a survey of Western literature from this point of view, with emphasis on: Spencer, Shakespeare, Rousseau, de Sade, Goethe, Blake, William Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lord Byron, Shelley, Keats, Honore de Balzac, Theophile Gautier, Baudelaire, Huysmans, Emily Bronte, Swinburne, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Emerson, Walt Whitman, Henry James, and Emily Dickinson.

From the first chapter to the last, Paglia writes much that is debatable, but also much that is thought-provoking.

HOLDING MYSELF ACCOUNTABLE

 I am constantly thinking to myself that I need to post this or that, or that I need to update my blog itself, and then never do it.

I am now holding myself accountable ... I will bear my thoughts and feelings - even the ugly truth - to better my own mental health. If someone wanders onto this page and agrees or disagrees, I'm not going to worry as this is where I will lay my thoughts and feelings bare. 

I'm tired of the funk I am finding myself in because I feel that I can't freely express myself. THAT changes now ...

IT'S FOR THE BIRDS

I don't know if I can pinpoint an exact age or reason as to why I dislike birds so much. Maybe it was because of Alfred Hitchcock and his movie "The Birds". Maybe it's because at a young age I remember being bombed and pecked by these feathered creatures. All I know is that I truly dislike the creatures. 

I am mentioning this today because there is a morning dove that resides in front of our house that has taken to attacking me every time I leave from the front door. Seriously, it was literally divebombing me as I was out collecting mail this morning! The little bugger even pecked out a few strands of hair in one of his passes ... 

Can I call ASPCA about it? Can I get a BB Gun and do some target practice? Can I capture it and feed it to the feral cat in our neighborhood?

Returning to Blogging Universe

 So I have gone back and forth on returning to blogging and putting myself and my feelings out there. I feel as if I can do this even if no one but myself reads this ... So here I am, once again trying to write and bare my soul ...