Dropped fruit

Today, I gathered many ripe plums that shook their way off our tree in the backyard. Some were damaged in their fall. All have scars, breaks, or other evidence of their fall from the relative safety of being hooked to the tree to their (not final) resting place in my backyard.

I love eating these fruits. They are fresh, tree-ripened, and virginal. Their open rips bleed lovely deep red-purple blood, and they are both sweeter and spicier than the fruit that ships to the supermarkets around here.

I had almost forgotten how good they taste until I sucked one in this morning. Its tastiness stayed with me, like the aroma of making sweet love, long after I finished it, and much like lovemaking, I couldn't wait to get home to do it again tonight.

Sure enough, the winds and birds had done their duty and delivered a large bounty for me tonight. I have sketched the results here for you, and I apologize if it is not as tasty a photo as you might like.

Which brings me to the dicey subject of, ahem, pornography.

I've already posted about the live web cam business based in Asia that I suspected was exploiting young women in the Philippines and elsewhere who have few other options to support themselves and those who depend on them.

Upon further investigation, I now have to revise that opinion. It may be the result of the well-known tendency of males to project their view upon the women they meet (or in this case, virtually meet.)

My new view, after further exploration and conversation, is that this may be one aspect of a new global connectedness between people the world over. Physical attraction is often the initial reason people find each other. It's almost ineffable, this reality, but Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink, documents how important first impressions can be.

Try to remember how you felt the first time you met a person. Yesterday, I pointed out how few American men are actually tall (defined as 6 feet and above) but how disproportionately those who aare occupy positions of power in our society. That is an example of the power of first impressions...

I will not here pretend to be capable of discussing the aspects of females that attract men, because the truth is that almost any way of being a female will attract certain men. We are so hard-wired for sexual reproduction that you can be tall, short, skinny, fat, old or young, dark or light, with any color combination of eyes, hair and skin, or anywhere along the long spectrum of female personality types; it matters not, there will be men for you.

Slowly, it seems, women come to understand this, when it comes to the men whom they attract.

Think about it this way. If you were not inherently and genetically attractive to a critical mass of men, the ruthless selection of evolutionary history would have rendered you extinct.

Therefore, yes, for every woman there is a man, and vice versa. And, given that we have so massively over reproduced in this world, there actually are a lot of potential mates for you, whoever or however you are.

And, of course whatever I have said here applies to men who love men, women who love women, and cross-genderism as well. All is natural; if you are given to believing in a God of some sort, that is her gift to you.

The gift of knowing you can easily be loved, because you are inherently beautiful, and exactly what another somewhere here among us all is seeking -- just you, just the way you are -- is what I want to give you this night.



Tonight, I more or less overdid myself. Count 'em, it was me and eight kids, five boys and three girls, ranging from 8-14 or so. We consumed the better portion of five pizzas, a gallon of ice cream, several video games, a movie, several CDs, a book (perused), and the shared stories of our collective ~145 years on this planet.

We talked about lots of things, it was a running conversation here in my Mission flat. The eight of them collectively have me by a quarter century or so, but I am more than four times as old as the oldest among them.



These are all, each in their own ways, sweet kids, loving, respectful, observant and jaded by what they've seen of their parents' shattering lives. Yet they persist, hopeful, flirtatious, future-oriented, as is their right. Soon, they will reach the reproductive age, they will control resources, and their choices will determine the future of our species, and this planet.

I don't know about you, but I am anticipating an old age where I might be available to offer advice, but not responsible to control, their choices. If they wish to listen, I will speak. If they don't wish to listen, I will continue to do what I am doing here -- blogging without any feedback or any sense whatsoever whether these writings are useful, or just so many digital keystrokes, destined to cycle endlessly in cyberspace, much as a dying satellite spins hopelessly in orbit, held by gravity, but no longer relevant to those who launched it there in the first place.

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