Vulnerability and protection

"I’ve been checking out your blog from time to time.  Sometimes I’m staggered by the amount of personal disclosure you put out there.  I can’t help thinking that by making yourself so objectively discoverable, even in your uncertainties, you may isolate yourself from the intimacy with others that means so much to you.  The writer’s curse, I guess."

I am naked all the time.  Sometimes, if I am walking through a national park with a small group of beautiful people burning with the passion of life, I can get naked right there amongst the trees and tourists, dipping my body and myself into the water and stepping under the heavy piercing intensely charged waterfalls, screaming with the  exquisite vividity of being alive.  I can feel pride at the presence of my body in all its glory.  I can increase my sensitivity to the subtleties of the world and the forest and the possibilities of the moment, shared with myself, with my environment and with my radiant friends.  I can embrace the moment and cover my body in yellow ochre and spend the rest of the day as an angelic three-man Golden Mud Tribe.  Together we can not expose ourselves to the surprised passing walkers but the normality of their own humanity and the vehemence of their own shame.  When I feel encouraged and supported and loved by my companions I am powerful and open and able to expose myself to the world without danger or shame.  And thus the world is transforming around me.  The human race and the world as a whole opens up just a little more simply because my brothers and I have opened up together for all to see.  We have become so delighted with each other and with the natural world that people threaten to call the police, they smile at us, they turn away, they engage with us in an attempt to extract the conscious justification we must have made before getting naked and golden in public.  There is no reason.


In the real world my sensitivity tells me exactly where to draw the line and I am rarely wrong.  The internet, however, is vast and sprawling and inconceivably complex; it has little physical reality, little tangible vibrational frequency, no life force.  How am I supposed to know how far it is safe to open myself in this digital-intellectual dimension when here I am inherently alone, there are no friends present with me on my website despite the links connecting me to the interface of hundreds of people?  I have no fear of government monitoring of my details because I am not planning any terrorist attacks and they are powerless anyway.  But if all my thoughts and fears and loves and uncertainties are available for subscription to anyone on the planet, what is left for the delicate quiet moments when two individuals trust and love one another and intend to share their affection and sensitivity in an intimate moment?


I fell in love again the other day and I stared into this man's eyes and offered him everything.  He looked back and it seems to me we were relatively equal in our ability to be present in the devotion of the moment.  I guess there is only so deep either of us were willing to look and certainly as a result of this moment I felt no expectation of an extension of this intimacy.  It seems there is only so far any one entity allows you to move towards them and perhaps the degree is always mutual and it's only our conscious mind that undermines are certainty when we have decided we are in love with someone because we see their beauty.  Perhaps when we meet an entity, especially a human being forced to balance themselves between the art of life and the game of civilisation, who is willing and able to be beautiful we should merely accept and honour them in their vulnerability.  What more is there to demand?


I certainly make a lot of friends in being so objectively discoverable.  Everywhere I go there are people who want to talk to me, people who want to look me in the eyes, who want to be my friend or show me some kindness.  I am 26.6 years old, I am a man, I am vigorous and healthy and there is a part of me that wants to make love to the most magnificent humans I meet, by which I mean physical intimacy.  Are the presence of my masturbatory thoughts on the internet an impediment to the fulfillment of my desire?  Am I exposing the genitals of my soul to the faceless masses and therefore desensitising my physical genitals from the glory of exposure in a delightful moment to a single precious individual?  Communication is my job and intimacy is my inspiration and I don't know whether frustration is supposed to be a part of the manifestation of my intention in this life.


I am a human being and I am not ashamed.  I love you and I am not ashamed.  I am in love with you and I am ashamed because I'm not sure you want me to express my love in the ways my heart and my body desires.  I am ashamed that I want to touch you.  Perhaps there is some trauma-related reason why I am sitting alone in front of a computer, farting and drinking water, typing out my love, instead of holding my body against yours, advancing within each other from the cold and damp of the cave.  Perhaps the truth of the loving observation quoted above is not in the effect of my writing but in the intention.  It seems I would rather write about longing and frustration rather than fulfillment and acceptance.


I could also add to this story the simultaneous text message from another valuable person who wants to be gentle with me, who I do not desire sexually.  I tell myself it is better to give than to receive or if I give I will also receive so I should not deny the entities that desire me with their heart and body.  I should fulfill the possibilities of every friendship and say no only to the callous and jealous.  I should continue this dialogue wherever it takes me and delicately adjust the balance between vulnerability and protection for the rest of my life as I navigate through the loves and desires of this world.