13 December 2009

Goddurned Avatar

One of the ladies from Araki's Tokyo Lucky Hole, a book of photographs of Tokyo's sex trade district - a book that inspired one of my short stories this past summer. I followed early revisions of my story to where it wanted to go and it ended up being about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the real beginning of The End. Ain't that somethin'? That's how it goes, though: sexuality is tied to our deepest concerns about life on this planet. Our society tends to tie it almost exclusively to getting one's rocks off or as a means of selling Cheese Nips and vacuum cleaners. I swear, sometimes, I stand in front of a jade Kwanyin and say, "Come on, my sweet-hipped mami. Please cough up a goddurned avatar from the Pure Land to set it all straight." And she looks back at me and sez, "What are you doing to make peace and compassion a reality?"

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