I started my day by reading an article, The Orgasmic Mind: The Neurological Roots of Sexual Pleasure which I was linked to by Delux. The article describes what is going on in your partner's mind as they are reaching an orgasm with you, which is pretty much just totally amazing to read about. One thing the article brings up is that for women, an orgasm requires a certain level of safety and comfort with ourselves and our partners:

Brain activity fell in the amygdala, too, suggesting a depression of vigilance similar to that seen in men, who generally showed far less deactivation in their brain during orgasm than their female counterparts did. “Fear and anxiety need to be avoided at all costs if a woman wishes to have an orgasm; we knew that, but now we can see it happening in the depths of the brain,” Holstege says.

I won't go into how I believe that need is at least in part a reaction to the patriarchal society, which is so violent towards women, that we live in here. But at the end of the article, it talks about how drug companies are creating pills that make it easier to reach orgasm, thereby decreasing our visible need for safety and comfort:

One such experimental compound is a peptide called bremelanotide, which is under development by Palatin Technologies in Cranbury, N.J. It blocks certain receptors in the brain that are involved in regulating basic drives such as eating and sex. In human studies bremelanotide has prompted spontaneous erections in men and boosted sexual arousal and desire in women...

So hold the thought about these orgasm-enabling pills for a minute, and let's talk about love. In All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks speaks to self-love, the act of loving yourself unconditionally, being the foundation for all other love that you are able to give and to receive:

Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our other efforts to love fail. Giving ourselves love we provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the unconditional love we may have always longed for receive from someone else. Whenever we interact with others, the love we give and receive is always necessarily conditional. Although it is not impossible, it is very difficult and rare for us to be able to extend unconditional love to others, largely because we cannot exercise control over the behavior of someone else and we cannot predict or utterly control our responses to their actions. We can, however, exercise control over our own actions. We can give ourselves the unconditional love that is the grounding for sustained acceptance and affirmation. When we give this precious gift to ourselves, we are able to reach out to others from a place of fulfillment and not from a place of lack.

One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am. It is silly, isn't it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim "You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself" made clear sense. And I add, "Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself." (emphasis mine)

Which then leads me to a quote from this interview at clamor, which I found through brownfemipower later today, that connects love for our own bodies to social justice organizing:

Unfortunately, what I most often witness is people’s trauma around their bodies getting in the way of uniting. As queers, as fat people, as people with disabilities, as people of color, we have often located so much of our pain in our bodies. We internalize so much anger, we get sick from it and throw up walls and make divisions. I get inspired when I see the connections made on an individual level. But on a larger scale I don’t really see it happening yet.

I think there are two main obstacles: 1) Most of us spend a lot of time outside of our bodies. I’m not sure how many people are willing to get into their bodies in the way it would require in order for this kind of movement to build. Phat Camp was an amazing place to witness people going through this. They come in with their brains in a tizzy, wondering “What is empowerment? What is self-acceptance?” and then they realize we don’t want their brains to do the work—we want to go to a deeper place. A place where all of our bodies are unified in the struggle to be whole and real.

2) People who don’t have to think about their power usually don’t. Sometimes I wonder if we can really build anything effectively without figuring out how to cross over and get people to examine their privilege. There is so much mythology about health and wellness, that it’s hard for me to picture having a deep moment with someone who more than anything believes I just need to lose weight. Even if we agree that the prison system needs to end and Bush is a motherfucker.

I see the goal of all work like this to be community building, healing, and revolution. In that order.

A lack of acceptance of our bodies, which can be a very difficult part of self-love, gets in the way of building communities, organizing, and creating healthy interpersonal relationships. And I also find it difficult to picture myself having a deep moment with someone who defines who I am inside by the shape or other characteristics of my body, and who places expectations on my self or my body, one based on the other.

At the 2008 AMC I heard a lot of talk about how the greatest movements of today are built around, and defined in terms of, our love for each other, rather than only on the oppressions we face. About how instead of only focusing on our anger and bringing down our oppressors, this allows us to also act from a place of love and gives us the ability to envision new, positive futures, built upon love, which we can work to replace our oppression with. The above mentioned interview also speaks of this idea in the context of our bodies and otherwise:

LF: Part of what I appreciate so much about this roundtable is being able to listen to and learn from activists who have taken this approach. Some people like to argue for unity on the basis that we all have the same experience—for me that just plants landmines that are going to blow up later. In my activism and my travels, I’ve been able to work with so many different types of people, which teaches me to appreciate our differences and recognize the burdens that people are forced to carry. This helps me learn about what it is to be a human being and break out of the isolation that’s been imposed on me as a transperson. GF: I taught a group of young girls of color last weekend, ages 9 to 12. They’re African-American and Latina. At least one of them had starved herself from the age of nine. We talked about how they wanted to create new magazines and images of beauty. I asked them how this conversation related to self-defense and violence-prevention. One girl said, “You have to know your life is worth something before you can fight to save it.” Others talked about their belief that one can’t work for justice in any community without starting from a place of self-love, or at least working toward that.

If love in our closest relationships can only be found by loving ourselves first, then I see a pill which can replace or obscure our need for love as an assault on, or at least an direct obstacle to, women realizing our need to and thus finding our ability to love ourselves. And if love is at the heart of our movements for social justice, then self-love is at the center of them as well, and I see medicinized apathy towards love as an attack also on our movements for justice, peace, prosperity, health, love, and wholeness for us all.

Instead of pills, or self-help books that teach us to cope without love, what we need is awareness and knowledge about love, knowledge of how we can achieve it through self-love first, and the wisdom and experiences of those who have found it. Awareness of what love is is important because we can't talk about love, or realize and acknowledge where our lives lack love, without this grounding. bell hooks gives us her understanding of love in All About Love: New Visions:

I spent years searching for a meaningful definition of the word "love," and was deeply relieved when I found one in the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's classic self-help book The Road Less Traveled... he defines love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." Explaining further, he continues: "Love is as love does. Love is an act of will - namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love." Since the choice must be made to nurture growth, this definition counters the more widely accepted assumption that we love instinctually. (bolding mine)

I think this definition exposes how unselfish real love is, as loving someone else has nothing to do with yourself, but rather their own independent spiritual growth. (spiritual as in the core of our being, the place where our mind, body and spirit meet, or our whole selves.) hooks then later goes on to clarify and expose our myths about love:

To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication. Learning faulty definitions of love when we are quite young makes it difficult to be loving as we grow older. We start out committed to the right path but go in the wrong direction. Most of us learn early on to think of love as a feeling. When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect with them; that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called "cathexis." In his book Peck rightly emphasizes that most of us "confuse cathecting with loving." (bolding mine)

These definitions are powerful, as our culture generally defines love simply as some combination of care and affection, which may or may not even be consistent. These definitions expose the truth that where there is no respect, there is no love, regardless of how much care is involved, and likewise for all of these components. Domination, abuse and neglect can not coexist with love when love is acting in a way that continuously embodies all of these ingredients.

We need to know how to find love if we are ever going to have success in our search. But giving and receiving love to and from others is difficult when we are not working toward loving ourselves as well. Using medication to diminish our need for love, teachings that tell us to simply accept a lack of love from others, and beliefs that the love lacking in our lives needs to be found in some external place, as are prominent in mass media, do nothing to help. They all function to hide the need for us to work on loving ourselves, which only pushes us farther away from the love we hope to obtain.

Loving ourselves is not an easy thing to do, but by following a definition such as above, hooks says in All About Love: New Visions, we can see that "action we take on behalf of our or another's spiritual growth provides us with a beginning blueprint for working on the issue of self-love." She goes on to claim self-esteem as being a critical first step toward self-love and gives a clear path toward building self-esteem from the work of Nathaniel Branden:

The wounded heart learns self-love by first overcoming low self-esteem. Nathaniel Branden's lengthly work Six Pillars of Self-Esteem highlights important dimensions of self-esteem, "the practice of living consciously, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, living purposefully and the practice of personal integrity."

This approach to self-love rings very true with me, as I can clearly see how working on those same dimensions, without meaning to directly improve my self-esteem, has strongly impacted my ability to love myself and others. Working on any one of these dimensions has strengthened my ability to work on all of the others, and I can see clearly how continuing to work on these will continue to improve my ability to give and receive love. I also greatly appreciate that none of these directions toward self-esteem depend necessarily on the involvement of other people, even though support and exemplary love from those around us can make a huge difference.

There are many books, movies, etc. on the topic of love, but true knowledge about love needs to come from those who have done the work to find self-love. As bell hooks says in Communion: The Female Search for Love:

The women in our culture who have the most to teach everyone about the nature of love are the generation of females who learned through feminist struggle and feminist-based therapy that self-love was the key to finding and knowing love.

We, the women who love, are among a generation of women who moved beyond the patriarchal paradigms to find ourselves. The journey to true selfhood demanded of us the invention of a new world, one in which we courageously dared to rebirth the girl within and welcome her into life, into a world where she is born valued, loved, and eternally worthy.

And I think that "invention of a new world" parallels so perfectly with the work of envisioning, transforming, and rebuilding that is the goal of our movements for social change and justice. That transformation can be done within each of us, and as we work on our own transformations, it will allow us enact them on the world around us. And as queers, as fat people, as people with disabilities, as people of color the act of learning to love ourselves in our bodies is already a radical and powerful movement.

It is the color of light,
The shape of sound high in the evergreens
It lies suspended in hills,
A blue line in a red sky.

I am looking at sound.

I am hearing the brightness
Of high bluffs and almond trees
I am tasting the wilderness
of lakes, rivers, and streams
Caught in an angle of song.

I am remembering water
That glows in the dawn
The motion tumbled in earth
Life hidden in mounds.

I am dancing a bright beam of light

I am remembering love.

listen to it

There’s another world inside of me that you may never see
There’s secrets in this life that I can’t hide
Well, somewhere in this darkness, there’s a light that I can’t find
Well, maybe its too far away, or maybe I’m just blind
Maybe I’m just blind

So hold me when I’m here
Love me when I’m wrong
Hold me when I’m scared
And love me when I’m gone
Everything I am
And everything in me
Wants to be the one you wanted me to be
I’ll never let you down
Even if I could
Give up everything
If only for your good
So hold me when I’m here
Love me when I’m wrong
Hold me when I’m scared
You won’t always be there
So love me when I’m gone
So love me when I’m gone

When your education x-ray cannot see under my skin
I won’t tell you a damn thing that I could not tell my friends
Now roaming through this darkness
I’m alive but I’m alone
Part of me is fighting this but part of me is gone

So hold me when I’m here
Love me when I’m wrong
Hold me when I’m scared
And love me when I’m gone
Everything I am
And everything in me
Wants to be the one you wanted me to be
I’ll never let you down
Even if I could
Give up everything
If only for your good
So hold me when I’m here
Love me when I’m wrong
Hold me when I’m scared
You won’t always be there
So love me when I’m gone

listen to it

I was watching
with one eye on the other side
I had fifteen people telling me to move
I got moving on my mind
I found shelter
In some thoughts turning wheels around
I said 39 times that I love you
to the beauty I had found

Well it's 1 2 3 4
take the elevator
at the hotel yorba
I'll be glad to see you later
all they got inside is vacancy

I been thinking
of a little place down by the lake
they got a dirty little road leading up to the house
I wonder how long it will take till we're alone
sitting on the front porch of that home
stomping our feet on the wooden boards
never gonna worry about locking the door

Well it's 1 2 3 4
take the elevator
at the hotel yorba
I'll be glad to see you later
all they got inside is vacancy

It might sound silly
for me to think childish thoughts like these
but I'm so tired of acting tough
and I'm gonna what I please
Let's get married
in a big cathedral by a priest
coz if I'm the man that you love the most
you can say I do at least

Well it's 1 2 3 4
take the elevator
at the hotel yorba
I'll be glad to see you later
all they got inside is vacancy
And it's 4 5 6 7
grab your umbrella
grab hold of me
cause I'm your favorite fella
all they got inside is vacancy

How I fell in love with the song:

listen to it

(Let me tell you why I love him)

Cause he is the truth
Said he is so real
And I love the way that he makes me feel
And if I am a reflection of him
Then I must be fly
Because his light
It shines so bright
I wouldn't lie

I remember the very first day I saw him
I found myself immediately intrigued by him
Its almost like I knew this man from another life
Like back then maybe I was his husband maybe he was my wife
And even the things I don't like about him are fine with me
Cause its not hard for me to understand him cause he's so much like me
And it's truly my pleasure to share his company
And I know that its God's gift to breathe
The air he breathes

Chorus:
Cause he is the truth
Said he is so real
And I love the way that he makes me feel
And if I am a reflection of him
Then I must be fly
Because his light
It shines so bright
I wouldn't lie (no)

How can the same man that makes me so mad
(Do you know what he did?)
Turn right around and kiss me so soft?
(Girl you know he did)
If he ever left me I wouldn't even be sad no
Cause there's a blessing in every lesson
And I'm glad that I know him at all

Cause he is the truth
Said he is so real
And I love the way that he makes me feel
And if I am a reflection of him
Then I must be fly
Because his light
It shines so bright

I love the way he speaks
I love the way he thinks
I love the way that he treats his mama
I love that gap in between his teeth
I love him in every way that a woman can love a man
From personal to universal
But most of all
It's unconditional

(You know what I'm taking about)
That's the way I feel
(And I always will)

Baby, no substitute for the truth
Either it is or isn't
(Cause he is the truth)
You see the truth it needs no proof
Either it is or it isn't
(Cause he is the truth)
Now you know the truth by the way it feels
And if I am a reflection of him
Then I must be fly
Because he is, yes he is
I wonder does he know -echoes-

listen to it

Let me be patient, let me be kind
Make me unselfish without being blind
Though I may suffer I'll envy it not
And endure what comes
Cause he's all that I got
and tell him...

Tell him I need him
Tell him I love him
And it'll be alright
Tell him tell him I need him
Tell him I love him
It'll be alright

Now I may have faith to make mountains fall
But if I lack love then I am nothin' at all
I can give away everything I possess
But left without love then I have no happiness
I know I'm imperfect (I know I'm imperfect)
And not without sin (And not without sin)
But now that I'm older all childish things end
and tell him...

Tell him I need him
Tell him I love him
It'll be alright
Tell him tell him I need him
Tell him I love him
It'll be alright

I'll never be jealous
And I won't be too kind
Cause love is not boastful
Oooh and love is not loud
Tell him I need him
Tell him I love him
Everything is gonna be alright
Oooh oooh yeah yeah aww yeah

Now I may have wisdom and knowledge on Earth
But if I speak wrong then what is it worth?
See what we now know is nothing compared
To the love that was shown when our lives were spared
and tell him...

Tell him I need him
Tell him I love him
And it'll be alright
Tell him tell him I need him
Tell him I love him
It'll be alright

listen to it

Where'd you go?
I miss you so
Seems like its been forever
that you've been gone

She said somedays I feel like shit
Somedays I wanna quit
and just be normal for a bit
I don't understand why you have to always be gone
I get along but your trips always feel so long
And I find myself trying to stay by the phone
Because your voice always helps to not feel so alone
But I feel like an idiot, working my day around a call
And when I pick up I don't have much to say,
so I want you to know it's a little fucked up that
I'm stuck here waiting, at times debating
Telling you that I've had it with you and your career
Me and the rest of the family here singing

(Chorus)
Where'd you go?
I miss you so
Seems like it's been forever
that you've been gone
Where'd you go?
I miss you so
Seems like it's been forever
that you've been gone
Please
Come back home

You know, the place where you used to live
Used to barbeque up burgers and ribs
Used to have a little party every halloween
with candy by the pile but now
you only stop by every once in a while
Shit
I find myself just filling my time
With anything to keep the thought of you from my mind
I'm doing fine
I plan to keep it that way
You can call me if you find that you have something to say
And I'll tell you
I want you to know it's a little fucked up that
I'm stuck here waiting, at times debating
Telling you that I've had it with you and your career
Me and the rest of the family here singing

(Chorus)

I want you to know it's a little fucked up that
I'm stuck here waiting, no longer debating
Tired of sitting and hating and making these excuses
For why you're not around, and feeling so useless
It seems one thing has been true all along
You don't really know what you've got till its gone
I guess I've had it with you and your career
When you come back I won't be here and you can sing it

(Chorus)

listen to it

[Will]
I woke up this morning
Looked at ya picture
Think about when I'm a get wit'cha
Hit ya on the two-way simply to say I gotta see you today
They say love is a gamble and if so, baby I'm the Bilagio I can't lose
And I guess that make you the Mirage
Wait you more exotic than that, you like the Taj Mahal momma
You a treasure to me life with you is a pleasure to me
And I'm a make sure no man ever measure to me
Like Run and D you and me are together forever
I got an interview to do
Then to the plane, that too
Uh wear that black dress, Boo
Then close your eyes and open your heart and I'ma give you

All my love
A thousand kisses from you is never to much
All my love
Never too much, never too much, never too much
Uh uh, uh uh
And I just don't wanna stop
Never too much, never too much

[Jada]
Woke up this morning two-way vibin', couldn't wait to write you
I hit you back then kissed three little kids that look just like you
Love is magic, can't explain it, sometimes it just happens
Saw your picture, you're so silly boy you keep me laughing
I've got a photo shoot, can't concentrate my mind is roamin'
Cause it's 4 o'clock and at 5:15 you are comin' home and
You know my heart, you know my thoughts, so ruffneck yet you're tender
The only person ever locked up safe was to surrender

All my love
A thousand kisses from you is never to much
All my love
Never too much, never too much, never too much
Uh uh, uh uh
Cause I just don't wanna stop
Never too much, never too much

[Will]
The way you walk wanna make me say (yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah)

[Jada]
The way you love me make me wanna say (yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah)

[Will]
Girl the way you look wanna make me say (yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah)

[Jada]
Just so you all wanna make me say (yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah)

[Will]
Yo yo me and more it's like a Picasso painted your aura
It's like Beethoven composed your vocal tones
Wrote band inspired hand sculpted you the desire of man
Michel Angelo grieves inside you
Seeds of my wildest dreams fertilized in your eyes
You're compassionate and your passion is how you ration it
That makes me swear you was trained how to take me there
Rarely I seen fate be fair
We got a stroke of grace
Remember you was countin' me out?
It's crazy we had times of doubt, right?
And since the dawn of time, written history
Better men, better poets than me
Have tried to set verse to the love they knew
Dead to words judge what I do when I give you

All my love
A thousand kisses from you is never to much
All my love
Never too much, never too much, never too much
And I just don't wanna stop
Never too much, never too much

This song took some serious digging to find. So I hope someone sees it and enjoys it. The girl in the red hat is my apotheosis.

listen to it

As gravity is to every human
As the earth is to the trees
I couldn't drift away from your love because it's
implanted in my memory

If there was some uncertainty

You're dear to me
You know who you are
You're always here with me
You know who you are
You're dear to me and I hope you know who you are

Watching you slumber drawn to the splendor
of your face
when it's completely still
Standing under the flood of your laughter
into every cell in me you spill

After you everything else is weak

You're dear to me
You know who you are
You're always here with me
You know who you are
You're dear to me and I hope you know who you are

It's out of, out of my hands you see

You're dear to me
You know who you are
You're always here with me
You know who you are
You're dear to me and I hope you know who you are

listen to it

I got my head, but my head is unraveling
Cant keep control, cant keep track of where its traveling
I got my heart but my heart is no good
And youre the only one thats understood
I come along but I dont know where youre taking me
I shouldnt go but youre reaching back and shaking me
Turn off the sun, pull the stars from the sky
The more I give to you, the more I die

And I want you
And I want you
And I want you
And I want you

You are the perfect drug, the perfect drug, the perfect drug
You are the perfect drug, the perfect drug, the perfect drug

You make me hard, when Im all soft inside
I see the truth, when Im all stupid eyed
The arrow goes straight through my heart
Without you everything just falls apart

My blood wants to say hello to you
My feelings want to get inside of you
My soul is so afraid to realize
Every little word is a lack of me

And I want you
And I want you
And I want you
And I want you

You are the perfect drug, the perfect drug, the perfect drug
You are the perfect drug, the perfect drug, the perfect drug
You are the perfect drug, the perfect drug, the perfect drug
You are the perfect drug, the perfect drug, the perfect drug
You are the perfect drug, the perfect drug, the perfect drug
You are the perfect drug, the perfect drug, the perfect drug
(whispering)
You are the perfect drug, the perfect drug, the perfect drug
You are the perfect drug, the perfect drug, the perfect drug
You are the perfect drug, the drug, the perfect drug

Take me, with you
Take me, with you
Take me, with you
(continues in backround)
Without you, without you everything falls apart
Without you, its not as much fun to pick up the pieces
Without you, without you everything falls apart
Without you, its not as much fun to pick up the pieces
Its not as much fun to pick up the pieces
Its not as much fun to pick up the pieces
Without you, without you everything falls apart
Without you, its not as much fun to pick up the pieces

listen to it

The lyrical content in the song was about a dream vocalist Raine Maida had. In the dream, his father was dying in the hospital, but he arrives too late to say that he loved him.

Walked around my good intentions
And found that there were none
I blame my father for the wasted years
We hardly talked
Never thought I would forget this hate
Then a phone call made me realize I'm wrong

And if I don't make it
Know that
I loved you all along
Just like sunny days that
We didn't know because
We're all dumb and jaded
And I hope to God I figure out what's wrong

Walked around my room not thinking
Sinking in this box
I blame myself for being too much like
Somebody else
I never thought I would just bend this way
Then a phone call made me realize I'm wrong

And if I don't make it
Know that
I loved you all along
Just like sunny days that
We didn't know because
We're all dumb and jaded
And I hope to God I figure out what's wrong

And I hope to God I figure out what's wrong
And I hope to God I figure out what's wrong
If I don't make it
Know that
I loved you all along
Just like sunny days that
We didn't know because
We're all dumb and jaded
And I hope to God I figure out what's wrong

And if I don't make it
Know that
I loved you all along
Just like sunny days that
We didn't know because
We're all dumb and jaded
And I hope to God I figure out...