THAT DAY

At the library where I work, on break, I read a Freudian analyzing Emily Dickinson. Overanalyzing Emily Dickinson--digging for cliché Freudian mechanisms, while blind to her openly stated, eccentric passions. He's weirder than she is, and that's fairly weird.

THAT NIGHT

I'm at a party held in the Inner Theatre, a Palo Alto center for psychodrama. Listen to a woman analyze an art photo in highly theoretical terms. But... it’s an extremely erotic picture from Penthouse magazine, of a long-haired girl sprawled on her back on fur-draped rocks, one knee high-spread, opening her cunt like a over-full sandwich. Powerful mood from her, only partly the sexual display: dark, fiery, animal, athletic, a bit sophisticated for me...

Then the art critic asks me "What do YOU think?"

What comes out of my mouth is completely unexpected: “I thought at first glance she was wearing a tan bodystocking--so guarded a skin!”

Huh?

Guess you're not always as naked as you seem.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

The art theorist ignored the photo's sexuality. But was I any better? When I spoke up, I too ignored the model's obvious sensuality and sexual excitement... so as not to offend the art-theorist? Or... was a deeper part of me seeing something real that the sexiness distracted me from? Until the truth of what I saw popped out of my mouth.

It all echoes that Freudian analyzing Emily Dickinson--who I DO think is both very guarded (seeking universality) AND deeply frank and personal (seeking authenticity).

The dream hints I do see beyond the skin--but may deny it, even to myself. Till, like Emily, I speak up--and look strange.

Forgive the sketch's crudity--in my journal it's a tiny marginal scrawl of faded color pencil. Had to digitally magnify & up the contrast, just to make visible at all.

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