Website

Have not been doing much writing lately - nor updating the blog. The thing is that I hve been busy trying to master the software to get a website up. It now is - although by no means complete. Please visit it: http://www.houseofinanna.co.uk

Last night someting happened. I was talking to K and in the course of it I realised many things. Foremost among these was that I had forgotten the vision that took me to Hungary. The details of how I arrived at this are not really relevant - they were a synchronicity of events over which I had no control. But I felt a return of the vision, of the deep conviction that I had to move there; that there was work for me to do.

And the most important thing is that the work was largely unstarted by the time I left. For what happened was that I became overwhelmed at the scale of what I had seen and lost all confidence that I could even approach realising it. It seemed so damn big and I felt so damn small. Not only that but I felt frightened. i felt that I was hubristic, particularly as my own personal life was in such a mess -purely as a result of my actions. So I aimed small and tucked the vision into a neat little pocket in my consciousness where I always hide away the uncomfortable truths that I do not wish to face. And forgot it.

What became clear last night was, however, that this forgetting may have been a necessary part of the process. For I had to realise who I am and what I have been called to do. In order to do this, I had to aim low and fail. Now I know that I must aim high for only then can I hope to hit the distant target. I must remember the vision and keep that in my sights.

For the vision was real, and it still is. This is what I learned last night. It came to me; I did not seek it. It has, in different forms, been with me as long as I can remember. Sometimes, it has been clear and direct, as it was that day when I first went to Dobogöko and saw the Danube hundreds of metres below. Memories of a time when I had been there before flooded into me and I felt both at home and thorougly alien. It was strange and it was exhilarating. Until the doubts set in and I came face to face with my own imperfections - my petty hurts and grievances - and I enacted them. By turns grandiose and self-effacing, I struggled in the day-to-day and sank ever deeper into despair, losing all that I had previously held dear in the process. And returned, feeling defeated, to England.

The operative word here, however, is "feeling". For I was not, in fact, defeated. I am still here and yesterday realised that so is the vision. It has not gone. I cannot fully articulate it yet, but the time is soon approaching that I can. I will, Inanna willing, return to Hungary to take aim again. But I will be stronger and more determined; less limited by fear and uncertainty. I will own the vision and the source of that vision. For it did not come from me. I did not seek it. I fled it. But I could not escape it. Now I must learn to embrace it

Tenderness

Shortly after I posted my last piece, a friend took me to task a little for not mentioning tenderness - which was, after all, Lawrence's original title for Lady Chatterley's Lover. She was right to have done so, and my only defence is that I was writing in passion, not in any considered way, as a reaction to the idealisation of sex.

I think, when I originally wrote about the "interplay of vulnerabilities" it was tenderness I had in mind, but this was not exactly made clear. In an intimate relationship each partner reveals to the other(s) certain aspects of her or his self which would otherwise be kept hidden. It is in the acceptance of these aspects that tenderness emerges. We are all vulnerable, for we are all mortal and there is, I believe, a dread of annihilation deep within all of us. So we look for the tender touch of someone who accepts us in our frailty. Or we over-compensate in games of power and despair in which we hide our vulnerability behind a facade of mastery and performance.

I am aware that this needs a little expansion so I will try to explain what I mean by that. I have, over the years, watched quite a lot of pornography. However, I have found very little that i find truly erotic. For it is all about mastery and performance. Erections never fail. Women always reach orgasm - or, very badly, pretend they have. Never do any of the participants suddenly realise that their muscles have cramped - never does a clumsy movement of elbow or knee result in the abrupt disappearance of desire. Never, above all, in all the detailed and energetic genital stimulation does tenderness enter. Never do they laugh. It is all taken so bloody seriously. It is the inverse side of the abstracted, idealised, non-physical sexuality that the men in the video were lauding. In neither case is the full humanity of the participants recognised.

For we are not just bodies and we are not just spiritual beings, we are human. We may aspire but we often fail. We have fears and insecurities that can manifest at any time. Erections fail and desire can vanish. This is a fact. Gay or straight, we need comfort and reassurance when the night seems just too dark. We need to know that we are loved when our bodies fail to perform as we would like. We need to laugh and we need to cry at our frailties. We need to be loved as we are and not as we would like to be or, worse, what we imagine the other would like us to be. We exist not as angels or demons but as a mixture of the two with one or the other being dominant at any one time. I feel that it is not for our perfection that we can be truly loved but for those myriad imperfections that make us human.

I think that all this was in Lawrence's mind when he wrote. In many ways he failed for he had his own unresolved issues, but this is not really relevant. The intent and the attempt was honest, sincere and revolutionary. Connie and Mellors are human beings, meeting and loving in a space of vulnerability. In a space of tenderness. In the rain and under the sky.