Them Changes

I have a confession to make.

With my 70^th birthday right around the corner, it’s important for me to be honest about a fundamental transition I’ve made in my life as a cisgender male. Transitioning is never easy and often misunderstood, even by those who claim to be open-minded. It’s a change that society mostly rejects, as it goes against social constructs and the perceived ‘way things should be'.

I’m not embarrassed to admit to this transition, and I’m happy with the immediate impact it’s had on my life. I hope that my family and friends will understand my choice and support me as much as they can.

I’ve limited this change to my home and familiar environments, because it allows me to lessen any negative impacts it may have.

With the approval of my wife of 40 years, who supports me in every way, this essay will be my declaration to the world about my choice. So here goes:

I’ve decided to no longer urinate from a standing position and have transitioned to urinating from a sitting position on the toilet.

THERE… I’ve said it.

As with so many things in life, this realization was long in the making. The tipping point came one day about six months ago while I was cleaning the bathroom I normally use… she uses the one adjacent to our master bedroom, mine is off the hallway. I’ve cleaned bathrooms my whole life and have written about this important activity before.

https://gortnation.blogspot.com/2010/12/hi-my-name-is-bob-and-im-cleaner.html

I was scrubbing and wiping down the toilet when I realized something, maybe for the first time: when a guy pees from a standing position, water and urine splashes on everything – the toilet rim, the seat, the seat lid, the floor, the curtains adjacent to the toilet – literally everything within a foot of the bowl gets splashed with watery urine.

Think about it: peeing while standing is quick and easy but it also means the urine stream falls about two feet to the bowl water, impacting the surface and causing tiny droplets to eject up and out of the bowl. SCIENCE. 

Not my bathroom.

Having this epiphany while sitting on the floor and cleaning my own dried urine was a mental lightning bolt. I thought to myself, “It doesn’t have to be this way!!”

From that day on, I’ve peed sitting down and haven’t regretted it for a nanosecond. The transition didn’t take long, but I learned that old habits are hard to break. I’ve also had additional realizations from this fundamental life change.

While urinals seem to be an easy answer to the splash quotient, most of them exist only in public places and unless you're careful, splashing occurs and impacts the urine-ee and the adjacent fixture separation walls. A quick look at those (usually) metal walls often display corrosion and peeling paint due to the caustic nature of human urine. Males have blithely pisssed in urinal stalls for decades, seemingly unaware they’ve been splashed by their own piss.

I once worked at a job where the bathroom urinal walls were unusually close to the fixture, and they were so corroded by piss that they looked like an ancient archeological dig.

Standing while urinating, whether in private or public, also subconsciously demands the act be performed quickly in order not to have one’s genitalia exposed for too long, a fear endemic to nearly all males. In addition, rushing the act of urination also increases the chance of miscellaneous drippage of leftover urine, which occurs more frequently as men get older and the prostate gets lazier. Underwear mitigates the problem, but just barely.

As an aside, I’ve never understood the poor ergonomics of men’s underwear with the front flaps to allow the standing pee to occur with an unzip and penile exposure through the flap. I hated wearing those 'tighty whiteys' as a kid, never used the flap and stopped wearing them 50 years ago. They're still wildly popular and sold everywhere.

This I know: shaking it two or three times before stuffing and zipping is no guarantee against drippage, unless you don't care.

Also too, I have an unnatural fear of being an old man who smells like pee.

Now that I urinate while sitting, I'm more relaxed and able to take my time, releasing the initial flow, then waiting a few seconds for my aged prostate to reset and let that last bit go. Liberating might be a bit of overstatement, but maybe not. In addition, my bathroom no longer has the faintest whiff of piss, even if I miss a regularly scheduled cleaning. 

I can wipe! No more splashing! No more dried urine on the floor!

We recently watched an episode of the streaming series ‘Girls’, where two of them were talking while one was on the toilet.  After some conversation, the one not peeing asked the other, “Are you done yet? Why are you still sitting on the toilet?” The other says “Yes, I’m done, but I like to wait and make sure every last drop is gone. It makes me feel confident I won’t have any leakage.” YES.

I’ve read this sitting-while peeing phenomenon has been adopted by some men who've been asked by the women they cohabitate with to please sit while peeing so as not to make a mess. It can create discord and emotional havoc if the male involved allows his ego to resist the change. Choices… amirite?

As I age and my soft machine’s functions ramble on towards eventual malfunction, I try to stay connected to my physical self and make the changes needed to continue to be a successful and happy human. Sitting while peeing seems like a small thing, but the results have given me more context about my conscious existence.

"Life is funny... skies are sunny... bees make honey." - Alvin Lee

“It may seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first.” – Miyamoto Musashi, swordsman/philosopher/artist (1584-1645)

All images, Gracias de Google Images; Buddy Miles 'Them Changes' video, Muchisimas Gracias de YouTube.

"If the shoe fits..."

                  

When The Artist and I saw the movie ‘Conclave’ during its theatrical release in 2024, we knew it would be an Oscar contender. It was an amazing film to watch on the big screen, with a thought-provoking storyline, an excellent cast and stunning cinematography.

I loved the movie, and it resonated to another film I’ve cherished since I first saw it at The Star Theater in La Puente (CA) during its theatrical release in 1968. 

‘The Shoes of the Fisherman’, a geo-political thriller based in and around the Vatican, stars Anthony Quinn as Kiril Lakota, a Ukrainian Catholic Bishop and political prisoner, who is challenged with far-reaching questions of faith and humanity. 

Released from a Siberian gulag after 20 years of hard labor, he is tapped to become a Cardinal, then unexpectedly finds himself elected to be Pope after the sudden death of the previous pontiff, all while the world is on the brink of famine, global conflict and imminent nuclear war.

I was twelve years old when I sat in that theater, absorbing complex philosophical issues that were already percolating in my junior-high school brain. I went to see it two more times to make sure I understood the larger messages it presented. 

The Star interior. The colorful Mardi Gras wall graphics were cool and kinda creepy.

The film spoke directly to me... good films will do that. The Star Theater, a quasi-historic building, was demolished in 2019. So it goes.

In 1968, I’d just begun the journey of leaving my religious faith behind, inhaling library books about the world I lived in and wild science-fiction stories about a future I could only dream of. 

The process of de-coupling from Catholicism was fraught, and at first I struggled with the notion of becoming a non-believer. My struggle was very similar to a young priest in the film whom Kiril befriends, a writer accused of heresy by the church for highlighting the conflicts between traditional spiritual faith and modern reasoned skepticism. 

‘The Shoes of the Fisherman’ was recently scheduled for cable broadcast, along with several other biblical films like ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘The Robe’. The Artist recorded it and we watched it (appropriately enough) this past Easter Sunday morning. I whipsawed between the prescient themes it presented, the thematic similarities in ‘Conclave’ and its reflection to our current reality.

I haven’t stopped thinking about this film, especially given the state of play in the world today.

My youthful journey away from religious belief was bolstered by a 'religious' film that spoke to the dichotomy between faith and reason. It helped me to understand where my skepticism came from and why it mattered. 

Having the ability to follow a life path without religious faith is one of the benefits of free will. Living in that mode has filled me with joy, love, empathy, compassion and understanding for other people, especially those who choose a different path.

The messenger may change, but the message never does: remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

I’m grateful that Anthony Quinn embodied such an intelligent and thoughtful human as Kiril Lakota in ‘The Shoes of the Fisherman’. He gave me license to explore thoughts about my own existence, and act accordingly.

Be like Kiril.

5 Stars.

'Star' images, gracias de Google Images; 'Shoes of the Fisherman' and DEVO 'Gates of Steel' videos, muchisimas gracias de YouTube; DEVO was right all along!

POETRY MAN

Back in the long-ago of 1967, I was a 6th-Grader at Lassalette Elementary in La Puente, California.  A few times during that year, our class had opportunities to order youth-oriented paperback books from a service called the Scholastic Book Club. 

There were lots of titles to choose from, but I bought only one book that year. It was a book of poetry, first published in 1966, titled 'Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle... and Other Modern Verse' (Dunning/Lueders/Smith). I think I paid thirty-five cents for it. 

I didn't know this book was an award-winning anthology, or that it presented modern poetry in a way that would appeal to young people, or that it would become a classic and widely used in high-school curriculums. It just looked interesting.

I literally inhaled the book. It changed me, and fundamentally changed the way I looked at the world. I even memorized a couple of the poems and can still recite them at the drop of a hat.

This past Christmas, The Artist gifted me with a beautiful hard-bound edition of 'Reflections', and I've now read it several times. I'm finding great pleasure in leafing though the pages and reading a random poem out loud.

Here are several of my favorites. They still move me in ways that I would not have expected, just like they did when I was in 6th Grade.

A note from the book's Forward:

"Read each poem slowly. Give every poem a chance to speak to you. Reread. Read aloud. Make your ears and your eyes work on each poem. Expect to find surprises - then read slowly enough to enjoy them."

How to Eat a Poem  (Eve Merriam)

Don’t be polite.

Bite In.

Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that

may run down your chin.

It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon

or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core

or stem

or rind

or pit

or seed

or skin

to throw away.

Why Nobody Pets the Lion at the Zoo  (John Ciardi)

The morning that the world began

The Lion growled a growl at Man.

And I suspect the Lion might

(if he’d been closer) have tried a bite.

I think that’s as it ought to be

And not as it was taught to me.

I think the Lion has a right

To growl a growl and bite a bite.

And if the Lion bothered Adam,

He should have growled back at ‘im.

The way to treat a Lion right

Is growl for growl and bite for bite.

True, the Lion is better fit

For biting than for being bit.

But if you look him in the eye

You’ll find the Lion’s rather shy.

He really wants someone to pet him.

The trouble is: his teeth won’t let him.

He has a heart of gold beneath

But the Lion just can’t trust his teeth.

Resume’  (Dorothy Parker)

Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

August from My Desk  (Roland Flint)

It is hot today, dry enough for cutting grain,

and I am drifting back to North Dakota

where butterflies are all gone brown with wheat dust.

And where some boy,

red-faced, sweating, chafed,

too young to be dying this way,

steers a laborious, self-propelled combine,

and dreams of cities, and blizzards –

and airplanes.

With the white silk scarf of his sleeve

he shines and shines his goggles,

he checks his meters, checks his flaps,

screams contact at his dreamless father,

and, engines roaring,

he pulls back the stick

and hurtles into the sun.

Ancient History  (Arthur Guiterman)

I hope the old Romans

Had painful abdomens.

I hope that the Greeks

Had toothache for weeks.

I hope the Egyptians

Had chronic conniptions.

I hope that the Arabs

Were bitten by scarabs.

I hope that the Vandals

Had thorns in their sandals.

I hope that the Persians

Had gout in all versions.

I hope that the Medes

Were kicked by their steeds.

They started the fuss

And left it to us!

War  (Dan Roth)

Dawn came slowly,

almost not at all.

The sun crept over the hill

cautiously

fearful of being hit

by mortar fire.

Too Blue  (Langston Hughes)

I got those sad old weary blues.

I don’t know where to turn.

I don’t know where to go.

Nobody cares about you

When you sink so low.

What shall I do?

What shall I say?

Shall I take a gun and

Put myself away?

I wonder if

One bullet would do?

Hard as my head is,

It would probably take two.

But I ain’t got

Neither bullet nor gun –

And I’m too blue

To look for one.

The Garden Hose  (Beatrice Janosco)

In the gray evening

I see a long serpent

With its tail in the dahlias.

It lies in loops across the grass

And drinks softly at the faucet.

I can hear it swallow.

For a Dead Kitten  (Sara Henderson Hay)

Put the rubber mouse away,

Pick the spools up from the floor,

What was velvet-shod, and gay,

Will not want them any more.

What was warm, is strangely cold.

Whence dissolved the little breath?

How could this small body hold

So immense a thing as death?

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from 

a Friend Called Felicity  (John Tobias)

During that summer

When unicorns were still possible;

When the purpose of knees

Was to be skinned;

When shiny horse chestnuts

    (Hollowed out

     Fitted with straws

     Crammed with tobacco

     Stolen from butts

     In family ashtrays)

Were puffed in green lizard silence

While straddling thick branches

Far above and away

From the softening effects

Of civilization.

During that summer –

Which may never have been at all;

But which has become more real

Than the one that was –

Watermelons ruled.

Thick pink imperial slices

Melting frigidly on sun-parched tongues

Dribbling from chins;

Leaving the best part,

The black bullet seeds,

To be spit out in rapid fire

Against the wall

Against the wind

Against each other;

And when the ammunition was spent,

There was always another bite;

It was a summer of limitless bites,

Of hungers quickly felt

And quickly forgotten

With the next careless gorging.

The bites are fewer now.

Each one is savored lingeringly,

Swallowed reluctantly.

But in a jar put up by Felicity,

That summer that maybe never was

Has been captured and preserved.

And when we unscrew the lid

And slice off a piece

And let it linger on our tongue:

Unicorns become possible again.

Lead image courtesy of Oblio; 'Reflections cover, gracias de Google Images; Phoebe Snow 'Poetry Man' video, muchisimas gracias de YouTube; THANK YOU, KIM!!!!

MAGIC BUS

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” – Arthur C. Clarke, science-fiction writer,  futurist

I’ve enjoyed almost 70 years of conscious existence on this small blue marble. A really good one was 1970, when I was a high school Freshman taking a Senior-level class in Cultural Anthropology at La Puente High School. 

I’ve mentioned this class in a previous story. Please humor me.

On the first day of school, I entered the classroom and saw a pile of desks in the middle of the room, with other students sitting or standing along the walls. The bell rang with no teacher in sight.

After a few minutes, I began pulling desks off the pile and setting them upright. Some of the other guys began to do the same, and soon all the desks were facing the chalkboard, with everyone seated. 

As if on cue, teacher Alan Eggleston walked in with a giant toothy grin and mocked us for being programmed by society to set up the desks in a culturally- acceptable schoolroom format. That first day set the tone for the next two semesters of serious, mind-expanding education.

This story is about a very special day in Alan Eggleston’s Cultural Anthropology class in September of 1970.

We’d been discussing the concept of human culture, how mankind developed it, and why certain benchmarks of that development were so vital. In preparation for an upcoming class project, Mr. E announced a field trip we’d soon be taking. Very early one Saturday morning, we piled into a school bus and rode East on the San Bernardino Freeway and into the desert, somewhere between Cabazon and Palm Springs.

The driver slowed down, crossed the freeway’s dirt median and parked the bus on the Westbound side of the road. We got off the bus and trekked up the gentle slope of the alluvial plain that stretched in front of us. We hiked about a half mile, far enough away that we couldn’t hear the cars cruising on the freeway below us. The bus looked small and distant.

We stopped walking and were surrounded by rocks and scrub. After a few quiet moments, Mr. E addressed us as a group, his words muted by the wide-open desert:

“OK, you know we’ve been learning about how early man struggled every day to survive and thrive, which required him to fashion the tools to meet those needs. We’ve also studied how he learned to make them out of the natural environment he lived in.”

He raised and stretched his arms out to the desert.

“This… is the kind of place where ancient stone tools have been found. Today I want you to make your own stone tool using anything you can find that's a part of this environment. Take your time, consider the tool, how you’ll use it, and let’s get started!”

The search began for each of us to find an appropriate type of rock that would flake off when struck by a harder hammerstone. We formed search groups, and within 30 minutes everyone had the materials needed to start fabricating their tool. I chose to make a large cutting tool for skinning prey, which needed a sharpened side to slice and a rounded side to grip.

We started working away, sitting on the ground or on top of large rocks. There were a few banged fingers and rocks that shattered on first strike. We talked and laughed and made comments about each other’s poor chipping method. Soon the talk and laughter stopped, and the only sound was that of humans chipping on rocks.

Mr. E walked among the group, watching us chip away, quietly suggesting better ways to use the hammerstone, assisting those who were struggling.

 I was making progress and my cutting tool was taking shape. Suddenly, I had a strange feeling... almost an epiphany. I looked up from my work and listened to the sound of humans sitting in the desert, chipping on rocks. It was an ancient, visceral, primeval sound. I became unstuck in time. This is what it sounded like twenty-thousand years ago, when the Chemehuevi or Serrano or Mohave or Cahuilla or Tongva people were inhabiting these desert places.

                          

I felt a connection to those ancient people... people I would never know, but whom had suddenly come as alive as the people around me here in the desert. I got emotional thinking those deep thoughts, and it took me a few moments to re-focus.

I will never forget that feeling.

Alan Eggleston knew exactly what I was experiencing: a psychic pull across two hundred centuries. That’s why we were here. That’s why this trip to the desert, and his class, mattered.

Eventually, the morning waned and the heat rose, so Mr. E called time on our work. We gathered around, discussing and comparing our tools and their uses, with surprisingly good results for a bunch of teenagers. We headed back down to the freeway, ate box lunches in the shade of the bus, then boarded and began the long drive back through time. 

There were other class projects during those two semesters that dragged us back and forth across centuries, connecting to a shared humanity and opening our minds to new ways of thinking. I've always felt lucky that Alan Eggleston was a guide in my Freshman journey, and grateful that he remained a valued mentor throughout my high school years. 

Several Junior and High School teachers were critical to my formation into a thinking, questioning and understanding human. Without them, I could easily have veered off in another direction. I owe so much to Ruth Pechota and Scott Mitchell (Willow Junior High School), Alan Eggleston, Jim Ellis, and Carlos Magallanes (La Puente High School). It’s impossible to imagine my education without them.

Education is the Magic Bus that takes us to places we can’t get to on our own. Teachers are the Magicians that guide us along the way. They're far more important than any politician, corporate oligarch or religious leader. 

Look to the teachers for the way forward, into the future with open eyes and an open mind.

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” – Plutarch, Greek philosopher, biographer

“I can make you the hamburger, but I can’t eat it for you. You’ve got to eat the hamburger for yourself!” – Ruth Pechota, Social Studies educator

Bus, alluvial plain and ancient peoples images, Gracias de Google images; Educator images, Gracias de Willow Junior High School (1970) and La Puente High School (1974) Yearbooks, from the writer's library: The Who 'Magic Bus' video, Muchisimas Gracias de YouTube.