tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28133718.post3881423030243756233..comments2023-06-28T22:58:28.247+10:00Comments on Sixth In Line: Sex and deathElisabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015624747225433940noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28133718.post-45991280270709552532013-09-16T22:17:44.548+10:002013-09-16T22:17:44.548+10:00I would love to know who wrote that poem.I would love to know who wrote that poem.Joanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09458408621855773976noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28133718.post-15849888971175503762013-09-15T14:40:20.696+10:002013-09-15T14:40:20.696+10:00This was beautiful -- meandering, lyrical -- all o...This was beautiful -- meandering, lyrical -- all of it. The last two lines -- the quote and then your sentence were just perfect.Elizabethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03313726816776097840noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28133718.post-74864518411741461162013-09-15T09:05:56.710+10:002013-09-15T09:05:56.710+10:00I really do like your writing and the subjects you...I really do like your writing and the subjects you bring to the surface and then expose just enough, to wish I’d been there☺<br />I think most of us are more open to show more of our physical selves when we are young. It’s rebellion of course, but also the logic behind hiding areas of our bodies from one another really is sort of stupid. It’s only as we age and see how nudity is treated, that to survive we give up and go along. <br />I wonder if as we age we become less confident of our bodies in a youth oriented social perception of physical beauty as well. Of course there is also all the laws that get in the way, from too many centuries of organized religions where, believing is promoted over thinking and common sense. And so we just give up and remain covered up, realizing it’s not worth the fight. Or maybe we just find others who are accepting, and remote places to get away from what is obviously the majority who don’t realize how stupid the cover up has always been. <br />Anthony Ducehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17476865809734682418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28133718.post-42352587718779943282013-09-15T04:47:06.703+10:002013-09-15T04:47:06.703+10:00I think you're right, Elisabeth, it would have...I think you're right, Elisabeth, it would have made more sense if the mother, rather than the father, wore the short shorts. We live in an era where men's shorts rarely go above the knee. Women have the option of going much further. If it's a casual-dress restaurant, it would be all right for the daughter to wear such shorts. The father's the one that would have gotten the weird stares. We also live in an era where women are simply allow to be more sexually provocative when it comes to dress. For instance, suppose it had been an upscale "fine dining" restaurant? The daughter wouldn't have been allowed to wear shorts of any length, but she could have worn a low-cut sleaveless top. The father couldn't. There's one place where a man CAN dress sexually provoctive--but, well, there you're not really expected to have a wife or daughter in tow.<br /><br />As for the general question of how much a women can show in public, doesn't what kind of physical condition you're in have something to do with it? If you go to a beach, you'll see some women in one-piece bathing suits and others in bikinis. Now, are the women in one-piece suits dressed that way because they're sexually modest, or are they perhaps simply not as thin as the women in bikinis? Just as thin women are more likely to wear short shorts, mini-skirts, etc. Nothing to do with sex. On the hand, I have seen non-thin women wear low-cut tops that really off the breasts. I'm willing to bet that DOES have something to do with looking sexually alluring. <br /><br />Just sayin'. Kirkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02155991693956178030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28133718.post-74990683036709361452013-09-15T04:29:54.111+10:002013-09-15T04:29:54.111+10:00Nice piece. I like the questions, and the personal...Nice piece. I like the questions, and the personalities evoked, even the two versions of the same one - the younger & the older. <br /><br />I remember answering an internet questionnaire once that was supposed to direct us to a world religion, the one that matched our answers best. I got directed to Islam, which puzzled me until I remembered how many times I'd given "modesty" a thumbs up. But I don't think the word meant the same for both of us. I mean "humility" and as far as I'm concerned you can be naked and humble or wrapped up without any skin showing and be immodest. If that's true in Islam, it's certainly not a governing ideology. Glenn Ingersollhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10674475308395975995noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28133718.post-71352491507646736212013-09-14T20:02:27.377+10:002013-09-14T20:02:27.377+10:00The suit in the window, a brilliant shiny royal bl...The suit in the window, a brilliant shiny royal blue; must buy it. <br /><br />Dancing at the Orchid Ballroom tonight, brand new bright blue suit on. Feeling ace!<br /><br />Walking down the road to get to the bus stop. Why are people smiling and looking at me? Is it the suit?<br /><br />Turned back. Indoors suit off. Dark grey 'bird's eye' double-breasted suit on.<br /><br />Gave the new blue suit to my younger brother. He loved it.<br /><br />Even now, decades later, I feel embarrassed about the 'loud' blue suit.<br /><br />The young, I think, just want to be noticed. Stand out from the crowd. I guess I did. Then I must have thought people were laughing at me in my flashy outfit. I felt uncomfortable and couldn't wear it.<br /><br />However, I wouldn't mind wearing it in my coffin! Couldn't care less then.PhilipHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811831703263176415noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28133718.post-47694751142532161892013-09-14T19:53:07.665+10:002013-09-14T19:53:07.665+10:00Woody Allen’s film Love and Death was originally t...Woody Allen’s film <i>Love and Death</i> was originally to be called <i>Sex and Death</i> but United Artists disapproved. <br /><br />I remember the first—actually only—time I saw a girl in a see-through top. It was on my very first trip to the Glasgow Mitchell Library, the city’s big reference library, so I’d be about sixteen and the place was full of college types. At the counter while I waited for my books there was a girl of maybe eighteen in a transparent top with no bra. It was a top of many colours, like an oil stain, and probably nylon or maybe silk from the look of it and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Off her breasts. I couldn’t tell you now what she looked like. I actually couldn’t even tell you what her breasts looked like other than the fact they weren’t enormous or anything. But there they were, a few feet away from me. I wasn’t aroused. I was too fascinated to get excited, too nervous, too taken aback. None of the women I had grown up with would ever do anything like that. If I caught a glimpse of a bra strap on a shoulder it was as much. What got me was the fact she was clearly not bothered—she wasn’t doing this for a dare of anything—and no one else seemed to be bothered or even have noticed as if it was the most normal thing in the world for her to be standing there without a bra on for all the world to gawp at. The thing is, if I walked into the Mitchell Library today and saw the same thing I don’t think I would feel any differently than I did forty years ago. I’ve never got used to how fashions have changed and how women will deliberately wear dresses that are too small so that their underwear is visible. <br /><br />They did a <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/315/7123/1641" rel="nofollow">study</a> in Caerphilly a few years back. Apparently they found that there the mortality risk was 50% lower in men with high frequency of orgasm than in men with low frequency of orgasm. So sex and death are connected. Why am I not surprised? The article made an interesting point about the need to promote the benefits of a healthy sex life. We have the “five a day” campaign for fruit and veg. I wonder what the government’s recommended weekly dose of sex might be. That would be a fun campaign to get to run. More fun that the “save water, share a bath” campaign from … I think it was the late seventies.<br /><br />My family had/has no traditions when it comes to death. My parents were both cremated and the ashes disposed of by the crematorium. We don’t romanticise death in any way, shape or form. We’re not heartless—we all cried and grieved in our ways—but we didn’t make more of the ceremonies than was needed; it was an opportunity for friends and family to come together to remember. Two or three hours later it was all done and it was just the family. I can’t honestly remember that much about either day but you know me and my memory.<br /><br />Carrie and I are both very clear about what we want to happen when we die: nothing, or as near to nothing as can be got away with. No service. No coffins. No urns. No memorials or trees planted in our name. I’ve never understood the idea of having to go to a place to remember someone—I’ve never visited a grave in my life although I have wandered round a few cemeteries in my time—nor have I ever understood why people feel the need to go to church to talk to God. I guess I’ve never really got the concept of ceremony, the marking or respect by following a few made-up rules: go here, say this, wear that, repeat these words. I don’t suppose I’m very sentimental. I miss my parents but I can’t and don’t remember the anniversaries of their passing.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28133718.post-66338225777506822132013-09-14T17:55:15.566+10:002013-09-14T17:55:15.566+10:00I clicked on the link to see the short shorts, the...I clicked on the link to see the short shorts, they look exactly like the shorts my husband and I used to wear and we had four small children at the time! They don't look too short to me. Our shorts were also cut off jeans, they'd worn through at the knees so we cut them to shorts and got a few extra years wear from them. I have a pair of cut ff jeans shorts even now that are almost as short because they've been fraying away and I still wear them at 61. <br />I think he might have had a point about not wearing short shorts to a restaurant, but were the shorts decent and what type of restaurant was it? A "family" restaurant where parents take young children? Then okay, probably more kids would be wearing short shorts. A "swish" chandelier-and-crystal-glassware restaurant would be a different matter. No short shorts there. Riverhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14794655013673748992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28133718.post-67974136704157067312013-09-14T16:07:44.091+10:002013-09-14T16:07:44.091+10:00This was such a gift to read. Thank you, Elizabeth...This was such a gift to read. Thank you, Elizabeth.Maggie Mayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14699674732274478502noreply@blogger.com