This Preppy’s Passion
An erotic response to life isn’t just about love-making,
it’s about being fully engaged body and soul to the
extraordinary beauty of life. To music, art, poetry and
nature, to all that stirs the soul and elevates us from
our little lives. To feel so deeply the poignant sadness
and the exquisite joys of being fully human, to live life as
a prayer of awe and gratitude!!
What fire burns in those few lines, I wish that I had penned them. Alas, the dilemma. I started this journey (this blog) thinking that somehow, someday I would just might recapture my mojo, my passion for the art of writing. Yet I find myself writing others’ words, much as a parrot regurgitates what it hears. I am so repulsed at what I am doing that I feel unholy, like a hack.
In the beginning I thought, just put your thoughts out there, if someone reads them great, if not, that is alright.
I hate to admit but I do care. I do want people to read what I write.
I am not writing this post to garner sympathy. Who am I kidding , of course I want to garner Sympathy, that is with a capital S. why would I put the pen to paper and post if I didn’t want some response from you.
I do want an erotic response to life. I do want to feel, to burn with passion, Yet, I find myself not actually feeling much of anything that looks like passion. In the past few days, I have wanted to isolate. I even toyed with the idea of deleting everything, Facebook accounts, Twitter account, E-mail accounts everything and getting rid of Sofia (my Mac). I want to be free of all distraction to write. I know that isolation and deletion is not the answer. I have no idea what the answer looks like, just that I must find it.
To admit to myself that I don’t have the answer is one thing, but to admit this to you goes against all that I know as a WASP. I want to put on the shiny armor and blind you with my wit, charm & perfect writing. When in reality, I feel that I am just a parrot expelling air, at least that is how I feel today.
I have learned through-out this journey : Feelings are just that, Feelings. Feelings are not realities. What then is this thing we call reality ?
I don’t know. Do you ? Do any of us?
Faithfully Yours, Bumby.
Tags: Love-making, Passion, Preppy, Writing
The Preppy Chronicles 
Jessica
June 24, 2011 at 9:06 PM
I don’t know… I think feelings are real. I think feelings are a reflection of reality. My reality is quite difficult these days with extreme highs and lows. My feelings absolutely reflect the events in my life.
Like you my writing is distracted by all things “plugged in.” I love nothing more than the pulse of the pen as it glides and stops, glides and stops, across the pale blue lines on a yellow legal pad. That said, I find nothing more tedious than the act of copying all my work onto my laptop. Also, truth be told, my thoughts fly out of my head faster than than my hand can keep up!
Bumby Scott
June 24, 2011 at 9:15 PM
Thank you Jessica. I find myself wanting to keep up with it all & feeling like I will never catch up, which is extremely frustrating. I have also noticed that with the change in medium, my attention span is shorter. I know that there is a balance, I just haven’t a clue what it looks like.
The Preppy Princess
June 26, 2011 at 6:40 PM
Oh dear Bumby, please (*please*) don’t do anything as severe and perhaps irreversible as deleting accounts. Too many of us would be crushed to lose your insight, your wit, your candor. Especially your candor, something of a lost touch here in cyberville.
I am sad to read that you feel unplugged. From my tiny corner of the globe I wonder if you do know what the “realities” are, at least some of them, and perhaps aren’t comforted or enchanted by what you see?
You are so not a hack. Seriously not.
Sending you a hug,
tp
Bumby Scott
June 26, 2011 at 7:52 PM
Thank you!!! I do know that this will all pass. I have no plans to delete anything, but the thought was appealing for a brief moment. I think that a large part of the feeling is that the more that I dig into the past, the more I see how far off course that this country is from our founding principles. I think that we are standing at the edge and if we as a nation do not stop, we will slide into the abyss and join the ranks of Egypt, Rome, Greece as once great nations and empires. All destroyed by great moral decay. At this time we are as nation ruled by the axiom: I can do what ever I want, drugs, abortion, homosexuality & lesbianism. I want it now!!! because it is my right to “Pursue Happiness” We have forgotten that the concept, “Pursuit of Happiness” involves putting your wants and desires aside for the good of the whole, in order to keep our society from tearing itself apart.
Pink One
June 30, 2011 at 8:39 PM
Hi Bumby! It sounds like you’ve been mulling over a lot of things lately. I guess one could say that reality is what a person creates for themselves according to the choices they make. Feelings, to me, are somewhat of a secondary reality, if you will. It’s nice when our feelings coincide harmoniously with the choices we make, but sometimes they don’t. If I made choices according to my feelings, I would never get the dishes done. 😀 My reality would then be nasty! I’m probably not hitting the nail on the head here, but it just makes me think about what I’ve taught my children while they were growing up, “You need to do what’s right no matter how you feel.” “You’re the boss of your feelings. Don’t allow your feeling to have control and “boss” you around.” As I explained to them, this does not mean that we always have control of what, how, and when we feel, but what we do with those feelings once they arise. Acknowledge them, yes, but don’t give them power over you. It’s not a matter of denying feelings, but rather putting them in their proper place so that they support you, or do not hinder you.
Pink One
June 30, 2011 at 8:50 PM
By the way, I have never thought of you as being a hack. There’s nothing wrong with not re-inventing the wheel. There’s simplicity in recognizing that someone else has already said something splendidly that fits what you think or feel, so there’s no need to do so again.
Bumby Scott
June 30, 2011 at 11:13 PM
@Pink One Thank you for you most kind words. I have been mulling things over. The most difficult undertaking that we as humans can do is to look deep inside and examine our thoughts, beliefs, our wants and desires. The mere looking is easy, it is the willingness to change what we don’t like and feed the positive. Last years Aha moment is this years old thinking. The mere fact that have chosen this pathway is an indication that I need improvement, or does it ? I am still struggling with the notion that God made me a perfect being with all of my flaws, It is those flaws that make me useful. I don’t need to improve, I just need to grow into the person that he created me to be.
Pink One
July 1, 2011 at 8:52 AM
Yes, we are flawed, and God does not NEED perfection from us, but we could all use some improvement. What he WANTS is our love shown through our efforts and intention to do our best despite our flaws, or in spite of them, so to speak. That has to be good enough for us as well. The best analogy I can think of is our kid’s school work/grades. We’ve never been the type of parents to demand A’s from our children, but we have always expected them to do their best. If their best resulted in a B, then we, and they, had every reason to be thrilled with the B, and no reason to be upset that they didn’t get an A. If they knew that their B was the result of not really trying, then they needed to make more of an effort. Another example, from a slightly different angle, is my weight. I have a “flawed” body that suffers from an autoimmune disease. This causes me to have a very difficult time keeping my weight down. I’m 145 lbs., but would love to be my normal 120 lbs. Do I hate myself and my body because it’s not at 12o lbs.? No. Do I throw my hands up and make the excuse that, “Oh well, I have an autoimmune disease and there’s nothing I can do about it.”? No. There’s nothing I can do about having the autoimmune disease, but there is something that I can do about how I take care of myself. As long as I’m eating healthy and exercising, then I know that I’m doing something about what I do have control over and I can be happy about the weight that my efforts leave me at. I know too many people who use their “flawed” body as an excuse for not taking care of themselves, and allow themselves to become unhealthier and more overweight than they would be if they took care of them despite their disease, yet blame their disease. I think they are unhappy and feel horrible about how they feel and look, not because of the disease that they put the blame on, but because in the depths of their heart they know that the truth is that they aren’t doing what they are capable of doing in order to help themselves be as healthy as possible in their situation, within reason, of course. I’m not talking here about being obsessive. We all can technically take things to an extreme, but that’s not what’s expected of us, and that’s not what I’m saying. I hope you understood that.
I don’t mean to offend anyone by what I’ve said. I know there are always exceptions, but I’m not talking about the exceptions. I’m talking about those who fit what I’ve said
Bumby Scott
July 3, 2011 at 7:22 PM
Thank you Pink One, I think as we all head down this path of discovery and find our truth, each one unique, the challenge comes in the acceptance of that truth. That is my hope. For me the issue revolves around accepting that God did make me perfect, which includes all of my flaws. Thus, what I consider to be flawed, is in His reality perfect.
Pink One
July 4, 2011 at 3:06 PM
Well, not perfect in the sense that God is perfect. So, you’re not talking about sinfulness so much as you are talking about our human nature itself? Even so, our human nature, which God did not make a mistake in making, still needs to be ordered and directed to God’s Will, otherwise we would only be animal in nature, living according to natural instinct alone. Although our instincts may be natural according to how we are made, we have free will, which, as children of God, will reflect God’s Will if we make choices according to that belief. It may be a totally natural instinct for a man to want to kill someone who has made him raging mad, but he can’t actually go kill the person, yet it would be understandable if he felt that way. I think a large part of the problem with our society is that people live according to their instincts and feeling, reacting and making decisions on the level that animals do.
Maybe I’m not understanding what you mean by accepting yourself, flaws and all. How would that change how you live if you believe in God already? I can understand that it might take away unnecessary guilt by not being so hard on yourself for not being “perfect”, but how would it change your decision making, unless you plan to start making decisions purely on natural instinct, like animals do. Accepting flaws as “good” does not automatically mean that we can act upon them because they are “natural”, if God has told us not to. You are not saying that, are you? I’m sorry if I’m completely missing your point.
Bumby Scott
July 6, 2011 at 9:31 AM
@Pink One, once again you have not misunderstood.
If I believe, which I do, that I am made in the image of GOD, that I am a Spiritual being on a human journey & that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, then I must come to an acceptance that ALL of my ” instincts ” are there for a reason.
The main reason that I started this conversation, about sex and the role that it plays in my life & in the American culture, was because I needed to see if what I was taught as a child, was true. The drive to procreate is in my opinion, the single most powerful drive that exists in nature only superseded by our drive to worship & be in relationship with our creator. My task is to find out what GOD says about sex and what man says that GOD says. This is a personal journey, my other task is to see what the ” General ” persuasion was at the time that the colonialists came to this country. Why I believe that what they as a collective understood to be the will of God is important, is because they set our society on a pathway in 1630 that was ratified in 1776- 1778. How did what they believed about human nature and the Spiritual nature of being human take root in the American psyche that lasted from 1630 through the mid 1950s. That is a good long run. Has being human changed so much, that we are willing to throw away 325 years of history to satisfy the unnatural lifestyles of a few? What is it that God says is right and what does man say is right?
I believe that freewill would not, nay, cannot exist without the inherent choice of living a life that is dominated by the Spirit of GOD and one that is ruled by only the thoughts of the human spirit. I believe, that when I give up the idea that I as a human, know what is right and accept the idea that my creator knows a bit more than I do & accept the guidance that He gives, I can then make decisions that are not based solely on what I think and feel as a human. When I reject the balance of the two , we end up with a society that accepts unnatural as natural.
I hope that this helps clarify my thoughts.
Pink One
July 16, 2011 at 7:19 AM
I understand what you’re getting at. I do have some thoughts on this, but, as I saw above that you are about to do a post on this, I’m curious what you will say in your next post before I comment. I’m interested to see what your digging will uncover for you.