ouch.

Now here's something (watch the ad to get the full article, it's 15 seconds and well worth it). It's a discussion of how and why the idea of open marriage doesn't come up in any commentary about the Clintons, or really anywhere else in public conversation.

What society refuses to see is a third possibility -- the possibility that human beings are capable of experiencing two contradictory feelings at the same time and that one does not negate the other.
Which is incredibly true. Imagine how much drama, both in entertainment and in our lives, is driven by the conviction that we should (why?) and are only able to (blatantly untrue and no one wants to admit it) love one person at a time.

Open marriage, for those of you following along at home, is the idea that one can be totally committed and loving to one person, and continue to have sex with others. In short, as the group Savage Garden put it (in a song that's much more catchy than you'd think from the lyrics), the idea that "trust is more important than monogamy". This itself is just a special case of what we tend to call polyamory, an umbrella term to cover the realm where people can and do construct all kinds of different networks of relationships, which may or may not include sexual activity.

The land of the ambivalently free.

Been getting my butt kicked at aikido this week, being very stiff and neglecting to breathe regularly. Breathing calmly while falling down (ukemi) turns out to be trickier than it sounds. I've started practicing ukemi a bit more seriously, though, so someday it will have paid off a bit.


Chris