Gym Unicorn: Sought by Many, Tamed by Few

The pollen is officially here.

Working out:  I found some exercise videos on-line and applied them to my routine.  What I noticed was that my posture slips unless I'm thinking about my rhomboids and that some of the rowing motions I do probably work a little better if I imagine that I'm pulling back with my elbows instead of my hands.  Went Saturday:  About 210 calories in 25 minutes on the elliptical (I'm noticing my left hip gets a cramp if I start up too quickly).  100 calories in 10 minutes on the rowing machine.  3X12 at 15 on the assisted dip and chin machine.  3x12 at 50 on the pec fly (with a wider setting so I'm starting out a little more stretched out than I had been).  3X12 at 80 on the lat-pull down (being careful to pull from the rhomboids and not move my torso so much).  3X12 curl-ups (which I guess are really called vertical crunches or something).   3X12X35 lbs barbell curls.  An assorted number of overhead dumbbell triceps curls until I had to flee the gym to avoid something horrific over the stereo.  

I've been using a calendar app to remind me to go to the gym, and I think it's helping.  On the plus side, I think I'm getting rid of some flab.  On the minus side, I'm feeling sore; sometimes I think it's from when storms roll in, but other times my joints feel a little worn.  I guess that's the peril of being over 50.

I saw an internet picture of a shirtless buff guy in a kind of unicorn outfit (rainbow lighting unicorn pants, fluffy white hat thing with a thick golden unicorn horn, and rainbow leg warmers).  I'm having a moment of ambiguous body goals, because I'd like to look like that; but on the other hand, unicorn guy isn't an ectomorph; but back on the first hand, I think I could get obliques like that; but back on the second hand is breaking down my body into various sets of -oids a dismembered way of viewing myself; but back on the first hand "and I'd be as hard as nails / and they'd only want me more / if I was a folly girl ... (and continuing Dot's song, '...nah, I wouldn't like it much / married men and stupid boys / and all the smoke / and all the noise...").

Over-The-Top Art

Over the July Forth weekend we went to the Portland Art Museum and saw the "Gods and Heroes" display of (mostly) paintings from the French Academy.

I liked them because they are over-the-top ("see the drama unfold").  Think of all the hysteria over the Death of Socrates, and add stray arrows, and dancing over severed heads.  And fabulous necklaces or scraps of loincloth.  Mark thinks the over-the-top parts are stupid, but he likes the technique.  I like allegory in general and convoluted allegory especially, and I liked some of the sullen expressions in the paintings.  And tableaux:  it's true, if I could live my life going from one fabulous tableaux to the next, I'd be... well, maybe not happy all the time, but certainly it would be fun.

The body language of the nymph turning away from Paris was great, and all the outstretched hands in every piece were fun.  

I wasn't especially wild about the painting from just before the French Revolution, as these tended to feature children being shot with arrows or stabbed with swords.

I think the most effective part of the display was walking around a corner and being confronted by the anatomy paintings.  Mark had warned me about these, and still I was surprised.  The most impressive painting was a warrior in a fighter's stance, and the artist had painted the musculature and bones underneath the skin on half of the figure.  

A painting of Icarus and Daedalus reminded me of the funny captions recently given to a slew of Icarus paintings in The Toast (sadly defunct in 2026).  The one in this exhibit wasn't particularly buff, but it was easy to imagine him suggesting, "But Dad, these feathers will make me stand out more when I'm up in the sky."

Early on in the exhibit there was a statement about how the students of the academy spent much of their time painting or sculpting the male nude.  The idea was that the male nude was something God made and therefore a something that was divine and worthy depicting the heroic.  Mark thinks this is propaganda, but what I think is interesting is how we went culturally from the nude male body being divine and heroic to it being a subversive statement of (homo) erotic desire.  

I missed the cartoon at the end making fun of all the figures holding their arms out, up, or imperiously.  So we'll have to go back.

Gay Beltane

Beltane is coming up, with all its "Tra-la, It's May!" imagery.

If you do an image search on Pinterest for "beltane" or "beltaine" you get lots of saucy pictures of white folks dressed in scanty scraps of green, with crystals or elk horns stuck on their foreheads. Or you get suggestively posed trees. There's some maypole dancing, and a few folks jumping over flames. Oh, yeah; and deely-bopper-anteneaed flower fairies.

If you do an image search for "gay beltane" or "gay beltaine" you get _nothing_. Not even gym-queens in Pan drag. Same thing for "lesbian beltane" and "LGBT beltane." Granted, this is Pinterest and not the whole internet. But still, it reflects the heteronormativity of the Neo-pagan community.

I've always had difficulties squaring homosexuality with mainstream Neo-pagan celebrations of Beltaine because attempts to do so seem like simple token substitutions (http://johnburridge.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-im-solitary-neo-pagan.html). To be fair, my latest Google search did bring up an interesting ritual exploring the erotic relationship between the Greenman and the Horned God as a metaphor for the interconnectivity of as the plant kingdom and the as the animal kingdom. ... and then it turned into a discussions of the symbolic roles of tops and bottoms.

Turning away from the internet, when I think of this time, I tend to not think in terms of Beltane and more in terms of it being The Ides of Spring: the purifying balance-point between the new beginnings of the Spring Equinox and the transformations of the Summer Solstice. For me, the male divinity of this festival manifests as an attractive man, drumming, with flowers or a wreath in his hair. I like the custom of jumping over a fire, or passing between two fires as a kind of purification--and a ritual circle of scantily-clad men drumming together around a roaring bon-fire for purification would be enchanting. And hot.

Thinking about the ritual and the erotic energy connected to this festival, I can't help think about boundaries and taboo--which circles around again to purification. And then I get conflicted thinking about how to share this kind of festival with my family. I know balancing body- and sex-positive ritual with family-friendly ritual is an on-going debate within the NeoPagan community, and it gets even more complicated in a mixed-faith family. I imagine some Neo-Pagan families get a babysitter for the "adult" rituals.

Beltane Babysitter. Now there's a story idea.