The Televisionary Oracle (13 page)
Read The Televisionary Oracle Online
Authors: Rob Brezsny
Wait. Wait. Wait. Here comes another voice demanding to be heard. From out of the subconscious depths it erupts, begging to offer a further nuance to the master theory.
It’s true that on the face of it I may seem to be just another sleazy patriarchal drone possessed by my own testosterone (even if I rationalize it with spiritually savvy abracadabra). But in my defense, there is a considerable body of evidence suggesting that my testosterone’s imperatives might be developing a distinctly
womanly
bent. I could even go so far as to say that for some mysterious reason—either through my own craftsmanship or some divine favor—I am in the process of re-engineering my generic male lust so that it serves feminist agendas.
Theorem 1: I never seek out women who honor and obey obsolete gender roles, or who willingly participate in their own objectification, or who rely so utterly on their fabulously beautiful appearance that all brain cells not contributing to that project have ceased to grow. While my libido may reflexively and atavistically flow in the direction of such throwbacks, I’m never moved to act on it.
Theorem 2: More and more I find myself doing unto women as women have traditionally done unto men. I try to read the moods of any female companion I’m with, for instance, and use this information to play to her needs. I’m an enthusiastic listener; I ask catalytic questions; I’m acutely attuned not just to what
I
want to do, but to the ways she and I can blend and collaborate. Most importantly, I don’t do any of this merely out of duty. I enjoy it. It fulfills me.
Theorem 3: I love to give women gifts; I
need
to give women gifts. Not in the typical style of a generosity-addict, though: My goodies are not a means to control and manipulate the recipients. I confess I’m not perfect; if I were I’d bestow my blessings anonymously so that no one could ever puff up my ego with her gratitude. But I’ve worked hard to eliminate the compulsion to attach any strings.
Theorem 4: Nothing excites me more than a woman who’s able to express a balance of “masculine” and “feminine” qualities. I demonstrate my commitment to this ideal in the way I treat her. For instance: I encourage her independence with tenderness, not aloofness. I reward
her objectivity without punishing her subjectivity. I jack up her ambitions by being supportive, not competitive.
Theorem 5: I get off almost as much from invoking my companion’s pleasure as I do from my own.
Theorem 6: Unlike the majority of the male population, I know the identity and location of the only human organ whose sole purpose is to experience pleasure, the clitoris. Unlike the majority of the male population, I know a woman’s sexual engine can’t go from zero to eighty miles an hour in ten seconds. Unlike the majority of the male population, my hard and fast rule about orgasms is, “After you, dear.”
Theorem 7: I feel sheepish about the kind of bragging I’m doing, since I know that doctrinaire radical feminists who think all men are rapists would regard me as a self-deluded poseur. And it’s
good
that I feel sheepish. It keeps me humble; it drives me to continue checking in with my true motivations; and it encourages me to cast that big frowning dyke in the role of my superego, which is far better for my moral growth than a big frowning patriarch.
Think globally,
but act locally.
Plan for the future,
but act in the present.
Dream of all the masterpieces you’d be thrilled to create,
but work on just one at a time.
Lust for every enticing soul you see,
but only make love to the imperfect beauty you’re actually with.
Allow yourself to be flooded
with every last feeling that bubbles up from your subconscious,
but understand that only a very few of these feelings
need to be forcefully expressed.
Be passionately attuned
to all the injustices and hypocrisies you see around you,
but be selective when choosing which of those you will actually fight.
Live forever,
but die a little each day.
Watch the Televisionary Oracle,
but be the Televisionary Oracle.
D
ear beauty and truth fans, please remember that you are always in control. While communing with the Televisionary Oracle,
you
are the chief programmer.
You
decide which songline to tiptoe along.
You
decide which wormhole to shimmy through.
Now take a look at our selection of Drivetime spectaculars, and choose the one that tickles your kundalini best.
•
Menarche for Men
. For the first time in more than six thousand years, members of the male gender get to plunge into the shamanic fun that comes from being dead and alive at the same time.
•
Mary Magdalen’s Monster Truck Rally and Tantric Cryfest
. Saintly voluptuaries get doped up on poignant eros and whirl their souped-up pick-ups around hundred-foot-tall scarecrows of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.
•
Do What You Fear Orgy
. First, you make a list of the one hundred things you’re most afraid of. Next, you rate them from one to one hundred in order of how badly they scare you. Then you agree to stop worrying about the bottom ninety-five fears because they just distract you from the five really interesting ones. Finally, you conquer those top five fears—by doing them.
•
Destroy the News
. Sacred newzak, weather, and sports channeled live from menstruating shamans who’re dedicated to annihilating the pathological obsessions of the mass media in the kindest way possible.
•
A Feminist Man’s Guide to Picking Up Women
. Self-help book from one of the Drivetime’s most macho feminists.
•
Get Out the Guilt Binge
. Write a list of each source of your remorse. Then compose an atonement and give a gift to each person on that list whom you’ve wronged. Next, write a love letter and give a gift to yourself, forgiving all your sins. Finally, eat the list.
•
Sex Riots
. Travel with our roving band of Sex Rioters to Tadzhikistan, Albania, Malaysia, and many other hotbeds of phallocratic repression. Simply sit back and enjoy the uproar, or join right in in stirring up some erotic agitation.
•
The Archetypes Are Mutating: The Heroine with a Thousand Ruses
. The autohagiography of a close personal friend of the Sly Universal
Virus with No Fucking Opinion.
•
Brag Therapy Marathon
. Brag about yourself willfully and wildly, stopping only to provoke nods of agreement, either in front of a mirror or in the company of companions who won’t hold it against you.
•
The Kundalini Pledge Drive
. A telethon designed to mobilize the
SHAKTI
that has been groggy for more than six thousand years. (Also known as
witchy dragon gumbo, pearly crone thunder
, or
riot grrrl orgone
.) The goal: to pave the way for the celebration of Twenty-Two Hours of World Orgasm.
Homework
Write an essay on at least two of the following topics:
“How I Used My Nightmares to Become Rich and Famous”
“How I Exploited My Problems to Become Sassy and Savvy”
“How I Fed and Fed and Fed My Monsters
Until They Ate Themselves to Death”
“How I Turned Envy, Resentment, and Smoldering Anger
into Generosity, Compassion, and Fiery Success”
“Why Perfection Sux”
H
i. It’s me again. The reluctant queen. The apologetic spoiled brat. This time I want to invite you into the story of how I learned to kill the apocalypse in spite of the efforts of dear Vimala, my beloved mother and teacher. To begin, I need to describe my menarche. But there’s a problem. I had so many menarches. Which one shall I tell you about? The false alarms? The dress rehearsals? The harrowing rituals in which my well-meaning moms did just about everything but punch me in the groin to induce my tardy first flow?
Maybe I should tell you about the first time Vimala tenderly manipulated me into guzzling two large cups of noxious tea brewed from pennyroyal and false unicorn root. Didn’t cure the problem as advertised, but stirred up a riotous night-dream straight out of the medieval tapestry starring a unicorn with its paws in the lap of the sensuous virgin. And that was mildly consoling to Vimala, who has always been a sucker for any of my portentous sleeptime artifacts from which she can wrangle prophetic interpretations.
In case you have not yet sniffed out what the bloody hell I’m talking about, I’ll spell it out. My menarche was late. Not just a little. It was so late that some feared it might never start at all. And this was most disturbing to the members of the ancient order which prided itself on preserving the sacred menstrual mysteries through the dark ages of the phallocracy. How could their girl messiah embody and illustrate those mysteries if she herself didn’t menstruate?
It’s what I’ve always referred to as my Third Shining Flaw. A worthy
companion for the ugly birthmark and heart trouble I was born with.
From an early age, of course, I had been thoroughly saturated with the logistics as well as the mythology of the menstrual cycle. Beginning with my first crayon drawings of the magical rainbow womb, no teaching imprinted me more deeply than the meaning of the moment that the ovum and its nest die. As they slough themselves free of the womb, I’d learned, they give a signal to the pituitary gland to secrete the hormone that begins the ripening of a new follicle in the ovary. This was the primal mystery of our order, a core symbol of how thoroughly the forces of life and death are interwoven.
“She’s a late bloomer,” the Pomegranate Grail’s muckamucks clucked to themselves when their storied princess reached her fourteenth birthday without so much as a clot of the moon-flow. This despite the inconvenient fact that my breasts were growing exuberantly; my pubic and underarm hair were already thick thatches.
There was a thing like a wave of cramps in the month before my fifteenth birthday. Something that might be construed as an announcement of being on the verge of tiptoeing up to my menarche. And preparations were duly made. My seven mommies wove garlands of roses and peonies. They consecrated (for—what?—the fifth time?) my all-natural linen menstrual pads—made out of flax, don’t you know, as in matriarchal days of yore. And then there was the unbelievably corny poetry, which I couldn’t help but swoon over despite myself, it having been so thoughtfully chosen by my preternaturally loving mommies: “You’re about to take a trip to the moon in a boat powered by fireworks and wild swans.…”
I’m sure my guardians had often whispered the word
amenorrhea
in worried discussions before I ever heard it, but the first time it hit my ears was a cold December day when I was closer to my sixteenth birthday than my fifteenth. In retrospect I know how awful a curse word that was; how rudely it threatened to refute the visions on which my mission hinged. That there might be something amiss with the menstrual potential of a messiah whose mission it was to restore the menstrual mysteries?! Impossible! Unthinkable! Downright heretical! To even ruminate on the possibility veered dangerously close to an admission that either, one, they’d fingered the wrong person for the job of serving as their holy one, or two, restoring the menstrual mysteries
would not proceed in the way they’d always imagined.
At least amenorrhea was a concrete, physical problem, though. It might possibly be due to causes that didn’t have to do with divine disfavor. In that sense my moms were rooting for it.
Unfortunately, the facts were not in their favor. Primary amenorrhea—failure to ever begin menstruating—occurs most often in young ballet dancers or gymnasts who’re used to torturing their bodies with strenuous physical exercise. And while I was in good shape—danced a lot, walked all over creation, played softball—I was no Olympic-bound superfreak.
There’s another cross-section of teenage girls whose ovaries don’t produce estrogen in the proper way to goad the uterine lining to thicken and shed: the anorexics. But I was no ninety-pound weakling patterning myself after the concentration camp imitators stalking the fashion runways of Paris. I never bought into that skinny-is-prettier bunk. And the food my moms made was too tasty to avoid, anyway.