Third Eye Off-Centre

Colour of the day: #dbdeed.

I remember reading, as a 14 year old, T. Lobsang Rampa's purportedly true novelization of his road to enlightenment, The Third Eye. In the book, having attained some important level of wisdom, he was going to have his third eye opened in some Tibetan ceremony straight out of the pages of Doctor Strange or, perhaps, a Clive Barker story.

I remember there was an eye-shaped metal device with teeth that was sunk into the flesh and bone of his forehead to reveal the hidden occular organ which, theoretically, had grown during his deep-breathing exercises and comtemplation of the sound of one publisher waving advances.

I was reminded of it this morning as a large pimple appear just to the left of centre on my brow. I await enlightenment hourly as it grows larger. Perhaps, if it grows to a sufficiently karmic head, I will take matters in my own hands and cause the ejaculation of wisdom onto the bathroom mirror.

A web-search on Mr. Rampa turned up this.

Mannered Faggot

My subject title is stolen, if I remember correctly, from scapegoatee who used it to describe what he perceived as a more affected younger version of himself before he had sucked cock and grown more genuine.

But today, I am here to honour the mannered faggot and perhaps, for a time, to aspire to his lofty, artificial heights. I have been reading a wonderful if circumlocuitous "triography" of George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus and Lincoln Kerstein by David Leddick. From the 1920s to the 1950s, they were part of a glittering, New York homosexual demimonde devoted to beauty and art. Platt Lynes was a pioneering photographer whose work was inspired by surrealism and the naked form of beautiful boys whom he photographed until his early death. Cadmus was a magic realist painter who felt a direct kinship to his Renaissance predecessors. Lincoln Kerstein was an impressario who brought ballet to America. Their lives intersected both professionally and socially and all were sincere, dedicated to art and surprisingly out. (Perhaps only surprising when we mistakenly think of our time as a the zenith of social progress.)

( Here are a couple of things I love from the book. )