I made some posts on Facebook recently. One was a link to a story on Vatican Radio about a Catholic activist in Vietnam who was released from prison. He was put there for demonstrating for political and religious liberty in Vietnam.
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2014/10/03/vietnam_frees_catholic_activist_after_three_years_in_prison/1107847
These are things we take for granted in the USA.
The second was a comment I made:
“Where did we get the idea that having sex is a right? Or that having sex will make us happy? just wondering that’s all.”
Let’s get back to the title. The desire to detach ourselves from the travail of this world is shared by many. Businesses like Anheuser-Busch (or its successor) or the Mexican drug cartels are more than happy to facilitate this detachment. I don’t need to mention the advertising or entertainment industries, do I? Seems like no matter how hard we try to escape, reality always catches up. So our foray into numbness is always short-lived. And we never quite get numb, because we know the fix, or the endorphins, always wear off.
Were Karl Marx alive today, I think he might transpose some words in his famous statement, “Opium is the religion of the people.” We keep trying to consume our way into happiness. What we get is more damage , further intrusions of reality, from addiction to bankruptcy, STI’s, or the basic guilt and remorse we feel for treating people like instruments for our gratification.
The newly-freed Vietnamese political prisoner was jailed because he engaged and challenged his country. Religion was hardly his opium. It was anything but.

This vacation saw me getting back to an exercise regimen. I did a 40 minute walk on the beach Monday. Wednesday, I decided that $10/visit is a small price to pay for a little satisfaction and aliveness. So I  spent the. ten bucks and went to the Y. The Outer Banks YMCA is a nice facility. The locker room is a tad spartan, but there is a sauna.

I already shared about Wednesday’s swim. Thursday I swam 2050 meters. Yesterday I did 1650 meters. My stomach was a little unsettled, so I stopped at 1650 meters, just over a mile. The great feeling post-workout is that sense of emotional well-being and euphorbia that an aerobic workout provides.

Diet-wise, I have been been eating lots of grilled seafood. The scale at the Y appears to be inaccurate. So I will check my weight at home.

I am sitting in a rental condo in Duck, North Carolina. The sausage links are frying in the pan, an infomercial for the Bissel Symphony.is playing on the tube, and, outside the mist and wind of the tail end of a Nor’Easter make a mockery of our. “sun n’ fun” vacation.  Enough TV. I just started Glenn Gould’s recording of J.S. Bach’s  Goldberg Variations.  It is one recording that I must have. 

Despite the rain, this vacation has been great. I went to the Outer Banks YMCA yesterday and, after paying the $10 guest fee, I swam 1750 meters. I had not done a swim workout in forever. My weight loss plan has derailed and II have felt uneasy for about two months. That changed on this trip.  I have been reading, spending time with my wife, eating some fresh, local seafood, walking, swimming and generally enjoying myself.

The book I am reading is The Slave from Laura Antonio’s The Marketplace Series. She tells a good story., making this fantasy of “voluntary”  human trafficking seem plausible.

Have a new tablet computer. I am using the hunt and peck keyboard and I don’t”t think the italic font went off. Oh well. Deal with it.

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!.

I thought keeping a blog would be easier than it is. When there is a lack of anything in life worth noting, it is a challenge.
There is a bit of the pervert in me. When I was a boy, the exotic and forbidden element of human sexuality beckoned. Sex was The Big Secret. So the trappings of sex, specifically women’s underwear, took on significance. My strange and convoluted mind then eroticized spanking; then French women who slept with German soldiers during The Occupation having their heads shaved turned me on.
I had the usual amount of guilt about sex. I ended up marrying my sex partners, never fully exploring what marriage really meant. There is more to it than providing a legal and moral framework for sexual activity. Because marriage and children are linked, I was ill-prepared for fatherhood, much as I wanted children.
There is the tension between sex as pleasure and sex as the procreative act. That it feels soooo good is what keeps us at it. Frequency of heterosexual, penile/vaginal coitus means that conception will probably take place.
That love encompasses more than sex serves to make any long-term relationship viable and rewarding.