The toys have been delayed

Bitter to sweet

In other news, Evergreen’s Ever Given, the super container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for 6 days was dislodged and re-floated this afternoon. It heads for the Great Bitter Lake for inspection before it is sent on its way to Rotterdam, all things being equal. [BBC News: Suez Canal reopens after giant stranded ship is freed]

There is cause for great sweet celebration for moving the ship out of the way would soon address a pressing need that the pandemic and lockdowns placed on us. As without partners and companionship for intimacy, some people have sought alternative avenues to fulfil human expression, even pleasure for self or with some company.

Escape your inhibitions with toys

Wending its way to The Netherlands, a shipment of 20 containers contain toys of a titillating and excitable variety which on usage, application, and play can or could bring orgasmic heights or spasmodic climaxes, or some feverish expression of body, soul, and escape that is currently absent from my vocabulary. [iNews: The Suez Canal crisis is now blocking a huge shipment of erotic toys from reaching the Netherlands]

Where people absent themselves from a Puritanical view of sensual pleasure, they might find a fuller experience of the essence of their being human and humanity, for which the Dutch, the Belgians, and the Germans might be considered quite ahead of those of whom it is known, No sex please, We’re British. Any wonder that consignment is not bound for Liverpool.

In motion by lotion

The roll and stall

In it we move by bearings and bushes,
Maybe I thought I heard brushes,
Then we have to spare our blushes,
For in the way we go not by buses,
Even as some think it be what flushes.

So handled tenderly lest it crushes,
And by shifting motion we find it gushes,
Either fungal or avian both be thrushes,
For a cure many have become lushes,
Yet neither of the first will work for mushes.

Thought Picnic: I write to please myself

“Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: write to please yourself.” Harlan Ellison.

And I have tried

I have probably failed at the first three hurdles, but always striven to do the fourth. That I know because I write mostly in my own space, where I have control and where no one can dictate, amend or edit what I have written.

My blog is my own refuge, the castle of my expressed mind in writing, crenelated with moats and drawbridges that makes reading but commentary difficult.

Commentary is difficult not because people cannot comment, but I am quite exactly about the quality, tone and context of comments left on my blog. I want to be engaged and engaged in a way that we might agree or disagree without descending to the point of being disagreeable.

I learnt to do this

I write to please myself because I am under no deadline to deliver nor am I under obligation to submit work for any remuneration. The views and opinions are mine and mine alone, sometimes borne of introspection or derived from things that have inspired me.

I learnt to love writing much later in my life, I never liked writing in primary school and I only entered one writing competition in secondary school where I claimed second prize. I helped co-found a press club but soon got bored with the idea and moved on to other things.

Looking at this blog in its twelfth year, it is probably the only thing I have consistently done for this length of time apart from breathing, sleeping and living. I sometimes feel I have left it like a plant, a weed to grow wild, an empty house at risk of going derelict and sense of unhappiness appears at time when I note I have not fed the blog with new material.

Writer’s block

It is not like there is nothing to write about, the mind is always in churn, the ideas are always in thought, it is just the drive and the inspiration that put words in an order to make a worthwhile blog that appears to desert me for hours, sometimes for days and it has happened for weeks too.

For weeks, it is usually the case of my having conceived something but decided the time is not yet ripe for the piece to be written. I have had that occasion where waiting for some time allows for another event or idea to overtake things and a better blog ensues. Yet, after over 2,500 blogs I find it strange that none are left unfinished in draft, ready to be revisited – I seem to write for the moment rather than for the future.

Writing for my pleasure

I love this stuff and I am still trying to master it, if it is ever intelligent, that will have been a great attempt on my part, if it is witty, I might have excelled myself, if it is wise, I will wonder what has overcome me, but for my pleasure, I am always myself.

Daring as much as I can dare and concealing enough to maintain a sense of mystery even with my predictability, I hope I can still spring a surprise and that is how this blog began, seeded by the quote at the beginning and finding pleasure in writing this with a smile.

Thought Picnic: Giving up easy pleasures for lasting happiness

Confused into conflation

How we have lost the meaning of the pursuit of happiness by thinking concatenating a stream of pleasures constitutes happiness.

The pleasure is however just for a moment, in fulfilling a need, a desire, some greed providing some sort of sensual gratification.

We are pleased to see, to touch, to feel, to taste or to hear, each moment as momentary as it is fleeting, coming and going as a series of events that we react to or chase after, but are never fully satisfied because it cannot be sustained.

Pleasure cannot last

Pleasure is a lustful pursuit and lust needs not be overtly sensual, but it comes with temptations, it exercises the weakest parts of our will and feeds on the things we too easily succumb to as it accentuates and exaggerates places where we strive to gain control and have purpose or direction.

Some pleasure comes with excitement and then the novelty of it wears off leaving us seeking the next thrill. Immediacy and impatience usually gives pleasure scope to bedevil us. Essentially, pleasure is not happiness.

Happiness is what you decide to have

Happiness is a state of the mind, a state of well-being which can have some pleasure. The words can be synonymous but the reality is happiness is lasting.

You can decide to be happy and with that might come some pleasure, however, how we please ourselves would necessarily mean we are happy.

It is when we confuse happiness and pleasure that we begin to depress ourselves, worry unnecessarily and vacillate between satisfaction and dissatisfaction that creeps ever so menacingly into every area of our lives.

The pleasure that ruins us

It gets to a point where we begin to abuse ourselves in the quest for pleasures that we think make us happy in ever increasing desperation to repeat the old pleasurable moment, yet we fail woefully at recreating the same feeling that draws us deeper into unhealthy choices and ruinous addictions. We become lascivious lacking all restraint and reserve.

When we learn to do without the props of ephemeral pleasures and still retain an outlook that is wholesome, positive, expectant and hopeful, we lay the foundations to the greater influence of happiness in our lives without being driven to either pleasure ourselves or please others in a downward spiral of despondent, depressing, dejected and damaging thoughts that fill us with misery.

Whilst you can be pleased, seek to be glad, be yourself rather than try to be something else, have your own voice and use it with confidence and watch how believing in yourself and what you can do brings you happiness that you can build upon and use to change your life for the better.