On the Tantra Trail

As I've mentioned numerous times over the past several years, thanks to Jozien Keijzer, I have become a devotee of Margot Anand. (It was Jozien who, disdaining Margot's book as too technique-oriented, sent it to me.) Anand's work led to The Function of the Orgasm (link is to a 38-page pdf) by Wilhelm Reich who led to Bronisław Malinowski and his trilogy about the Trobriand islanders.

I have yet to discern the connection (perhaps someone can enlighten me?) between Reich's work and the Trobriand peoples, but I suspect it has to do with the islanders' sexual practices. (Haven't had time to read what with Cook's sciatica and all the cat-sitting.)

But this morning's delving took me to the first pages offered on Amazon of the first volume (of the trilogy), Argonauts of the Western Pacific.

What I found striking is Malinowski's comment (on p.5) about the (white) folks already on the island: "Here were men who had lived for years in the place with constant opportunities of observing the natives and communicating with them, and who yet hardly knew one thing about them really well. How could I therefore in a few months or a year, hope to overtake and go beyond them? Moreover, the manner in which my white informants spoke about the natives and put their views was, naturally, that of untrained minds, unaccustomed to formulate their thoughts with any degree of consistency and precision. And they were for the most part, naturally enough, full of the biased and pre-judeged opinions inevitable in the average practical man, whether administrator, missionary, or trader, yet so strongly repulsive to a mind striving after the objective, scientific view of things. The habit of treating with a self-satisfied frivolity what is really serious to the ethnographer; the cheap rating of what to him is a scientific treasure, that is to say, the native's cultural and mental peculiarities and independence -- these features, so well known in the inferior amateur's writing, I found in the tone of the majority of white residents."

Although I've never thot of myself of scientific bent, (albeit, according to Good Luck Duck by virtue of being a polyamorist I DO qualify as qweer...a form, I'll propose, of bent-ittude), Malinoski's description brought to mind the Bud Lite & Big Tires folk in their gray t-shirts and khaki shorts.

I'm also intrigued by the recent adoption of the beard affect. Hit youstuh be a signature sign of beatniks and poets (think Allen Ginsberg). Wha' happint?