PLEASE NOTE...

… this change: you'll now find future TPS blog posts here, on the Pilgrim's Staff website.

LITTLE MAN

Our grandson Luka celebrated his third birthday last week.  He's quite the little man already.  Here he is in grandpa's t-shirt...

... on his birthday last Tuesday.  It's amazing how the gender differences begin to show already.  He loves trucks...

... especially monster trucks.  He loves Hot Wheels.  He loves building things and breaking them down again.  He loves to race around the garden... and he loves to win.  He loves to go wild.

He loves the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...

And of course he loves his little penis.  I have a wonderful picture of him lying gloriously naked on the wooden floor of the corridor in our house, legs in the air, a big grin on his face as he exposes his little fanny and his penis.  I was about to post it here, but Ellie reminded me that these things can suddenly become very public and that there are people out there on the alert for child pornography.  What a shame!  It's an image of sheer, uninhibited, shameless ecstasy, of masculine--even though tiny tot masculine--exhibitionism.  And I dare not include it on my blog for fear of being accused of this perversion.

Ah well, our Luka is a gorgeous little boy, aware already in a little boy's way of his body's approach to the pleasures of manhood.  I watch him from the perch of my advanced years with the peculiar joy known only to a grandfather.  I suppose there is some ancestral gene at work in the dark recesses of the reptilian brain, the satisfaction of the propagation of one's family, father to son or daughter, and to grandson. But more powerful than that, to my mind, is the simple experience of truly unconditional love.

MEN AND WAR: Art Review

There's a stunning exhibition of paintings by the early 20th century American artist Marsden Hartley at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The fact that this substantial body of work spans only two years, from 1913 to 1915, is staggering in itself.  That they were made in Germany just before and at the start of World War I gives them a special historical significance.  That many of them were made in bereavement, as a memorial tribute to the gay artist's gay lover, killed during the first year of action, gives them a particular emotional poignancy and social significance.  That they are amazing paintings, as rich in symbolic value as in color, form and texture, makes this an absolute must-see exhibition.

What struck me most was the courage and defiance of these paintings.  Though set against a sheer, funereal black ground, the color of mourning, their painterly exuberance constitutes a not-so-covert thumb-in-the-eye not only to disparaging social attitudes about gay men and homosexuality, but also to the patriotic triumphalism that led so many European countries blindly into a disastrous and particularly pointless war.  The inclusion of a contemporaneous film of public military events, with troops strutting proudly on parade, reminds us of the absurdly reactionary, puffed-up image of chivalrous masculine valor that compares tragically to what we know of the ignominious slaughter in the trenches of that shameful "war to end all wars."  Stand back a ways from "Abstraction (Military Symbols)"…

... and you'll perhaps see, as I did, the ironic image of a knight on horseback, armed with lance and sword, surging forward towards the viewer.  But it's no diminishment of the courage of the millions of men whose lives were needlessly sacrificed to say that these were no knights in shining armor; they were simple canon fodder.  Add in the almost excessive exuberance of color and the emotional intensity in so many of these paintings, and the viewer comes away overwhelmed by the sheer waste and sadness of it all.

So with all their evocation of military decorations and other references to Germany military power, Hartley's paintings seem to me to carry a satirical subtext: the outward display of masculinity, the pomp and circumstance, is barely disguised vanity.  The howl of pain and outrage is as powerful, but also as restrained and subversive as it is in the poems of Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke, and others who experienced the brutal reality of that war.  It is of special interest, I think, that this two-year body of work also incorporates the formal patterning and symbology of American Indian artifacts…

… evoking, to my mind, the aggressive wars conducted by the American military in the course of the previous century, and the enforced cultural assimilation that followed.

Both these wars, let's face it, were the work of men, politicians and generals, and the cavalrymen and foot soldiers enlisted in their cause.  The Hartley show leads into a neighboring gallery, where we find the contemporary sculptor, Sam Durant's proposal for a poignant, if austere national memorial to those who died in the wars against the American Indians…

Proposed for installation in the national Mall in the nation's capital, it consists of two long rows of  bland, monochrome gray reproductions of otherwise widely scattered 19th century monuments to the dead.  Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the vast majority of them memorialize the white soldiers who died.  The handful of smaller monuments for the Native Americans killed in these actions is clustered separately, between the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool, marking the melancholy distance between victims and aggressors, and the historical prominence of the latter.  Dominance, dominion, colonization, these are the deplorable traditions of power established by Western civilization.

For an antidote, be sure to visit the galleries at the opposite end of the same floor of the Broad building at LAMCA.  Here you'll find a solo exhibition devoted to the work of the Chicago-based African American artist Archibald Motley, another early 20th century painter, and one inspired in part by by the Harlem Renaissance to celebrate all aspects of black culture.  Though they, too, have a satirical edge, his paintings are for the most part wild and joyful.  He is fascinated by the diversity of shades of black…

…  as well as by the teeming social strata within the black community: his life-affirming pictures feature frenetic jazz musicians and dancers…

… card sharps and criminals...

… as well as high society African Americans, ecstatic church worshippers, and the underclass of working stiffs and bums.

Motley has fared better than a number of talented African American artists of his generation, many of whom have been marginalized by the great, sweeping tide of (Anglo-American!) mainstream art.  It's good to see his work justly celebrated in an exhibition such as this.

A MAN

With so many insecure and wounded little boys running around the place these days, posing as men, it's refreshing to meet a real one.  We did, last night.  Sadly, he was a man in bereavement, so I must be careful to respect his privacy; more in a moment.  In the meantime, I woke this morning thinking that it would be useful, on this new blog "about men," to reflect a little on what I mean by that.

I tend to assess a man's character based on what I judge to be his integrity.  By "integrity," I mean, in the idiomatic phrase, "having it all together"; and by "it" I mean the four basic qualities that constitute the fullness of the human experience: the intellectual, the physical, the emotional, the spiritual.  To lack any one of them, or to have these qualities in some way out of balance, is to lack the integrity, the "togetherness" I'm talking about.  What those wounded little boys who pose as men most frequently lack is the connection to their emotional lives, and they wreak a whole lot of damage on those they purport to love--and, needless to say, upon the world at large.  Think George W. Bush.  Think Vladimir Putin.  Think other world "leaders"whose damaged egos lead us into wars...

So it was good to be sitting on our balcony last night, as the sun set, and getting to know a man who had just arrived in our lives.  No need, at all, to say more about him than that he was a man bereaved of his partner in life, the man whom he had loved, and with whom he had lived for the past ten years. We listened, rapt, as he told us of his loss with both poise and dignity, and with frequent moments of undisguised emotion.  There was no attempt to disguise, or minimize, his grief and pain.  We listened, too, as he read letters of profound wisdom and consolation from a distant, previously unknown sympathizer--a person whom he discovered to be a woman who had made the decision to live her life as a man.

And I found myself reflecting on all this, this morning, as I woke.  How our manhood has little to do with who we love, or even what we have between our legs.  To be a man belongs to what is within, a sense of self, a inner clarity about who one is and where one belongs in the world.  A man's strength derives not from the macho posturing that is often mistaken for strength, but rather from his security and the vulnerability this allows, from his compassion, his sense of purpose, and his dedication to the service of something greater than himself.

So when I write "about men," this is the kind of man I think about, the standard by which I measure other men.  I know that I'll be writing frequently about those little boys, because they are so many.  But I'll be holding them to the standard of a man such as I have just described.

SEX SLAVERY

Some people might find the references to 18th century sex slavery in my novel The Pilgrim's Staff, from which this blog originates, to be outrageous and unworthy of belief--and more particularly the comments by my 21st century narrator, the artist David Soames.  These readers may find it hard to believe that sex slavery is still active in the United States today.  Well, I invite them to take a look at Nicholas Kristof's op-ed piece in the New York Times today.  This is a well-informed and respected reporter, who writes fairly frequently about the subject, and always with appropriate outrage.  Take a look...

THE LEAP

BIRDMAN, or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance: a Film Review

So much to write about these days, when you start writing about men, as this blog seeks to do!  Apple CEO Tim Cook's courageous act in coming out as a gay man would warrant an entry in itself; and I've been thinking a lot about the Frontline special that I watched, The Rise of Isis.  Then there are three exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that I saw last Friday, two of them provoking further thoughts about men at war.  If all goes well, I'm planning to write about them next week.  And I didn't have time for the exhibit of Samurai armor!  More testosterone to think about...

Today, though, I'm choosing to put down some thoughts about the movie Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) by the Mexican born director Alejandro González Iñárritu.  Along with the rest of the audience at the performance I saw last night, I sat stunned into silence while the end credits ran.  The film was that powerful, that intense.  It had had so much publicity by now that it is almost unnecessary to note that it's about an aging actor, Riggan Thomson (superbly played by Michael Keaton), like Keaton himself a one-time action movie ("Birdman") idol, now struggling to recover something of his earlier success and fame with the production of his own stage adaption of a Raymond Carver story.

At one level, this is a classic (Jungian) hero's journey: descent, ordeal, return.  The descent is triggered by a stage accident that makes way for the hubristic Mike (Edward Norton) to step in as replacement for an injured actor and provoke chaos in the play's preview run.  The clash between the desperately insecure and needy Riggan and the imperious, sneeringly confident Mike is complicated by fellow cast members, wives and women, including Riggan's flirtatious daughter (a great acting job by Emma Stone) who challenge, sometimes mock, the fragile male egos of the lead men.  The ordeal is Riggan's.  Tormented by the voice of his taunting alter ego, the superhero Birdman, he vacillates between his desire for the success and adulation he once knew, and despair and the impulse to self-destruction.  It's a powerful inner battle, and he ages visibly as it progresses.  The director stages it for the most part in the confines of the theater's dingy backstage, where Riggan slugs it out with both his inner voice and--sometimes literally--with his outer nemesis, Mike, in the interminable, ill-lit corridors and claustrophobic dressing rooms.  As a metaphor for the twisted passages and chambers of a tortured mind, the director's use of this location works to unsettling perfection.

In part the struggle is between reality and artifice, between the actor and the roles he plays, between the small stage in the theater and the great stage of the world out-there.  Mike chastises Riggan for being lost in artifice--but he himself is the shell of a man, who exists only as the character he inhabits.  Unable to "get it up" in the context of his real life as a man, he's ready for sex, inappropriately, on stage.  Riggan is agonized by his ambition and his unsatisfied--insatiable--need for recognition, but also guilt-ridden for having sacrificed wife and family (his daughter) on the altar of his actor's ego.  Goaded by Mike, he loses himself in the gap between the real and the imagined--and it is this nightmarish confusion that leads to the startling climax of his ordeal and costs him, possibly, his life.

But this is not purely psychological drama or social realism.  It's the element of Latin magical realism that makes this production more fraught with symbol, more intense, more internal, and more lyrical.  Riggan is gifted, or imagines himself gifted with supernatural powers: he can shift objects with his mind, throw them up against the wall, summon images of events and beings that have no basis in the real world.  In strictly psychological terms, we'd call him schizophrenic.  But he's more than that--he is, in a real sense, a super hero; perhaps, to be more exact, a meta-hero, the exemplar of conflicted human being, caught between raw existence and the hunger for transcendental meaning.  He's exceptional, like all heroes, yet also Everyman--for who, among us, has not in his mature years nursed regrets for what might have been, for what seems now so hard to achieve, if not beyond our reach.  It is to Michael Keaton's great credit that he pulls this off, creating a character who inspires profound compassion.

So about that leap...  At the beginning of the film--and it passed too quickly for me to have remembered the words exactly--there was the suggestion that nothing great will come without that leap that characterizes risk, the staking of everything we have.  And at several moments throughout the film, we see characters literally or metaphorically confronted by that leap.  At the end (don't ask, you must see this for yourself) we find Riggan on the high ledge of a hospital room, looking out into the void, and ready, now, to take the leap.  For him, this is the leap that will free him from everything that has tortured him: his ambition, his failures as a man, a husband, a father, the one-time mega-success that is now beyond his grasp.  And what will make it possible for him to finally take that leap is the realization of the love he longed for and was unable to find because of if "ignorance"--the ignorance of the film's subtitled--that has blinded him to the truth of his own love for others and the love that others, he now understands, have for him.  In his hero's journey, this is the moment of truth, the moment of return, of salvation of a kind.

You may be as initially surprised as I was, as the final credits rolled, to see the name of the well-known Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh included in the list of to whom the film's creators wished to express their gratitude.  On second thoughts, though, the inclusion seems natural and credible.  The central teaching of the Buddha asserts that suffering is inevitable for us human beings, but that there is a path to the release from suffering.  It is this letting-go of pain, in the final scene of the film, that the hero finally achieves.

And the rest, as Hamlet said, is silence.  Which, as noted above, is how we were left, as an audience, as the final credits ran.  In stunned silence.  Birdman will remain in my memory as one of the truly great movies I have been fortunate enough to see.

RAIN!

It's raining!  Can you believe this?  Here in Los Angeles!  It's not a downpour, not the deep soaking we so badly need, but what a pleasure to take George out for his morning poop walk and find the street wet with the night's rain.  In recent days, it has felt like it was never going to rain again.  Now it feels like a great breath taken and released.  There's a freshness in the air that is unfamiliar, but most welcome.  Let's hope that this is the harbinger of more to come...

WOUNDED LEADERS: A Book Review

(I posted this a while ago on The Buddha Diaries.  It also appeared on The Huffington Post.  But it seems appropriate here… PC)

Wounded Leaders: British Elitism and the Entitlement Illusion, by Nick Duffell.

First, don’t assume from this book’s subtitle that is irrelevant to us here in America, or to our leadership.  It is of vital relevance, no matter the specificity of his target.  Nick Duffell’s title will have resonance for anyone who has lived through the past couple of decades in America and watched our own wounded

leaders in action--or, more correctly, inaction.  That said--and we'll come back to this--his central argument is that the boarding-school educated governing elite in Britain are themselves unconsciously governed by the lasting wounds incurred by the experience of being sent away from the family at an early age, and placed in a militaristic environment in which they learn to protect themselves from a hostile outer world.  

I can speak to this.  I am what Duffell aptly refers to as a Boarding School Survivor.  As a practicing psychotherapist, he has a long-standing practice designed to bring such people back from their emotional disorientation and isolation.  I could have used his services, long ago, but had to discover my own path through this maze.  I was sent away to school at the age of seven, and by the time I escaped to freedom at the age of eighteen, I had received a remarkable head-oriented education but remained what I often describe as an emotional cripple.  I had learned the costly and dangerous art of evasion and emotional invulnerability.  As a seven- or eight-year old, I could not afford to do anything but suppress the feelings that would open me up to attack from my fellow-boarders: fear, anger, sadness, grief, the terrible pain of being separated from parents who assured me that they loved me—even though it was hard to understand the paradox of being loved and yet exiled from the family, the locus of that love.

The result of my excellent education was that I never grew up.  Rather, it took me another three decades before I realized there was something wrong with living like a turtle in a shell.  Boarding School Survivors, as Duffell describes them, are stunted individuals so caught up in their heads that they remain disconnected from their hearts.  I simplify his profoundly well-informed and subtle arguments, whose bottom line is that Britain’s ruling elite, boarding-school and Oxbridge-educated, are supremely unqualified to lead in our twenty-first century world because they get so intently focused on their distorted, rational vision of national and global issues that they remain impervious (invulnerable) to the bigger picture of human needs.  They are unable to listen, to empathize with others than themselves and their own kind.  They are guided by the certainty of their own sense of rectitude.  To doubt, to question, to have a change of heart is to be vulnerable, and vulnerability is the last thing in the world they can allow themselves.  (Duffell’s final chapter, on doubt, is particularly eloquent and on-target.)

I am admittedly unqualified to evaluate the more technical aspects of Duffell’s argument.  To this reader, he seems impressively knowledgeable and up-to-date with the latest discoveries of neuroscience and academic psychology.  He draws on a broad understanding of the philosophical development of rationalism and its critics, the countervailing social movements of repression and rebellion, and contextualizes his argument in that historical perspective.  In our contemporary times, his exemplars are primarily the likes of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, England’s current Prime Minister David Cameron, and London Mayor Boris Johnson, whose attitudes and actions are profoundly—and in Duffell’s view—mistakenly reactionary.  As he sees it, they bully and bluster their way past opposition into futile military actions and social programs that enrich the already privileged and wealthy and contribute to the continuing impoverishment of the needy.  No wonder the England he describes is an angry country.

Late in the book, Duffell expands his vision of an entitled elite to include brief reference to American leaders—in particular, of course, George W. Bush, whose blind and reckless pursuit of a delusory obsession rushed us headlong into the war with Iraq.  The disastrous results are with us today, in the form of a Middle East in unending turmoil.  Looking at America today—a nation of people surely as angry as the British—I’d argue that what Duffell calls the Entitlement Illusion is by no means limited to British elitism.  Our leaders must also be counted amongst the wounded.  Our leadership is dominated by the squabbling of little boys who have never grown beyond the need to protect themselves and their own territory from those who do not agree with them.  Our political problems are the same as those Duffell describes in his country: militarism, misguided and prejudicial rationalism, a lack of empathy for the poor and underprivileged, an assumption of rectitude that rejects other views without a hearing, an angry rejection of doubt or reappraisal of previously held views.

Entitlement, I’d argue, is not the exclusive property of the British elite.  I myself believe it’s also, more broadly, a factor of historical male privilege, the patriarchal tradition.  There is a persistent myth in our culture that sees men as rational beings, in control of events, capable, practical, while women are (still, in the eyes of too many of us men) perceived as irrational, guided by emotion rather than reason, and therefore less competent in leadership positions.  Duffell argues passionately for a middle path, one that minimizes neither reason nor emotion, but balances the intelligence quotient with the emotional quotient, the head with the heart, reason with compassion and empathy.  I agree with him, that unless we as a species can find that balance, we are in for dangerous times ahead.  His book is a timely and important reminder of the need to “change our minds” in a fundamental way, and open ourselves to the powerful--and practical--wisdom of the heart.  I sincerely hope that the book will find readers beyond the native country of which he writes.  Its insights are profoundly needed everywhere, throughout the globe.

LOST MAN

An intriguing news item: a middle-aged man attends a Denver Bronco football game. At half-time, he simply disappears--with, apparently, no credit card, little cash, and only the clothes he's wearing.  He has no mobile, and therefore can't be reached by phone.  Police efforts to trace him as a missing person fail to find him. His disappearance attracts national media attention: CNN, Fox News, ESPN all carry the story, but apparently he's not watching television news…

A week goes by before he finally shows up.  A man "fitting his description" is found in a Kmart parking lot, a hundred miles from the site of his disappearance.  Police reported that he was found in good health, "speaking and answering questions intelligibly that were asked of him."  Without any personal means of transportation, he seemingly walked for most the the hundred miles.  His explanation: that he'd gotten bored with the football game and decided to go for a walk.  He was looking for "somewhere warmer" and had been sleeping in "tree'ed areas and bushes" along the way.

Paul Kitterman, Broncos fan

My fantasy?  The man's a delightful dreamer.  I like his generous mustache, and the crow's feet that seem caused more by good humor rather than age.  (Oh, yes, he's only 53.)  I can't blame him for leaving the football game: the last one I saw myself was a total bore.  Now that the NFL is so thoroughly commercialized, there seems to be an interminable wait between every play while the television stations air their ads.  The actual action on the field is pretty minimal and predictable.  So much for football.  It would take an awful lot of self-supplied testosterone to get a kick out of it.

But look at his smile.  Beatific, almost, wouldn't you say? He's happy to have his back to the football field behind him.  What are they doing, anyway?  Measuring the yardage?  Moving the chains?  The men in black seen strolling across the field give a sense of suspended action.  And look at those half-empty stands.  Not a great deal of excitement there, either.

So he left.  Wandered off.  Found more interesting and engaging things in his own head.  A hundred-mile walk!  What a concept!  I imagine him strolling off with his beatific smile through the parking lot and out into the surrounding neighborhood.  He barely notices his fellow pedestrians, let alone the cars.  He's happy when he finally reaches the edge of the suburbs and strides out into the countryside.  He breathes in the air, finally unleashed from the city's grip, feeling better than he has for years.  He's alone.  No one to talk with, no one to talk at him.  No bad news to be subjected to!  No ISIS!  No election politics!  No hatred and contention!  A kind of ecstasy…

If it feels so good, then why go back?  What better than to keep on going, into the dusk, the twilight, soon the night?  What better than to make a bed amongst the fragrant pine needles, perhaps looking up into the starlit sky?  To fall asleep untrammeled by the usual trappings of the civilized life!  To wake, at dawn, to the sound of birds?  Ah, this is living…

I'm probably romanticizing.  Maybe the poor guy had a hell of a week, fighting off the cold and hunger.  He had little enough money, no credit cards, how could he have even stopped at wayside restaurants to eat?  Perhaps he got tired of the dirty clothes and the sore feet.  Still, no sign that he was begging for help when he was "found."  No sign of physical or mental distress.  Was his dream shattered by his discovery?  Was he secretly hoping NEVER to "go home"?

There's no telling, of course.  All I have are the media reports.  He'll probably show up on the Today Show in a few days' time, to be interviewed by Matt Lauer about his wayward ways.  But I hope not.  I hope that he stays silent.  And I hope he never loses that beatific smile.

THE POLITICAL SCHTICK: Theater Review

In New York last week, I made it a point (no pun intended!) to see “Tail! Spin!”, a hilarious political satire on our wayward politicians and their penises.  You’ll remember Anthony Wiener’s infamous—and virally viewed—selfie (“I was hacked,” he moaned); and Larry Craig’s “wide stance” in the airport men’s room; and Mark Foley’s predilection for congressional pages; and Mark Sanford’s trek on the Appalachian Trail.  Here they are, all four of them, in their own self-righteous words,   It’s a riot. impeccably re-enacted by a fabulous cast, with all their excuses and explanations, their

deflections and--finally--their unconvincing, if abject apologies.

Okay, it’s a riot.  But it’s really a pretty sad tale.  We men—you women may have noticed—seem to have a hard time controlling our libidos.  Or no, it’s not really a matter of “control”, it’s more a matter of knowing how to use our sexual gifts joyfully, to the appropriate satisfaction of our natural impulses and those of our partners; and of knowing how to do so without causing pain to those we love or to ourselves.  It’s not the penis that’s at fault, it’s the way that it’s handled (again, please, no pun intended!)

We do love to hate our politicians.  We have reason to hold a good number of them in contempt.  Our current flock is notably incompetent.  Inflexible, humorless, pontificating, phony-patriotic, self-assured in the worst possible way, they seem incapable of the kind of action we expect from our elected leaders.  The “system” is in part to blame: they spend a great deal of their time prostrated at the altar of money, incurring indebtedness to the wealthiest donors who naturally expect something in return.  But it’s the same system that attracts the kind of “professionals” who neglect the needs of those they are supposed to serve in favor of their own self-interest—which primarily takes the form ego satisfaction and eventual re-election.

Still, these four guys and their penises…  They are properly skewered in “Tail! Spin!”, and by nothing other than their own venality.  It requires little clowning on the part of the actors to make them look at once pathetic and absurd.  The male cast—Arnie Burton, Sean Dugan, Nate Smith and Tom Galantich as the principals—are ably assisted by assisted by Rachel Dratch...

of SNL fame, who plays a series of dubiously dutiful wives as well as a truly hysterical Barbara Walters.  The action is enlivened as each of the principals jumps into roles other than his own: we have lawyers and journalists, page boys and fellow congressmen all joining in the farce.  The set has the familiar appearance of the debate stage, but the podia are no more than props for lively antics.

We laugh at them all, but remain painfully aware of the damage wrought by such men not only on the rapidly eroding trust in our political lives, but particularly on their suffering families and wives.   Their overweening arrogance, their apparently unshakeable belief in their own invulnerability, their contempt for everything but the satisfaction of their own lust, is not only laughable—but appalling.  Regrettably, such exemplars of our sex also ask us men to take a good look in the mirror and see the (somewhat distorted) reflection of our own libidinous selves!  If we’re not conscious how we use it, the penis has a lot to answer for. 

Eventually, though, it’s all about power, isn’t it?  It’s about men who, out of their own desperate insecurity about their manhood, need to assert false dominance—and mistake the penis for the proper means to do it.  Submit to my rod, submit to my rule.  That’s the tragedy behind this farce.

THE BOOK

It's beginning to take shape.  This past week, I have read through the final proof--or is it a semi-final proof?--and approved the cover design.  Still plenty more details to work out, but the book should be available by mid-October.  Watch for it!

Oh, and...  Just so you know what it's about, here's the back cover blurb:

 “I am no Rake.” So says the anonymous English gentleman whose two hundred year-old journal falls into the hands of the prominent Los Angeles-based figure painter and avid blogger, David Soames… 

 … who is skeptical of the author’s protestation.  “No Rake…?”  Blog and journal soon begin to mirror each other in an exchange that echoes across the centuries.  As the potboiler romps exuberantly through 18^th century Georgian boudoirs, it triggers the intimate memories of a 21^st century man reflecting on youth—and age.  

The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same.   At least when it comes to men and sex.  The Pilgrim’s Staff is an explicit, unabashed reflection on the nature of masculine sexuality…    

“Be prepared for a journey of discovery into men’s secret lives.  Peter Clothier is a brilliant and colorful writer who pulls no punches.  He explores his themes with vitality, spontaneity and curiosity.”

--Les Sinclair, Certified Leader Trainer, The ManKind Project