I know I will not be popular hearing what I have to say, even though I am known to love The SUN for maybe 30 years, looking forward to seeing The SUN in my mailbox. Even my first sentence is a distraction, delaying me writing: I hate the “F” word. It’s not that I don’t swear, I do: Oh shit! God damn it!
So, when I read the poem Pinkie Masters (December 2025) I’m distracted reading the 18th line: “I have the hiccups like a motherfucker.” Really? The poem stops in midair.
“I still know a few things, you say. You said.” The last line of the poem, myself feeling intensely disappointed that our language, our anger is directed at sex. That’s what fucking is – right? And with your mother?? Oh shit!
Google defines fuck: have sex with (someone), ruin or damage (something.) “To express annoyance, contempt, infuriating.” In other words, expressing anger. Violence. Violation. Distorting any sensibility, or sacredness to sex – destroying any semblance of making love.
Until recently, I hadn’t encountered ‘fuck’ written in The SUN, or novels, old or new. Yet, this past month I read My Other Heart (novel published in 2025) which I very much like, as its detail of intimate conversations and thoughts between two Asian American girlfriends are unusually truthful. “You know with life, sometimes its good, sometimes it really fucking sucks. But I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned, and it’s always something I come back to, this whole living up to expectations and feeling invisible is also about who we are in our core. We can change that to a point because nothing stays the same, but it’s a matter of how much we’re willing to be controlled from the outside, and how invisible we are willing to be.”
Now I am deeply visible, as a psychotherapist still practicing at age 79 when clients say “sorry” after saying the F-word. I emphasize that it is okay in this therapy room, where expression should not be thwarted by limiting words.
Smiling, I add, “Feelings is the best F-word going!”
Addendum:
On a lighter note, I’m distracted by my need to find heart rocks, my attention taken away from the waterfalls I’ve hiked to see! Take in.
And I love being distracted, as I walk down the stairs of my apartment, to stare at one of the many people I love, framed in my photo gallery, like wallpaper.