Book review. Aglow, by Will Forest.

This is an amazing book. It took me long to read it. No, I don’t usually read slowly but there is so much in this book to think about that I took time for that. Why would I run through an amazing story, past great reflections and texts when I can stroll through all that, sit down and look at it all, and think about it? That’s what I did with this book.

The story plays in Mexico and Latin America. Key components in this story are a written codex with a secret, a strange necklace with figurines, and the main actors Zé and Marisol. ‘Aglow’ is a great addition to the Naturist Library because it brings forward the reason and benefit of social nudity very well.

I don’t know how to say more about this book without going in at the deep end to spoil it all for you. I can just say: get it and read it. And enjoy.

 

How naturism changed my life. (repost)

(This piece was written by my Dutch buddy Harmen. I’m proud to know him and to repost this, his first blog post, with permission.)

After being bullied for a small 14 years during my youth and a slow process of finding and accepting myself, plus a wide interest in a lot of things, I came across naturism 10 years ago. A lot of things naturism is about, like respect people, animals & nature were one of the main reasons. I knew it was practiced mostly in the nude, but since I already accepted myself for who I was at that time, the being nude wasn’t really a problem for me.

image

So I jumped right in and joined a very good friend, which is also naturist and a second mom to me, to naturist resort Flevonatuur in the Netherlands. From the first second I arrived there it felt like home coming and my missing puzzle piece was found.

My interest in naturism grew and developed a lot these last 10 years, but not only that changed a lot. I think the biggest change in my life was my point of view at life. We are living in an era where time is money and money and status is more important then people. People that need help are left behind, people that don’t need help are overwhelmed with stuff they don’t need but also don’t decline. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a people person, I love people and I’m interested in them. The real them. It’s just the way people act these days what annoys me. The negativity and hate that’s in them lately. Open a news website and read the comments at stories that have the subject immigration for instance. So much hate to people they don’t know, they don’t know their story, their history, their motivation nothing. They just spill their guts on social media without even thinking or reading what they’re saying. I blame modern media for the most part of this by spreading fear and false information. But that’s no excuse for turning of your brain and just typ the most negative things you can think of.

In the end it’s all about giving and receiving respect. I always ask myself the question, can you look in the mirror before you go to bed and say ( and believe ) that you’re a good person? The problem with this is, that the majority of the people don’t like themselves. They don’t like their job, they don’t like their family and friends and most of all they don’t love themselves. Instead of making a change they just keep going on and on like this for years and keep building up that negative vibe they’re in.

When you look at naturists, there’s a lot of respect between them. They don’t judge people by what they represent but by who they are. And even then it’s not really judging. Live and let live. They literally know everyone is the same because there’s nothing they can hide. Not even theirselves cuz when you’re at a naturist resort or a nude beach, yourself is all you have to offer. There’s no rich or poor, no success or fails. But there is a Paul or a Jenny, a Rick or a Samantha. There are just persons. Real persons. Living persons. With a suit named skin. And that skin, no matter what color it is, is the same for everyone and everywhere. A female nipple isn’t any different then a male nipple, tho male nipples are accepted in public while female nipples aren’t. I talked with a lot of people about that, male and female, and the majority of the people that are against public female nipples give as reason that ” it’s sexual “. Well no it isn’t. They’re put there for a reason, feeding your children. And yes I know it’s an erogenous zone aswell but so are ears. You wanna cover up ears aswell? The point I’m trying to make is that the world isn’t as black and white as you might think.

I’m posting this and as you probably already noticed you can see my butt ( funny fact: did you know my butt is made out of the same cells and materials as the rest of my body? It’s really true, look it up ). Facebook is a very strange medium. ( Sidenote: When I wrote this it was a Facebook post first ) You can post violence, wars, blood, animal cruelty, filthy words, etc. but what you can’t post is skin that usually is covered up. Pictures of breastfeeding were removed and called ” sexual content “. This is the world we live in today. It’s okay to show which awful things are taking our lives, but it’s not okay what kept us alive the first most important period of our life.

I’m not asking you to agree with me, I’m only asking you to love yourself for who you are. I’m not saying I never made a mistake or that I know what’s best for you. I’m human, surely I do make mistakes and I don’t have the wisdom to say how you should live your life. What I do know, is how you could make it easier for yourself on this big planet and more enjoyable. We’re at a moment where the world needs more love and what a great way to achieve that in the first place by loving yourself. Also I’m asking you to think before you speak, especially on social media. I know the anonymity makes it easier to say things you would say offline but that doesn’t justify it.

Don’t judge people before you talked with them. Or even better, don’t judge them at all. Embrace your body, it’s the only one you got. Don’t like your job? Switch jobs. Don’t like your friends? Make new ones. I know it sounds very easy. It’s not. But when you do it, it’ll make your life so much easier. We’re born without judgement. Without hate. Without shame. These are all things that are taught to us. Only question you have to ask yourself is do I really wanna spent my time on earth trying to live other people’s lives or do I wanna live my own life before it’s over. So step outside that box and make a change. For yourself, for your surrounding and for the sake of this world. It’s the world we leave behind for our kids. Don’t let them pay for our stupid mistakes and narrow thinking. There’s more inside you then you think. Embrace it, don’t care what other people will think or say because in the end you’ll see that it doesn’t matter what others think about you. It’s about what you think about yourself.

Love yourself like I love myself. I know you can do it.

Thank you ❤️

If you want you can follow Harmen’s blog.

Historical fiction.

historical fiction

Historical fiction

You may wonder why I bring up historical fiction. If you did then you didn’t see this post in which I explain this a bit.

I’ve taken it upon myself to write a historical fiction story with naturist elements. It’s finally moving towards something. At the start of this I had not thought it would be so difficult to write…

Moving through genres

Compared to Naked Crow (which isn’t very easy either since I want to keep things credible), the historical naturist fiction piece proves to be one of the tougher writing jobs I ever put onto myself.

Whether or not you, the readers, will like the story or not, I’m glad that I picked this up. And why? For the challenge. For the moving beyond boundaries. We all need to grow. When you and I first dropped our clothes and found we enjoyed it, that was a step in our development. Growth. Nudity became our norm.

Beyond boundaries

I’ve been writing since several years, and when I first had the idea of writing naturist fiction (I’d been a naturist since a long time then already) that was pushing against a boundary. After several naturist books, like the four Naked Crow books and certainly Mirror Earth, I feel good about pushing against another boundary. Going back in time, picking an era and write about that. I’m not going to tell you what era it is nor how I put naturism into it, but the fact that it’s working makes me feel good. It tells me that I can do this. Perhaps I don’t yet do it well, but time and readers will be the judge of that.

Naked Crow 5

Since I’m talking about writing (well, writing about writing actually!) I’ll grab the opportunity that Naked Crow 5 is currently looked over by a fellow author. After he’s done with it I can start making corrections and the book will come out quite soon after that. (Did I hear sighs of relief there? 😉 )

Until that happens I wish you many happy, naked moments!
Paul

In case you missed it:

for some mysterious reason Twitter removed my @zjuzdme account (they never replied to my inquiry why they did it).

I’m on Twitter as @Paul_Z_W now.

Naked authors

Naked writing

naked writing

Yes. I’m coming back to writing. I enjoy writing. The list of books I’ve written so far might have given that away. I like writing in the nude most of all because that allows for uninhibited writing. I am convinced that other naked writers agree with me. It might not surprise you that more writers like (or liked, because some of them aren’t among us any more) to be naked while acting out their imagination and committing that to people.

The famous ones

(and there might be a few surprises in here for you).

Victor Hugo. The famous author of great works like Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. At one point he ran into writer’s block and came up with the brilliant scheme to have his clothes taken away so he had nothing else to focus on than his writing. No clothes to fidget with. All he had to do was sit. And write. Naked.

 

Ernest Hemingway.

The author of Farewell to Arms also bid a farewell to his clothing. I haven’t found any proper confirmation of this but it’s rumoured that he wrote naked, standing up.  Nudism ran in the Hemingway family. Ernest’s cousin Edward opened England’s oldest nudist resort (then still called colony.)

 

D.H. Lawrence.

Remember him? He wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Apparently he liked to climb trees in the nude and ponder what he was going to write about, before coming down and do his actual writing. I like that approach and would love to try it. Might be difficult to find trees away from people, but who knows…

 

James Whitcomb Riley.

James Whitcomb made his friends lock him up in a room, alone and naked, so he would write instead of popping down to the bar for a drink. Always good when you can count on your friends. I guess they had his drinks for him. 😉

 

Edmond Rostand, from France.

He was constantly interrupted by his friends and he was annoyed by that. Because of that he took up working naked in his bathtub. It might be hard to believe but his greatest work, Cyrano de Bergerac, was indeed written in a bathtub…

 

Now here might be a familiar face and a surprise to many: Benjamin Franklin. He too liked to write, and he too often retreated to his bathtub for that.

But not only did he write in his bathtub. He also liked to sit naked in a cold room where he would write without being disturbed.

 

And here’s the last famous naked author. Agatha Christy, the woman whose work has only been outsold by William Shakespeare. She too liked writing in the bathtub.

Who would have thought that Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple perhaps began their life in a bath?

The less famous ones

The writerYou probably know this one. Author of the Naked Crow series, Mirror Earth and so forth.

Writing in the nude is the best, freeing thing possible for me. I would live my life nude if I could – there’s just this every day life bit that gets in the way of it.

Let me be nude and I’m happy. Let me write in the nude and I’m ecstatic!

 

co-ed naked philosophyWill Forest. Another not yet very famous author who writes in the nude. If you have not heard of him before then you have now. To the right you see the cover of his book Co-ed Naked Philosophy which I have read and enjoyed tremendously.

Will is very engaged in the naturist way of life. Not only does he write in the nude about naked people, he also maintains a weblog. I don’t know if he writes in the bathtub.

 

Wallace GreensageWallace Greensage might be an author you have not heard of yet. This could be entirely true as he released his first naturist novel, “Who is this naked lady? (And what have they done with my wife?” only a short time ago.

I haven’t finished this book yet but I can say that it is a very promising start to what I can hope is a good writing career!

That’s the list for now

This list isn’t complete and I didn’t mean to make it an extensive one. Let me end this long post by wishing you lots of reading pleasure. If you know of other naked writers, please let me know. Maybe this can be compiled into an impressive list and tool for naturist readers who are looking for more books in our specific genre.

Paul

Naked is healthier and here is why.

Most textile-oriented people won’t agree with this statement but naked is healthier. I feel like living proof and I let me tell you why. First have a look at this picture:

Body

…do you see something odd? If not, look again. (If you have to look again you’re still learning to be a naturist as you probably only saw a penis.) I saw it immediately as soon as it appeared. There’s a bump on the right side. It’s an inguinal hernia, also known as groin rupture. People who are comfortable with seeing and knowing their own naked body will notice and acknowledge such strange occurrences much sooner than clothes people. I am convinced of that.

Doesn’t mean that I’m happy that I see it because this probably means surgery (be it minor surgery according to the doctor) and I haven’t been in a hospital since almost 40 years.

Something clothes addicts will never experience

We have an advantage over dressed people who are addicted to their coverings. Perhaps some would even call it a blessing. We know what it is to feel free. And that means really free. Many naturists talk about freedom, liberation, being unhindered, and that is what we are. We savour the freedom from restraints like clothes and such as much as possible.

naked freedom

The longer I’m a naturist, the more I understand how free we are. When I get home I take my clothes off. Clothes that have been on me all day while I did things I would rather not do. After all, work is a hobby that pays the bill but it does eat up an awful amount of time.

The joy of being naked is the feeling that so many have never experienced. It’s mind-boggling when you think of it. How did this happen? Why is being naked so bad in the eyes of the majority of people? As I said before, people are shocked more by the sight of a naked person than by the sight of a gun. Or violence. Or injustice. Naked people aren’t dangerous. Sorry if I bring in something horrible but look at suicide bombers who wear those belts with explosives. Beneath their clothes. A suicide bombing nudist wouldn’t go unnoticed in a crowded market place. And then I mean a market place crowded with other nudists. (Can you imagine how I would love to wander around in such a market place?)

Naked people are the most relaxed people that I know, and often also the kindest. Because they don’t need to hide and don’t want to hide. Because, indeed, they are free.

making the bedThe awareness that nothing like clothes is holding me back when I walk through my apartment often hits me like a brick wrapped in velvet. Hard but also very pleasant. I can do this. I am not afraid of my own nudity. Every real nudist or naturist feels secure in her or his nakedness. Because of that freedom. I am strongly convinced that such freedom isn’t only physical. It has its effect on one’s mind as well. Mental freedom. Now there’s something to be proud of. So many people long for that…

The squeeze

Clothes give you the squeeze. They really do, and nudists/naturists know that. Unless you walk around in a kind of tent that people will think is improper stuff (well, that’s their problem, but still), and nudists don’t want that. Even clothes that seem to fit quite well when you’re standing will cut off some part of your body/circulation when you sit or kneel down.

clothes too tightFor those who are clothes addicts that might not be a problem (after all, people can get used to all forms of BDSM) but each time I have to move around in clothes it’s clear: these things are not comfortable. And the more I notice, the more I’m convinced that these fabric inventions are good against the cold (I’ll be the last one to disagree on that) but why people insist on wearing them when it’s warm enough to go without… In the woods…then I’ll take naked.

Naked Planking on Twitter

Yes, it seems to be a trend! Naked Planking on twitter.

Clothesfreelife posted about it here. I’m game, of course:

If you care to join the fun, or see more about it, have a look at this search on Twitter. If you post a planking picture, do let me know. It’s a great exercise for your core and I’d like to cheer you on.

More naked plankers:

And a radical here: