Now there is a mountain. On the mountain stands a rock. From the rock flows a spring. And everything has a heart. The world taken as a whole has a heart. And the world’s heart is full of stature, with a face, hands and feet. Now the toenail of that heart is more heart-like than anyone else’s heart. The mountain with the rock and spring are at one end of the world, and the world’s heart stands at the other end. The world’s heart stands opposite the spring and yearns and always longs to reach the spring. The yearning and longing of the heart for the spring is extraordinary. It cries out to reach the spring. The spring also yearns and longs for the heart.

From “The Seven Beggars” by Nahman of Bratslav in Nahman of Bratslav: The Tales ed. Arnold Band.

I came to a place where all light was mute

And roaring on the naked dark

like seas wracked by a war of winds.

Their hellish flight of storm and counter storm through time foregone,

Sweeps the souls of the damned before its charge,

Whirling and battering them it drives them on.

And this, I learned, was the never ending flight
Of the carnal and lusty
Who subject reason to desire.


As the wings of wintering starlings draw them on
In their great wheeling flights, just so the blast
Bears through the tyrannous gust those evil souls.

The blast of hell that never rests from whirling
Harries the spirits along in the sweep of its swath,
And vexes them, for ever beating and hurling.


As cranes,
Chanting their dol’rous notes, traverse the sky,
Leaving the long streak of their flight in air,
So the wind drove on the wailing shadows.




From Inferno by Dante Alighieri composite use of translations by Henry Cary, Dorothy Sayers, John Ciardi and John Sinclair.


Image
Dayana Cadeau,prominent female bodybuilder and past Ms.Olympia title holder, from the work of pioneering photographer of female bodybuilders Bill Dobson at billdobson.com and billdobson.net.

This image foregrounds the relationship between this project and erotica,a relationship that emerges from the fact that I am am exploring the tension between the erotic, understood in the general sense of the sexual perception of the body and in a particular sense in terms of sexual activity and the human effort to explore the potential of this aspect of existence, either in rejection of its possibilities or in acceptance of natural urges or even in term of sublimation of these urges.The images of Dobbins' work that fascinate me strike me as having possibilities of evoking the tension between these possibilities of human existence. I see this evocation as something indirectly realized through the broad range of associations that the ladies' physiques convey, as suggested by the dynamics of his photography as realized through the manner in which the ladies are dressed,their poses,his use of light and shadow.I place,for example, the Dayana Cadeau image alongside a scene from the The Inferno,the first part of the epic poem,The Divine Comedy by the Italian poet Dante in order to evoke relationships between the sombre power of the poetic lines and the sleek ruggedness, the apocalyptic power evoked by Cadeau image by the towers of dark flesh, which, even though imposing, on account of the pose she assumes, still call attention to the cave like seductiveness of the space shaped by the globes of the buttocks, and, casting shadows, both alluring and challenging on account of its obvious eroticity and the paradoxical coexistence with a level of muscular tension and power not usually associated with the more uncomplicated visual values associated with the erotic.
The erotic and the rugged, the seductive and the challenging coexist in this image.
In placing this image alongside Dante's evocation of of the punishment suffered in hell by the lustful,I am not suggesting a correlation between the negative surrender to sexual desire depicted in Dante's work but with both the stark power of Dante's evocation,with the character of his conjuring and weaving of the elements of a linguistic spell and with Dante's evocation of the seductive moral ambiguity of sexuality as evoked,for example,by his retelling of the story of Paula and Francesca who are led into adultery by the reading of another great narrative of the seductive dangers of sexual temptation, Lancelot's relationship with Guinevere in the Arthurian cycle.The decisive and subtle power of sexual fires is suggested by the elliptical description of the climatic conjoining of mutual passion aroused by the reading of the Arthurian tale,when Paula,narrating his story to Dante recalled,that having been moved by the story of Lancelot,he and Francesca "read no more that day".
The sweet power of the erotic,which steals uninvited into human minds regardless of the social propriety of the desires and feelings evoked thereby,is suggested in this story.At the same time,the image of the female bodybuilder placed here echoes another conjunction of seemingly contradictory impulses which yet suggest the character of much of existence as a mesh of paradoxical conjunction of contraries.The lady's pose is seductive,her body lithe,supple and inviting,but it Oslo projects a sense of power that could be understood as at the same time working against and yet heightening the sense of feminine force that the lines of the body continue to display,even though she is more muscular than most men.


For more of Cadeau,see her site at http://www.dayana-cadeau.com/.

"In Yea and Nay,all things consist".
Jakob Boehme

They crowded five of them into the taxi-cab. Halliday lurched in first and dropped into his seat against the other window. Then Minette took her place, and Gerald sat next to her. They heard the young Russian giving orders to the driver,then they were all seated in the dark, crowded close together, Halliday groaning and leaning out of the window. They felt the swift, muffled motion of the car.

Minette sat near to Gerald, and she seemed to become soft, subtly to infuse herself into his bones, as if she were passing into him in a black, electric flow. Her being suffused into his veins like a magnetic darkness, and concentrated at the base of his spine like a fearful source of power. Meanwhile her voice sounded out reedy and nonchalant, as she talked indifferently with Birkin and with Maxim. Between her and Gerald was this silence and this black, electric comprehension in the darkness. Then she found his hand, and grasped it in her own firm, small clasp. It was so utterly dark, and yet such a naked statement, that rapid vibrations ran through his blood and over his brain, he was no longer responsible. Still her voice rang on like a bell, tinged with a tone of mockery. And as she swung her head, her fine mane of hair just swept his face, and all his nerves were on fire, as with a subtle friction of electricity. But the great centre of his force held steady, a magnificent pride to him, at the base of his spine.

From Women in Love by D.H.Lawrence
[20th century English ]

Some dark, evil thing set down roots deep into his soul and ate and ate and ate. It was smiling all the time while he moved from one depravity to another. It just kept on smiling and wriggling its broad hips. Depravity and perversion of the most base degree was its natural habitat. Did it matter then what a man slept with- a cow, a horse, a child or anything? A person who cries under conditions like that has retained enough sensitivity to look on his own degradation, and there is a point where he begins to fight his way to freedom. It took a shattering death to pull out the deep, dark roots.

.....Medusa was smiling. She had some top secret information to impart to Elizabeth. It was about her vagina. Without any bother for decencies, she spread her long black legs in the air and the most exquisite sensation travelled out of her towards Elizabeth. It enveloped Elizabeth from head to toe like a slow, deep, sensuous bomb. It was like falling into deep, warm waters, lazily raising one hand and resting in a heaven of bliss.
Then she looked at Elizabeth and smiled a mocking, superior smile You haven’t got anything near that, have you?
.......it was not maddening to her to be told she hadn't a vagina. She might have had but it was not such a pleasant area of the body to concentrate on, possibly only now and then if necessary.

.....The bush slept all around, and at night the insects communed with their own selves in long, brooding, plaintive soliloquies. The deep, black midnight sky vibrated with a billion soft blue lights, and at dawn the sun arose like a majestic king thrusting one powerful golden arm above the flat horizon. Only the bush, the brown road, the insects, the stars and the yellow-gold dawn remained a tender, background symphony. There was no beauty or tenderness in her learning:
What is love?
Who is God?
If I cry, who will have compassion on me as my suffering is the suffering of others?
This is the nature of evil. This is the nature of goodness.

.....The next night he introduced a girl. She had her hair done up in the traditional style; small chunks of hair were tied on to a length of string and wound round and round the head. The girl bowed her head so Elizabeth could get a good look at her hair-do.
....She wasn’t the usual sort of girl. She was a specialist in sex. A symbol went hand in hand with her, a small sewing machine with a handle.
"She can go with a man the whole night and feel no ill-effects the next day, provided you stimulate her properly”, Dan explained.
The stimulation worked like a sewing-machine; turn the handle with a big swing, then the needle rattles up and down; turn the handle again and so on. It looked as if the key to it was her penny button. She liked her penny button tickled.
His other comment on Miss Sewing-Machine was; "She’s a demon of self control".
Then he simply tumbled the girl into bed beside Elizabeth and went with her the whole night....They kept on bumping her awake till at dawn they made the last bump, bump,bump.

...he thrust black hands in front of her, black legs and a huge, towering black penis. The penis was always erect. From that night he kept his pants down; after all, the women of his harem totalled seventy-one.

...The next night he had a new girl-Miss Wriggly-Bottom. She looked Chinese; she was quite yellow, and her long, straight, black hair cascaded over her bare shoulders. The girl didn’t care for clothes; She was stark naked. Miss Sewing-Machine had a dress on till the lights dimmed Wriggly-Bottom had small round breasts and a neat, nipped-in waist. She walked in time to a silent jazz tune she was humming and wriggled her bottom. Then she lay herself down on her bed, on her tum, and propped up her chin up in her hands. She looked at Elizabeth with enchanting Black eyes.
“I’m just waiting for my date”, she said.
The date dimmed the lights.
[The next morning he turned on a record which said] “My darling, if you call me I’ll come to you. I don’t like women like that. They are too cheap”.
Apparently he liked the girls to keep their clothes on until he told them to take them off. Then that night he had a dramatic announcement to make. Miss Wriggly Bottom was stone dead. He’d overestimated her stamina. She couldn’t go with a man the whole night. Her sex was outside, on her bust and thighs, it wasn’t inside. There was just a vacuum inside. “I have an insatiable desire”, and in he hauled Miss Sewing-Machine again.
She was looking desperately sad and wistful, but she temporarily solved his problem. The next day he was free to turn his attention back to his job, which was, of course, directing the affairs of the universe.

...to have a supreme pervert thrust his soul into your living body. It was like taking a walk on slime; slithering, skidding and cringing with a deep shame. It was like no longer having a digestive system, a marvellous body, filled with a network of blood vessels -it was simply having a mouth and an alimentary tract; food was shit and piss; the sky, the stars, the earth, people, animals were also shit and piss. It was like living in the hot, feverish world of the pissing pervert of the public toilet-the sort of man who, in in buses and cinema queues, pressed himself against a woman. And when a woman turned around and said: “You shouldn’t do that”, she looked right into a face with an uncomprehending smirk that said: “But don’t you like it? That’s all I do. That’s all I know. My whole life is my pissing vehicle. You’re like that too. You’re just pretending”.

.....Madam Loose-Bottom had a sexual potency on a scale ten times greater than Dan’s. He would go into a bottomless pit of insatiability. Her symbol was a clump of wild grass; her sex was like a rough tumble in the wilderness.

...Some of the women made him panic a little. [Madam Loose-Bottom did] And Body Beautiful did. Their sex must not be more a little more than he could manage. Also women more sexually potent than he were incredibly dirty. He unfolded a long story about Madame loose bottom. She was a fallen goddess; her fall had been so bad that that she was the sort who slept with her own sons. He said: “Her past was so bad that even the police could not keep records of it”.

….The next thing he could not stand was the orgasm of Body Beautiful. It was feverish and hysterical and apparently affected him in a painful way. She was made to expose everything. The flesh of her private parts had a raw, red look as though the surface skin had been rubbed off by many hands. Like a small child wetting her pants, she had an orgasm right on top of Elizabeth.

...He...introduced Miss Pelican Beak. In every way Pelican-Beak was enchantment. She was gay and carefree, tough, energetic and so athletic she seemed to be a trapeze artist. Her symbol came along with her, the beak of the pelican bird. It referred to her passageway, which was long and tough like the bird's beak. This special gift enabled her to make love in all sorts of postures without any danger of internal injury; that is, she could twist her legs above her head, she could twist this way and that, she could do all sorts of things, and...could go the whole night with no ill-effects.
[She] liked to make comments like “Don’t!”,as though she were suddenly ashamed of something because it was love making with all the stops out. Then she alternated this with a long drawn out: “Daa-rling”.

From A Question of Power by Bessie Head

[20th century Southern African]

BRIGHT
with the armpit dazzle of a lioness,
she answers,

wearing white light about her;

and the waves escort her,
my lioness,
crowned with moonlight.

So brief her presence-
match-flare in wind's breath-
so brief with mirrors around me.

Downward....
the waves distil her;
gold crop
sinking ungathered.

Watermaid of the salt-emptiness,
grown are the ears of the secret.



From "Watermaid" in Labyrinths by Christopher Okigbo

…the distance that lies between what creatures are in themselves and what God is in himself…

All creatures of heaven and earth are nothing when compared to God, as Jeremiah points out: Aspexi terram,et ecce vacua erat et nihil;et caelos,et non erat lux in eis ( I looked at the earth, and it was empty and nothing; and at the heavens, and I saw they had no light ) [Jer.4:23].

By saying that he saw an empty earth he meant that all its creatures were nothing and that the earth too was nothing.

In stating that he looked up to the heavens and beheld no light, he meant that all the heavenly luminaries were pure darkness in comparison to God.

All creatures considered in this way are nothing and a person’s attachments to them are less than nothing since these attachments are an impediment to and deprive the soul of transformation in God-just as darkness is nothing and less than nothing since it is a privation of light.

… all the being of creatures compared to the infinite being of God is nothing …

All the beauty of creatures compared to the infinite beauty of God is the height of ugliness.

All the grace and elegance of creatures compared to God’s grace is utter coarseness and crudity. That is why a person captivated by this grace becomes highly coarse and crude in God’s sight.

Compared to the infinite goodness of God, all the goodness of the creatures of the world can be called wickedness. Nothing is good save God only [Lk.18:19].Those who set their hearts on the good things of the world become extremely wicked in the sight of God.

All the world’s wisdom and human ability compared to the infinite wisdom of God is pure and utter ignorance, as St.Paul writes to the Corinthians: Sapentia hujus mundi stulitia est apud Deum ( The wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight)[Cor.3:19].

Those, therefore, who value their knowledge and ability as a means of reaching union with the wisdom of God are ignorant in God’s sight and will be left behind, far away from this wisdom.

All the sovereignty and freedom of the world compared to the freedom and sovereignty of the Spirit of God is utter slavery, anguish, and captivity. Those, then, who are attached to prelacies or to other such dignities and to freedom of their appetites will be considered and treated by God as base slaves and captives, not as offspring.

All the delights and satisfactions of the will in the things of the world compared to the delight that is God are intense suffering, torment, and bitterness. Those who link their hearts to these delights, then, deserve in God’s eyes intense suffering, torment and bitterness. They will not be capable of attaining the delights of the embrace of union with God, since they merit suffering and bitterness.

All the wealth and glory of creation compared to the wealth that is God is utter poverty and misery in God’s sight. The person who loves and possess these things is completely poor and miserable before God and will be unable to attain the richness and glory of transformation in God; the miserable and poor is very far from the supremely rich and glorious.

…We are not discussing the mere lack of things; this lack will not divest the soul if it craves for all these objects. We are dealing with the denudation of the soul’s appetites and gratifications. This is what leaves it free and empty of all things, even though it possesses them. Since the things of the world cannot enter the soul, they are not in themselves an encumbrance or harm to it; rather, it is the will and appetite dwelling within it that cause the damage when set on these things.

David says on this subject: Pauper sum ego,et in laboribus a juventute mea ( I am poor and in labors from my youth )[ Ps.88:15]. Even though he was manifestly rich, he says he was poor because his will was not fixed on riches; and he thereby lived as though really poor. On the other hand, had he been actually poor, without his will being so, there would have been no true poverty, because the appetite of his soul would have been rich had full.


From The Collected Works of St.John of the Cross trans. by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez.

I painted my eyes with black antimony

I girded myself with amulets.

I will satisfy my desire,
you my slender boy.

I walk behind the wall.

I have covered my bossom.

I shall knead coloured clay.



I shall paint the house of my friend,
O my slender boy.

I shall take my piece of silver
I will buy silk.

I will gird myself with amulets

I will satisfy my desire
the horn of antimony in my hand,
Oh my slender boy!

Bagirmi poem from African Poetry:An Anthology of Traditional African Poems ed by Ulli Beier

I came to Carthage, where I found myself in the midst of a hissing cauldron of lust.

Arrived...at adolescence I burned for all the satisfactions of hell, and I sank to the animal in a succession of dark lusts: my beauty consumed away, and I stank in Thine eyes, yet was pleasing in my own…..

I had not yet fallen in love, but I was in love with the idea of it [leading to ] a feeling that something was missing…

To love and have my love returned was my heart’s desire, and it would be all the sweeter if I could also enjoy the body of the one who loved me.

…in this I did not keep the measure of mind to mind , which is the luminous line of friendship; but from the muddy concupiscence of the flesh and the hot imagination of puberty mists steamed up to becloud and darken my heart so that I could not distinguish the white light of love from the fog of lust. So I muddied the stream of friendship with the filth of lewdness and clouded its clear waters with hell’s black river of lust.

Both love and lust boiled within me, and swept my youthful immaturity over the precipice of evil desires to leave me half drowned in a whirlpool of abominable sins.

I might well have listened more heedfully to the voice from the clouds....It is good for a man not to touch a woman....

I should have listened more closely to these words and made myself a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven; and so in all tranquillity awaited Your embraces.

Instead I foamed in my wickedness, following the rushing of my own tide, leaving You and going beyond all Your laws. Nor did I escape your scourges…

You were always by me, mercifully hard upon me, and besprinkling all my illicit pleasures with certain elements of bitterness, to draw me on to seek pleasures in which no bitterness should be. And where was I to find such pleasures save in You O Lord, You who use sorrow to teach, and wound us to heal, and kill us lest we die to You.

Where then was I, and how far from the delights of Your house, in that sixteenth year of my life in this world [when] the madness of lust-needing no licence from human shamelessness, receiving no licence from your laws-took complete control of me and I surrendered wholly to it?

The briars of unclean lusts grew so that they towered over my head, and there was no hand to root them out. On the contrary my father saw me one day in the public baths, now obviously growing towards manhood and showing the turbulent signs of adolescence. The effect upon him was that he already began to look forward to grandchildren, and went home in happy excitement to tell my mother. He rejoiced, indeed, through that intoxication in which the world forgets You its Creator and loves what You have created instead of You, the intoxication of the invisible wine of a will perverted and turned towards baseness.

With the basest companions I walked the streets of Babylon [the city of this world understood as a bastion of moral depravity as opposed to the city of God composed by the righteous ] and wallowed in its filth as if it had been a bed of spices and precious ointments. To make me cleave closer to that city’s centre, the invisible Enemy trod me down and seduced me, for I was easy to seduce.

My mother had by now fled out of the centre of Babylon….

From St.Augustine,The Confessions of St.Augustine,trans.F.J.Sheed and St.Augutine,Confessions,trans.R.S.Pine-Coffin.

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth:for thy love is better than wine.

I am black....the sun hath looked upon me,I am comely,O ye daughters of Jerusalem,as the tents of Kedar,as the curtains of Solomon.

A bundle of myrrh is my well beloved unto me;he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.

As the apple tree among the trees of the wood,so is my beloved among the sons.

I sat down under his shadow with great delight,and his fruit was sweet to my taste.

His left hand is under my head,and his right hand doth embrace me.

By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth:I sought him but I found him not.

I will rise now,and go about the city in the streets,and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth:I sought him but I found him not.

The watchmen that go about the city found me:to whom I said,Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?

It was but a little that I passed from them,but I found him whom my soul loveth:I held him,and would not let him go,until I had brought him into my mother's house,and into the chamber of her that conceived me.

Thou hast ravished my heart,my sister,my spouse;thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes,with one chain of thy neck.

How fair is thy love,my sister,my spouse!how much better is thy love than wine!and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!

Thy lips,O my spouse,drop as the honeycomb:honey and milk are under thy tongue;and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.

A garden inclosed is my sister,my spouse,a spring shut up,a fountain sealed.

Awake,O north wind;and come,thou south;blow upon my garden,that the spices thereof may flow out.Let my beloved come into his garden,and eat his pleasant fruits.

I am come into my garden,my sister,my spouse....

I sleep but my heart waketh:it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh saying,

Open to me,my sister,my love,my dove,my undefiled:for my head is filled with dew and my locks with the drops of the night.

I have put off my coat...

My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door,and my bowels were moved for him.

I rose up to open to my beloved;and my hands dropped with myrrh,and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh,upon the handles of the lock.

I opened to my beloved....

How beautful are thy feet with shoes,O prince's daughter!the joints of thy thighs are like jewels,the work of the hands of a cunning workman.

Thy navel is like a round goblet,which wanteth not liquor:thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.

Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.

Thy neck is as a tower of ivory;thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon,by the gate of Bath-rabbim:thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh towards Damascus.

Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple,the king is held in the galleries.

How fair and how pleasant are thou,O love,for delights!

This thy stature is like to a palm tree,and thy breasts like clusters of grapes.

I said I will go up to the palm tree,I will take hold of the boughs thereof:now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine,and the smell of thy nose like apples; and the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved,that goeth down sweetly,causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.

I am my beloved's and his desire is toward me.

"The Song of Solomon",The Holy Bible,King James Version

Monks, the All is aflame. What All is aflame?

The body is aflame. Tactile sensations are aflame. Consciousness at the body is aflame. Contact at the body is aflame. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the body -- experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain -- that too is aflame.

Aflame with what?

Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, and despairs.

Seeing thus, the instructed noble disciple grows disenchanted with the body, disenchanted with tactile sensations, disenchanted with consciousness at the body, disenchanted with contact at the body. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the body, experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain: With that, too, he grows disenchanted.

Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is fully released. With full release, there is the knowledge, 'Fully released.' He discerns that 'Birth is depleted, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'

TheBuddha,The Fire Sermon


Meditation

"I define truth as imperfect by distinguishing it from untruth".

Aleister Crowley,Confessions (London:Penguin,1989)part 4,Chap.58,paragrapgh14,p.512.

Together they went to an abandoned temple where the bhairavi lit a fire, threw incense into it, and then became deeply absorbed in meditation.

Sitting next to her, he too closed his eyes and drifted off.

Suddenly he felt her gentle touch and when he looked at her, he found to his utter astonishment that she was now completely naked, lying prone with her legs in the lotus posture, and flower petals scattered over and around her genitals and with her pubic hair and other parts of the body besmeared with ashes and dabs of red and back color. . .

The bhairavi....looked transfigured and asked him to sit on her lap, as he had done many times before, though never without her wearing a stitch of clothing. He was dumbfounded but obeyed.

I climbed over the sacred body, and sat over the dark space left by the folding of her legs. At the very first contact, I was aware that her skin was burning. The heat was forbidding. But I knew it was not for me to question.

I assumed the accustomed lotus posture....Minutes passed; perhaps hours.

Who cared?

A stream of delight rippled through the 84,000 nadis of which she had always spoken. At the base of my spine I experienced a half-tickling, half-singing urge which ran up and down my spine. I closed my eyes.

The bhairavi told him that he was the living flame, time eternal, the sun, brahman, while she was a corpse, time-bound, the sky, and the lotus. Then she asked him to recite Sanskrit verses, and soon he lost all sense of her presence and even of his own being.

Something was happening to the mound around my penis. A vibration, thrilling, hot deep throb hammered beat after beat. The more it came in waves the more I was pushing out my spinal base...a strange feeling of completeness, fulfilment and ecstasy settled on my nerves.

When he finally came to his senses, he felt exhausted but still asked when they would visit the ruined temple again. She assured him that they would meet there again and again, explaining, "A carpet also hungers for someone to sit on it".

From The World of Tantra by Brajamadhava Bhattacharya,quoted in Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy by Georg Feuerstein.

Meditation

The fire seized her,fed.There was no burnng but a cold and weightless dazzle and then a light that blinded,deafended,numbed,with her senses being subtracted until all that remained was the odor of desire,and that odor suffused ecery pore and everywhere it brought oblivion.

It was the wind that woke her.It was full of sand and stinging hot,and yet each particle of sand that blew against her skin was like a tiny,tingling penetration,invigorating and indecent.

The sand was nipping at her flesh like lover's kisses,the wind hotly seductive as it whirled through her hair.

From somerwhere in the winding,shadowed steets,a chime echoed.Its silvery tones shivered through Val's body;its vibrations pleasured heart and lungs and entrails.

A parrot flew by above-a gaudy slash of green and scarlet against searing blue sky-and the sight brought delight that was unbearable in its intensity.

Nor were simple,everyday sensations less capable of inspiring ecstacy.The odor of baking bread....of musky human sweat that wafted from the cloistered dooorways as she passed-each was author to an exquisite sensitivity of mind and loins,making of each pore a tiny vulva,ravenous for more.

It was difficult,if not impossible,however,to keep her concentration focused-when the slap of her sandaled feet on paving stones,the metallic ring of chimes,the gold threads in an ornately woven rug glipmsed in an open courtyard rung such sensual delight that she felt exhausted,frazzled,giddy with the unnatural opulence of her sorroundings.

As her wanderings led her deeper into the labyrinthine streets,Val caught sight,here and there,of other people:an old woman lying splay legged in an alleway,her grizzled,thinly furred sex exposed.She held a musical instrument,a long flute-like thing with a curved end,which she simultaneously used to play and penetrate herself,moaning out the notes as she played herself to orgasm.

From "The Safety of Unknown Cities" by Lucy Taylor in The Mammoth Book of Erotica ed. Maxim Jakubowski

Meditation

The contemplation of the world began from the noblest spectacle that the human senses present to us[ the infinite expanse and limitless motions of the stars]and that our underststanding can bear to follow in their vast reach;and it ended-in astrology.Morality began with the noblest attribute of human nature[free will],the development and cultivation of which give a prospect of infinite utility;and ended-in fanaticism or superstition.

Immanuel Kant,

Critique of Practical Reason, trans.Thomas Abbot.

For a full two hours this man and I explored every centimeter of each other's bodies.I knew every inch of his penis and he every fold of my vagina and although we were uninhibitedly screaming directions as to what we wanted,we never asked each other's name.

For one incredible moment,as he was thrusting in and out,we were totally as one.I felt as though my soul had left my body and was floating out into space.This was the ultimate sexual experince,one that I've had just a few times with my husband,but I didn't know this guy from a bean.I was overwhelmed by passion-and yes,I even felt love for this stranger.It really blew my mind.

After we finished,I told him of my "religious" experience and he told me he'd felt the same thing.It was as though the burning core of the desire had lifted us out of our bodies and had catapulted us into outer space.He said it had happened to him only once before,and that it was awesome.

Letters to Penthouse II (New York:Warner Books,1989)117.

Meditation

"...Negative Capability....when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason..."

John Keats

Nathan Scott (author of a book entitled Negative Capability), notes that negative capability has been compared to philosopher Martin Heidegger’s concept of Gelassenheit, “the spirit of disponibilité before What-Is which permits us simply to let things be in whatever may be their uncertainty and their mystery."

From Wikipedia on Negative Capability

To Catharge I came,where a cauldron of unholy loves bubbled around me.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.