Why are we here?¶

Beloved, you ask me, “Why are we here?” I now know for sure. We are here to be with our lover. We do not know who it is, or where we will meet them, but we seek them throughout our life. What can be a greater purpose to our lives than to lie with our beloved in bed, talking sweet nothings, embracing and being passionate? No better pleasure than to stroll in the woods or drive into the mountains with the one we love. The trees and rocks have their roots there since the beginning of time. Our togetherness is such, rooted since the dawn of time, as inevitable as the fall of an apple.

So come lie with me on the bed. Let me hold you and feel the softness of your skin. Let me kiss you on your lips and do mock battle with your tongue. Let me feel you with my hands and fingers, drawing up a map, as an explorer discovering new and exciting country. For me, this country is always fresh and full of surprises. In love one suffers from sensual amnesia. Let me explore your soul with words. Tell me sweet love poetry, sing about spring blossoms, talk about summer heat and quiet sunsets. When the chirping birds wake me in the morning and I find my bed empty, I find myself in the worst existential hell, one created by the absence of the beloved.

Farewell, Once Beloved¶

Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you. It was but yesterday we met in a dream. You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky. But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn. The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part. If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song. And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky.” Kahlil Gibran.

Autumn Leaves¶

The days pass by like falling leaves. Red and gold tree tops glow in the sunlight. The wind blows a leaf away. Every instance without you is like a leaf falling off the tree. Time blows it away leaving behind loss. How will my soul find nourishment if you are not by my side? Catch the sunlight and create joy for me. Feed my passion and be my life. Without its leaves the tree soon dies.

Last week I drove through the mountains on country roads. The trees were dusty and the rocks a peculiar rusty brown. The road wound between steep cliffs, trying to keep up with a frisky mountain stream. I thought: how the cliffs squeeze the road! They make it twist and turn: no going straight here, the rocky pincers are too strong. I want our love to be such. Squeeze me so my path is twisted and I follow your joyful curves. Let me navigate the route you carve out for me.

We form a strange loop, mutually recursive and eternally pleasing. A mathematical baroque, a looping sequence of notes, a dance in which one strand merges into another.

A Lesson In Experimental Natural Philosophy¶

Voltair’s Dr. Pangloss, a disciple of Leibniz, delivers to a chamber-maid, behind the bushes, a lesson in experimental natural philosophy. This lesson, although it satisfies the base carnal animal soul of the pupil and her teacher, is the cause of much distress to the said Dr. Pangloss. For Dr. Pangloss, after tasting briefly the pleasures of paradise, burns for long in the torments of hell. A torment, in the form of an infection, which can be traced, through a long direct line, to one of the companions of the illustrious Christopher Columbus.

Although Dr. Pangloss does not trace the infection further, we can, with the aid of the Bible, trace it back to Noah. Warned of the Flood by the good Lord, Noah makes a ship, apparently not large enough to carry two of all the species on the planet, but large enough to carry syphilis in plenty. This and other many more amusing diseases, created no doubt to punish the wicked promiscuous heathens, was on the Ark which Noah built. Thus the cause and the proper reason for Dr. Pangloss’s suffering was the Ark of Noah.

Thank you, O Merciful Supreme Author, for creating this best of all the possible worlds.

The Error of Eros¶

Beloved, while lying wrapped in your arms you ask me about love. I must admit that I find love rather perplexing. Your soft skin, your warm wet lips, your beautiful hair (at which I poke fun, now-and-then), our tongues clashing, your hand on my face, your legs tight around me, a lick on the nape of you neck, all make me think of love. I think then of Bacchus and Apollo. I want to drink deep of the wine of Bacchus, getting lost in dark sensuousness: a Dionysian curse. The heat of Apollo bothers me often, doing its best dispel the stupor. Think rationally, he tells me. Yet, among the fumes of the potent wine rational thoughts find it hard to stay upright. They slip: a rather tragic comedy.

When I give it a thought, it appears to me that irrational love is rational. It feeds our passion for life and gives us meaning. I need not wait for paradise, it awaits me here: I need to just lay in the nook of your arm, listen to your sweet voice and feel your nails on my back. I do not need Virgil to tell me what hell is like: just your absence is worse than the most morbid dreams of Dante.

Let me err with you, an erotic error of Eros.