“It is only by enlarging the scope of one’s tastes and one’s fantasies, by sacrificing everything to pleasure, that the unfortunate individual called Man, thrown despite himself into this sad world, can succeed in gathering a few roses among life’s thorns” Marquis de Sade “Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns” Miller and Devon IT’S […]
Raising the Dead: The Dark Side of Love
On pagan sexuality, getting laid in the seventies, the great god Pan, the Marquis de Sade and the mating habits of goats
Top: Statue of Pan, The Eagles Nest, Northport, Long Island Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced. Marquis de Sade I credit my parents with instilling in me a love for pagan sexuality. Not intentionally – they didn’t advocate any kind of sex. It’s something that was only mentioned a couple […]
An Irish folk tale, Maid of Mullaghmore and memories of Muckross Head, county Donegal
I once spent about a week hanging out with Caoimhin Mac Aoidh, noted Donegal fiddler and historian, particularly on all things Donegal fiddle. He wrote about the tune Maighdean Mhara Mhullach Mhoir, or The Maid or more precise, The Mermaid of Mullaghmore. I was driving up the coast of Donegal, on the way to the village of Teelin, […]
Why do lovers leap? Native American myths and a lookout from Rock City, high above Chattanooga, Tennessee
Mark Twain wrote in the nineteenth century that there were fifty locations along the Mississippi River that claimed the title of lover’s leap. In fact, they are spread out not only across this country, but others as well. Nobody knows where, or even if there was a place where this legend springs from, a single […]
Christmas Card from Orpheus to Eurydice (last known address, Hades)
Top: Orpheus in Hades, Pierre Amedee Marcel Beronneau Editor’s note: This is my website, so I get to do what I want. Occasionally I write fiction, though this was going to be a nice scholarly article on Orpheus and Eurydice. Instead I got to wondering what happened to Eurydice afterwards? Too lazy to look it […]
Exiled – In the abyss, with only the full moon and a hungry lion for company
December 3, 2017 I was taking photos in a zoo once, stalking a lioness, she was agitated, pacing in her pen, she didn’t seem to like the sound of my camera. I got up to the fence and started snapping again. I heard the people scream, I saw the lion hurtle towards me. I lowered […]
To the two little fairies who once lived in my garden, who had stars in their eyes and flowers in their hair
Last night I had the strangest dream. I dreamt it was my wedding day, or rather wedding evening. It was being held in that little church where I first really spent time with one of you. I had known you for years, but it was the first occasion where I was responsible for you and […]
On the artist’s wife … Catherine and William Blake, both visionaries in their own way, and an undying love that conquers the grave
Nov 28, 2017 I’ve been walking around town after dark. It’s pretty quiet, a small town and not much going on. Down the street is a tree still in full autumnal glory. The one next to it is completed denuded. I’m walking on leaves much of the time and there aren’t many sounds better than […]
For the love of witches
MY FIRST MEMORY OF THE WORD WITCH happened when I was young, maybe five or six, though it’s likely I’d heard of witches in fairy tales before that. _______ Top: The Cove at Avebury, the oldest feature of that stone circle, where they honored their dead _______ We were riding through the country at night, […]
From the witch’s garden, Meadowsweet, a love potion as well as a balm for aching hearts
A look at Meadowsweet, a wildflower traditionally thought of as an omen of love. But with any love potion, it works best when love is already present from the start.
Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe
“The death… of a beautiful woman” is “unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world” Edgar Allan Poe Ligeia is a curious one in the Poe canon. Published in 1838, scholars are still debating how to take it. Some see it as a tale reminiscent of reincarnation, others a supernatural tale and quite possibly the […]
On Valentine’s Day, poets, Poe and the evolution of romantic love from darkness to light
Purple Roses by Cate Davies It’s about eight or nine years ago, middle of a hot summer and I’m in the gutter, literally. Well my feet are anyway. The rest of me is sitting on the curb, outside a tavern in Baltimore, Maryland. I’ve been drinking and thinking about a woman, but at the moment my […]
