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Evening Voices

The Symptoms

The second time I come to see her, she lets me touch her right breast. I’m sure she would let me touch the left one, and maybe slide my hand down her smooth belly, but the idea is too much for me. She strokes my arm as I hand her the fives through the window, just barely brushes her fingertips along the inside of my elbow. I roll her nipple between my fingers, run my palm over the breathless curve. I want to stop.

The Role Of The Erotic Imagination

Sex is so stunning and powerful that the sexual gaze would seem to have something in common with the religious gaze. Of course, for many religious people, sexual fascination is the opposite of the religious spirit, but in some traditions where sex is considered sacred, it isn’t much of a leap from honoring the image of a saint to venerating an image of a sexual god or goddess.

Summoning Venus

An Interview With Thomas Moore On Sex And The Soul

The goal of our sexuality — especially in our thinking about lovemaking — should be to evoke the spirit of Venus. That’s really what it’s about. It’s not about the modern idea of people trying to communicate with each other. Nor is it just instinct, nor biology. In The Soul of Sex, I set out to write about sex in a way that was not biological, not psychological, and not sociological. I came to the conclusion that summoning the spirit of sex — which the Greeks called Aphrodite and the Romans called Venus — is still what sex is about, and is what we need to do in today’s world.

Solstice

His mother is blessed with a dull acceptance that cushions her suffering, but Arnell, her youngest son, is bright, and this winter will leave its mark on him. 

February 2001

I don’t believe that clothes make the man. Then why am I still a little proud that I own only one suit?

December 2000

We fell asleep the usual way, Norma curled against me, the cats between us at the foot of the bed. At three in the morning, she woke up, violently sick from something she’d eaten, and spent the next two hours throwing up. I knelt beside her in the bathroom, my arm around her shoulder. There are many positions for love.

Jonsared

He doesn’t seem crazy. Not at all. There’s no muttering, no matted hair, no tics, no eyes that are keyholes into rooms where the worst things happen.

Reptile Man

I’ve read that it’s common to be repelled by someone you later find attractive. My attraction to Reptile Man was like that. He hung out at Red Emma’s Deli, arriving at ten every morning like clockwork. He always read a newspaper someone else had left behind and spaced out three coffees over a period of about two hours.

Old Soul

How Aging Reveals Character — A Conversation With James Hillman

To show one’s face is part of having the courage to show who one is. And coming to terms with your own face takes a lifetime. Just think how, when you were twelve or sixteen, you wished you looked different. And that’s true for everyone; even the most perfect, beautiful boy or girl is dissatisfied. So why is that? It can’t just be that I don’t look like the model on the magazine cover. It’s something else. You haven’t yet accepted your fate, who you are. As you get older, that relationship between your face and who you are matures. They blend together. Your true self shows more.