I also devote a lot of time to learning technique. When I’m writing a novel, even one like this, if I’m reading another novel, I might plug in a technique I just saw used by somebody else in an unusual way. And then take it out again. Just to see how it works.
— Jeff VanderMeer
(painted for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll
Ariel in the Cloven Pine Paul Vincent Woodroffe, 1905
Fairies in trees are part of my own personal mythology. Like dryads, it pushes them into a botanical existence. In trees, they thrive, sleep, rest, refill their magic.
"Write to create a mood, an incident. If this is done with color and and feeling, it becomes a story."
— Sylvia Path, journal 1959
“She tastes like nectar and salt. Nectar and salt and apples. Pollen and stars and hinges. She tastes like fairy tales. Swan maiden at midnight. Cream on the tip of a fox's tongue. She tastes like hope.”
— Laini Taylor
“Sex is our deepest form of consciousness. It is utterly non-ideal, non-mental. It is pure blood-consciousness.... It is the consciousness of the night, when the soul is almost asleep.” — D. H Lawrence
🎨 Richard Borrmeister
If there is one thing I have learned in life, is that love is grand. Desire. Love is pretty much everything. All kinds of love. Romantic love is beautiful, even if it doesn't last. Remember, nothing last. All things end. I often live on the memories of the romantic loves that I have experienced, all of them, but mostly my marriage. I want to say that 'we fall in love many times in our lives if we are lucky.'
Love is a bit of a mystery to many people, but it possesses certain ingredients.
It takes meeting someone, noticing them, feeling an interest, and then it takes two, both people expressing that same interest and attraction. Desire again. Sometimes curiosity helps. Love does not thrive properly if proximity does not feed it, and for that matter, some good experiences too. Desire leads to touching. Intimacy is critical.
Somewhere along the way, if love is thriving right and if attraction wins over ego, a firm commitment happens. Each person wants the other person's happiness. Desire grows. Love manifest itself in a visible form. This is best if the two people are independent and emotionally mature.
But what makes Love and Passion last? Years and years and years of desire. That's compatibility. If two people are not compatible in most issues, love can die. This is why I tell people, if you value a good conversation with your lover, that's a big plus for the relationship. Good communication feeds love, because life is not just about falling in love. There is a reality of pain and stress and suffering outside the realm of love and desire. Also, people change over time. They may discover new loves and desires which alter a relationship. Some relationships survive. Some do not. But nothing negates what people once felt for one another when they first fell in love. While love fades with disappointments and absence, love is really stronger than one can understand.
I'll end this little post on love by adding that one of the gifts that modern people possess is the ability to experience what we now call Romantic Love. It was not always so. As cultures have evolved over time, fairness and love and passions have developed into an ideal Romantic Love, even for many very ordinary couples. But it not so for all people in this world. Some cultures have not evolved enough. For some of these people, love and desire leads to unhappiness and even tragedy.
If you can love, do so. Be happy in the doing of it.
