What is it that drives our curiosity about others? Do we imagine those people that we find sexy to be gifted with something that we lack? Do they know the answers to mysteries that we haven't figured out yet?

All Jungian archetypes aside, I'm eternally curious about how to properly describe sexy. Because it is so elusive, what makes people in the media believe that they have the right to define it?

Why are Americans so enamoured of an English accent?

Why do Latin men love blondes so much?

Why are Black men so entranced by white women?

Maybe all of these (generalized) attractions represent the unknown? What elusive characteristics to each of these groups have that the others do not?

I find myself completely smitten with English men. Yes, I recognize that many of them don't have great teeth, and alot of them are short. Yes, I see that there are "red necks" throughout Europe, and my own American bias filters out their rude, ignorant behavior everytime they open up their mouths to speak.

The electric response that my senses alight me with on the moment I hear an English accent is challenging to describe. I feel that I'm instantly transported to another life, where I was safe and the world was a known place. Things changed, but reason and civility were maintained as a high ideal. It's not the tea drinking, nor foppish mannerisms that return to lure me back into another world... it's the smells of damp tweed and wet soil, it is the feel of hot breath upon my wet and cold skin in the morning, and the rush of excitement of cold leather gloves on the small of my back helping me up onto a horse. There are echoes of a deep love that rise up within me, that I have no logical explanation for. I am passionately aroused by the smell of Earl Grey tea, and the sound of someone clearing their throat before they speak. The sound of boot heels on old stone floors makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and the gentle lilt of an English accent in someone saying my name makes my logical mind melt into my neck as emotion floods my senses with rich memories of a life I've never lived.

Is my heritage coming back to haunt me? Because I am a decendant of the English and the Scottish does that mean that my cells retained some memory of a life on the Isles where I was part of a different world? If so, why is this coming to bear now in such full color and life?

I wasn't raised with small dogs barking, yet their barks are comforting to me where they are irritating to others. I was raised in warm, dry climates.. yet the feel of wool on my skin, and thick socks across me feet seems more familiar than sandals and silks.

Somewhere in my memory there is a passion that sits dormant. It tickles my senses to the point of distraction, taunting me to come out and experience it in full force during this lifetime. My breath catches in my throat as my chest warms without my consent. My knees and hips soften, and my face relaxes as the memory of passion and perfection flood my conscious mind. Rich smells of cooking meat, and the sound of a man's voice calling across a field opens my heart and it sings. I am open.. like the lotus flower in the sun I relax my defenses and lay without restraint across the soft embrace of a fearless life filled with simple pleasures and the delight of an English world.

Passion, Love, and connections

We find ourselves overwhelmed with emotion, tears stream down our faces, and we smile without thinking. Our eyes clear up, and we feel as though we can see the whole world in a new light.

This is the feeling of being passionate about something, of being empassioned and allowing that energy to move through us without restraint.

Through this feeling, we can establish deep connections, and feelings for people and places that run deeper than the average connection.

Is it fair for people to restrain that? Is it healthy?

Should we keep our passions tempered? Sheltered and hidden from the world lest someone realize that we are human, emotional, and thus moved by our experiences in life? Do the people who gravitate toward corporate life inherently dislike the show of emotion? Or do they just learn how to keep a tight lid on anything that could be classified as passionate so that they don't create those deep connections and thus jeapordize their careers? I don't know the answers to all of these (well I have some, but I don't think that they are the beat all and end all.)

I believe that we are all passionate, feeling creatures. When we are starved of the outlet for that our heart shrivels.. kinda like the Grinch. I believe that the ache and the pain seeps into our bones like a toxin, and then comes out with a vengeance without warning when we are given an acceptable scenario in which to release them. I think that our lack of passion for daily tasks is why we are consumerists, and why our culture is so bi-polar about sex. Letting people BE emotional, acknowleding that emotions are healthy, and releasing them is as well, will allow us to move ON and truly BE aware of what is going on around us and to connect with people. If they leave the company.. then they leave. We must trust that life will move and we will grow from the experience rather than clinging to immature and selfish ideals that humans are NOT passionate and therefore MUST keep their passions tightly hidden.

I dedicate this post to the memory and inspiration of Luciano Pavarotti.

Bravo Maestro.

The tickle...

There is this zone, inside of our combined energy bodies, that vibrates when we are aroused the right way. What is the right way? It is the way that combines our emotions, with our body, with our spirit in such a way that none of them is out of sync with the other. It is a state of arousal defined by the feeling of flying, the feeling of falling into a soft bed, and the feeling of rising slowly into a warm embrace all at the same time.

The tickle is the feeling that immediatly preceeds that state. And it is what pushes us onward through the frustration and clumsiness of foreplay. Do not mock my statements, insisting that your foreplay is graceful and perfectly timed. All foreplay is clumsy, it's just that we are so high on endorphins we don't care. It's not elbow-in-eyesocket clumsy.. no one is seriously hurt or damaged (hopefully). But there are ALWAYS timing issues, even subtle ones.

In studying tantra and sex magick I have found that the tickle is indicator that you are raising energy, and that is actually where you are training yourself to stay: in a perpetual state of arousal just before unreason takes over and the waves start to crash over you. Yes, we all kind of work to get the wave of arousal to rise and crest. The swell of the appetite, the rush of blood and energy through the body, the warmth that seems to melt all fear... these are all good and noble goals. Yet, they are only the baby steps that preceed greater and more powerful experiences. The tantrikas have worked for months and years to teach themselves to channel that energy through their chakras, to feed their entire selves with it before they release it.. they work to commune with a divine-trancelike state to allow the energy to work to not only satisfy their bodies, but their spirits as well. These orgasmic releases are thought to prolong life, to keep the body healthy.

When you feel real fear, you notice that your body releases chemicals into it that make your skin and muscles react the same way as when you are aroused. Yet for a different purpose. This fear reaction is why I believe that people love horror so much (that, and I've read the description about a hundred times in Cosmo).

But what of love? What of the desire for love to expand to melt into things and expand their limits by pushing from the inside out? What of it's ever tranformative nature that brings us through amazing transitions and allows us to catch a glimpse of an ever orgasmic universe that is constantly aroused and bursting forth new life? Even as it contracts and ends life... it breaths, like we breath.. pumping blood energy through all the patterns that make up life as we know it.

It releases in ecstacy and a perfect blonde little boy is born with sea blue eyes and pale skin.. and it contracts and accepts back into it's core an old woman with gray hair and wrinkling skin who finally feels the sweet release of death freeing her from the restraints of a worn out body.

Whether it's the smell of rain soaked pavement, patchouli that has soaked into clothes and faded, or the delicate scent of honeysuckle coming in through the windows of my bedroom.. I celebrate the ecstactic release of the universe into being.

I'm just working on letting the tickle teach me to release into death and contraction as easily.