Don Juan (De Marco), a tribute

With two inconspicuous categories, one on Seduction and the other on the Lover’s Ethic, it seems rather out of balance to leave out a character like Don Juan. Yet, I’ve always known this; I’ve known and I’ve hesitated. My hesitation sprung from the concern that Don Juan was fictional and the story regarding his character varies depending on who’s telling it. One thing is general about Don Juan: he lived for women, but more than that, he lived for life herself. There is a most fascinating relationship between every man who lives passionately and the richness of his life. These people are almost always shinning and charismatic, their gaze is wild and hypnotic. This trait is by all means not sex-bound, it is available to both – society needs to drum this in with utter conviction and fervour, for life’s sake. One thing remains the same, these people are alive. Life flows from their bosom, so does adventure, tragedy and drama. Their life is like a wild storm: now thrusting left, now pushing right, now spinning and sweeping powerfully everything it comes into contact with – it is in other words, alive. This life is alive. What a tautology, yet don’t look at it and condemn it. Question yourself? Is your life alive? Is it really?    

What exactly living for woman and living for life actually means, and what their relationship is, is subject to interpretation. My interpretation I would like to bestow you with in the form of Don Juan, and I will take my bearings from a most auspicious and conspicuous source, which I invite you all to enjoy. The very under-rated Hollywood movie with some fascinating elements entitled: Don Juan De Marco, with Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando. The movie itself arises from an even more conspicuous source: Lord Byron’s book entitled Don Juan. This movie brings out the tension between Realism and Romanticism (a distinction I’ve flirted with elsewhere) with a touch of mediocre genius; just a touch, a light and soft touch.   

I’ve written about Giacomo Casanova, yet I’ve left it until too late to write about Don Juan, it’s about time I paid him a tribute. Don Juan was more bound to women than Giacomo, he was their slave. Whilst for Giacomo, women were the spice of life; the touch of pepper to the steak, the fine wine to that last dinner. Unlike Don Juan, Giacomo was in control of himself, he understood and embraced women, and the dynamics that arose from an abnormal admiration of them. He had an enigmatic comfort with passion. He knew the power and influence of sexual dynamics, but also the power of reciprocal exchange – this is perhaps his most auspicious difference, and why Giacomo was nowhere near the Lover. Don Juan was the opposite in this aspect, he knew nothing of exchange, he didn’t even think – he just loved, he burned, he made bud. He was blind to each and every woman; blind, lost and mesmerized by her bosom (not breasts) and eyes – he burned with desire, a kind of desire that melted her defences, a desire that saw right through them. Looking beyond what the eye could see. He’d bring out the infinite in her, what we’ve called before: her soul. He’d disclose it, hug it, kiss it, affirm it, make love to it and then offer it back to her as a gift. The kind of man a woman feared, but was excited by all the same; a tormenting man. The kind of man she would imagine about and tears of joy would moisten her tender southern flesh – her soul would weep in longing, just for a touch, for a kiss, for a look… The reader must bare in mind these differences between these two, and their similarities. This post however, is about Don Juan, so let’s get back on course. 

It seems unfair and quite difficult to juxtapose historical figures such as these two, not least of all because of their notoriety and controversy. One is particularly certain of this: the question remains open as to whether these two were ‘actually’ seducers – even though they have been labelled as such. Culture these days is cancer-like enough to make anything outside its sphere something condemning or worthy of alienation, and yes, seduction is something to be condemned – primarily because of its limits. There is one particular depiction of Don Juan that makes him absolutely nowhere near a seducer. I would argue Don Juan is the closest depiction of the Lover I have come across, thus far. Giacomo was not a Lover, he was openly a seducer, he at times bought sexual pleasure and led astray many women – although, one needs to be as harsh to women as possible, they always knew and still went along. The pleasure from a man such as Giacomo, the ambivalent kudos that comes with it, bypasses the danger arising from social depravity – the possibility of social depravity is precisely the problem, it is the inhibiting agent. This is the kind of pleasure that needs to be celebrated, for its various positive affects. Although, Giacomo still remains a seducer, but a peculiar kind of seducer, one with the wings of the Lover, the uncanny admiration for women. But, not yet a Lover himself.    

Don Juan’s primary difference lies in the following, he was a kind of mystic. A mystic that found eternity, found God, in woman, and this is why he is the closest thing to the Lover that history has to offer. The Lover sees God in and through woman. Woman is the medium to what mystics call God. What others have called, the affirmation of life; woman as a means to life, a mutual means. To make love to a woman is to make love to life herself; to make love is to make love to life. To make love is to make life.

This following quote from the movie always depicts a remarkable picture of making love from the Lover’s perspective, the scene is amazing. Everything that happens in that first ten minutes of this movie paints a picture of the Lover, like no words can.

“No. I, I never take advantage of a woman. I give women pleasure… if they desire it. It is of course, the greatest pleasure they will ever experience. There are some women… fine featured, a certain texture to the hair, a curve to the ears that, that is, sweeps like a turn on a shell. These women… have fingers, with the same sensitivities as their legs. The fingertips have the same feelings as their feet, and when you touch their knuckles, it is like passing your hands along their knees. And this, tender, fleshy part of the finger, is the same as brushing your hands along their thighs. And… finally…”  (Movie)

The ambiguity of this quote is fascinating, severely so. He initially proclaims that he does not take advantage of a woman and then, as if “by accident”, proceeds to the crux of seduction, to insinuation, to a promise of pleasure. Further, through the suggestive sexual innuendo that runs by so smoothly and at such a small distance, you’d have to be a complete idiot not to understand his point. “And… finally…”, women know this ‘finally’, they dream of this ‘finally’, they tremble with excitement at this ‘finally’ like a child at “Toys R Us”. Is he a seducer though? Does he, as the lady initially proclaims, “seduce women”? Apparently not, yet, a good seducer covers his tracks, a good seducer will seduce without seducing – the best seducer is precisely not a seducer; in her eyes. I write this because I want you to feel the ambivalence, I want you to feel the state of confusion. Why? Because precisely that is as far as seduction goes. Confusion is the decoy and deploy of a seducer. The next part, the next step, is the Lover. To see beyond this deploy, to view this ambivalence as precisely what needs to occur for the pleasure. It is what needs to occur for love and ultimately for the affirmation of life, to surrender all thought, and to surrender all defence. This is the job of the ambivalence: to shut you up, both internally and externally. Such that a space is open. Why, what is this space for? So that you can experience pleasure; and finally, so that you can love. The space allows room for pleasure to enter and possess you. A space to make you lost in the moment, so that you can feel alive once again, like your intra-ordinary keeps asking the Lover to make happen.

“Every true lover knows that the moment of greatest satisfaction comes when ecstasy is long over. And he beholds before him the flower which has blossomed beneath his touch.” (Movie)

Don Juan cares not about his satisfaction. He cares not about hers either. He cares about life, he cares about budding. He cares about bringing to life something that has long been in torpor, something that has been suffering from hypersomnia. The only conquest for him is the conquest of the death of life, of the misery of life. “Behold,” the Lover would say, “behold”. Behold the woman as he found her, and the woman as he left her, behold how his love was contagious – how his love gave life. How he infected her with life, how he instilled life back into her, how he made her drunk without a single drink – drunk on life.

“Every woman is a mystery to be solved. But a woman hides nothing from a true lover. Her skin colour can tell us how to proceed… a hue like the blush of a rose, pink and pale, and she must be coaxed to open her petals with a warmth like the sun. The pale and dappled skin of the red-head calls for the lust of a wave crashing to the shore, so we may stir up what lies beneath and bring the foamy delight of love to the surface. Although there is no metaphor that truly describes making love to a woman… the closest is playing a rare musical instrument. I wonder, does a Stradivarius violin feel the same rapture as the violinist, when he coaxes a single perfect note from its heart?” (Movie)

Woman is absolutely not a mystery. The only mystery is man’s stupidity and man’s lack of concern, man’s lack of awareness regarding his woman. Man has been working blindly, his member thrusting and retreating, his eyes completely shut. Shut away from his woman’s facial expressions as he thrusts. Shut away from his woman’s eyes: are her pupils dilated or not? Shut away from her chest and cheeks: are they red (or flushed) or not? Shut away from her breathing: is she breathing heavily and uncontrollably or not? Shut away from her reactions to his touch: does her body tremble when you position yourself as such, when you touch her in this way and in that place, or not? Man is blind and stupid, therefore woman is a mystery, to him. Woman in general, is not a mystery. For Don Juan, and in general, woman is more sexual than man. She thinks about sex so much, that she constantly fights with herself in order to stop it. Woman has been tamed, fundamentally, and this taming has produced the type of women that yearn for a Don Juan as much as they fear him. It has produced an ambivalence in woman that is most saddening, only to a man who knows what lays in pure reception between his legs – what beauty wishes to lose itself in his touch.

Why is Don Juan close to the Lover?

“By seeing beyond what is visible to the eye. Now, there are those, of course, who do not share my perceptions, it’s true. When I say that all my women are dazzling beauties, they object… the nose of this one is too large, the, the hips of another they are too wide perhaps, the breasts of a third, they are too small. But I see these women for how they truly are… glorious, radiant, spectacular, and perfect… because I am not limited by my eyesight. Women react to me the way that they do, Don Octavio, because they sense that I search out the beauty that dwells within them until… it overwhelms everything else. And they cannot avoid their desire, to release that beauty and envelop me in it. So, to answer your question… I see as clear as day that this, great edifice in which we find ourselves, is your villa, it is your home. And as for you, Don Octavio de Florez, you are a great lover like myself. Even though you may have lost your way… and your accent. Shall I continue?” (Movie)

Don Juan is a rarity, even for the Lover. His vision is both Lover-like and not. It links him to the Lover because of the admiration he harbours for woman, but at the same time, it makes him deviate from the Lover because he seems to place no value to the intra-ordinary. Although, I would argue that one can interpret this looking within as precisely the intra-ordinary interaction in its most romanticised expression. Yet, a Lover has one fundamental difference: his very own intra-ordinary pushes her to break herself in a reaction long before the sex – she becomes alive before the passion. Rather, the passion is there and burns through it all, before any of it whatsoever.

The Sculptor’s Tools

A speech for all the sculptors out there, my brothers and sisters who just wish so desperately to give birth to themselves in one form or other, and who struggle day and night in the process. A speech for the strong souls whose only weakness is the desire to express themselves in their own way: business, art, science, philosophy…

A sculptor must be honest to his tools. He must keep them safe; shielded from the wind, from water and rust, from old age and decay, from bluntness and breaking, and from all possible dangers. For to the sculptor, his tools are everything. His work is his life; it’s how his soul desires to extricate itself and take shape outside of him – to sever itself from him with every work, and to nourish itself with every attempt. His tools become his most cherished possessions.

Yet, he must also have the courage to flaunt them! For what is a soul if it is not seen, and what is a work if it is not enjoyed – and enjoyed not only by him. Why possess a gift and not be able or even wish to give it? Who has the courage to harbour a gift and never desire to give it? Who’s soul is so destitute as to be born with a gift and to wish to place it on one’s shelf? – hidden from the world where it can slowly wither and clothe itself with dust. Nay! Let him whose soul possesses a burning desire to speak, let him speak! Let him whose soul possesses a burning desire to sing, let him sing? Let him whose soul possesses a burning desire to be silent, let him be silent. Him who writes, let him write. Him who destroys, let him destroy. Him who creates, let him create. Him who smiles, let him smile. Him who cries, let him cry. Him who punishes, let him punish. Him who desires, let him desire. Let him, let him, let him.

Let them all flaunt their burning souls, let the burning warm one and all. For the warmth of a soul is the like the warmth of a sun – it gives life, it gives wonder, it gives nourishment and it gives breath. So flaunt your soul and flaunt its tools, keep them by your side wherever you go, whatsoever you do and whomsoever you meet. Let them see that shinning sickle by your side, that sharp and elegant knife by your waste, that mighty hammer by your hand, that flashy cane that supports your battered limbs… Be who you are, and become who you’ve always been.

An excerpt from Osho’s “The Tantra Vision”

I wanted to share this little excerpt with you all…

—

All my obscurities, all my hindrances – things that were obstructing my vision – are removed. I can see reality directly. Repressions are no longer there; my energies are in a flow. I am not against my body, I am not inimical to my body; I am one with my body. The division is dropped. My senses are all open and functioning at the optimum. My mind is silent, there is no obsessive thinking. When I need to, I think. When I don’t need to, I don’t think. I am the master of my house. A light was born in me, and with that light, all obscurities have disappeared. Now nothing obstructs me, my vision is total. The wall that was around me has disappeared.

That wall consists of three things: repressions in the body, dust in the senses, and thoughts in the mind. These are the three bricks that the China Wall around you is made of. Remove these bricks, and the wall disappears. And when the wall is gone, you come to know the One.

—

Protected: A Tribute to Georges Bataille.

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The Eternal Struggle of Humanity

*Ok Fred, you’ve persuaded me. Even though I do not see a possibility of this happening in this way, it is perhaps the best way.*

People are torn asunder by themselves. People’s biggest battle is not the world, but themselves. People even in this time and age suffer from the debris of customs, alas, from customs themselves. People must find a way to sever themselves from jealousy and their need for love in another. People must find a way to not seek their identity in another, or they will never know happiness with another or with themselves. People’s struggle is this: they cannot find themselves in themselves, they must always seek themselves in another. People need to break this vicious circle, or they will never be happy. They must find a way to love themselves; regardless of anyone else.

Now more than ever woman needs man, to help her realize this. And man needs woman to help him realize this. This and only this is where and when man/woman must prove himself/herself, all other proofs are idiosyncratic and nauseating. Now more than ever man/woman must be strong enough in him/herself to allow her/him the space to be her/himself without him/her or anyone else in the world. People must attain their individuality independently of other people especially him/her, so that she/he can more fully experience life, herself and him (and vice verse). They must do this or else they are doomed to never become a woman/man, and remain a little girl/boy through their fear and desire for secutiry. Security will kill them, because it allows them a way to escape from herself and run into another, a mask, in the form of him/her or a simulacrum they have created for themselves to hide from themselves; from facing themselves.

This is the eternal struggle, and one hopes for the birth of a kind of man/woman that can allow and aid this to happen, one prays day and night. For the cornerstone of humanity is not philosophy, not science, not politics etc… but the constituents that make all the prior and humanity itself possible: woman and man, and/or, man and woman.

Words from Kierkegaard

No! No one shall be forgotten who was great in this world; but everyone was great in his own way, and everyone in proportion to the greatness of what he loved. For he who loved himself became great in himself, and he who loved others became great in his devotion, but he who loved God became greater than all. They shall all be remembered, but everyone became great in proportion to his expectancy. One became great through expecting the possible, another by expecting the eternal; but he who expected the impossible became greater than all. They shall all be remembered, but everyone was great in proportion to the magnitude of what he strove with. For he who strove with the world became great by conquering the world, and he who strove with himself became great by conquering himself; but he who strove with God was greater than all. Thus there was strife upon earth; there was he who conquered everything by his own strength, and he who conquered God by his powerlessness. There was one who relied upon himself and gained everything, and he who, secure in his own strength, sacrificed everything; but greater than all was Abraham, great with that power whose strength is powerlessness, great in that wisdom whose secret is folly, great in that hope whose outward form is insanity, great in that love which is hatred of self.

*Fear & Trembling

A tribute and an honour to one of the greatest thinkers of all ages.

Natalie Wood

A look that calms, the wild sea,
A touch that traps, your heart even though you’re free.
A smile that ignites, in you desire,
A complexion that adds, gasoline to the fire.
A madness in you rises, for the beauty you mourn,
A delicacy in the female aura, forever you scorn.
An expression that fills, your heart with grief,
A beauty as that in Autumn, at the fall of the last leaf.
A mystery that compels you, as you write each verse,
An agony you experience, at the face of your curse.

 

Giacomo Giovanni Casanova

Giacomo Giovanni Casanova’s life is very fascinating to me, perhaps because of his constant pursuit for love or adventure…

Casanova’s reputation has degraded into a terrible cliché and this makes his memory rather negligible. However, it is precisely that fact that attracts me to his life; he is almost like a cocoon that failed to produce a butterfly; did it actually fail or are we all wrong to degrade him?

The love aforementioned and the one I will be talking about throughout this little entry is oriented towards Romantic Love, known to be only the first stage of Absolute Love.

His youth was dominated by a vegetative state until about the age of eight; suffered from chronic nosebleeds and was dumb-witted. Born as a child to actors, his father was a director/actor and mother was a beautiful Venetian actress. As he got older, his intelligence grew in proportion with his body, he grew more and more shrewd.

Casanova’s first encounter with a woman, and we know of the gravity of these encounters, was when he was at a tender age of eleven. As he put it, he fell in love with a girl called Bettina, an intensely beautiful but fucked up girl with a rather more than copious desire in the masculine species; she liked cock beyond proportion. The way she seduced him was inconspicuous, but at the same time bewilderingly simple and observable. After hot and cold encounters (coquetry was a pandemic to women of that time period) one after the other, one day she “accidentally” jacked him off, left without returning, and from that moment he felt shame mixed with guilt and shame at what he had done, he felt that he took away her innocence and dishonored her and her family. This lead to a melancholy, due to the fact that she wasn’t around so that he could induce closure; this was enough to make him fall in love.

It is precisely the moments when we are made to question ourselves that we open up our hearts.

There is an observable theory behind that, when you question yourself you are vulnerable; vulnerability is perhaps the last step leading to openness and surrender, constituents of romantic love. Think of all the times you surrendered and you will see that it was the times when you thought that you were vulnerable, that you had no other alternatives. When you are made to question yourself, you are made to question the very thing that you use to defend what you do and how you do it; via this questioning one is left vulnerable because their excuses have gone, their reasons for why and how have gone. Once your reasons for why and how have gone, you are left in a place of loss, you feel the biggest void there is, and that void can only be filled by an influx of deep admiration for the person who just made you question yourself. This admiration is inspired because, when someone makes you feel like you don’t know yourself, you automatically presuppose they must know themselves and they must be stronger, so you place that person in a pedestal and the moment you’ve done that you’ve ruined your experience. Not only that, but now you think that if they know themselves they can show you how you can know yourself too. Now the person becomes a salvation that can lead to your true nature. A dependency is synthesized, thus leaving you infatuated, and without the awareness required for you to escape it. Bare in mind, this is only one way to express how love happens, only one way that “romantic” love can happen.

The interesting thing about our notion of love is that it is usually bred by emotions of a contrary essence to love. How many times have you fallen in love with people you shouldn’t have fallen in love with? How many times has someone you perceived to love you has let you down or toyed about with you, by emotionally tossing you back and forth? Love, as we see it, has a peculiarity beyond that of words; it is almost so volatile and unpredictable that one wonders whether that is the reason for its hold on us? Giacomo Casanova chased love and adventure like a hungry lion chases a zebra. His life was altered around one word; experience. Experience to its fullest extent, he was truly a lover of life, in fact he loved it so much that he almost lost it a couple of times in his pursuit for experience.

One of the most important lessons one can learn from Casanova’s life is his innate and particularly contrasting ability to seduce nuns. Nuns in those days were supposedly the most chaste human beings alive, and still are now; virgin – most of them anyway- young, fair and innocent – as if. The distinct observation that I have made about so called chaste women, which I would have never made hadn’t it been for his life, is one that chaste women are perhaps the first to burn under the flames of temptation. When you see a woman forced into chastity and gaze in her eyes, you see an immaculate draining of her energy, a tenseness most unusual in women of freedom. This tenseness is very subtle however and at times masqueraded too well to even notice, without careful attention, but it is there. There are three that I have perhaps become distinctly aware of, feel free to add others if you so wish:

 - Perhaps the most interesting is the look of anger, some women forced into chastity have a general disdain for everything and anything; the wrinkles on their brows as they are floating about harmoniously scream of tension, so much tension that one wonders just how loud she could scream had she been in the hands of a “real” individual. Forced tension has the drawback of forced release, temptation easily succumbs those forced into renunciation, when you fight something, you are weakened simply by the energy you expend on fighting it. Thus, and on account of that expenditure, you will always lose.

 -The subtle kind is the kind of woman that hides her tension behind a veneer of self-deception by attempting to feel fulfillment. She expends so much energy that she even hides it from herself, her look is one of fulfillment, and her gaze is so peaceful and innocent that it can trick anyone. However she too is given away by her curiosity, her peaceful look turns into one of fear when in contact with a man. That fear is never of the man; it is of her temptation towards the man, of what she would do to the man if she was alone with him.

 -Lastly, and the easiest one to spot, is the look of humility or timidity, these are women that are floaters around the world, hardly noticeable and always fly under the radar – usually librarian women. The kind of women that can’t look at you in the eye for longer than you feel you deserve to be looked at, are by far the most intoxicating of the lot, and have much more to offer. These women are the best fighters of all the other types, they don’t hide it, and they are such great fighters of temptation that they have taken it to the next level. They force you not be attracted to them or even notice them, and in turn they are partially, if not fully, salvaged from the poisonous fangs of temptation. This perfect mechanism once understood unleashes a passion beyond words. A passion that render words meaningless; the experience speaks words that will never be heard.

Chastity and lewdness are nothing but aspects of the same coin. They are nothing but a house with two entrances, one rather more comfortable than the other. To experience one is to lack the other; to be faithful to one aspect is to be unfaithful to the other. Each aspect, as we see from the countless encounters of our present hero, must have its dedicated time and fulfillment, for there is no escape. Adultery makes one feel alive, decency makes one feel divine; both mandatory human desires. There is no midpoint, both aspects are mandatory for living a healthy life. Bare in mind that the aspects mentioned are not the actions, but rather the feelings that arise from the actions, those are mandatory. To feel alive and to feel divine. A coin’s both sides must be observed so that the shop keeper or the owner of the coin may be sure of its value and worth.

Casanova’s first encounter with a woman was enough to shape his whole life with other women. On a perspective oriented by determinism, a crude explanation of determinism is, when your future or present is determined by your past (key emphasis on causality), his encounter with Bettina was enough for him to understand the complexity of romantic love. From that moment forth he developed a certain weakness towards women, a weakness he masqueraded as extremely potent seductive ability. Bettina’s actions were enough for him to draw the much desired distinction between male and female psychology. Bettina helped him become engulfed in the feminine psyche; being feminine himself also contributed in his learning. Bettina, although young at the time (fifteen years old), managed to play the game of love with the cunning of a woman many years her age. She used the ever-interesting tool of coquetry with masterful skill, this was the primary weapon of women in those years, given the strength men had over them, it was an excellent way to get men to do what they wanted them to do. This one encounter with coquetry was enough for him to understand its essence and thereby counter it extremely well. The game of love* is one of leverage, and as degrading and painful as this may seem, romance is very closely related to business. Whoever has leverage over the other will invariably hold power over the other. When the leverage is equaled, it creates an interesting phenomenon called mutual love. However, the key to maintaining this mutual love is to maintain the balance of leverage, the moment the balance is lost, love is gone with it.

He was, without doubt, the breath of fresh air women were looking for in that time and age. He created an ego oriented towards becoming the perfect romantic hero, the damsel in distress, the adventurous bad boy, the charismatic gentleman, the mysterious stranger, the dandy and many, many others.

Each woman he came across, that he desired, managed to create in him her personal and perfect man. It was like he was walking around as a blank sheet of paper, in which the desired woman could write herself in; a canvas for the desired woman to paint her heart in. He did this with utmost perfection; in fact he went so far that many times he almost lost his life in the process of being a precise representation of the feminine desire. He never did anything to women; all he did was become that which they desired. His ability to alter characters in order to accommodate the woman he desired, was fascinating; his exquisite capabilities of being able to read women fast and understand what it is they are burning inside for and what is missing in their life. This he performed intuitively. He never gave a girl what she said she wanted; he always gave her what she absolutely needed and couldn’t live without. In this way he was able to become her innermost desire; a cunning tool.

Getting off on a tangent a little, there are a few points one should know about his self-conception. Perhaps the most admirable point he makes about his life is;

 “I am writing to laugh at myself, and I am succeeding” – Casanova

Such a view of his very immoral and unconventional life is enough to inspire interest as to why he would make such a bold claim. How can someone laugh at a life of heart-break, death, crime and many other such incidents? It seems paradoxical to find amusing, things we hold to be horrendous. What’s even more mind blowing is his claim of being a Monotheist, his claim of a belief one God.

 “I believe in the existence of an immortal God, creator and master of all forms.”

How can someone leading such a dissolute life claim to have a belief in a religion? The audacity seems penetrating to one who fancies himself a believer of Spirituality and Religion. Yet he made the claim none-the-less. His understanding of the duality of the world is remarkably spiritual, and one wonders how can someone prone to lasciviousness, be able to accommodate a spiritual understanding? He also claimed that in the times of distress he relied on faith, and it was precisely his faith in the divine providence that allowed him to escape phenomenally inescapable situations. One can draw many conclusions about such a paradoxical man, the most important I reckon however is that he was getting closer and closer in his understanding of the spiritual and so he would have moved higher up the ladder of true love. Romantic love is merely a parenthesis in the journey to absolute love; it is merely a pit stop that one has to make should he be able to continue. Giacomo seemed to have made the pit stop very well. To make him a cliché for pleasing the women of lazy and boorish men is unfair.

——————

*It was very difficult for me to make this move, but I made it none-the-less. There is a game to Love, and anyone who denies that contemporary romance has no games in it, should definitely try and enhance their observational capacities. So don’t be offended that you are caught in a game, playing with a thing you think should be game-less (or shouldn’t be played with), because you are only kidding yourself. Accept that there is a game involved and transcend it, rise above the situation. What would life be if it weren’t for games and fun? Love is not a serious energy, because if it was serious it would not be so intoxicating. It’s its freedom that intoxicates us; it comes and goes as it pleases, and it chooses those who are worthy, no questions asked.