For years, Dan and Mary Peterson were inseparable. Then at age 80, Mary went to hospital for a heart condition, and she died there after 35 days. Taken by surprise, 82-year-old Dan fell into a deep depression. For six months he didn’t know what to do with himself. Day after day, he spent time staring out at the squirrels in his garden and remembering his wife’s favourite flower: white roses. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Tag: love
Confused notions and incoherent terminology about love and sexuality
Suppose that you manage a website devoted to dogs, discussing everything about their life, health and happiness, giving advice on how to groom them, advertising dog events and contests, all with beautiful photographs of nice dogs on each page. Then someone comes and says that you hyper-sexualize dogs, that your site is a zoophile’s paradise. You will rightfully reply that the perversion lies only in that person’s mind, as your interest in dogs is friendly but not sexual, and you just want to share it with others. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
A romantic Inuit, by Peter Freuchen
The explorer and ethnologist Peter Freuchen (1886–1957) spent a large part of his life in Northern Greenland, exploring it in depth, trading with Inuits and making friends with them. He even married an Inuit girl, Navarana. Living in the most hostile environment in earth, Inuits held a very pragmatic point of view on many matters. In particular, they considered marriage as an economic and family association between a man and a woman, based on solidarity, but without any commitment to conjugal fidelity in relation to love or sex; often men lent their wives to other men, or borrowed their wives, or swapped wives with them, for purely utilitarian motives; they could also see their wives prostituting themselves to Europeans as a good business. Such exchanges were generally decided by husbands; as hunters feeding their family, they considered themselves as superior to women. Inuit men were basically macho, proud of their manly ways. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
I Want a Little Girl, by Moll & Mencher
“I Want a Little Girl” is a famous jazz song, ranking 360 among jazz standards according to JazzStandards.com. Written by Billy Moll and composed by Murray Mencher in 1930, it has for over 70 years been interpreted by many famous musicians, in various musical styles: jazz, soul, country and blues. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Components of Love
Today I will discuss the various types of feelings and emotions involved in what one calls love, I label them “components.” I am to some extent inspired by the famous book The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis, but while he described them as distinct forms of love, I will rather consider that they can mix together in various proportions through any particular love relation. This idea of mixing different forms of love was developed by John Allan Lee in Lovestyles; however he views them as “styles,” which can be not only emotions, arousals and feelings, but also attitudes towards feelings such as commitment, playfulness or manipulation, as well as degrees of compliance with social norms such as marriage and family. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Vassili, l’amour rêvé de Sabine Sicaud
Un jour d’été 1927, la poétesse Sabine Sicaud, âgée de 14 ans, se blesse au pied lors d’une baignade dans le Lot. La blessure s’infecte, et une sorte de gangrène, l’ostéomyélite, va se répandre dans son corps. Pendant un an, cette maladie lui fera subir des souffrances atroces, qu’elle exprimera dans des poèmes poignants comme Douleur, je vous déteste et Ah ! Laissez-moi crier. Ce long calvaire se terminera par sa mort à 15 ans le 12 juillet 1928. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
La gare où le train ne s’arrête jamais
Où es-tu, fille aux grands yeux noirs
De neige, mon bonheur d’un soir ?
Je t’attends, mon amante bleue,
Mon soleil, mon cœur fabuleux. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Clair, by Gilbert O’Sullivan
The Irish singer-songwriter Gilbert O’Sullivan was popular in the early 1970’s. One of his greatest hits has been the song Clair, which ranked top in the UK Singles Chart for two weeks in November 1972. It tells his affectionate love for a little girl aged 3 or 4 whom he babysat, the daughter of his producer-manager Gordon Mills. He expresses his feelings straightforwardly, with a spontaneity that would be difficult to find in our epoch of moral panic about intergenerational relations: “Each time I leave you I feel I could die / Nothing means more to me than hearing you say / ‘I’m going to marry you / Will you marry me, Uncle Ray ?’” (O’Sullivan’s real forename was Raymond.) CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Le chemin de l’amour, par Sabine Sicaud
Sabine Sicaud est une poétesse-enfant française méconnue. Née le 23 février 1913 à Villeneuve-sur-Lot dans la maison de ses parents nommée La Solitude, elle est morte au même endroit le 12 juillet 1928 d’une maladie (l’ostéomyélite) contractée un an plus tôt. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…