We all have guilty pleasures. What is yours? Mine, of course, is reading...but why have I latched on to the New Adult genre? What has grabbed me about it, and why would I write such a tale now that I'm far removed from being a college-aged student myself? It was a summer morning, and I had been binge reading on the After series (Are you familiar with it?) --you know that summer reading that you don't want to take too much time on or take too seriously? I was at my family camp (which I'm sad to say I no longer have), sitting on the dock, remembering young love and all the angst that comes with it, from years right there on the dock to that present moment, right there reading. And when I went back to the cabin, it just poured out, and I became a college freshman all over again, a young, shy woman trying to find her way, discovering who she was, deciding who she wanted to be, a girl who had been involved with dance and theatre and music her whole life, like the characters who appear in the story and not, and the story just appeared in my mind. I found myself going back there --to first loves and first times and self-discovery and heartbreak--and then the characters began to talk my ear off. Though fictional, the emotions were anything but. At its core, it's just a simple love story. But for anyone who has experienced the highs and lows of young love, you know: Love is never simple. There is something moving about New Adult literature, and there is something especially moving about romance. It's the time in our lives we are realizing ourselves with the freedom that allows it. We have rights and privileges we dreamed of having, without the heavy weight of responsibility, especially if you are fortunate to go to college without having to work full-time. Your mind is open, your eyes are wide, and you feel that inexplicable optimism and hope that anything is possible. You believe in change. You believe in fighting the cause. And you believe in love. Education does that to a person; you're closer to reaching your dreams, even as you embrace your dreams shifting. And love--love seems to happen most when your heart is vulnerable and available to it. We've not, probably, loved so fully before or been able to understand ourselves enough to know love. It's a time in our lives where it's easier to give ourselves, because we're finally starting to know ourselves... And so, Play Only For Me is a bit of that journey, two opposites, one a singer, one a guitarist, who try to find not only each other, but themselves. Thanks for being patient as I continue to write it.
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Have you heard people use the term “love of my life”? Have you used it? And what is it really? What constitutes using that phrase? Can it happen more than once and therefore, an overused, trite phrase? Is it really “love of my life right now”? Or worse, do you only know that because it was someone you let get away? Someone you wish you hadn’t? Or have you yet to meet the “love of your life,” and are you still waiting? To me, this means someone you love wholly. Someone you don’t want to change, and someone who doesn’t want to change you in any way. It’s that someone who fulfills you--emotionally, sexually, intellectually. That person who makes you laugh. Who “gets” you. Who finds you beautiful even when you know you’re not. It’s acceptance. It’s that someone who makes you love yourself, even when it’s very hard to do. It’s someone who looks into you, at your scars, both figuratively and literally, and loves you anyway. And it’s symbiotic. To me, it doesn’t mean a perfect love or a love that is superficial. It is deep, fulfilling. It is a love that challenges you on occasion. A love that is passionate. A love that transcends anything you’ve ever felt before. It’s poetry really. It’s beauty but not in a physical sense. Not at all. It’s about souls connecting in another dimension of living. It makes you feel as if you weren’t living before. And it’s never jealous. Is this “love of my life” real? Fleeting? Just another romantic fantasy? For those of us who have been there, it’s the very reason for existence. i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) E.E. Cummings Today’s post comes from a movie I watched the other night: The Shape of Water. Have you seen it? This won’t be a movie review. It’s impossible to write one without giving everything away, so I discuss the thing I loved about it the most, the eroticism of it. When it comes to sexy, we all have differing ideas. Just look at last week’s post on hair! Short. Long. Dreads. Bald. And everything in between. We all have different tastes and different styles. What about our reading or movie-watching pleasures? What do you find sexy there? Or does that depend on what you’re looking for at the time, your mood? If you’re looking to get aroused, perhaps to aid yourself in rising to “that” place, the big O, a quick, one-handed read? Or is it a long, angsty drawn-out sexual tease? Or perhaps you prefer more subtle, more sensual art and writing? Less erotic and more romance? What about no sex at all? Just straight romance? Really! I want to know. As I write this, I’m smiling because it started to snow, and so I am going to seemingly go in a different direction for a moment, but I’m not, not really. I always look out the window when I write for some reason, as if Nature herself will tell me what I’m thinking or what’s on my mind. You know that idea that to center ourselves we can place our fingers on our collarbone with our right hand on the left side of our collarbone, move it down just a bit and press? That is what Nature does to me. When I look out at her majesty and stop and let myself go and not think, that is when I think. Oh the irony! And when my mind quiets, I can write. What quiets you? Where are your thoughts? It’s the quiet moments of the morning where I write best, especially in the summer, when my mind isn’t going in a million directions. And the way the snow is falling right now, big, huge flakes, so light you know they would melt on your tongue immediately, their white beauty a direct contrast to the naked trees, brown, barely alive. And I realized I find it oddly erotic. Subtly so. The beauty of it is quiet. It doesn’t make a sound and yet it makes such a loud impression. This. This is what I like. And it ties into my thoughts today. I like subtle eroticism, even though sometimes I don’t write that in my own work. Like I asked you above, it does depend on my mood too. But the things that affect me the most, are not the in-my-face and graphic erotic, but, instead, eroticism that is there nonetheless, somehow a work of art, that I somehow find beautiful or sensual or erotic. I guess one would simply call it romanticized eroticism. Hmmmm…I wonder if that term has already been coined? Perhaps I should coin it if not, because yes, I do see the world that way. Things I truly admire or marvel at bring me to that conclusion. The Shape of Water does that too. Its director brings us a tale that is so rich with such beautiful, yet subtle eroticism, we suspend our disbelief about all of it. It strips barriers of stereotypes and what it means to be human and lets us just see living and love and hate and racism and good and bad and light and dark and greed and pride and science and nature and romance and the romantic and everything in between. It is no surprise why it won best picture. It reminded me that I do wonder, often, if we don’t really exist as we think we do. That perhaps we are all just connected parts of nature, four seasons, going through the cyclical inevitability of life. When I look up at the sky and pause and see its infinite expanse and ultimately question true existence and whence and how I came to be, I have no answer. Somehow, that too, is beautiful. And I realize, I don’t mind at all. I do breathe. I do feel. I do love. And that is all I really need to know. For I exist.
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I LOVE to write and read. I particularly enjoy reading erotic romance that has tons of emotion in it. I hope you will ask me questions and share your favorite authors and novels. I welcome all feedback.
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November 2022
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