Hail to Spring. Yes, really.

In spite of – or maybe because of – the snowy white winter scene that surrounds me, I feel a need to praise spring. In light of this last (it had better be) blast of winter, here are some words from the Unitarian Henry Thoreau, from Walden:

Everyone has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the [wood] of an old table … which had stood in a farmer’s kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts, ––from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still … [The bug] was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn.

Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection … strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb, ––heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board, ––may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society’s most trivial … furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!

All hail the beautiful and winged life that stirs in us today, in springtime.

A note from New Orleans

In the midst of emerging spring, in the city whose natives describe her as “the crotch of America,” I wonder: Is there a chance to redeem the notion of the erotic from the purely sexual and pornographic?

Here are Terry Tempest Williams’ thoughts on “The Erotic Landscape,” from Red:

I wonder about our notion of the erotic –– why it is so often aligned with the pornographic, the limited view of the voyeur watching the act of intercourse without any interest in the relationship itself.

I wonder what walls we have constructed to keep our true erotic nature tamed. And I am curious why we continue to distance ourselves from natural sources.

What are we afraid of?

The world we frequently surrender to defies our participation in nature and seduces us into believing that our only place in the wild is as spectator, onlooker. A society of individuals who only observe a landscape from behind the lens of a camera or the window of an automobile without entering in is perhaps no different from the person who obtains sexual gratification from looking at the sexual play of others.

...[true, deep] eroticism, being in relation, calls the inner life into play. No longer numb, we feel the magnetic pull in our bodies toward something stronger, more vital than simply ourselves.

Looking at some tiny purple crocuses blooming in my front yard last Sunday I had a brief experience of this landscape of erotic bliss. Not experiencing the natural world as cut-flowers-in-a-vase, but as rooted and living, an integrated part of the natural world, the difference between looking at pictures of disembodied genitalia and actually making sweet, succulent love with one’s beloved.

Then last night, strolling up Bourbon Street and looking at the vacant-eyed, barely clad women beckoning from the doorways of nightclubs, I felt the stark difference. The hawkers promised sexual gratification, but I think while the voyeurism of watching live sex shows and “barely legal” strippers might lead to momentary satiation, it could never produce real satisfaction.

Williams quotes D.H. Lawrence: “There exist two great modes of life––the religious and the sexual.” And she says that “eroticism is the bridge” between these two modes. What would happen if we engaged with eros, that bold and juicy energy that suffuses everything with passion and power? It would be scary. And it might be the only thing that could span the chasm.