Cultivating a Life of Leisure

Just back from my September jaunt.  Paris-Nice-Corsica-Sanary Sur Mer-St. Tropez-Marseille-Madrid.  By far the most lovely was Sanary, I believe I'll be spending a month there this spring to get better acquainted.  More to come once I'm all caught up and such.

I Sail Therefore I am...

Hamburg

Julie Depardieu

If you've yet to enjoy the pleasure of watching one of the younger Depardieux act...  She is exceptional.

Schlossgut Gross Scwhansee

While I would never brave the crowds in the summer, spring and autumn here is exceptional in every way.  I spent a wonderful, long weekend here last year with wonderful friends and the only woman in this world absent my mother for whom I would, quite literally, die.  I should go back, though probably never will.  And that saddens me.  Often the attempt to relive a particular moment and feeling is actually more painful than the letting go. 

That weekend, that crisp northwesterly just arrived from Denmark...  saline mist on my lips, drizzle in our hair, her smile, her love, their companionship, that dinner...  the sailboats in the harbor, the smell of the north, hanseatic history, that sauna...  The memory is already starting to fade, though the raw longing felt by its incremental loss will stay with me well into my senile years.  So in a way, I'll always have Schlossgut Gross Schwansee, though her love, their friendship and that place are all but gone forever...

Currently Reading...

And yet again you have me.  If poor Edward was dangerous because of the chastity of his expressions--and they say that that is always the hall-mark of a libertine--what about myself?  For I solemnly avow that not only have I never so much as hinted at an impropriety in my conversation in the whole of my days; and  more than that, I will vouch for the cleanness of my thoughts and the absolute chastity of my life.  At what, then, does it all work out?  Is the whole thing a folly and a mockery?  Am I no better than a eunuch or is the proper man--the man with the right to existence--a raging stallion forever neighing after his neighbor's womenkind?