The Inevitable Return to Sensuality

The Inevitable Return to Sensuality

One doesn’t understand the beauty of something until he sensually experiences it. If a photograph which contains the most beautiful the world can conjure is presented before one’s eyes, one sees the beauty of the image alone, and not of what it contains. One sees only the photograph. Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel can only be fathomed by laying on the beautiful cold marble floor, breathing the musky air, somehow fundamentally in love with gravity, gazing upward as the man himself had surely done. No photo can ever compare.

As we box ourselves in further, confining ourselves to our screens and walls limiting the very sensuality we sometimes fear, we suffer, longing for what is behind, what is beyond, where nature and sensuality await us. What do we experience when we finger our apps and buttons, clicking our way through images and abstractions of that which lies directly out the nearby window? Can this be healthy?

There’s a reflection in the screen. It’s us, sensual, in the moment, experiencing through every pore, but sitting there, still, unmoved, forgetting, entranced by the light emanating from the glass in front of us, and the melody of symbols that gather there. We are living, and this is how we are doing it—seated with ass to chair, safe and tucked away in our little corner, seemingly oblivious to the fundamental chaos around us, as we calmly retire from our sensuality.

When everything within us stops moving, we die. Why do we try to stop moving? What is it we fear about that chaos that flows through us, the constant din of movement animating us? Our legs long to step over rocks along western shores, to run free as every manifestation of movement does; yet, to many, they provide nothing but something to sit on. Our bodies yearn to feel something new, providing us with the memories that inspire happiness upon the reflection of our lives. What memories do getting lost in a screen provide?

Sensuality is a first principle, yet we do more to hide this fact than embrace it. It is our relationship with everything. It is through our senses we learn to love and laugh. A light caress, a profoundly beautiful scent and touch of a warm lover can change everything, and negate all previous ideas of love. The sight, sound and smell of a beautiful forest or mountain are burned into the memory, reminding us that out there, beyond the screens, nothing else can possibly be more beautiful.

Smell your screen, touch it, look at it, taste it, now you are experiencing it as you should, sensual and alive, as physical as it is, body in motion and feeling, physis, and no longer merely the dull reflection we can hardly recognize. We begin to remember.

Beyond the screen is the chaos of world and what we make of it. For too long we’ve shamed our sensuality, our bodily arousal and the chaos it brings in favour of self-negation, self-denial and the retiring from life into spirit. To what end?

Dance, sing, laugh, play, and love with every sense. Live first, remember well, and die later. Perhaps, words to live by? Perhaps something to die for.

Thank you for reading,

reply to post by LesMisanthrope



Excellent. I often think of the position people are in and then I read a book or go back to sleep; and then I think possibly I've been left behind because I don't imbibe. Maybe if I had a facebook account I'd be able to experience this sensuality first-hand. After all, it seems to be the path of least (and shortest) resistance.

This, I realize, is the reason people around me are the way they are. It soon becomes apparent they are the easier to be duped into savagery. And here I am, alone, with nothing to do at 2:36am but to post on some conspiracy website most likely run by the "man" who perpetrated these chains in the first place; but, on second thought, humanity seems dumb enough and lazy enough to do this themselves, like a dog with its head stuck in that too small mayonnaise jar oblivious to everything but the slop caked and dried on the inside; and this slop is no other than that which many call entertainment and some call their lives.

If true beauty is wanted, go look at a tree, and the birds and squirrels that eat the nuts, and the snakes that eat the birds, and the kids that kill the snakes, and realize that those kids have nothing but their lives ahead of them and thank god they aren't inside doing something wasteful like I would have been doing at that age (although I killed my fair share of snakes). Realize that you are the kid, the snake, the bird, the squirrels, and, if I dare say, the tree; and realize that we are all in this maze of death, and there is no escape for anyone or anything. True beauty will come to you in a second, and I'm sure you won't like it.

After reading the fourth paragraph of the OP, readers are encouraged to search the film LeMans on Youtube (the full movie from 1971- 1:48:39 is the duration), skip to 48:40 and tell me that these men are not some of the most genuine in world history; and some of the most acquainted with absurd beauty. True role models.

It's a shame that the automobile is going the same route as the button, which is to say the smooth, transparent way, lacking any and all tactile depth.

reply to post by LesMisanthrope


This was absolutely beautiful, and has made me take a look at the way that I live life.

Thank you for this brilliant post.

Well that depends...

I loved your prose. It was very sensual and licentious. However we all must live in a reality where we work and deal on a daily basis with the things that are, for lack of a better word, tedious.

There is little time to taste the fruits that you so delightfully expose.

Ah, to be financially dependent and carefree. What a world it would be.

reply to post by GrantedBail


I think you're right. In order to remain in the comfort of society we must participate in it. It's definitely tedious. But I think one can play her cards right, so to speak, and design a regiment that allows for more adventure between bouts of tedium. Maybe even something as simple as a shift in mindset can help further this cause.

reply to post by LesMisanthrope


Are you proposing to take care of me...So I don't have to worry about the day to day??? I'd be more than willing to take your application.

,,,shaving completly ,,is an old practice,,showing who the prostitues were.,,,,saying a 15 yr old girl is a Women,,,and a 17yr old boy is a child,,,there's something wrong.

And,,the amount of promiscuity rampant on the internet,,and your phones,,and texts,,,is being kept in a file.
Are your children in that Data Base?

Imagine there surprise years later.
A concerned Net ean.

oh,, hello NSA,, ??? tap,,tap,,

reply to post by GrantedBail

Are you proposing to take care of me...So I don't have to worry about the day to day??? I'd be more than willing to take your application.

No ma'am, I would do no such thing. I'm proposing that with a return to sensuality, your day-to-day might become tedious means to exquisite ends, something to look forward to, anticipate and think about while seemingly trapped in the grind.