PERSONAL: LOOKING AT A WOMAN

My life has been a blur, a veritable forest of women... thousands even... the glistening body of Brynda Johannsdottir beside a Gjain waterfall in Iceland... a three-day roller coaster ride at the Dnipro Hotel in Kiev with Tatiana and Irina... a life-saving, hypothermia averting night in a sleeping bag with a Sherpa named Honey on the slopes of mountains.. I could go on and on.

Observe a woman  is one of the unsung wonders of the world. Watch the way she touches her hair, how she pushes it back from her face, curving it around the contour of her ear, a subconscious gesture when it gets in her way. And notice your delight when her hair falls right back down again as she leans forward. Some women have no idea the effect they have on men; it is beauty in repose, and it is wonderful

Here’s what I’ve learned in my life: to truly experience anything, to experience things in their entirety, all the senses must be engaged. A woman is like a fine wine of the rarest vintage. It is not enough to merely glance at the wine in the glass, then toss it back without a care or thought. Instead, one needs to take the time to let the wine relax and breathe, to observe its clarity and complexion, to admire its superb body, to draw in its exquisite bouquet with every breath, savoring it deeply, and then—and only then—should one take that first anticipatory sip, drinking it in slowly, mindfully, attuning the senses to all of its quixotic subtleties, its texture, its nuance… experiencing it... breathing it... living it... fading into it.

This is the secret to living and loving: everything must be experienced on all levels, everything must be explored, every invitation accepted, every experience fully immersed. When we travel to another city, why do we stay on the tourist track? How dreary to see the world this way! Far better to discover the rhythm of the place, to touch the city’s fabric with our hands, to absorb its culture through the pores of our skin. Who, after all, can say they’ve been to Paris when the only thing they remember is the Eiffel Tower?

It is the same with women and it is the same with wine.There are some women you encounter in your life that shake your foundations.Because of women,there are poets and artists in the world.Is not the curve of a woman the greatest creation of a benevolent God? Is not the smile of a woman the greatest source of inspiration on earth? How can one possibly resist the disarray of desire that beauty invokes? How can one devote his life to anything but a study of the poetics of women? It makes no sense to me to strive for anything else.

I love women. I don’t give a damn what others think of me. Let analysts analyze. Let psychologists murmur and suggest. and wring their hands. Let man-haters roar. I move through life without apology, without defense, without regret. I am wondrously in love with women, in love with the very idea of women, and if your heart is sincere, you will understand exactly what that means. This is what I live. This is what I love. This is what I believe. This is my religion, my saving grace. This is the air I breathe.

When I am gone and they are scattering my ashes to the wind, let them look up to the sky and say, “Yes, he was a scoundrel, a flaneur, inconsistent, ridiculous, excessive, but oh, he lived a life! A winged life! He loved freedom and beauty above all. His greatest fear was mediocrity. He was immensely curious, charmed, and enchanted, on an adventure, itinerant, having enormous fun in life, never needy, never attached to the outcome, never serious, but always sincere. He was in love with the voluptuousness of life and its immense potential. Above all, he was a lover of women. He loved women completely, from the sea to the sky. He was fascinated by the essence, the glory, and the magical omnipotence of women. He had no other hobbies. Women were his poetry, his music, his reading, his travel, his sport



What am I looking for?

There’s a difference between hot women and beautiful women. Hot women are everywhere; they abound. They are beautified, not beautiful. Beautiful women, on the other hand, are rare and a real mystery. Hotness speaks to our impulses. Beauty speaks to our imagination.Hot women get hit on. Beautiful ones rarely do. Why is this? It’s because men understand hot women; they are a known entity. Men know what to do with them, or more precisely, what they would like to do with them. Hot women have a front side and a back side. No mystery there whatsoever. Beautiful women, on the other hand, possess a complexity, a depth, a nuanced grace, that confuses most men. Men have no idea what to do with them..but I do.

Hot women are attracted to “shiny objects”: money clips, camera lenses, fancy watches. All you have to do is flash it better or more profusely than the next guy and you’re in.Beautiful women do not care about these things at all. They are attracted to only one thing in men: beauty. And what is the beauty in a man? A lifelong devotion to a personal passion, a passion larger than him, larger than her, larger than the whole wide world, a passion that radiates from his pores until the day he dies. This is the beauty of men. And this is why beautiful women are forever in love with starving artists, musicians, dreamers, iconoclasts like myself. They love these men because they, too, possess a certain, rare beauty. They, too, are set apart.A man who loves women is loved by women. This is a law of the universe.

A man who loves women treats all women the same, giving each of them his full attention, kissing their hands and winking all around. It doesn’t matter at all what he says. What matters is the way he says it. When he focuses on a woman, there is no one else in the world. He includes. He shares. He leans in to her, giving of himself, and inviting her to share of herself in return. He smiles with his eyes and his whole being. And he makes sure that every other woman sees the special attention he is lavishing on her,




Does she not sleep? Each time I awaken in the night she is still close to me, smiling at me, stroking my hair. She only smiles, saying nothing, saying everything, surrounding me in her aura of hidden things. She guards me in the night, watching over me, cradling me tight to her breasts, protecting me in my dreams. Her breath-hum is all around me, an unseen force with no beginning and no end, like the hot wind of this beautiful country that created her. I close my eyes and listen to her heartbeat.I can only think that if a man has never experienced a moment like this in his life.Only then has his life been lived, only then can he smile up to God and say, thank You, now I understand, now I have seen the majesty of Your works, I have touched my feet upon sacred ground, and now it is enough, I can kiss the sky and die