David Given Schwarm

“Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.”

“The opposite of loneliness, it’s not togetherness. It is intimacy.” How many times have you had a revelation about your sexuality while having sex, or learned about an essential value you hold while in deep conversation with someone you love?

translated by Muna Lee    I grew    Only for you. Cut the acacia boughs that demandOnly destruction at your hand!     My blossom blew   Only for you.Uproot me—in its natal hourMy lily doubted were it candle or flower.     My waters blue   Flow for you.Drink me—never crystal knowsSo pure a tide as in this channel flows.     Wings I knew   Only for…

“I had to give up the fantasy, the enormous life consuming fantasy, that someone or something was going to do this for me—the fantasy that someone was coming to lead my life, to choose direction, to give me orgasms.”~

Freud liked to collapse distinctions:masochism is the continuationof sadism (“nothing but”), in whichone’s own person takes the place of the sexual object; so lookingis analogous to touching; is basedon touching, is base in so far forth;but neither the lingering at the touching nor the lingering at the lookingsatisfies the libido, the lust;not the hunger, not…