This morning I finished reading, The Tears of Eros by Georges Bataille.  I am sure the book is not finished with me.  Bataille offers not an argument, but an assertion demonstrated by photography of artworks from the Paleolithic to the modern era, to paintings by various artists in the late 20th century.  The book, written at the end of a lifetime of scholarship, and personal exploration is not so much a treatise, a proposition, as a personal confession.

---

My purpose is to illustrate a fundamental connection between religious ecstasy and eroticism – and in particular sadism.  From the most unspeakable to the most elevated…

What I suddenly saw, and what imprisoned me in anguish – but what at the same time delivered me from it – was the identity of perfect contraries, divine ecstasy and its opposite, extreme horror…

…the religious horror disclosed in sacrifice becomes linked to the abyss of eroticism, to the last shuddering tears that eroticism can illuminate.

–Georges Bataille, p. 206-207

Photos were taken yesterday.

---

We’d not do well without a song.  Are not some songs, a celebration of Eros, the electricity of being alive?  This one, — a simple lyric, and serrated as a blade.

See Me, Feel Me / Listening To You

By The Who

See me, feel me
Touch me, heal me
See me, feel me
Touch me, heal me
…

Listening to you, I get music
Gazing at you, I get the heat
Following you, I climb the mountain
I get excitement at your feet

Right behind you, I see the millions
On you, I see the glory
From you, I get opinions
From you, I get the story
…

Lyrics by Peter Townshend, Dennis Bandfor