Day After Anniversary Ruminations

It was our 37th wedding anniversary yesterday.  So, if you will indulge an "old cat" some romantic rambling...

I can't remember not thinking about women. 

In an interview with Alan Alda, (and I'm paraphrasing from memory), he said...

"I was raised by a chorus girl mother.  I have a distinct memory when I was about three years old when the chorus girls would change costumes.  They would say, "Hide your eyes in the dresses while we change."  Oh, the smell of the women that hung on the long rack of dresses!  Even then, I can remember realizing slyly that they didn't think I had yet experienced the boy-girl "thing.""  [Paraphrased.]

Occasionally, when my children were old enough, we farmed them out to babysitters for a weekend together at a rustic cabin beside a lake.  We spent more time in the cabin than gazing at the lake.  Once, some years later, my oldest son remarked how noticeable it was how much more relaxed and at peace we were when we came back.  I don't recall the exact words.

I ran into something similar in a recent Newsweek article about Barack and Michelle...

Speaking about Barack and Michelle: "There is no doubting their physical attraction.  Reporters liked to snicker at how much looser the candidate seemed after spending the occasional night at home or on the road with his wife."  Newsweek, November 17, 2008, p 65

Let's get technical, quoting from Why We Believe - Newsweek, November 3, 2008, p 59

A bundle of neu­rons in the superior parietal lobe, a region toward the top and rear of the brain, for in­stance, distinguishes where your body ends and the material world begins. With­out it, you couldn't navigate through a door frame. But other areas of the brain, including the thinking regions in the frontal lobes, sometimes send "turn off!" signals to this structure, such as when we are falling asleep or when we feel physical communion with another person (that's a euphemism for sex). During intense prayer or meditation, brain-imaging stud­ies show, the structure is also especially quiet. Unable to find the dividing line be­tween self and world, the brain adapts by experiencing a sense of holism and con­nectedness. You feel a part of something larger than yourself.  

 Translated... 

• A part of my brain distinguishes where my body ends and my wife's body begins.
• During sex this area shuts down, and I am not as able to determine where my body ends and my wife's body begins.
• A feeling of physical and emotional connectedness results.

 Well, sign me up!  No wonder so many pagan religions used temple prostitutes to enhance the worship experience.  (Not condoning the practice.  But, not speaking lightly about it either.)

 What is the point of all this?  Possibly, it's stated in the following quotation from the movie "Eight Days a Week"...

 "People are supposed to make love. It is out main purpose in life. All those other activities (playing the violin, washing dishes, reading novels, driking wine) are just ways of passing time until you can make love again."