"Things are not only capable of true intimacy, they also bring a high degree of sensuality into our lives.  We touch them, look at them, listen to them, clean them, oil them, decorate them. "  Thomas Moore from The Soul of Sex.

Thomas Moore considers his piano and books to be erotic objects in his life.  He describes in detail the relationship he shares with his "brown elephant" of a piano and the friendship he feels toward his books.  I can't think of many things in my life more intimate, sensual or erotic than my hairstyx collected over the years.  These objects have glided through my hair, touched my scalp and curved upward to secure my hair over the years.  I selected them for their artistic value, and they became symbols of years, even if I cannot tell you which years go best with which styx.  They have been lovely and functional little tools that reside in a green antique vase in the back of an armoire in my bathroom.  I have pulled them out and made them into a graceful pattern of energy...would that you could feel the wood, metals and stones beyond observation in a graphic design.  Soon they will reside in my hair again, and they will make me more myself again. 

Thomas Moore's question inspired me to celebrate in art this one group of lovely objects indwelling my life behind armoire doors.  It is nice to bring them out and stroke them with my imagination. 

What are the erotic objects of your life?  How do you relate sensually to the precious objects of your world?  How are you enriched and your soul fed with the peaches and cream of your material world?       

Sensuality, in art and life, exceeds intellectual functioning, but intellect is required to comprehend this insight and to awaken emotion.  We are more than one dimension, each and every one of us.  Our little selves are incredibly multi-dimensional.  Line, curve, texture, shadow and blessed light illuminates alike our strength and vulnerability, revealing through our senses small pieces of essential truth about who we are and who we long to be. 

Art is a sensual journey that  carries us to the profound mystery.  When it succeeds, art takes the sensor to a garden of delight where he languishes in a moonlit garden, inhaling the scent of tea olive and gardenia, gazing at the silvery light embracing the landscape, straining to discern the vibrations of a violin competing with churling cicadias and trickling water to ride atop the warm waves of a Summer breeze.  Successful art supplies the comforting taste of ripe peaches and the rich comfort of fresh coffee.  It rustles the leaves of overhanging limbs and periodically strokes the wind along the sensor's cheek and through his hair.  Successful art re-minds, re-members, re-calls and gives, for a moment, an assurance that we are perfectly lovely creatures born to reflect splendor.  

Art is a sensual journey that awakens acute longing for all we can imagine.  It is a journey that can only be taken by those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and courage to reach for all the blessings of this life and the life everlasting, where we suspect the delights of the garden will never end. 

I found the most enchanting antique shop in Atlanta, Paris on the Ponce.  The shop owner was kind enough to let me take photos - somewhere around 156 - and this is one of my favorites.  This redhead sat beneath the art deco mirror I bought, and she did a good job marketing the objets d'art.  I could conjure up images of how bohemian I would surely look sitting in my artsy old home beneath the mirror, even without the mask and red hair. 

This antique shop was the type I have longed always to find; it was a place of ideas, dreams and wildly sexy images, dim red lights, cut glass and glitter.   It even had a mock cabaret cafe, Le Moulin Rouge, complete with tables and chairs, balcony seating, bar and stage.  I was transported to the time and place where I surely lived in a former life, Paris sometime between 1880 and 1920, immersed in that period's seductive, hazy, daring je m'en fous style.