Love

by Norman Weeks

Overview

The culture of the Mediterranean is an erotic one, all sensual love, from food to art. Even Mediterranean religion and philosophy are erotic.

Rome is the supreme shrine of the Christian love-cult. In Rome, we venture upon excursions into the artifacts of Christian history and into the contemporary practices of Christian love devotion. What are morality and sanctity, love-style?

Even if we have no use for either religion or philosophy, there should be, at least, a little Mediterranean art in our living.

Whatever our pretensions to culture, we are, deep down, just naked animals, and naked in our needs, one of which is love. Needy, we want romance, we are Romantics. We drift into fantasies and illusions in our desperate search for love.

Deprived, frustrated, we suffer jealousy, we inflict cruelty. Haunted by our failures, we may end up with broken hearts.

And yet, love certainly has its lighter side. We eavesdrop on the conversations of men's and women's misunderstandings of each other, we consider odd matches, and argue which sex is superior.

The author relates his own Roman romances, interjects some aphorisms, and then gets straightened out by a Sybil.

Still naked in our needs, we want, not the examined life, but the shared life. Love is the loyalty in spite of everything. It is acceptance, affirmation, and the bliss of intimacy.

Eros, our Mediterranean angel, guides us past sex to love and marriage, with home and family. Our needs met, we find fulfillment.

LOVE is volume three of the trilogy, ROMAN RUMINATIONS, "the psychology of the human as an enculturated animal".

Product Details

BN ID:	2940148768616
Publisher:	Norman Weeks
Publication date:	09/29/2013
Series:	Roman Ruminations , #3
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	148 KB

About the Author

Born and raised in Chicago, Norman Weeks studied in Rome, earned his degree in history, then settled in to a Roman residence. With Rome as a base, he traveled in fifteen European countries, including those of the old Soviet bloc. His interest in ancient cultures led him on archaeological itineraries throughout the Mediterranean.

Back in the Americas, he served two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Brazil, then ventured into Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. He has guided wilderness excursions into the Minnesota-Ontario Boundary Waters.

In Asia, he immersed himself in the Buddhist cultures of Thailand, India, and Nepal.

Norman Weeks is an experiential writer. He writes about living in Nature and within a culture.

Of the former, NATURE NORM'S NORTH WOODS relates his experiences in the woods-and-waters of the northland, while TROPICAL ECSTASY explores the Amazon and the Northeast of Brazil.

Of culture, he enters into one of the oldest civilizations in TWO WEEKS IN ETERNAL EGYPT. Culture-versus-Nature is a principal theme of WALDEN CONTEMPORANEOUS.

The trilogy, ROMAN RUMINATIONS treats "the psychology of the human as an enculturated animal". Its three volumes are LONELINESS, INSTINCT, and LOVE.

Throughout his various writings, Norman Weeks expresses a cosmopolitan appreciation of our world.