The image in my profile was created by Dutch painter Escha van den Bogerd.  I find her use of light and shadow to reflect the ambers and creams of flesh to be so radiant, and so tender.  The artist titled the work "Courtesan".

Thank you for looking at my profile, if you enjoy it, you may also be pleased by the galleries in my photo albums. 

I enjoy talking in the room with others.  If you wish to talk with me in private, I may accept a patron's polite invitation.

Pleasing One. Being pleased.

Roses, orchids, lilies, my vegetable garden, my strawberry garden.  I enjoy painting with oils and drawing with pastels on canvas.  I have fun with photography, I get to relive so many sweet memories smiling, giggling and getting teary-eyed as I view pictures in my iPhoto library.  I relax with reading, knitting.  I love exploring art and listening to music.  My brain sparks talking politics with open-minded people who have  the heart of an idealist and the mind of a pragmatist. I love traveling.  Immersion in a culture and its history alters one forever...and I am grateful for every experience. 

I am enamoured by authenticity...wisdom, wit, wine and whiskey...and a six string guitar.  


A not so well kept secret (since I am writing it in my profile)...
...I am a lady in the parlor, and a whore in the bedroom.

“When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it,
then [the painting] is finished.”
~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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"The word poet literally means Maker ...anything which is not well made doesn't exist." ~ Theophile Gautier

Soft smile...what follows is a series of excerpts from a delicious story titled La Morte Amoureuse by Theophile Gautier.  It is the story of the fair courtesan Clarimonde told by  Romuald, her titled lover and priest.  If you would like to hear more of this story, I would be most pleased to share the written and audio versions in  French and English translations...enjoy ...

"It seemed as though scales had suddenly fallen from my eyes. I felt like a blind man who unexpectedly recovers his  sight. The charming creature  appeared in bright relief against the background of that darkness, like  some angelic revelation. She seemed herself radiant, and radiating light rather than receiving it... She seemed conscious of the martyrdom I was undergoing, and, as though to encourage me, she gave  me a look replete with divinest  promise. Her eyes were a poem; their every glance was a song. She said to me :  'If thou wilt be mine, I shall make thee happier than God  Himself in His paradise. The angels  themselves will be jealous of thee.  Tear off that funeral shroud in  which thou art about to wrap thyself. I am Beauty, I am Youth, I am Life. Come to me! Together we  shall be Love. Can Jehovah offer  thee aught in exchange? Our lives will flow on like a dream, in one  eternal kiss.  'Fling forth the wine of  that chalice, and thou art free. I will conduct thee to the Unknown Isles.  Thou shalt sleep in my bosom upon  a bed of massy gold under a silver pavilion, for I love thee and would take thee away from thy God, before whom so many noble hearts pour  forth floods of love which never  reach even the steps of His throne!'...

I loved her wildly. She would have  excited satiety itself, and chained  inconstancy. To have Clarimonde was to have twenty mistresses; ay, to possess all women: so mobile, so varied of aspect, so fresh in new charms was she all in herself—a very chameleon of a woman, in sooth. She made you commit with her the  infidelity you would have  committed with another, by donning to perfection the character, the attraction, the style of beauty of the woman who appeared to please you. She returned my love a hundred-fold, and it was in vain that the young patricians and even the Ancients of the Council of Ten made her the most magnificent proposals. A Foscari even went so far as to offer to espouse her. She rejected all his  overtures. Of gold she had enough.  She wished no longer for anything  but love—a love youthful, pure, evoked by herself, and which should be a first and last passion...

'I shall not die! I shall not die!' she cried, clinging to my neck, half mad with joy.
'I can love thee yet for a long time. My life is thine, and all that is of me comes from thee.
A few drops of thy rich and noble blood, more precious and more potent than all the elixirs of the earth, have given me back life."

"What I write is not for little girls." ~ Theophile Gautier
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“Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love
with a gorgeous redhead.” ~ Lucille Ball

"While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats." 
~Mark Twain (such a witty fellow)

"Ruadh gu Brath!" ~"Redheads Forever!"
~Scots Gaelic

"Art! Who comprehends her?  With whom can one consult concerning this great Goddess?" 
~ Ludwig von Beethoven

"I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like
what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my
way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down."
~ Georgia O'Keefe

"It belongs to me. God told me that if I painted it enough, I could have it."
~ Georgia O'Keefe

“O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.”
~ the Bard

"Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it." 
~Tallulah Bankhead


"Okay. Just a scoop of creamed potatoes...and a slice of butter. 
Four peas...and as much ice cream as you like to eat."
(courtesan's movie trivia...for a smile)

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"To whom much is given, much is expected." 
Luke 12:48

"I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. ...in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination." 
~Adlai Stevenson, Unitarian  Universalist

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"I been meek and hard like an oak, I've seen pretty people disappear like smoke. 
Friends will arrive, friends will disappear, If you want me, honey baby, I’ll be here."
~Zimmie (and if you know who that is...I'm smiling at you)

"See, don't ever set me free, I always wanna be by your side.  Girl, you really got me now, you got me so I can't sleep at night"....so Kinks-y


"Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm,  'Come in', she said, 'I'll give ya shelter from the storm'... Suddenly I turned around and she was standing there, with silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair. She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns, 'Come in,' she said 'I'll give ya shelter from the storm'...  Beauty walks a razor's edge some day I'll make her mine, if I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born...
'Come in,' she said 'I'll give ya shelter from the storm'..."
~The poet with a guitar.


A poem is like a naked person.
But a song is something that walks by itself.

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We live with a callous
on the heart. 
Only the artists can remove it.
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