*a small dark themed essay, found on the Net, that asks some questions:
“Vampire. A living oxymoron. An immortal. Or a corpse? A bringer of death or a savior of life? A curse or a blessing? On the brink of death and saved by a vampire’s bite, becoming free of disease and natural death at the prime of your life, and having it taken by a vampire, dropped into the abnormal darkness to be a living human, blind to the beauty of the world and ignorant to the problems--or a vampire, able to see our faults, able to understand the true meaning of things. So which is it better to be? Human or vampire? Always aging to a final death or living forever without worry? Surviving in ignorance or existing in understanding? A heavy price, but the reward’s great. You have to ask: is the cost of life worth it? Most people say that vampires don’t exist, but if you look closely around, you see them. Maybe not devilish creatures like you expect, those hell-destined beings that find their pleasure from our veins, but dark souls, sad and desperate--desperate for a feeling. These people you will see. And being someone like this means losing your life, losing your soul, losing the will to actually live, but gaining the ability to see--the ability to understand the darkness in this world. So what will it be? Life or death?”

*idiom*
I never could understand the ancient idiom: “to spread oneself with one’s thought over a tree” (e. g. “Stop spreading yourself with your thought over a tree!”), and recently, after I translated these words in English, I’ve understood their sense eventually. It’s when speaking or writing one can’t concentrate, collecting one’s thoughts, and one’s thoughts are like branches of a tree, branching out without stopping. One can do it unwittingly as well as purposely.

*plea for help*
Can anybody tell me the name of the author of the following popular quotation:
“Patriotism is the last resort of a scoundrel.”
Wilde?.. Chekhov?..
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a joke which I heard on TV:
Q: “I wonder when old men stop thinking about young women?”
A: “Half a year after death.”

*erotic*
One of the most exciting erotic web-pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_art_in_Pompeii_and_Herculaneum
Another spicy page on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_China
“Homophobia was imported to China along with Western science and philosophy.”
null

*wind and flowers; moon and snow*
In ancient China the words “erotic literature” were written as several hieroglyphs: “books about wind and moon”. Some more hieroglyphs:
Feng-Lu -- “wind and stream” -- love and depravity
Nan-Feng or Hanlin-Feng -- “male wind” -- male love
Min-Ue – “full moon” -- sexually attractive rear
Hou-Tin-Hua -- “flower from backyard” -- anus, sodomy
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essays:
Homosexual Culture and Nabokov
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/homoerotic_nab.doc
The Darling of Fortune, love story
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/06/26/love_story~2520121
I saw the Night…--my view of the story of Hadrian and Antinous. The essay was first published on the Net in 2006
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/night2.doc
Mystery of Antinous--my view of the death of Antinous, first published on the Net in 2005
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/mystofA.html
The Obituary of my first kitty who died in 2006
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/mykitty_eng2.doc
humor
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/04/27/sundries~2173391
translation
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/06/16/a_little_bit_of_gay_literature~2466104
The Needs of the Navy by Aleister Crowley, one of the stories which I love and which I would like to be published on the Net
http://www.geocities.com/larisabee/navy.doc
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read more:
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/07/27/anthony_blanche_fan_blog~2709191
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/08/20/vamp_up~2837823
http://ohlala007.blog.co.uk/2007/11/05/the_italics_are_mine~3246835
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*beguilement*
from The Unbearable Bassington, by Saki:
“...Who is that who bowed to you?" she continued, as a dark young man with an inclination to stoutness passed by them on foot; "I've seen him about a good deal lately. He's been to one or two of my dances."
"Andrei Drakoloff," said Youghal, "he's just produced a play that has had a big success in Moscow and is certain to be extremely popular all over Russia. In the first three acts the heroine is supposed to be dying of consumption; in the last act they find she is really dying of cancer."
"Are the Russians really such a gloomy people?"
"Gloom-loving but not in the least gloomy. They merely take their sadness pleasurably, just as we are accused of taking our pleasures sadly…”
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*The View from the Left Bank*
(reminiscence)
In one of the previous posts I told about my relationship with cats. Now, another true story.
It was in summer fifteen years ago. That summer I returned to the town after years of absence, and one fine morning I went to the river to take the sun and to bathe. I won’t tell what’s the river called. Danube? Niemen? Volga? It doesn’t matter. The bridge over the river was 998 meters long, and believe it or not, I preferred to cover this distance going on foot. What a wide spread of the land, water and sky you could see standing in the middle of the bridge… My way lay to the Right Bank. There was a wild plage--nothing special--the grayish sand and various pebbles which is nothing other but fragments of a million-year-old rock--the water of the river was dark yet it was said that bathing was harmless in the place. The gulls flew low over the water. What did it mean? It meant that some fishes were alive in the river. Hoping for a fisher as well as for a bather. Now I was at the plage. Being waist-deep in water I splashed a little and stood still to spend some time lending myself to the coolness and adjusting my eye to the glitter. It was good in the water. The endemic tranquility of the wilderness filled my mind and body. And now, suddenly--a rapid swift motion over my shoulder upwards over my head, and a whiff of air or some wings touched my hair. I looked up--it was a gull, of course, but what a big feathered thing he was--for it was evidently a mature male--he seemed to be big as albatross--what a big beak, what a big head, what a spread of wings! None of the rest bathers or people at the plage noticed this flight. It was frightening but I felt agitated rather than frightened; in my inner I felt his rapid motion was intended for me alone. It looked like a welcome. Indeed, I was a stranger, a new comer, and he was a chief of the local gulls. Recognizing a stranger he approached to me from behind lurking for some reason--I could not hear the approach, and the water glitter was blinding, therefore his sudden appearance and flight upwards over my heard looked so swift and impressive. I felt certain that the feathered amber-eyed thing enjoyed the impression, which he produced.
Perhaps this small incident doesn’t seem worth so intensive attention and explicit description--but not for me. For me as a town inhabitant, it is one of the rarest unforgettable moments of communing with nature itself, a moment of communion to its mysteries if not initiation, and the occasion to become related with nature on my genetic code level, to feel its endless love and to express my own love in return.

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