I believe it is a well known fact that I love and revere women. These enchanting creatures embody the sacred feminine that I believe is our closest connection to our imaginative qualities of creation, both physically and spiritually.
Rarely do I use the word "always," but in this case I shall:
I am a better man when I am in love and with a partner -- always.
I have enjoyed the cherished company of the finest women I can imagine, beginning with the women in my family.
My grandmother, my mother, my aunts and cousins, my daughters and now my granddaughters have all imbued me with a splendid and embracing love for feminine grace and power.
The result of this?
I am writing a new novel. FOR LOVE OF A WOMAN, featuring the same cast as ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.
In this new book, I've been guided (yes, by the sacred feminine) to explore the relationships of each cast member (I see these books as plays in my imagination -- you'd love the scenery) with the women in their lives.
In ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE -- A TALE OF ÆSOP, Æsop holds center stage, and while Dione, our heroine and Æsop's love, has scant stage time, her presence and importance is both potent and powerful. After all, it is her "unanswerable riddle" that turns the story on its ear.
So this time Dione holds focus and it is through her voice that her story is revealed.
Æsop offers his loving support in the background.
How did Dione become the voice of FOR LOVE OF A WOMAN?
I followed my intuition.
I held a "character conference" in the great hall of my imagination.
If you would like to read how Dione became the voice of FOR LOVE OF A WOMAN, follow this link: www.thomasbahler.com/character-conference/.
For Æsop, myself and so many men that have gone before and shall come after, this is a journey of love and fascination.
And this enduring concept was once again brought to my attention while recently reading Mark Twain's autobiography.
I came upon a passage that resonated with me like no other and corroborated my resounding admiration for the feminine.
Twain's relationship with his wife Olivia touched me deeply and in his book, he writes the most beautiful homage to her.
So I shall end my writing here and simply share this most embracing tribute.
Tribute to Olivia -- Page 320
I saw her first in the form of an ivory miniature in her brother Charley's stateroom in the steamer Quaker City in the Bay of Smyrna, in the summer of 1867, when she was in her twenty-second year. I saw her in the flesh for the first time in New York in the following December. She was slender and beautiful and girlish--and she was both girl and woman. She remained both girl and woman to the last day of her life. Under a grave and gentle exterior burned inextinguishable fires of sympathy, energy, devotion, enthusiasm, and absolutely limitless affection. She was always frail in body, and she lived upon her spirit, whose hopefulness and courage were indestructible. Perfect truth, perfect honesty, perfect candor, were qualities of her character which were born with her. Her judgments of people and things were sure and accurate. Her intuitions almost never deceived her. In her judgments of the characters and acts of both friends and strangers, there was always room for charity, and this charity never failed. I have compared and contrasted her with hundreds of persons, and my conviction remains that hers was the most perfect character I have ever met. And I may add that she was the most winningly dignified person I have ever known. Her character and disposition were of the sort that not only invite worship but command it. No servant ever left her service who deserved to remain in it. And as she could choose with a glance of her eye, the servants she selected did in almost all cases deserve to remain, and they did remain. She was always cheerful; and she was always able to communicate her cheerfulness to others. During the nine years that we spent in poverty and debt, she was always able to reason me out of my despairs and find a bright side to the clouds and make me see it. In all that time I never knew her to utter a word of regret concerning our altered circumstances, nor did I ever know her children to do the like. For she had taught them, and they drew their fortitude from her. The love which she bestowed upon those whom she loved took the form of worship, and in that form it was returned--returned by relatives, friends, and the servants of her household. It was a strange combination which wrought into one individual, so to speak, by marriage--her disposition and character and mine. She poured out her prodigal affection in kisses and caresses, and in a vocabulary of endearments whose profusion was always an astonishment to me. I was born reserved as to endearments of speech, and caresses, and hers broke upon me as the summer waves break upon Gibraltar. I was reared in that atmosphere of reserve. As I have already said in an earlier chapter, I never knew a member of my father's family to kiss another member of it except once, and that at a deathbed. And our village was not a kissing community. The kissing and caressing ended with courtship--along with the deadly piano-playing of that day. She had the heart-free laugh of a girl. It came seldom, but when it broke upon the ear it was as inspiring as music. I heard it for the last time when she had been occupying her sick-bed for more than a year, and I made a written note of it at the time--a note not to be repeated.
Twain, Mark; Smith, Harriet E.; Griffin, Benjamin; Fischer, Victor; Frank, Michael B.; Sharon K. Goetz; Leslie Diane Myrick (2010-11-15). Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1 (pp. 320-321). University of California Press. Kindle Edition.
