Thomas's monday morning poetry

Good Morning All!

A few days ago, I walked into a colleague’s office and announced proudly that I had managed to reduce a quote that I had asked for concerning reading glasses by flattering the lady on the other side into submission. The lady colleague’s response was; “ You’re such a player!”

Her response intrigued me. My definition of a player is a person who will sum up a situation (the situation being a targeted lady) and use any means at his disposal to achieve his goal, which is normally to score with the targeted lady (and I don’t mean a kiss on the cheek). The player would classically manipulate the target into submission. I emphasize the word manipulate. Once the player has achieved his goal, he moves on. There is no second date, even though he might leave the lady with the promise of one, or at least the promise of a phone call.

Does a player have no conscience? I don’t know. I asked two other ladies what their opinion of a player was. The one was direct: her definition of a player was an assh#le. The other lady summed up the player as someone who would use any means to achieve the desired end, which was getting the targeted lady home.

So, obviously there are varying opinions of the description of a player. I believe that, to give the idea of a player some definition, one has to compare the prospective player (and I bet that each and every one of you knows of someone who loosely fits this description) with a yardstick against whom you can judge the person.

Who better to use as a yardstick than the most notorious womanizer of modern times: Casanova!

“I am writing my life to laugh at myself, and I am succeeding. I write thirteen hours a day, and they pass like thirteen minutes. What pleasure in remembering one’s pleasures! But what effort to recall them to mind! It amuses me because I am inventing nothing. What chagrins me most is that I am forced, at this point, to mask the names, since I cannot expose the affairs of others.”
-Giacomo Casanova

Casanova was a thoroughly interesting man. The back page of his autobiography reads thus:

“Seducer, gambler, necromancer, swindler, Good Samaritan, spy, swashbuckler, self-made gentleman, entrepreneur, wit, poet, translator, philosopher, and general bon vivant, Giacomo Casanova was not only the most notorious lover the Western world has known, but also a storyteller of the first order. Since he lived a life richer and stranger than most fictions, the tale of his own adventures is his most compelling story, but his memoir remained-at 12 volumes – unfinished at the time of his death in 1798. In these selections, made from authoritative French texts, are all the highlights of Casanova’s life: his youth in Venice as a precocious ecclesiastic; carousing and dabbling in the occult; imprisonment and thrilling escape; travels and encounters with major literary figures and world leaders; and, of course, many amorous conquests, ranging from noblewomen to nuns and cobblers’ daughters, all of them willing partners in the adventures of his life.”

Casanova was a character who lived a fulfilled life. If one discounts his amorous adventures, it is still a life that cannot be compared to the normal. What is most interesting about the man though, is that he loved women dearly, and that every woman that he seduced was an enthusiastic partner.

So, next time one looks at another, and analyzes whether that person is a player or not, compare that person to the master, Casanova. Is time spent with that person an adventure or is it a drunken manipulation of another?

And now for some more Chinese philosophy:

The Valley Spirit never dies.
It is named the Mysterious Female.
And the Doorway of the Mysterious Female
Is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang.
It is there within us all the while;
Draw upon it as you will, it never runs dry.

Tootle pip.
Thomas