Chloe Thurlow's Blog, page 19

Nude Selfies & The Age of the Selfie

Nude selfies are not vanity or exhibitionism. Nude selfies are a celebration of self.

Girls bodies change like bugs into butterflies as we grow up. This change is totally absorbing. From the moment your breasts appear, you want to touch them, turn them, squeeze your nipples. At every spare second, you look into the mirror to see if they have grown bigger.

Taking nude selfies, tummy in, breasts out, is addictive, but it also serves a valuable purpose: if you are sitting on the bus with nothing to do and no one to text, there is no better way to pass the time than flicking through your own gallery of images – selfies, friends’ selfies, random nude selfies you can’t even remember who sent them.

There are more selfies on the web than fish in the sea; if that’s not true it will be soon. College girls, hot girls, shy girls. Celebrities are everywhere in their altogether. The nature of celebrity is to show your all – in the flesh, whatever the risk. A teacher in Russia was threatened recently with suspension for sending a semi-clad selfie to her students. Geri Muller, the Mayor of Baden, near Zurich, has been suspended after allegations that he sent a nude selfie to a woman who didn’t want to receive one. He’s 53. A girl in the UK got splashed across the Daily Mirror when she sent a nude selfie to her dad thinking it was her boyfriend.

Smartphones aren’t as smart as they think they are. Once sent, selfies can’t be brought back. They buzz like bees seeking pollen across sites that get thousands of hits from selfie makers keen to see what other nude selfies look like. There have always been nude mags, Playboy for instance. The difference is that selfie sites seek out what they call ‘real’ girls and ‘amateurs.’ Not that that becoming a pro nude selfie performer seems feasible. But why not? It is the age of self. We are all entrepreneurs now.

Nude Selfies & the Psychologists

Women want to look their best – great hair, make-up, shoes, the exposed slices of flesh we bare by the clothes we choose. This is genetic, not narcissism. It’s a jungle out there and, subconsciously, we are laying our scent to attract the male of the species. Most women have a negative body image thanks to magazines stuffed with air-brushed supermodels. We judge ourselves against other women, we can’t help it, and ‘real’ girl selfies with the entire spectrum of body types put our doubts into perspective.

Selfies are part of the culture. Barrack Obama, David Cameron. Lady Gaga. They’re all at it. Cancer Research UK raised £8 million with a no make-up selfie campaign, a tick in the upside box. Psychologists at universities around the world are making studies to find out why we take nude selfies, and I believe the answer is far simpler than they want to hear.

How To Shoot Great Nude Selfies

We do it because we can. Because humans are fascinated by their naked self. When a new gadget or gimmick comes on the market, it is human nature to try it. As our devices improve, nude selfies will be replaced by nude shorties, films shot as we go about the house making coffee, making the bed, making love. There has always been a Nudity Taboo, but finally, like the Anal Sex taboo, it is breaking down as we become more confident about who we are. It is the seventh age: the Age of Self. The Age of the Selfie.

How do you shoot a great nude selfie? First strip naked (shoes optional). Face a full-length mirror. Don’t shoot into the light and make sure there is no light shining into the mirror from behind you. Hold your smartphone at an angle to avoid camera flash – AND SAY CHEESE. If you want to submit a selfie, NakedSelfies makes it dead easy.

#mc_embed_signup{background:clear; clear:left; font:10px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */



Add Your Name to the Mailing List for occasional Updates - Chloe
* indicates required

Email Address *









'+msg+'

by

The post Nude Selfies & The Age of the Selfie appeared first on Erotic romance writer Chloe Thurlow.

Writing As A Sexual Act

Saul Wolfe Guest Blog

The Great and Good of the British literary establishment have usually preferred to avert their gaze (at least publicly) from erotic fiction. In the first place, it’s marketed as a genre (although one could argue that the ‘literary novel’ is a genre of its own). To make matters worse, it centres on the sexual act, the most private and subversive of human activities. And, regrettably, much of it is badly written, desperately trying to nag the reader into arousal through formulaic clichés. Thus the erotic novelist has little cultural capital. He/she is perceived as a dishevelled tart plying a dubious trade at the dark end of the street.

Yet in writing erotica, the author engages with a process that recapitulates a key stage in the cultural evolution of the species. The ability to fantasise, to evoke and envisage sexual activities with imaginary beings to the point of actually inducing orgasm was, in the words of the late Brigid Brophy, ‘a stimulus in the development of early man, by liberating the human sexual instinct from its dependence on immediate stimulation from something in the environment’.

Sexual fantasy drives the imagination, expands inner space. In sharing it as story, the porno-scribe becomes a kind of shaman, descending to the sexual dream-time and surfacing with a vision to rejuvenate the tribe…

Sexual Act Language

So the writer plays with the slippery medium of language, toying with its floaty signifiers, often struggling to channel their own sexual chaos into narrative form. It is like caressing smoke, creating these astral babes out of dream-clips, refracted memory, shimmering pixels. The inner eye scans ghost-flesh and/or word – ‘her pale breasts’ – begets image that slowly begets the whole lust-world, an amphitheatre of desire. The creative writing handbooks tell you to ‘love your characters’ and in this genre Love is the Law, as Aleister Crowley was fond of saying to his Scarlet Women.

Love is also ‘a proposition that’s gonna get somebody killed’ to quote the blues shouter Big Joe Turner, so there will inevitably be menaces, intrigues, crime and grime, the Aristotelian engine of conflict that keeps the erotic shadow-show on the road. But throughout the labour of love that erects the trembling structure of a novel, the author is engaged in a magical act of evocation, summoning his succubi (or incubi, according to gender) to lead the reader on a merry dance.

And here the erotica author conjuring up the sexual act enters a strange relationship with the reader. Modern critical theory has tended to downplay the importance of the author (‘The Author is dead!’ insisted the late Roland Barthes), but in the erotica zone, the writer potentially creates an almost tactile link with the reader, often culminating in physical arousal.

Of course – reverting to critical theory – texts can be read in a multiplicity of ways, and the writer may well wonder what might be occurring in this inter-action. One might imagine a girl sprawled on her bed, duvet thrown back, one hand sliding towards the soft delta of her sex as she strokes the screen of her e-reader; or the husband reading to his wife in the bathroom as she anoints her glistening thighs with aromatic lotion, a prelude to the sexual act.

On the other hand, it’s painfully easy to envision a reader with attention deficit syndrome snorting derisively as he – it would probably be he – skips through the well-crafted labyrinths of one’s plot or the loving description of a cute bottom, or the sexual act itself. One’s characters can’t fall in love with everyone they’re introduced to. And not every reader will fall for your seductions.

Follow Saul Wolfe at his lively WEBSITE . His new novel Space Virgins of the Third Reich will shortly be available on Kindle.

 

#mc_embed_signup{background:clear; clear:left; font:10px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */



Add Your Name to the Mailing List for occasional Updates - Chloe
* indicates required

Email Address *









'+msg+'

by

The post Writing As A Sexual Act appeared first on Erotic romance writer Chloe Thurlow.

First Love Lasts Forever

I remember my first love as if it were last night below the full moon with the sea slipping over the beach. The experience was overwhelming, painful, obsessive and I didn’t sleep for days. We may believe our first love is more intense and magical than anyone else’s. But that’s not true. It is always intense. Always magical. In fact, researchers have found that first love remains lodged in our minds and influences our attitude to love and sex for the rest of our lives.

According to BBC Science, first love is so potent it echoes the bond between mother and child in infancy. First love burns brightest and, even when it burns out, the experience, researchers say, is ‘similar to using cocaine, so pleasurable it’s like an addiction.’ The study identified three phases of love.

Lust
Attraction
Attachment

Lust and attraction sound much the same to me. Teenagers race from one to the other, rarely reaching the attachment phase, making the experience so strong, the light that come on stays on, a glow that glimmers behind each new relationship.

My first love was a boy I met in Spain. I have a photograph and he looks so young with his tentative smile, green eyes and swept back hair . He is deeply tanned, angular, his eyes not staring into the camera but through the lens at me taking the picture.

His name was Ricardo. He did not speak English, and my schoolgirl Spanish was at the level where I could ask for little more than a café con leche. Ricardo didn’t need to speak. He just stared at me with those big green eyes and I my breasts tingled as I stared at him with his wide shoulders in a white tee-shirt.

He was with his parents and two younger sisters at the same hotel where I was on holiday with my parents and brother. Like in a scene from Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, I would see him passing in the lobby. In the restaurant I watched across the sea of tables as he cut peaches in quarters and shared them with his sisters. I saw him on the beach. I wore a yellow bikini. He wore red shorts decorated with yellow suns. We smiled. We said Hola, and I took his photograph.

 First Love Last Night

Then it was Friday. There was a disco at the hotel. The moon was full. We danced. We moved towards the exit as if drawn by a magnet and gripped fingers as we hurried down to the beach. We continued around the coast towards the rocks where I had seen him diving. He made a swimming motion and I nodded. He stripped down to his underpants. I stripped to my bra and panties, and then I did something that I had not planned to do and can’t imagine how I ever got the courage to do it: I took off my underwear and walked into the sea.

I turned and waved. He was watching me as he lowered his boxers. He swam out through the swell. We raced childishly. We ran back to the beach and kissed, a long salty kiss. We made love that night beneath the moonlight and next day I stood in the shade outside the hotel as his family climbed into a taxi. Ricardo waved out the rear window as the car drove away and I thought my heart was going to break. I had discovered emotional feelings and desires I didn’t know I had and imagined that I would spend my entire life searching for the boy I had made love with on the beach.

The intensity of my feelings passed, as the survey in BBC Science said it would, but my first love remains unforgettable and the memory is like a breath of warm air on the bitterest winter night. Do you remember your first olive? Do share the memory in the comments.

 

#mc_embed_signup{background:clear; clear:left; font:10px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */



Add Your Name to the Mailing List for occasional Updates - Chloe
* indicates required

Email Address *









'+msg+'

by

The post First Love Lasts Forever appeared first on Erotic romance writer Chloe Thurlow.

Anal Orgasm Uninhibited & Exposed

Anal orgasm is like walking on water. A tiny miracle. Anal orgasm is like a secret, something stolen, an unexpected gift. Women don’t always understand that anal orgasm brings her more  pleasure than she ever imagined.

Anal pleasure comes from exciting the nerve endings around the entrance to your bottom and the delicate membranes lining the passage inside. Thanks to the brilliant designer (whoever she was), the pudendal nerve, the anal nerve system and the dorsal nerve secreted in the clitoris, are all connected in a fine web.

During sex, the hormone oxytocin – which creates feelings ecstasy – is released into the bloodstream. The skin tissue in your bottom is so fine, the oxytocin rush is more intense. During intercourse, stimulating pulses reach the clitoral crura, the bands of tissue around the clitoris. The stimulus causes the clitoris to swell with blood and become more sensitive, resulting in more intense and longer-lasting orgasms.

Anal Orgasm Tips

My recent blog Anal Sex didn’t mention butt plugs and I am grateful to Robin who left this valuable comment: “Butt plugs are sex toys that can be worn for hours or days. They greatly improve anal sex by allowing the sphincter to expand, increasing enjoyment and significantly reducing the risk of pain. They are available in different sizes. With a set of three, you start off with the smallest and graduate to the medium as soon as it is comfortable. Whether you ever get to use the large size is a matter of personal preference; often the medium size offers a good compromise between pleasure and the reduction of pain. Wearing a butt plug means that anal sex can be enjoyed within a short time.”

Robin also made this observation regarding lubricants. “On lube, it can be a mistake to use the same water based lube that you would use for vaginal sex or with a sex toy. The best anal lubes are silicone based. They are extremely slippery and a little goes a long way and lasts much longer than any water based lube. Silicone lubes were developed due to strong demand from gay males. They should know what works best.”

Anal Orgasm Preparations

The secret of good anal is preparation. Foreplay is the watch word – the more play before penetration, the easier, smoother and more enjoyable the consummation. Once couples can get it into their heads that anal sex is not him violating her, but her taking him inside this sensitive place for her pleasure. And pleasure shared is pleasure multiplied.

There are anal douches (put the words in your search engine) that give all the dark places a spring clean. Along with butt plugs and a good lube, as mentioned above, there is an infinite variety of phalluses in every colour, shape and size known to woman. Jiggle balls and vibrating anal beads stimulate the web of nerves that line the inside of the bottom – insert during foreplay and extract at the point of climax for a more explosive anal orgasm. Ever.

Any questions or comments on anal sex, just pop them in the box below.

 

Related articles across the web

25,000 Reasons To Have Sex Every Day
Can a woman orgasm from anal sex?
Anal Sex – Lessons for Boys and Girls

#mc_embed_signup{background:clear; clear:left; font:10px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */



Add Your Name to the Mailing List for occasional Updates - Chloe
* indicates required

Email Address *









'+msg+'

by

The post Anal Orgasm Uninhibited & Exposed appeared first on Erotic romance writer Chloe Thurlow.

Anal Sex – Lessons for Boys and Girls

Anal sex is like diving from a high cliff into a silent sea. Poise and preparation are everything. Sinking into the unknown is mesmerising and, once plumbed, what emerges from the depths is the thrill of new experience.

Anal sex is like seeing the sign: Don’t walk on the grass, then walking on the grass. It carries that sense of being wanton. The very word anal is itself anal, abstract, gloriously tempting. If you have a box of chocolates with ten flavours and you’ve tried nine, why would you stop at the tenth?

Anal sex has always been the forbidden fruit. But the barrier is down and the sweet tang of taboo is fading. According to one study published in Salon, almost half the girls in the United States between the ages of eighteen and thirty have given anal a whirl and report they either love it or hate it. Some people feel the same way about oysters, so I suppose it really does depend on how the dish is served.

Contrary to popular belief, anal sex does not appear in the Bible. It is alluded to in the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah. A group of roughneck Sodomites set upon two angels in the form of men. It has long been assumed their intention was gang rape, although descriptions of anal sex didn’t get by the censors. The word sodomy comes from this biblical account, but it merely means ‘The sin of Sodom,’ general mischief and debauchery.

Anal Sex Lessons

What separates the sexes? Men rush. Women hate rushing. This applies more to anal sex than any other bedroom activity. Men have learned (finally) that the clitoris thrives on attention. A girl’s back door is the same. At the entrance to the anus there is a muscle called the sphincter whose function is to push the unwanted out. With plenty of spit and tongue pressure, the muscle can be persuaded to work in reverse and draw inwards rather than push outwards. Is there a secret? Absolutely: patience.

In my blog Spanking Girls, I pointed out that your partner must know your bottom like his own hand. This is so important and leads me to ask this question: does he adore oral sex? I bet he does. Likewise he must grow to adore anal foreplay, wetting the rosebud entry point and learning to extend his tongue inside. Even then, all that licking and spittle is not sufficient lubrication and a good quality lube (of which there are hundreds of the market) is vital. Apply after foreplay and the penis will slip in comfortably. He must move slowly, rhythmically, no hurry, no force, the walls of the passage are designed to stretch and, as they do so, all the delicate nerves endings light up like landing lights at a busy airport.

Preparation. Relaxation. Lubrication. These are the three steps to good anal sex. Even then, you must take care not to cause rips and abrasions, however minor. Sex without condoms (generally preferred, it has to be said), increases the likelihood of spreading bacteria and sexually transmitted diseases. If you bring anal sex toys to the party, make sure they have first been washed with hot soapy water.

What is the best position for anal sex? The position in which you feel the most at ease: doggy style, girl on top, folded together like two spoons in a cutlery case. You find your own position, relax and move like honey being poured from a jar in a steady constant stream. Slowly now, take it slowly. Now you’ve managed to enter the forbidden garden, what’s the rush?

 

#mc_embed_signup{background:clear; clear:left; font:10px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */



Add Your Name to the Mailing List for occasional Updates - Chloe
* indicates required

Email Address *









'+msg+'

The post Anal Sex – Lessons for Boys and Girls appeared first on Erotic romance writer Chloe Thurlow.

Why Spanking Girls is the Pleasure of all Pleasures

French philosopher Georges Bataille describes spanking girls as ‘the illicit pleasure of all pleasures.’

When a hand comes down again and again on your bottom, the sting is quickly followed by a prickling numbness. The pain vanishes and the heat generated from those slaps sends lines of electric fire through all the tissues and nerve endings, ripples of warmth that gather in a wave of sensations, a million tiny kisses that lap over your clitoris and take you to a breath-taking orgasm. That’s why girls like spanking and spanking girls is a unique pleasure.

Someone new to spanking girls does not release this fount of ecstasy, but inflicts an agonizing burn that hurts for days when you sit down. A heavy handed spanker leaves bruises and the triumphant finale of the big O is the ghost in the haunted house that fails to appear.

Spanking girls in an activity that should only be pursued by mutual consent. That established, the spanker must know the posterior he’s about to spank like the palm of his own hand. He must adore those domes of pink flesh, each slap with his spread fingers a caress that warms the skin and spreads through and subcutaneous tissue immediately below the dimpled surface. The spanking must be steady, rhythmic, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, moving from one area to another until both cheeks glow with a rosy bloom that lights the charge and sends the electric message to the restless clitoris.

The best position for spanking girls is over the knees in such a way that your fingertips and toes just touch the ground and your bottom is at an angle that makes it easy for the spanker to maintain a metronome beat. There is something overwhelmingly feminine being exposed in this way, breasts full and pendulous, eyes pressed shut, your mind clear and your body free to plunge into absolute sensation.

Spanking Girls & Spanking Boys

Spanking is about pleasure, not pain, and contemporary couples of my acquaintance swap positions so that she has a turn at spanking and he submits to her loving hand. He does not have a clitoris, of course, but an erection heated by a good spanking is firmer and lasts long into the night.

Whipping, caning, chains, restraints, the cat-o’-nine tails and many other devices of pain so beloved of the Marquis de Sade are a whole other ball(gag) game, and are employed in more extreme sado-masochistic relationships. Everyone to their own. But a nice, warm, friendly spanking never did anyone any harm.

In his book Eroticism, Georges Bataille says there is an innate gratification in falling from grace, that the supreme pleasure of love is illicit love, a feeling that you are doing wrong. Spanking girls and being a girl receiving a spanking captures that feeling, that beyond the pleasure enhanced by the pain is a sense that you are being just a little bit wicked.

Opinions? Please leave them in the COMMENTS BOX below – there are no silly puzzles, no doors with fuzzy numbers on them, no need to join the site – although, if you do, you can download FIGHT 69 for free. Happy spanking – and read on if you want to know why sex every day is good for your health.

#mc_embed_signup{background:clear; clear:left; font:10px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */



Add Your Name to the Mailing List for occasional Updates - Chloe
* indicates required

Email Address *









'+msg+'

The post Why Spanking Girls is the Pleasure of all Pleasures appeared first on Chloe Thurlow.

Fulfilling Your Sexual Fantasies

Crista Martin Guest Blog

One of my sexual fantasies is to have sex outdoors. Me and my man on a desert island next to a waterfall surrounded by tropical flowers. We’d skinny dip in our little oasis. He’d lead me over the rocks and we’d make love with the surf slipping over us like in a cheesy music video for an ’80s ballad—Chris Isaak singing Wicked Game.

The problem with those seemingly romantic situations is sand gets in your vagina and you’re likely to have a bladder infection next day. Another thing, whirlwinds of spontaneous passion rarely occur when you actually think to bring your condoms along to the oasis. And if you’re not an exhibitionist, chances are you’ll be worried sick that a peeping Tom might be watching.

I am an expert at creating sexual fantasies. But being too neurotic to go through with them, I was thrilled to find another way to fulfil my desires—sex toys. After some secret surfing, not on the desert island, but the web, I washed up on the shores of Adam & Eve and came away with my first vibrator. Oo-la-la! Like having a glass of champagne, one leads inevitably to two and now my goodie drawer is a treasure trove of perfect companions when I need some quality solo time and, better still, bringing sex toys into bed with my partner turned out to be, well, incredible.

Personally, I adore the bullet varieties and finger vibrators, which are small and discreet. They are not intrusive, whatever your preferred positions, but  powerful enough to provide amazing stimulation to your clitoris during penetration. Since my guy and me started mixing things up every once in a while with a vibrator, I can honestly say our sex life has never been better. Not only do I get off just as often as he does, but he’s become more relaxed. Using the vibrator during sex takes a lot of pressure off him to make me orgasm and we’re both in the moment.

Restraint Fantasy

I have also stepped outside of my comfort zone and tried some bondage toys. I always liked a little spanking, when done right and in the heat of the moment, but my sexual fantasies do not include whipping or anything similarly painful.

To each his own, or course, but it turns out that for those among us intimidated by the really masochistic paraphernalia, there are playful devices that fall under the same bondage umbrella. Blindfolds and light restraints add an air of mystery. They’re perfect for making one of you “captive” to the other’s pleasuring. And of course, pleasure given is pleasure received. It may be difficult get used to the idea, but according to a study published in Live Science, people who engage in bondage are more relaxed and “might be psychologically healthier than the general public.”

If you’re nightstand has nothing but condoms and a sleep mask (that you only actually use for sleeping), maybe it’s time you started your own little treasure chest. And hey, if you ever do get out to that desert island, bring some sex toys along in your backpack. There’s no reason not to have the loudest, most intense orgasm of your life when there’s no one around to hear you.

Crista Martin is a blogger from Charleston, S.C. When she’s not working, she enjoys playing with her dog Sammy and cheering on the Clemson Tigers.

#mc_embed_signup{background:clear; clear:left; font:10px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */



Add Your Name to the Mailing List for occasional Updates - Chloe
* indicates required

Email Address *









'+msg+'

The post Fulfilling Your Sexual Fantasies appeared first on Chloe Thurlow.

Plato’s Cave, Perceptions and the Patriot Politician

When the politician stands in front of the flag, hand on heart, and says: ‘I love my country,’ don’t be like the prisoners in Plato’s Cave deceived by the moving shadows and the echoes that vanish to silence.   

In Plato’s Cave, a row of prisoners are chained up facing a wall. Behind them, a fire burns. Between the fire and the wall there is a walkway on which the people passing carry objects on their heads. The prisoners only see the shadows of these objects and believe the echoes they hear are the shadows talking. The world they perceive has no substance, even the voices are distorted, the mumblings of empty shadows.

When a prisoner escapes, he learns that what has passed for wisdom in the cave is totally false. Should he return to tell the other prisoners what he has discovered? Would they think him a liar or, worse, would they come to see that their beliefs were empty and groundless? Is it better to leave people in ignorance? Or is it the duty of those who have become enlightened to share their knowledge?

Plato was born in Athens around 425 BC and was a pupil of Socrates. In the cave allegory, he draws the distinction between people who believe knowledge comes from what we see and hear, and those who reach the truth through study and weighing the evidence. The allegory is designed to show that those who trust only in empirical knowledge (their eyes) will end up trapped in a ‘cave’ of misunderstanding.

The hand-on-heart politician appeals to our senses. His message of love of country moves us in such a way that we fail to notice that it has no meat and fibre – and, anyway, we are too busy looking at his good hair, nice wife and perfect children. He, or she (with perfect hair and children) omits to tell us what they plan to do about education, health, pensions, the minimum wage, unemployment, college fees, foreign wars, the growing imbalance between rich and poor, the fact that more children in the US and in Europe are malnourished today than there were 20 years ago. The planet is heating up, more species of animals become extinct every year, and nearly two centuries after the abolition of slavery, sex slaves and labour slaves cross porous borders across the entire world.

Plato’s Cave Revisited

We look to our politicians to provide answers to these problems; that’s why we elect them. But our politicians, bought by lobbyists and in union with corporate heads and bankers, have learned from the marketing men that the mere promise of a better, more equitable life is sufficient. It is the way the promise is delivered that matters, not whether or not it is credible. We want to believe we will look younger with the new bio-face cream, run faster than a speeding bullet with the latest trainers, lose those 5 extra pounds with bio-yoghurt. We want to believe the politician with his good teeth and ready smile will lead us to the Promised Land.

When the prisoner in Plato’s story returns to the cave, the other prisoners do not believe his descriptions of the real world and threaten to kill him if he tries to set them free. They fear the knowledge he brings and cling on to the perception of truth provided by the shadows – the TV news, the commercials that echo subliminal messages.

After the financial crisis in 2007, voters in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and most major western countries chucked out one set of politicians and elected another – from left to right and from right to left. Every country had been led to the brink of financial chaos by the mismanagement and greed of our banks. In every country the politicians, left and right, right and left, took money from education, health, pensions and social services and gave it to those same bankers, who rewarded themselves bonuses for being so clever. Viewed from another planet, the aliens would say the people on Earth are insane.

What is the answer? Study the allegory of Plato’s Cave. Don’t trust in what you see and hear. Trust in your own analysis, your own deeper intelligence, and remember, beneath the flag the politician wraps himself in are empty promises, vast ambitions, mouth-watering bank accounts and women more beautiful than Helen of Troy.

 

#mc_embed_signup{background:clear; clear:left; font:10px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */



Add Your Name to the Mailing List for occasional Updates - Chloe
* indicates required

Email Address *









'+msg+'

The post Plato’s Cave, Perceptions and the Patriot Politician appeared first on Chloe Thurlow.

Do We Possess Our Possessions or Do Our Possessions Possess Us?

I have a hard-cover brown folder in which I keep the printed pages from the book I am writing. This small possession has no value. But I would be sorry if I lost it. My laptop does not conjure up the same emotional attachment. As for my printer, it hates me and often flashes the message in green capitals that we are incompatible.

Our Stone Age ancestors stored fruit and meat in caves to keep them going through the winter. They painted murals on the walls. They made talismans and jewellery – the first possessions. It is human nature to accumulate and, as I look around the room where I am sitting, I wonder if we reach a point where we stop possessing our possessions and our possessions begin to possess us.

In the digital age, possessions take on a new significance. Before colour printing became inexpensive, if you wanted to see the Mona Lisa you had to visit the Louvre in Paris. Since the construction of the Royal Library of Alexandria in the 3rd century BC, scrolls and books have been available (certainly for a privileged few), and personal libraries have been a feature of our evolving humanity for centuries.

Now, we no longer need cook books or photograph albums. Our computer is a vast brain with a limitless memory. The web contains every thought, idea, quotation and image. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Robert Capa’s Pain of War soldier photographed mid-air after being shot. The complete works of Shakespeare can be downloaded – free. Studying Chinese? There are endless courses. Type Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto into YouTube and you’ll find a choice of orchestras who have interpreted this masterpiece. Did you miss the documentary of the Rolling Stones by Martin Scorsese? Or the last episode of Breaking Bad? Type and hit enter.

Small Possessions

With every facet of culture at our fingertips, it gives many of our small possessions less practical value and greater sentimental value. A drawing by a friend becomes a religious reliquary; The Dark Side of the Moon on vinyl like a piece of the Cross. I occasionally take from the shelf one of the books I have moved from flat to flat  - Camus’s The Outsider, perhaps, the Penguin edition with the orange spine and those sentences underscored in pencil half a lifetime ago, the phrases a reminder of who I was and how I have come to be who I am.

With globalization, rare fruits are picked, frozen and flown to major cities from far away places to ignite our taste buds with exotic flavours. Yet, the apple picked from the garden will still taste sweeter. As, indeed, a hand-made birthday card arriving in the mail will be more cherished than the FaceBook message.

As all culture is a click away, those things that moved our hearts and souls before we acquired our electronic devices become more important to us. Our stuff stops being just stuff and becomes snapshots of the past. We are not possessed by our possessions, we are blessed by them. Still, I really do have to take some shoes to the charity shop before they start breeding in the dark corners of the closet or, worse, cosying up to my printer.

 

#mc_embed_signup{background:clear; clear:left; font:10px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */



Add Your Name to the Mailing List for occasional Updates - Chloe
* indicates required

Email Address *









'+msg+'

The post Do We Possess Our Possessions or Do Our Possessions Possess Us? appeared first on Chloe Thurlow.

25,000 Reasons To Have Sex Every Day

Sex is good for you. Regular sex is like walking, like breathing: absolutely essential. Like coffee every morning and a glass of red wine at night, sex every day will make you look younger, feel younger, sleep better, even smell better. Sex relieves stress, burns calories, makes your heart fly like a bird and lowers the risk of heart attack.

I promised with the title 25,000 reasons to have sex every day – so, onwards and upwards: regular sex increases the antibody immunoglobulin, an immune-booster better than fresh orange-juice for fighting off colds, flu, fever, sore throats and most other minor irritants.

Missed the train? Late for an important meeting? Stressed to the heavens? Phone up, apologise, tell them you’ll be late and read my blog while you have a coffee. A daily session between-the-sheets not only lowers stress, it increases the ability to combat stress by producing endorphins that calm ragged nerves and make the blue in the sky look brighter.

Orgasms make us feel one with the universe. As you gasp oh yes, oh yesssss, the hormone oxytocin multiplies five fold and acts as a natural pain killer that reduces lower back pain, cures migraine, muscle fatigue and that all-over lethargy that comes from watching too much television. Get up from the sofa, take your clothes off, switch the TV off and just do it. It is believed that oxytocin inspires trust, intimacy and is a major contributor to general happiness. Research results differ, but I believe in being positive.

The Big O also releases dehydroepiandrosterone, an appropriately long word as the hormone triggers longevity. The hormone also improves immunity, repairs tissue and keeps skin healthy.

Men who chalk up at least two orgasms a week live longer than their limp buddies because the workout increases the heart rate and pumps fresh blood to the organs and cells. Blood is constantly being used up and regenerated. Exercise creates fresh blood and the toxins that make you feel weary are expelled with the tired blood. Sex makes you build up a sweat and sweat also rids the body of toxins, it’s healthy and, well, sort of sexy, too.

The female hormone oestrogen is a natural perfume that makes you smell desirable and protects against heart disease. It’s that scent that attracts the male and makes their macho hormone testosterone surge, increasing passion, strengthening muscles and bones; it lowers cholesterol and is good for their hearts (if they have one).

Sex Every Day Superyoung

Our ancestors did not live as long as we do today, they didn’t have the medicine, the science, the Nike trainers. Lacking other forms of amusement, on those long nights wrapped in furs in fire-lit caves they must have stayed strong having sex every day. Did they follow the missionary position? I don’t think so. Without knowing it, our shaggy ancestors probably practised chakravakasana: girls on hands and knees, spine bowed, bottom out in such a way that you can roll your backbone, breathing in and out, a motion that makes the body more supple, builds abdominal strength and is ideal for doggy fashion and anal sex.

You look younger having sex every day? According to David Weeks, who did 18 years exhaustive research before publishing his book Secrets of the Superyoung, in tandem with keeping your brain active and eating good stuff, sex holds back the hands of the clock. Is the good doctor right? Is it true? Does it matter?

Researchers have shown that regular sex lessens the pains of arthritis, reduces your chances of developing prostate cancer, helps bowel function, bladder control and erectile dysfunction. That’s right. Sex makes the blood warm and race, reaching those peripheral points that need a hot shot of plasma. Sex regulates menstrual cycles, hormones, and increases the supply of oxygen. A bountiful sex life makes semen healthier, a dream come true for those who want to have babies, and what a way to get there.

After sex you sleep liked a church angel. Total rest makes you feel more energetic and more inclined to go to the gym or the pool or the park for a fast walk next day, which makes you healthier, slimmer and ready for more bed action – continuing the cycle. Sex burns 200 calories an hour – about two chocolate cookies, so make love, don’t eat the cookies and that’s 400 calories and a leaner sexier you.

25,000 Reasons To Have Sex Every Day? We are programmed to recreate ourselves. It is embedded in our genes. There are (more or less) 25,000 human protein-coding genes and what those genes crave is sex, all 25,000 of them.

Sex life dull? Need some inspiration? Chloe to the rescue. Leave your reasons for having sex every day in the COMMENT BOX (no number puzzles!). Need more info? Out there on the web there are 25,000 reasons why sex is good for you – and I’d like to add one more: it’s fun.

#mc_embed_signup{background:clear; clear:left; font:10px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */



Add Your Name to the Mailing List for occasional Updates - Chloe
* indicates required

Email Address *









'+msg+'

The post 25,000 Reasons To Have Sex Every Day appeared first on Chloe Thurlow.