Friday, August 14, 2009

Naked and Simple Beauty

The first post of a new blog is, I suppose, a significant one--something that should set the tone for what's to follow.

Screw it.

I've started and restarted this "portentious" first post half a dozen times now. But I don't want to be portentious. I just want to talk about sex, to discuss things I've seen online and in the news, and to tell stories from my own life. I love sex, I love erotica in all forms, and I love to be naked. I love to try new things, and to think about trying new things, and to find ways of turning the latter into the former. I enjoy fine art and erotic photography and aspire to create some of my own. I would describe skinny dipping as the second most enjoyable thing in life, and have spent many enjoyable hours swimming in mountain streams, lakes, and hot springs. I've visited nudist parks and nude beaches, and enjoy them for their ecstatic freedom as much as I appreciate the eroticism of strip clubs. I'm fascinated by the differences between American prudishness and European candor, and by the fact that women can bare their breasts to sell magazines and subscription websites but, often, not to relax comfortably on a beach or breastfeed their children. I'm intrigued by a culture that rates extreme violence in movies as PG-13 but slaps an NC-17 on a film that shows two people having sex without being coy about the fact that one of them has a penis with a condom on it.

That's as much of a bullshit manifesto as I intend to write. From here on, let's talk about sex and nakedness!

The title of this blog comes from a quote by Galileo.

Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.
Not necessarily the best quote for what I want to do with this blog, but I like the sentiment and I'm a big fan of Galileo. My first choice for a title was actually "Total Immersion," based on my love of swimming naked, but that title is already taken by a swimming blog that doesn't have anything posted beyond a title. That seems to be true of a lot of the best web addresses: Naked Eye, The Naked Eye, Naked Truth, The Naked Truth, Stark Naked, Undressed, Simple Beauty, Naked Villainy (from Shakespeare), and, simply, Naked. The authors didn't get much beyond the thrill of posting a title and maybe a few entries, then abandoned them, like the best fruit left to rot and dry up on the vine. Some haven't had postings for seven or eight years. You'd think Google would retire them after that long.

Naked Beauty hasn't been updated in almost four years, but at least its sole entry is a tribute to a great nude painting. The blog at Naked and Nude leads with the header "Fuck"... and has no entries. Maybe that one word, put out there into public cyberspace, was enough to get the author off. No need to go furth.

Other good titles are active blogs that don't have anything to do with sexuality. "Unseamly" is a cleverly-titled quilting blog.

And then there are a few legitimately good blogs. "Without a Stitch" is the blog of a woman who poses for life drawing classes (something I have some experience with myself). "The Naked and the Nude" is a blog about nudity in the news, a great topic, which has recently been merged into a blog about nakedness more generally called "Wired Tales." This is probably the existing blog that mine will be most similar to, but with fewer pictures of pudgy naked men and more of beautiful naked women, my own interest being more more toward the latter than the former.

No matter; "Naked and Simple Beauty" is a simple and beautiful title, and one that fits well with my thoughts on sexuality. There's nothing more beautiful, and more thrillingly free, alive, and erotic, than simple, unashamed nakedness.

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