There is no way of making a hedge grow like pruning it. There is no way of making sex interesting like repressing it.
Why a physical universe at all, in that case? If god is in some way responsible for the existence of a creation, and if this creation is basically a snare, why did he do it?
We are all falling apart in some way or another, especially after you pass the peak of youth. But it’s never struck me that that is something to gripe about. That the physical world is transient seems to me to be part of its splendor.
The very fact, you see, that the world is always decaying and always falling away is the same thing as its vitality. Vitality is change. Life is death. It is always falling apart. And so there are certain supreme moments, you see, at which (in the body) we attain superb vitality—and that’s the time. Make it then. That’s the moment. Just like when an orchestra is playing: the conductor wants to get a certain group of, say, violins to come in at a certain moment, and he’s conducting, and he’s got to now make it, and they all have to go zzzt right now, see? Of course. That’s the whole art of life: to do it at the right time, to do it in time—like you dance or you play in time. And so, in the same way, when it comes to love, sexuality—or equally so in all the pleasures of gastronomy—timing is of the essence. And then it’s happened, and you’ve had it. But that’s not something that one should look upon with regret. It only is something regrettable if you didn’t know how to take it when it was timely.
On the one hand, there is a way of being so anxious about physical pleasure, so afraid that you won’t make it, that you grab it too hard, that you just have to have that thing! And if you do that, you destroy it completely. And therefore, after every attempt to get it you feel disappointed. You feel empty, you feel something was lost—and therefore you want it again. You have to keep repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating, because you never really got there. And it’s this that is the hangup.
Pleasure in its fullness cannot be experienced when one is grasping it. I knew a little girl to whom someone gave a bunny rabbit. She was so delighted with the bunny rabbit and so afraid of losing it that, taking it home in the car, she squeezed it to death with love. And lots of parents do that to their children, and lots of spouses do it to each other: they hold on too hard, and so take the life out of this transient, beautifully fragile thing that life is. To have it—to have life, and to have its pleasure—you must at the same time let go of it, and then you can feel perfectly free to have that pleasure in the most gutsy, rollicking, earthy, lip-licking way. One’s whole being taken over by a kind of undulative, convulsive ripple, which is like the very pulse of life itself. This can happen only if you let go; if you are willing to be abandoned.
The function of sexual play is not merely the survival and utilitarian function of reproducing the species, as it is among animals to a very large extent. What peculiarly distinguishes human sexuality is that it brings the partners closer and closer to each other in an intense state of united feeling. In other words, it is a sacrament: the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace bringing about love. And so if that is peculiar to human beings, it is perfect nonsense to degrade human sexuality by saying it should only be carried on in the way that the animals do theirs.
If you’ve got a prudish father and mother, you should be very grateful to them for having made sex so interesting!