Two Miles High

Alice's Mirrors

Montreux and Vevey

Montreux at the eastern end of Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) these days is a tourist city associated with both pop culture and High Culture and, over the years, celebrities too many to mention. For pop culture, there is a statue of Queen’s Freddie Mercury staring out over the lake

Alice's Mirrors

Montmartre

Montmartre, literally "mountain of the martyr," where Saint Denis, Bishop of Paris, was beheaded around 250 AD. Not to be outdone, Denis picked up his head and walked to the top of the hill, preaching a sermon as he went. In his honor the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur was

Alice's Mirrors

Starnberg

"Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour." - T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922: King Ludwig II of Bavaria was drowned

How to Look at a Naked Lady

Italo Calvino

My favorite Italo Calvino story, relating to Lady Godiva of course, is Mr. Palomar (1983), including this moment in an encounter on a nudist beach. "Returning from his stroll, Palomar again passes that bather, and this time he keeps his eyes fixed straight ahead, so that his gaze touches

The Town Square

The Town Square

Marco Polo enters a city: he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man's place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one

The Town Square

Istanbul

What had seemed the day before the dingiest of cities now took on a strange beauty, the beauty of unexpected horizons and tongues of grey water winding below cypress-studded shores. A man's temper has a lot to do with his appreciation of scenery. John Buchan Greenmantle (1916) For

The Town Square

Venice

Childe Harold: "In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the ear: Those days are gone – but Beauty still is here." Lord Byron's Childe Harold'

The Town Square

London

This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air. Y.B. Yeats Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so

The Town Square

Paris

"And really, the reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especially at night (above our blacked-out Paris with the gaunt arches of its Boulevard Exelmans and the ceaseless Alpine gurgle of desolate latrines), is the most adequate and ever-present symbol of that vast

From Russia with Love

A Fire in Oxford Street

The fire broke out early evening in Oxford Street in the offices above a store, when irate customers complained that the notes they had received at the cash register had turned into blank pieces of paper. Police have not commented on their investigations, which are considered unsolved at this time.

The Town Square

The Fortune Teller

As with all magic symbols, the power of the Tarot lies in the unexpected meanings we generate when we encounter them. Divination is not about what is in the cards but what is inherent in us. Click on a card... The Juggler (Magician), the female Pope, the Empress, the Emperor,

The Town Square

The Clock Tower

I enjoy Western, Indian and Chinese astrology. I am not interested in what the Sun or the Moon were doing at the moment of our birth, or what was ascendant, or what the planets were doing in our houses. But, I do think astrology captures human DNA quite well. I

A Tale of Two Women Chapter Opener

A Tale of Two Women

Malinche as the Virgin of Guadalupe

The Age of Consent Chapter Opener

The Age of Consent

Adam and Eve and the Forbidden Fruit

Angel Incarnate Chapter Opener

Angel Incarnate

Leonardo da Vinci and the Pleasure of Boys

Beauty & the Beast Chapter Opener

Beauty & the Beast

AIDS Metaphors and Other Things

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary Chapter Opener

Dreaming the Virgin Mary

Theodora and the Architecture of the Divine

From Russia with Love Chapter Opener

From Russia with Love

The Devil in London

Homer's Women Chapter Opener

Homer's Women

Why did it take Odysseus 19 Years to Get Home from Troy?

The House of Incest Chapter Opener

The House of Incest

Anaïs Nin and the Poisoned Sperm

How to Look at a Naked Lady Chapter Opener

How to Look at a Naked Lady

How Lady Godiva Got a Tax Break

Immortal Beloved Chapter Opener

Immortal Beloved

Beethoven’s Love Letters

The Judgment of Paris Chapter Opener

The Judgment of Paris

How Ninon de Lenclos Cheated the Devil

Kama Sutra Chapter Opener

Kama Sutra

A Spiritual Fable of Eunuchs and Orgasms

Letters from Africa Chapter Opener

Letters from Africa

Angels and Wheels over Zion