If we are to have intense pleasures, we must also be liable to intense pains. - Alan Watts

At about the age of eleven, I was reading the thrillers of Sax Rohmer and Edgar Wallace concerning Dr. Fu Manchu and other sophisticated Chinese villains, nurturing a secret admiration for these gentlemen because of their opposition to the suet-pudding heroism of our own culture, and because of their refined and mysterious style of life. While other boys dreamed of becoming generals, cowboys, mountain climbers, explorers, and engineers, I wanted to be a Chinese villain. I wanted servants carrying knives in their sleeves, appearing or vanishing without the slightest sound. I wanted a house with secret doors and passages, with Coromandel screens, with ancient scrolls, with ivory and lacquer boxes of exotic poisons, with exquisite brands of tea, with delicate blue porcelain, with jade idols and joss-sticks, and with sonorous gongs.

Plucking chrysanthemums along the East fence; Gazing in silence at the southern hills; The birds flying home in pairs Through the soft mountain air of dusk — In these things there is a deep meaning, But when we are about to express it, We suddenly forget the words.

We have, as a result of two thousand years of Christianity, sex on the brain. Which isn't always the best place for it.