Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things

A title from a study examining how cultures teach you to organize mental categories... it mentions a society in which the same word is used when speaking of women, fire, and dangerous things.

O fleece, that down the neck waves to the nape!
O curls! O perfume nonchalant and rare!
O ecstasy! To fill the alcove shape
With memories that in these tresses sleep,
I would shake them like pennons in the air!

Languorous Asia, burning Africa,
And a far world, defunct almost, absent,
Within your aromatic forest stay!
As other souls on music drift away,
Mine, o my love! still floats upon your scent.

I shall go there where, full of sap, both tree
And man swoon in the heat of southern climes;
Strong tresses, be the swell that carries me!
I dream upon your sea of ebony
Of dazzling sails, of oarsmen, masts and flames:

A sun-drenched and reverberating port,
Where I imbibe color and sound and scent;
Where vessels, gliding through the gold and moiré,
Open their vast arms as they leave the shore
To clasp the pure and shimmering firmament.

I'll plunge my head, enamored of its pleasure,
In this black ocean where the other hides;
My subtle spirit then will know a measure
Of fertile idleness and fragrant leisure,
Lulled by the infinite rhythm of its tides!

Pavilion, of blue-shadowed tresses spun,
You give me back the azure from afar;
And where the twisted locks are fringed with down
Lurk mingled odors I grow drunk upon
Of oil of coconut, of musk and tar.

A long time! always! my hand in your hair
Will sow the stars of sapphire, pearl, ruby,
That you be never deaf to my desire,
My oasis and gourd whence I aspire
To drink deep of the wine of memory!
-- Baudelaire

It is a dangerous game to play with the passions of princes.
-- old medieval saying

Gemini, from Carnaval in Rio

I am a lioness
and will never allow my body
to be anyone's resting place.

But if I did,
I wouldn't yield to a dog -
and O! the lions I've turned away!
-- unknown

What we see depends on mainly what we look for.
- John Lubbock

Sinister, an Amazon of Greek legend, faced with a more realistic version of the myth

If one man taking one step on the moon proved mankind is capable of space exploration -- why don't thousands of women fighting in hundreds of wars over 6,000 years prove that women are capable of serving in combat?
-- gendergap.com

Diamanda Galas, opera singer & performance artist, in Italy

I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.
-- Susan B. Anthony

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
-- James Michener, "Space"

Freedom is still the most radical idea of all.
-- Nathaniel Branden

Tell me whom you love, and I will tell you who you are.
--Houssaye