Wrestling with Seduction

To wrestle: to engage in a determined struggle. Seduction: a temptation to fulfill a desire one might otherwise wish to resist; an act to charm and persuade.

Wrestling with Seduction, a collection of modern prose and poetry, takes the reader on a journey that progresses over terrain each of us likely has trod at one time or another. From the time we first experience falling in love, we also encounter along the way loves fraternal and evil twin --- the blues. Then there are the other nuances of seduction: the seduction of what we see every day and covet for ourselves; the seduction of memory; the seductive forces of family and community beliefs, mores, and traditions; the seduction of time. On top of all that is the treachery and desperation of the heart, so that it usually is pretty untrustworthy. By middle age, we all probably know something about seduction --- the good and the bad and the in-between. The trouble is that giving in to it --- the falling --- feels so doggone good, whether one is young or old. But surviving the fall and telling about it later, with a laugh even, is a whole other story. This collection of personal offerings speaks not only about falling in love, but also about childhood and family and life and death and work and play and a lot of things which we may not always recognize as seductive. But they are. Herein, the struggle has a beginning, middle and something of a resolution, if thats what one may wish to call it. This writer, at least, is enjoying this period of denouement.