'Erotic is using a feather,'' she said. ''Pornography is when you use the whole bird.''
Isabel Allende
This is the third snippet I've taken from the book Aphrodite - A Memoir of the Senses by Isabel Allende. If you're coming upon this series for the first time, you can click here and here for the two previous snippets.
In the recipe section on Hors d'Oeuvres Allende writes this...
Tidbits are to the table
what kisses are
to lovers: a delicate demonstration
of what is to come later,
when you slip into something more
comfortable. They are served to accompany a cocktail
or glass of white wine before moving
to the table. Or, in some cases,
when the urgency to make love
is so strong that
there is no time to lose,
they can take the place of a meal.
and includes several fine recipes. I have chose the one with figs, as I am a lover of figs. Specifically, figs bring me back to my childhood in Portugal, where fig trees are as abundant as apple trees in the Northeastern U.S. So for me, a fig is not just an item I can pick up at the grocery store for $2.50 per piece but the fruit I once picked in a friend's cultivated fig orchard in Portugal, along with my cousins, on a hot summer day in the late 90's. There were so many spoiling figs on the ground beneath each tree that our hostess insisted on getting us bags to take as many home as we wanted. I would have collected more, had I not been so busy eating them as I walked along, content to be in the moment with an abundance of my favorite fruit and the hot sunshine on my bare arms and neck. What a feeling!
I wish I'd known about this recipe then.
Widower's Figs
pg. 230
These tidbits lead to sin, and you always want more.The bursting figs suggest a certain urgency, and everyone appreciates the sensuality of the sweet and spicy combination.
Ingredients
1 scant cup (8 ounces) semi-hard white cheese,
such asgoat cheese
1 tablespoon Salsa Picante
1 large apple or grapefruit
4 large ripe figs
Preparation
Cut the cheese into 1/2 inch cubes and coat in the salsa picante. Spear on cocktail picks and insert into the apple or grapefruit (I prefer the grapefruit). Place in the center of a round plate and surround with peeled and quartered figs.
I've just finished reading a recent post at what is perhaps my favorite blog: Sexuality In The Arts. Its title is deceptive in the sense of what it implies about the blog. It's a lot about the arts, yes. But it's also about loving, living and how personal expression can have an impact on lives - privately, socially, politically and spiritually.
Perhaps because of the path I'm currently traveling, One More Option, the author of Sexuality In The Arts, has become a sort of teacher. As is typical, OMO's post is about a lot of things but what I've taken away from it most is this, the ending paragraph:
I’m not a big fan of traditional boundaries. When life has given me boundaries, I’ve often responded by building sustainable archways, gates, bridges and tunnels - anything that might help people avoid being confined.
Whether it be physical, political or spiritual confinement, I can think of nothing more hellish. I find it especially sad when people impose confinement and isolation upon themselves and resist those who, in good faith, attempt to offer another path. Perhaps that path is not where they think they want to go. And granted, there are paths of various lengths, that lead to many places; not all of them acceptable to all of us.
My feeling is that we can walk down a path that is not for us, perhaps by the hand of someone else and still hold tight to who we are and what we believe. If that path is not leading to a place we like, or the view is not what we want to see along the way, we can always come back to where we started or take another path that leads back to where we want to be. To me that doesn't necessarily mean we have to unconditionally accept the path that is not for us. What it means is that we walked it and that we attempted to do so in another's shoes. It could very well mean that the path was not for us but it does give us another perspective. Perhaps even some common ground with the person who invited us to walk.
What I hold as an ideal for myself is not always how I manage to behave. I try. I try so hard. Mostly I fail, as I consider myself much more of a student than a teacher or sage. When I see how very far I have to go, I feel infantile. It does not stop me from attempting those few first steps. When I read something like the post by OMO, I feel a sense of wanting to try even harder. That is why I look up to her so much.
Paths not walked, when we are invited to do so, are a type of confinement. I choose to walk the paths I'm invited to walk upon. There are bridges, many bridges, that I want so badly to cross and have no idea how. I want to learn how. Everywhere I turn there are walls. We can either curl up and accept our confinement or we can paint a picture, write a poem or compose a song. Others then can see what we have to say. If we're lucky, we can be invited to tear down the wall - together - when we can see what each of us have to say and where it may lead us.
One More Option: thank you for being my teacher. Yours in Peace, Pagan Sphinx
For my National Poetry Month posts, I've decided that I want to focus on the work of women poets. Those who were and are considred "half cracked" are particular favorites. Half-cracked women poets are witches, bitches, feminists and madwomen. I say, thank god for us who partake of their intimacy, madness and sorcery.
Others, like Sharon Olds, tell their own truths about the body, sex, violence, death and family in stark language that is feared and criticized, I believe, because of their gender.
Here is Sharon Olds from her collection The Dead And The Living. Some critics of Olds have referred to her work as "pornographic", so be warned.
The Issues
(Rhodesia 1978)
Just don't tell me about the issues.
I can see the pale spider-belly head of the
newborn who lies on the lawn, the web of
veins at the surface of her scalp, her skin
grey and gleaming, the clean line of the
bayonet down the center of her chest.
I see her mother's face, beaten and
beaten into the shape of a plant,
a cactus with grey spines and broad
dark maroon blooms.
I see her arm stretched out across her baby,
wrist resting, heavily, still, across the
tiny ribs.
Don't speak to me about
politics. I've got eyes, man.
Also from The Gold Cell
Still Life
I lie on my back after making love, breasts white in shallow curves like the lids of soup dishes, nipples shiny as berries, speckled and immutable. My legs lie down there somewhere in the bed like those great silver fish drooping over the edge of the table Scene of destruction, scene of perfect peace, sex bright and calm and luminous as the scarlet and blue dead pheasant all maroon neck feathers, and deep body wounds, and on the center of my forehead a drop of water round and opalescent, and in it the self-portrait of the artist, upside down, naked, holding your brushes dripping like torches with light.
"When the Amherst sphinx styled herself a pagan, she meant she didn’t believe in the biblical God. What sort of deity, if any, she did believe in is hard to pinpoint." -- Gary Sloan, "Emily Dickinson: Pagan Sphinx,"
I believe that the images and writing posted here fall under the "fair use" section of the U.S. copyright law http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107, as they are intended for educational purposes and are not in a medium that is of commercial nature.
