That view...

Some photos of the inlet that the Pacific Ocean flows through where I was working - I have brought work home to do, where I don't have a view like that to distract me.

Scattered Drumbeats...

This will reveal what an incurable romantic I am! I have to admit it was partly motived by a Rumi quote that I wanted to use somewhere; this seemed like a good place. It's also touching on that very strange area of "internet romance" and its expectations, hopes... It's my entry in the Creative Writing Challenge:

A light rapping, knuckle on wood, breaks my solitude. In the dark warmth of the evening, I stop, listen, not expecting anyone, and ignore it. The light but insistent scattered drumbeat on the door tugs at me, continuing until I rise from my notebook, pull my cotton shirt around me. On one side of the door I breath into the soft darkness, unsure; my hand on the handle, I whisper into the crack, “Hello…?”

In the silence of an almost inaudible gasp, I hear indecision, an awaited moment from which one could yet flee, even if what one was looking for has been found, it’s fearful, and holding back for what seems like minutes before the response, “Hello…I, Miriam, I know you weren’t expecting me, I… needed to come, I’m sorry…”

“Who are you?” I whisper into the darkness and silence of the Summer night that spreads itself around the rustlings of moths whirring in the dim porch light, a light that reveals a man, in a soft summer shirt and jeans, standing at the door.

His arms almost tensed, yet awkwardly beside him, his heart full of desire, knowing his need and her recalcitrance, and feeling ashamed and exhilarated to be at her doorstep, looking at her tired and worried face as if it were a vision, “I … had to ...”

On the doorstep of my house, at the threshold of my life, in the night, I found myself wrapped deeply in the loving arms of a man I had never met, but always known. And I whispered to him lines from Rumi in the tightness of our embrace, "The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere, they're in each other all along." We became two sighs in the enveloping darkness, a twin blossom of a moonflower, a double rainbow in the night sky, another hope for the future..

last rites

burn
me to ash
fling
me to dance
my last dance
on the rich earth
sanctify flowers
bright unfolding
caress leaves
with fragments
of bone dust
fly with the wind
scatter my
white residue
light as breath
& illumined love
finally dissolving
into the lake
a dream



©2005 by Brenda Clews, all rights reserved

Writing the Middle-Aged Erotic Body...

This is a piece on the aging erotic body; it comes perhaps out of my difference feminist stance. It is in the tradition of body writing: the writing of the body of the woman. When I did the birth paintings nearly 20 years ago people found the red flowing vaginas of some of those paintings shocking and often uncomfortably averted their gaze at the wall of paintings I had up in the dining room of my house; a decade later those paintings took on new life, were used as journal covers, in art shows, copies often requested, and I am working on a poster of them. This writing is perhaps similar in that, like exploring the sensualities of the hiddenesses of the pregnant body, it explores the sexuality of the aging body. It is honest, open, vulnerable, hopefully sensual and erotic writing, but not pornographic. It is hetero. It is not my intention to offend, or shock, but to show the realism of the beauty of the body. This is the final piece in a small series, beginning with the red flower, an ethics of sexuality and relationships, the woman's gaze of her erotic desire. In Portrait of the Sexuality of a Middle-Aged Woman I want to throw light on her hiddenesses, how she sees herself. There is an element of the rebel, the woman who can be outrageous here too. This writing is a version of a response to a lover who I requested a self portrait naked in a mirror from and who then asked for a portrait in return...

Portrait of the Sexuality of a Middle-Aged Woman

Which sounds so, middle-aged...

She's never taken naked photographs. O, not true, a lover in her 20s did, but they were so faint, it was too dark; and her ex-husband took polaroids a long time ago. But not since then.

Though one night, when she was alone, she did, in the oak cupboard mirror, first seated, naked, only one breast showing, and she didn't like the photo but played with it, re-creating it through various filters that disguised her.

Then she surprised herself. The rebellion of those passing over the proverbial hill? She opened her legs and took a photograph of her vulva. When she displayed the photograph on screen, what she saw was larger than it is usually shown in medical text books. What she saw was beautiful in its own way, the folds within folds, the way her sex spread opulently from front to end. The white creamy remnants glistening. She had taken it after pleasuring herself, just to see what she looked like. Swollen, full, rich. She liked the photograph, felt it was a coming of age recognition of a sexuality she had never really seen before. She hid it on her computer, and then rushed over to delete it when a friend was looking through her photographs, mumbling about a naked photo that embarrassed her.

She'd never intended to keep it. It was not the sort of self portrait that you keep. Not what you'd want your children to find among your effects after you'd passed away. Or anyone else, not even a lover. It was an elaborate cunt, not something she'd ever seen in a Playboy or Penthouse or at any of the online porno sites she'd stumbled on, the ones with cum all over the woman's face and hard, hot cocks still beaming and glistening. When "holes" were shown, they'd be those small slits that the medical text books show.

It didn't make her feel any better, but maybe you had to be older, not tight anymore, to have this gland with its folds and glistenings and outrageous pearly opulences over which you place panties and forget about, or against which you place pads when you are bleeding with your monthly moon.

She's in her 50s. Hard to believe. She's white, Caucasian. She wears a size 8 comfortably, a bit baggy, a size 6 is more fitted. She is about 5'5", weighs somewhere around 125 lbs to 130 lbs. Her hair is long and curly and ash brown but is coming in with much more grey. Her waist isn't bad, but she doesn't know the circumference. She wears a 34C bra size; usually with an under wire for support. Though she loves bras with no under wire for hanging around the house.

She had a 'sex-goddess' body once, flat stomach, rounded breasts. After the birth of her second child, her thighs were left mapped with cellulite, which she accepts gracefully as a remembrance of the bearing of children, but which her husband found most unappealing. She's not comfortable in a bathing suit because of it. Before kids she wore string bikinis, the less fabric the better. Things change when your body is stretched with a child growing within. It's not that she doesn't love her body, she does, just in a private way. She prefers to be seen in clothes, that's all. When she was younger she preferred to be naked. Things change.

And now the little spider veins on the legs, around the feet, the larger ones that are showing on the hands, that's bothersome. But more in the way she thinks it makes others uncomfortable. The tiny veins remind her how the body is like a tree, with tiny branches or capillaries carrying life blood, and it's a beautiful creation no matter how old or what size one is.

Her breasts do sag a little, but she doesn't mind. She still has an awe of her breasts because of the breastmilk that flowed through them so freely once. And because if they're caressed and squeezed gently and sucked on she becomes very aroused and her vulva responds in ways that...

She's slim enough, not skinny, making the signs of aging both less and more pronounced. If she was heavier, her hands wouldn't be so carved with maps of veins. But she can still bend her body with as much flexibility and freedom as she ever remembers. She just can't fall onto the floor on her knees anymore, or even bend her knees for too long without pain. Her eyes are blue, or perhaps grey, with little brown specks around the pupils. Her skin is good now, but she has rosacea, it runs in her family, and has to wear a hat always. The skin on her face is very sensitive to sunlight. She babies her skin. Her teeth, oooh la. That's maybe getting too personal. Talking about vulvas is easier than talking about teeth! Save teeth for another day... Only one scar on the shin. Her skin is soft.

Orgasms are easier than ever. She believes orgasms are very healthy and would like to have at least one every day. She thinks everyone should agree that orgasms are healthy and that everyone should have at least one a day.

The Artist As Model, Or Her Desire In Her Gaze Of His Desire?

Is it erotica? Well, yes, I suppose so...

Of course it's about the body, the erotic body... and whose gaze is whose? And whose subjectivity is being expressed, and who is the object of her desire?

The Artist As Model, Or Her Desire In Her Gaze Of His Desire?

...and I lie back against you, you are caressing me, your arms, your shoulders, your hair, your face, I lean into, am held by, softly, and pulling me onto you, and I sigh gently in ways that you love, and you can feel my increasing desire, tightnesses, and deep blossomings, your breath, your tongue, your fingers on my skin, until I am an instrument in your hands and you are playing intoxicating music for your erotic pleasure, until I am a foaming sea of lavender for you, moaning and gyrating gently, craving your deep holy offering, crescendo of bliss, the air scented, a sweetness of grapes and hyacinths...

On the Ethics of the Love Life of a Single Woman...

(Using a stylus & tablet allows me to create a transparent layer underneath which I can layer other images, though I could have done a better drawing with a pencil... those are real love letters from years ago, and the writing in the border was from a one-time flame...)

Love Letters: On the Ethics of the Love Life of a Single Woman...

Please bear with me while I express this, sum it up, even if only for myself.

My ethical position came finally to this. I would not get involved with a man unless I had an openess to a relationship of forever. I wasn't putting time limits on it. If I thought that I'd maybe never want to see him again after one night, I would resist sleeping with him even if we were making motions towards; if I thought I might like perhaps a few weeks or a few months with someone at most, similarly I would walk away. That might all be fun while it was happening, but what if he fell in love with me, I'd only hurt him. I don't want to knowingly hurt anyone. It's a creed I live my life by, including my love life.

So, only if I could conceive of a forever would I get involved. That seems fair enough. And if he's not in that same space, and is looking at being into me for one night, a few weeks, or a few months, that's the risk I take. That's preferable to my doing it to someone else. The guy I did the "intimate friends" with got terribly hurt. Did that make me a better person? No. It made me a person who knew there was no commitment on my part and even though I told him that and did it anyway I knew there was a risk if he fell in love. And breaking up was hard to do because I became part of all the failures of love in his life. I don't want to go through it again. It wasn't a case of, 'well, we tried & it didn't work,' so much as, 'this was never anything more than a sexual diversion in my life for a short while.' They are two different scenarios. I simply chose not to do the latter any more; I can live without the sex, I can't live with hurting men who I more-or-less use, even if they agree to it.

It's my position, not anyone's else's, nor do I expect anyone else to adhere to my decision for myself based on what I can and can't live with ethically. And it's coincided with aging, so that's helped. And with increasing financial difficulties, that make me far less attractive. Etc.

But, then again, I wonder. A man of the cloth? And I a non-organized religion non-congregation spiritual rebel. And now man who lives nearly a continent away? Is it just that I'm afraid of intimacy? Or that I'm really choosy and the circumstances just happen to be the circumstances and not part of the design?

I hope this isn't too torturedly introspective for you.... I've never actually taken the time to write out my position in this free-wheeling world of free-love before. And it might explain why I'm at your doorstep free of entanglements and baggage. And why you don't need to worry about a thing, either, my dear lover.

***

The Red Flower...

Is this risqué? To post, I mean; no, it isn't, not at all, but, then again, I don't know... even hardworking "equality" feminists can get irate over the moon-time, it makes us different to that "one sex" white-uppermiddleclass-male everyone aspires to (except some of us don't). I'm a difference feminist. But not essentialist. Despite what it may or may not look like here. An embodiment theorist. Make of it what you will...