In the floating world where all things change
Love never changes by promising never to change.
(Geisha song)
During Edo-period Japan (1600-1867), the yujo were the highest class of all courtesans. These sex professionals were trained in the bedroom arts from the time they were young: blossoming into womanhood, mastering the erotic arts, flourishing as a prostitute of a high order. Prostitution during that era of Japan was legal, but carefully licensed. One such ‘red lantern district’ was Shimabara, the Pleasure Quarter of Kyoto. Another was Yoshiwara, the Pleasure District of Edo (Tokyo).
The yujo were not geisha. They were the royalty of prostitutes, the refined artisans of erotica and lovemaking. Seduction was their art form from the way they used their harigata (dildo) to how to pleasure a man (shakuhachi しゃくはち or fellatio). Yujo knew about aphrodisiacs and the exotic practice of kissing (seppun). The Yujo women were “love artists.”
This romantic era of Japan was called Ukiyo
(Japanese: 浮世 “Floating World”)
From the Wikipedia resource, this Renaissance period of art and pleasure described the Edo pleasure district as:
“Yoshiwara, the licensed red-light district of Edo (modern Tokyo), which was the site of many brothels, chashitsu tea houses, and kabuki theaters frequented by Japan’s growing middle class.
People involved in mizu shōbai (水商売) (“the water trade”) would include hōkan (comedians), kabuki (popular theatre of the time), dancers, dandies, rakes, tea-shop girls, Kanō (painters of the official school of painting), courtesans who resided in seirō (green houses) and geisha in their okiya houses.
The courtesans would consist of yujo (women of pleasure/prostitutes), kamuro (young female students), shinzō (senior female students), hashi-jōro (lower-ranking courtesans), kōshi-jōro (high-ranking courtesans just below tayū), tayū (high-ranking courtesans), oiran (“castle-topplers,” named that way for how quickly they could part a daimyō (lord) from his money), yarite (older chaperones for an oiran), and the yobidashi who replaced the tayū when they were priced out of the market.
In addition to courtesans, there were also geisha/geiko, maiko (apprentice geishas), otoko geisha (male geishas), danna (patrons of a geisha), and okasan (geisha teahouse managers). The lines between geisha and courtesans were sharply drawn, however – a geisha was never to be sexually involved with a customer, though there were exceptions.
The term “water trade” (mizu-shobai 水商売) is the “floating world” which is metaphor for floating, drinking, and impermanence. Sex was like water. Water was “yin” and feminine, and, conversely, a man’s sexual energy was “yang” energy. Sex during the Edo-period Ukiyo life was imbued with poetry, art, and dream-like desire. Longing and secrets, mystery and lust.
Waiting anxiously for you
Unable to sleep, but falling into a doze—
Are those words of love
Floating to my pillow,
Or is this too a dream…?
My eyes open and here is my tear-drenched sleeve.
Perhaps it was a sudden rain.
(Geisha song)
Geisha were not permitted to have sexual relations with the yujo’s customers. The term “Geisha” means “Artist” and the art of Geisha was entertainment— dance, shamisen playing, and flirtatious conversation. The yujo were the sexual artists, great lovers, and ladies of pleasure. They were elegant enchantresses of the pillow.
Within the shoji screened worlds of tea houses, brothels, and the theater, geisha and yujo were not the only women of pleasure. There were varying levels of class and status within their own floating worlds— the Shiro (white) Geisha that entertained and flirted, the Joro (whore) Geisha were the tawdry types, and the Machi (town) Geisha were former dancing girls (odoriko). Lower class prostitutes and amateur whores were illegally working the towns outside of pleasure districts.
Even further into darkness were the unmentioned girls and women that came into the world of prostitution without a choice. Girls sold into brothels, not the beautiful sort of life that the yujo and geisha led. The Yoshiwara district alone was home to about 1,750 women in the 18th century.
Geisha embody the extreme feminine allure in Japan, as opposed to the wife’s position in Japanese society. Geisha are witty and elicit fantasies; they intrigue and delight. The wife at home may appreciate the geisha’s art of entertaining her husband, relieving her of such matters. The wife ruled the domestic household and her husband’s finances, raised children, while the geisha entertained, flirted, and enchanted.
Shunga-e paintings were the erotica of the Edo-period, and the artists that created shunga-e were sometimes the same as those who made the famous Ukiyo-e woodblock prints— famous artists of Edo were also the creators of erotic prints and pornographic fantasies.
Artists of the Erotic Shunga-e were also great artists in general. Such as Katsushika Hokusai, who created Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景 Fugaku Sanjūrokkei) and the famous image The Great Wave off Kanagawa (神奈川沖浪裏 Kanagawa Oki Nami Ura).
Hokusai’s erotic art was also made with great talent. Most notably, The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife
(蛸と海女 Tako to ama, Octopus and shell diver).
Making love with you
Is like drinking sea water.
The more I drink
The thirstier I become,
Until nothing can slake my thirst
But to drink the entire sea.
(Marichiko)
(Hokusai ~ Exhausted Lovers)
Romance and courtship in Heian-period Japan, pre-Edo times set in ancient Kyoto (Heian-kyo), painted the landscape for lovers brushing their hearts out in calligraphy into fervent love letters. Poetry was the vehicle of erotic love, longing, passion and desire. Lovemaking etiquette was such that even the ladies of the court and their noblemen were hot for sex and romance, writing poems to pursue, to enchant, and to express their innermost secrets of their hearts.
An excerpt from Lesley Downer’s book, Women of the Pleasure Quarters: The Secret History of Geisha:
“But what made Heian period most extraordinary was the way in which art and the cult of beauty were bound up with love. For more than sexual desire or gut-wrenching passion, love was an art form, an opportunity to put brush to paper, to immortalize the moment in a small literary gem.
Having heard that a certain lady was very beautiful or, even more titillating, had beautiful handwriting, a nobleman would sit down to compose a waka, a thirty-one syllable poem, and brush it, in his finest calligraphy, on delicately hued scented paper. When she received it, the lady would assess the handwriting and color of the paper as well as the wit and appropriateness of the poem before brushing a reply. The nobleman would be waiting with bated breath to see whether her handwriting and poem lived up to expectations.
If the exchange of poems was satisfactory, he would eventually assay a visit. He would creep in at night and immediately, in the pitch darkness, remove his clothes, lift the silken counterpane, lie down on the hard straw mat next to the lady and without further ado consummate the relationship. Slipping away before dawn, he would then brush an eloquent morning-after poem, bewailing the rising of the sun or the crowing of the cock announcing the hour of farewell. The lady in her turn would brush a reply. Thus through poems they communicated their decision as to whether to continue the affair or not.”
Erecting like
The upwards curve of a
Threatening shakuhachi
The shakuhachi is a flute, and ‘shakuhachi curve’ suggests a strong penis. The phallic symbol of the instrument allowed Edo-minded lovers to playfully muse about fellatio. As provocative as blowing a flute was to the lustful minds of Ukiyo era, the flute was used in many woodblocks prints to suggest the oral pleasure. Other slang terms for sex and sexual innuendos were “jade gate” for a woman’s sex and “jade stalk” and “matsutake” (or mushroom) for a man’s penis, and “selling spring” was to suggest selling sex, as the season “Spring” was utilized in poems and the sex trade as a multi-purpose term for sex.
I hold your head tight
Between my thighs and press
Against your mouth and
Float away forever in
An orchid boat
On the River of Heaven.
(Marichiko)
Geisha were not allowed by their very nature to fall in love. Neither were prostitutes. It was the danger of the heart that neither sort could manage. It would mean disaster for their very existence as temptresses. To pretend to love was one thing. To fall in love was another thing entirely. Flirtation and courting was full of sexual desire— the art of seduction was a play, an illusion. So then, what happens when the geisha or the prostitute falls in love?
Historically in such circumstances the geisha and prostitute were ruined, overcome by passion and desire, the longing too great for them to handle while luring and beguiling other men. Suddenly, the art of seduction she used for others is seemingly powerless, as her heart is unable to bear the games she once so artfully played, with her mind lost in reverie for her lover. She becomes overwhelmed by dreams of running away with her beloved. No longer can she play the seductress to the many men that pay her for her attentions. She is consumed by passion and caught in the great tidal pull of life’s mystery: Love.
Love me. At this moment we
Are the happiest
People in the world.
(Marichiko)
And her art and erotic craft is love. Like the saying “live by the sword, die by the sword,” the prostitute and geisha, artists of seduction and flirtation, are the femme fatales, the unattainable feminine, for which men would do anything for, and therefore the power they wield is turned upon them. Longing. Heartache. Waiting.
Night without end. Loneliness.
The wind has driven a maple leaf
Against the shoji. I wait, as in the
old days,
In our secret place, under the
full moon.
The last bell crickets sing.
I found your old love letters,
Full of poems you never published.
Did it matter?
They were only for me.
(Marichiko)
In this world
love has no color—
yet how deeply
my body
is stained by yours.
(Izumi Shikibu)
There are many stories about geisha and prostitutes falling in love with their customers that are married and cannot change their lives or young and impoverished men that cannot rescue them out of their bondage or position. In such cases, the solution was death. Like Romeo and Juliet, the lovers were doomed to tragedy. Kabuki plays such as Love Suicides at Sonezaki re-enacted the true story of a double suicide in 1703 by the great Japanese dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724) known as the “Shakespeare of Japan.” The story was about a beautiful courtesan Ohatsu that falls in love with handsome Tokubei, who is too poor to buy her out of her position as prostitute. He cannot follow through with his arranged marriage to another, due to his love for Ohatsu. His dowry already granted to him for his arranged marriage is then revoked by his uncle. The story continues and sorrow unfolds as the star-crossed lovers cannot be together.
Black hair
Tangled in a thousand strands
Tangled my hair and
Tangled my tangled memories
Of our long nights of lovemaking.
(Yosano Akiko)
But sometimes, when lovers meet, the erotic desire flames their very souls. Even as a customer pays for sex and affections, whether pretended or not, it enters a realm that is human. It can be a source of inspiration. The nature of sex is union, when two lovers are as one. Regardless of money and position, sex is the essence of life and the mystery of our being alive. If sex and flirtation and the realm of erotic are the prostitute’s trade, then the question is — what does the prostitute do when she herself falls in love? How can she continue being a lover to many men, when she only wants to belong to the one man she loves? Like any other, she feels it ravage her very soul— awakening her, making her feel alive, passionate, and creative. The heart has its own reasons and mysteries. But how can she give her body to other men for money (her livelihood) when her instinct is to be devoted to the one she loves?
Your tongue thrums and moves
Into me, and I become
Hollow and blaze with
Whirling light, like the inside
Of a vast expanding pearl.
(Marichiko)
”To fall in love is to play with fire,” Beautiful Eiko laughed. She had a tumbling mane of silky black hair, porcelain skin, and a mouth that tempted. She had many customers that adored her, dazzled her with gifts and exquisite kimonos. Then she met a man who had nothing but himself to give. He listened to her, understood her. For the first time in her life, she felt alive, inspired by love. But their love affair had to be secret. She was locked within the world of the prostitute’s life. This was unbearable for Eiko. When other men touched her, she felt only her lover’s hands. When other men embraced her, she longed for her lover only. When in the arms of her beloved, he became the only man in her world. She only wanted him, to belong to him, as her love was an all consuming passion, the very fire that awakened her soul and lit her aflame with desire.
No different, really—
a summer moth’s
visible burning
and this body,
transformed by love.
(Izumi Shikibu)
{References used for this article: Downer, Lesley, Women of the Pleasure Quarters: The Secret History of the Geisha, and Dalby, Liza, Geisha}
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(photo from the 1962 film “Lolita”)
“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.” ~Pablo Neruda
It was mid-July in New York City. The subway was crowded, and my aunt and I were squeezed together. No air and the stuffy, awful smell of the crowded subway car. I was wearing my favorite lilac-colored tank top and white shorts. My legs were tanned from the California sunshine, boogie boarding in the ocean, Santa Monica beaches, Hawaiian Tropics suntanning oil, and the scent of coconut. I wore a necklace of pop beads in cherry red. My lips were slick with Bonne Bell “Dr. Pepper” lip gloss, my hair long and brown and blonde from the sun. Men were sitting across from me, in suits, carrying briefcases. Summer, 1983. I had just turned thirteen.
My breasts were swelling like the buds of camellias that show their pale pink petals through the green bud. My arms, long, and legs, long, hair sun-streaked to the middle of my back, blonde feathers nearly platinum. My eyes alive and sparkling, newly opened and poured into my irises, pop bottle of Coca Cola color, fizzing along the city, watching all the men come in and out of the subway. My thighs were sticking to the hard plastic of the seat, sweat and humidity. My thighs, untouched by men’s hands. My thighs, the soft skin of a girl of thirteen. My eyes full of carbonated dreams, of Monet’s pond, of light in the trees, of Debussy’s Clair de Lune. My eyes that slurried along the sidewalks of Manhattan, looking for something, listening to the buildings, taxis, shop signs and restaurant signs, the many sounds and smells of New York City in the summertime.
“Stop it,” nudges my beautiful aunt. Her elbow dug into my side. She is an opera singer, a Tosca, dark brown hair, musky eyes, and olive skin. She looks like a Flamenco dancer, a Spanish beauty, Italian diva. She looks beautiful even though she wears little makeup and never flaunts her looks. She has the same last name as I do, my mother’s sister, the great beauty. She sings Puccini arias, lives in a 5th story walk up in the West 80′s. We take the subway from my art school.
“Stop what?” I ask. She glares at me through the side of her eyes, magnetic slits of feminine knowledge, only a sliver is revealed.
“You know what.”
I pause, uncertain. My belly drops inside like a pendulum falling from the cogs and rhythms of the inner workings, and, with the face of a clock, I ask again, “Stop what?” But, time continues, and I’m not stopping. I was staring at the man across from me in the subway, giving him a sly smile, a Mona Lisa smile. My lips were barely turned upwards with their glossy pout. My eyes, my Coca Cola bubbling eyes, eyes that through generations told fortunes and tales, weaving a magic on their very own, whispering little stories into the man across from me, tempting him to find out what legends the women in my family have created with their tanned gypsy arms, bangles of gold and silver, glimmering and jingling with the sounds of laughter, what the women in my family have done with men like him. I smiled, a long and slippery smile, as my mouth has never tasted a man like him. My mouth had not yet opened to the kiss of a man.
I had written poetry with a calligraphy pen in the apartment while my aunt practiced her Puccini Vissi d’arte and sang as Floria Tosca. We had Zabar’s croissants in white wax paper bags, hard salami, and slices of cheese. My beautiful aunt watched me write and told me there are men in this city who would steal me away. Not to stare at men like that. How I looked at that man on the subway, it was dangerous. She told me she knew I was growing up, and I needed to learn that my body was so beautiful that men would take me and so I had to learn how to walk as if I were in a hurry, look down on the sidewalk, walk fast. My beautiful aunt gave me Rilke’s writings to read and books full of Pablo Neruda’s poetry.
“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” ~Pablo Neruda
I learned how boys liked to feel my body, put their hungry and curious fingers under my skirt, pulling aside my cotton panties, searching for the softest part of my female body, my yearning and budding body, so alive with the hum of cicadas in the August evening. It was summertime along the Mississippi River. The kudzu wrapped around the trees and the musk of cotton oil hung heavy. I was a girl of thirteen.
We moved from sunny California to the Deep South along the winding river that rambled down to the Delta, the mouth of the Gulf. She was a river that I knew well, and I was much like her, wanton and restless, muddy. I had boys touch me and felt their hot breath on my neck, their young pink tongues exploring my ear. Kissing me, in the back of cars in the skating rink parking lot.
My girlfriend showed me how to go ridin’ and cruise with the boys in their daddy’s cars. Oldsmobiles with velour interiors, music on the radio. We ate nachos covered in plastic orange cheese, salty tortilla chips on our fingers. We licked the tips of them and got into the car with the two boys, older, almost eighteen. We made out in the back seat, the boy I liked named after his daddy. He was sweet and Southern, syrupy vowels and tongue running down my neck like the river’s trail. He wrote me love letters and dedicated slow songs at the roller rink. We skated together in the dim light, Luther Vandross love songs and to Heatwave’s Always and Forever.
“…like the breasts of the young girl, so young before the immensity of what is to come.” ~Marguerite Duras
Soon I moved to Memphis and that older boy drove through cotton fields to my home, wrote me love letters, played vinyls on my record player, dedicating songs while kissing me on the couch. Our mouths searched for the shape of each other’s, and his hands traveled along my shoulders and arms and down along my jeans until he discovered how to unbutton and unzip while caressing. Soon we were sneaking off into the car, telling my mother we were going to get some ice cream. Back seat kisses and the radio. Smell of oily night in the South. The heat was thick with steamed up car windows. His hands were underneath my bra, down my panties. Sticky with longing, his pants stayed on. His hardness I never knew, but his fingers were wet with my almost ripe desire.
“I hunger for your sleek laugh and your hands the color of a furious harvest. I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty.” ~ Pablo Neruda
Santa Monica Beach, 1984. I wore a white bikini and nothing else but flip flops and pink toenail polish. I was lean and tan, walking the boardwalk, going to visit an Israeli boy of nineteen that worked in the market. He came out as I stood before the window.
The sun was high and the sand was still in between my toes. I was swimming in the ocean, hair tangled like seaweed, scent of wakame and salt. He wrapped his arms boldly around my waist, pulling me close, kissing me on the mouth. My aunt, my beautiful aunt, walked behind me. She was watching me kiss the Israeli boy. She herself, with so many lovers, so many men that would do anything for my beautiful auntie, she herself knew what she could not stop. She could not stop me from kissing boys on the boardwalk, wearing only a small amount of fabric strung together. I was smiling, happy. He was holding my hand, and, forgetting my aunt was with me, I ran with him, down to the sand. We walked to the water, kissed hungrily, tasted each other’s mouths like tasting open papayas in the sun, with the juice of pleasure on our lips, we laughed and kissed. It was a moment of girlhood into womanhood. You could smell my blossoming with your eyes.
“Very early in my life it was too late.” ~ Marguerite Duras
So I let him climb through my window. Scent of gardenia coming from the garden. Crickets and night, warm summer air. June, 1984. I was fourteen. His body is heavy upon mine. He presses into me, and I gasp, clutching his hips. My sex is as soft as fruit, you can’t force it to ripen, he’s almost inside of me, it’s too much. He whispers, “Is it hurting you?” but it’s not pain I’m feeling, just aching, the opening of my body. And I learned to open and offer my body, for lips to taste without hesitation, without pause, just an erect and warm penis sliding inside of me for the first time. I was free. I felt my body realize its true essence that night into dawn and after a hot bath in the early morning light. My body felt different, lighter. It was a woman’s body.
I wore my hair in the same style, but it looked changed. There was something in my eyes that changed, too. The light in them was green-gold and held shadows and stories. The way I looked at men with a sideways smile was something too late to change. It could not be undone. What my aunt saw in my eyes, in the sway of my young hips, was something she knew would come. It would end my childhood and begin my story, and whatever she was afraid of in that change was tidal and dark, something sinewy-like and briny, something mysterious and powerful, something altogether inevitable. Our gypsy smiles and flashing eyes came across the ocean from lands where our ancestors rode horses, drank smoky black tea leaves soaked in boiling water, told lies and stole things that were precious and sold things for more than they were worth. We came from tents and sang out with our hearts. Our hearts that were bigger than the sky and full of tears, hearts of women that drank to laugh at the men that loved them. Hearts of women like me, what we don’t say is the loudest song of our souls.
With a heart of a gypsy, I smile at the men as I walk upon the stage, naked. Slow, slow, hip, hip. Heel, sway, heel, sway. Wearing my smile, giving the men surrounding the stage the glance I gave as a girl on the New York City subway.
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He came through her door
their eyes met the first time.
Their bodies suddenly together
without hesitation.
Embrace. Arms tangled,
holding each other
scent of each other’s skin discovered.
Kiss
It was the kiss of lovers in a film noir
as she stood, weightless, nearly breathless.
But his kiss was real, unlike a fairytale kiss,
or a romance novel kiss.
His kiss, fragile and strong
and full of heaven.
All words washed away,
nothing left but his mouth.
She felt raw and much like a little girl
in his wide arms.
His long arms that enveloped her body,
pulled her near.
He kissed her with the juice of ripe fruits
from the hands of goddesses,
the golden apple tossed into his mouth by Aphrodite,
and she tasted the earth
and the tears of angels on his tongue.
Nothing else existed but his mouth
in that moment of complete surrender.
She had thought she had lovers before him.
She had thought she had kissed a man.
And now that he held her so close,
his lips creating poems, his tongue speaking
another language only her soul can understand.
This kiss brought her back
to remembering who she was.
There in that moment, her desire was bare.
She was naked inside and out.
Her heart, an apple peeled open, her body, ripe fruit.
This moment, she was naked to the universe,
floating from the golden haze of the taste of apple
the golden apple that Aphrodite threw to Adonis
in an offering of love.
His kiss.
If nothing else, that moment.
Everything else she knew,
in the kissing of his mouth,
she tasted.
His kiss: hungry, animal, growling and fiery
His kiss: angelic, shining, ecstatic and light
She wants him to take her with the passion of fires
that burned down forests,
take her with the strength of waves
that sank ships and destroyed sea towns,
the kind of magic that myths are made of.
She wants the orgasmic oblivion of his love
His hands holding her
full of artist’s madness and passion,
His kiss tells her she is whole and because of this kiss
her body swaying sea-tossed in his arms,
she wants the kiss of freedom.
A kiss that awakened her from sleep.
His kiss was the kiss
that broke all spells.
~Butterfly
“You, first parents of the human race, who ruined yourself for an apple, what might you not have done for a truffled turkey?” ~ Brillat-Savarin
“A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible.”~Welsh Proverb
Apples, the fruit of Eve, the golden apple of Aphrodite, the symbol of love and seduction. Snow White was offered a poisoned apple. Red apples, golden apples. A symbol of the breast, female. Adam and Eve were tempted. Forbidden knowledge. Seduction.
Apples and Apple Blossoms are symbolic of love. Eve, the temptress, was the first to seduce with a round, juicy apple. Breasts. Inside the apple, seeds. Mating. Sex. Desire, with all its delicious seduction, is fruitful, its power manifest in fertile mouthfuls. Kisses, tasting of mouths, biting into apples. Love, in all its manifestations, exists within an apple. Cheeks, like apples. Breath of the lover is sweet: “Let thy breasts be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy breath like apples.”
The poet Robert Frost’s symbolic poem, After Apple Picking describes the ‘apple picking’ as metaphor for chasing human desires.
The Song of Songs mentions apples and pomegranates, and apples that refresh one’s love: “Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love” Song of Songs 2:5. To “sustain” or “hold” alludes to a lover’s embrace:
As an apple tree among the trees of the wood,
so is my beloved among young men.
With great delight I sat in his shadow,
and his fruit was sweet to my taste.He brought me to the banqueting house,and his intention towards me was love.Sustain me with raisins,
refresh me with apples;
for I am faint with love.
O that his left hand were under my head,
and that his right hand embraced me!
The Spring Equinox, a sacred passage of time, especially to the Nordic Goddess Iduna, who kept “magical apples” as the Immortal Goddess of Spring. Her husband was the God of Poetry, Bragi. She welcomed the magical moment of her Spring Equinox with birds and apples. The apple represents nature’s rebirth. It reminds us of Aphrodite, and her birth from the sea foam.
Cider was considered magical, used in the orgiastic rites of the goddess. Strong cider is called “The Witches Brew”. And, if so, then… Eve was the “Great Goddess”. Witches, Goddesses, Aphrodite, the origins of Feminine Mysteries and Life, Birth. Pre-monotheism, the “Great Goddess” was the creatrix of the universe. The “Mother-Goddess” originated in Pre-Indo-European neolithic matriarchies.
The apple of love, lust, desire and seduction, a symbol of life and creation, its lore revealing its magical qualities and essence. Greek warriors threw apples to their desired ladies, hence “she was the apple of his eye,” and that apple was much like a engagement ring. As an aphrodisiac, apples are juicy, refreshing after lovemaking. Sweet, full of anti-oxidants, and wonderful temptations in pies and desserts. The simplest and most sensual combination to me is apples dipped in honey. We eat them especially for the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, to bring sweetness into the coming year. I find apples dipped in honey to be a very sensual experience. Perhaps those seductresses of Hebrew folklore used them to tempt their lovers?
PUTTING IN THE SEED (Poem by Robert Frost)
You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed, The sturdy seedling with arched body comes, Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.
I found a Harvard Classical Literature article by A.R. Littlewood, that mentions an essay written in 1899 by Benjamin Oliver Foster titled “Notes on the Symbolism of the Apple in Classical Antiquity” which dilgently traces the apple’s symbolism to Aphrodite.
After reading through the essay by Foster, I noticed through many passages where the “apple” is mentioned as a love token for mortals as well as Gods and Goddesses. The ‘love apple’ was used in Ancient Greek and Roman times, as an advance, a declaration, an engagement offering. Love notes were written upon them as declarations carved into the flesh of the apple. In this article, many ancient Greek passages, left untranslated by Foster, basically coming to the round-about conclusion that yes, the apple is the ancient connection between the ancient rituals of apple tree worship (fertility/fecundity) and the fruit of the tree, the “apple” being the symbolic breast of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love.
Another essay by Anne M. Avakian titled “Three Apples Fell from Heaven” notes the phrase in numerous Armenian, Turkish, and Persian folktales that end with the saying, “Three Apples Fell from the Sky…” and variations on the same theme, its use in place of “Happily Ever After” to end the tale. It use was also to illustrate the attainment of desire.
For more on APPLE LORE, click the APPLE
“Ti kallisti” (“to the fairest” in ancient Greek)
“Tired of bein’ lonely, tired of bein’ blue,
I wished I had some good man, to tell my troubles to
Seem like the whole world’s wrong, since my man’s been gone
I need a little sugar in my bowl,
I need a little hot dog, on my roll
I can stand a bit of lovin’, oh so bad,
I feel so funny, I feel so sad”
~ “I NEED A LITTLE SUGAR IN MY BOWL” BESSIE SMITH 1931
Where to begin? This is a phenomenal read. The stories, personal essays, and confessions of sex, love, sexuality, and all that connect, by women, are real, timeless, and full of life. Real life.
This anthology of “Real Women Writing About Real Sex” is a treasure of experiences and stories by women. These women speak about their lives, They tell us about sex in all its many forms: marriage struggles, love and getting pregnant while abroad in Spain (“A Fucking Miracle” by Elisa Albert), stories about childhood sexuality: caught kissing and playing doctor in the closet (“Peekaboo I See You” by Anne Roiphe) and hilarious motherhood observations, parenting dilemmas, and marital-bed sex (“The Diddler” by J.A.K. Andres). There are internal contradictions, secret erotica publishings and prudish thoughts of a sex novelist (“Prude” by Jean Hanff Korelitz) and love discovered during one-night stands (“Sex With a Stranger” by Susan Cheever). Longing, first time sex, losing virginity, and a bottle of Cointreau (“My Best Friend’s Boyfriend” by Fay Weldon). Take a wild ride with hot sex (“Love Rollercoaster 1975″ by Susie Bright) and fall back into an ex-boyfriend’s arms for a one-night fling in a luxury hotel to indulge before a double mastectomy (“Everything Must Go” by Jennifer Weiner). There are so many touching, moving, and brilliant stories by a myriad of amazing women writers, telling their tales of sex and everything that goes with it. There is also, to our delight, a short, short story by Erica Jong titled “Kiss” about her encounter with “a kiss that moistened oceans, grew the universe, swirled through the cosmos.”
Erica Jong begins in her introduction: “Why are we so fascinated with sex? Probably because such intense feelings are involved—- above all, the loss of control. Anything that causes us to lose control intrigues and enthralls. So sex is both alluring and terrifying.”
Elegantly, poetically, Erica Jong introduces the book by exploring the subject of women writing about sex, her process in handling the emotions of contributors, and her observations on what has changed much, and what has changed little, in the realms of women writing about sex. She comes to a conclusion that “writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.”
Erica Jong, the author: award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist best known for her eight bestselling novels, including the international bestseller Fear of Flying. She is also the author of seven award-winning collections of poetry.
Her contributors, all marvelous real voices of women writers, telling us about their experiences, ranging from fiction to non-fiction. A well-crafted crazy quilt of sexual patches, making up a whole of fabric, many colors and stories of sex. The innocent curiosity of childhood sexuality, losing virginity, sex and illness, pregnancy, urgency of lust, desire, the best sex, the worst sex,— all aspects, facets, and layers of sex and sexuality in the experiences of women.
“Sex is life— no more, no less. As many of these stories demonstrate, it is the life force.” Sex is about being human.
Contributors:
Karen Abbott, Elisa Albert, J.A.K. Andres, Susie Bright, Susan Cheever, Gail Collins, Rosemary Daniell, Eve Ensler, Molly Jong-Fast, Susan Kinsolving, Julie Klam, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Min Jin Lee, Ariel Levy, Margot Magowan, Marisa Acocella Marchetto, Daphne Merkin, Honor Moore, Meghan O’Rourke, Anne Roiphe, Linda Gray Sexton, Liz Smith, Jann Turner, Barbara Victor, Rebecca Walker, Jennifer Weiner, Fay Weldon, Jessica Winter, Erica Jong
**I have worked very hard to find all the links above, but cannot find J. A. K. Andres mentioned anywhere except for Erica Jong’s Sugar in my Bowl mention. Please authors: if you are linked (or unlinked) and need to update me, please contact me at [email protected] or twitter: @butterflydujour
I’m so excited about my mailbox today, because I’ve received a wonderful gift:
SUGAR IN MY BOWL : Real Women Write About Real Sex
I’ve opened the galley up like an excited child that cannot wait— tearing off the wrapper, ripping the taped areas off in my imagination, and delving into the electronic pages. Of course, I must admit that previous to this act of hurriedly scanning the writings of women in this new book, I was scolding my eleven year old son for reading on his laptop under his bed covers. Mommy says turn off the laptop now. It’s like telling your kids not to eat cookies, and then eating them while whisking the cookies away from their hands. Well. I know I’m guilty.
Yesterday, I received the most exciting notification in my Twitter account:
Erica Jong is now following you on Twitter! Really? Erica Jong?
My childhood memory suddenly flashed back to the visual of Jong’s book Fear of Flying which decorated our living room coffee table. I see the book in my mind’s eye, there. My prepubescent body, a young girl— and the book, Fear of Flying, on the coffee table where, on the corner, I used to press my pubic area on, to get that funny tingling feeling that felt so good. I pressed and leaned against the edge of that table, unaware that Fear of Flying was about a woman’s liberation, sex, and full of all the things my own life experience would come to know. Leaning on the edge of the table, staring at the cover of that book. It was stacked there, among other books. I hadn’t read Fear of Flying yet, because I was only seven or so. I had, however, flipped through The Joy of Sex and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, secretly. Can’t remember when exactly, but it was in that same living room, where Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying lay, imprinted in my childhood memory, in the sunny yellow-walled living room, on the coffee table. One day, when practicing piano, I noticed it had moved to the bookshelf. Then I noticed the book in various other places in our house; my mother’s nightstand by her bed, on her pool lounge next to her large tortoiseshell sunglasses, by the reading chair with her glass of chardonnay. A woman’s story. Like lingerie and lipstick, it carried within it, a deeper message to my soul— becoming a woman is more than the surface of a book cover, or lacy fabric, or a slick of color to the lips. It was another world that I was yet to know. Not even Rainier Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet or Kahlil Gibran’s poetry could assuage my longing to know the complexities of {a woman’s} life experience. No, it had to come from the mouths, from the hearts and souls of women writers. Instinctively I knew that as a young girl.
After lecturing my son about the importance of sleep and how reading an actual book in print was better for him than staring at a laptop screen, I shut his bedroom door and scrolled through this book, SUGAR IN MY BOWL, on my own laptop. There is so much rich, wonderful content, I don’t know where to start. Even though I have this galley, I will buy the book in print. I love handling books, the feel of the bound pages. Even the introduction by Erica Jong is marvelous. She begins:
“Why are we so fascinated with sex? Probably because such intense feelings are involved—- above all, the loss of control. Anything that causes us to lose control intrigues and enthralls. So sex is both alluring and terrifying.”
Elegantly, poetically, Erica Jong introduces the book by exploring the subject of women writing about sex, her process in handling the emotions of contributors, and her observations on what has changed much, and what has changed little, in the realms of women writing about sex. She comes to a conclusion that “writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.”
Her contributors, all marvelous real voices of women writers, telling us about their experiences, ranging from fiction to non-fiction. A well-crafted crazy quilt of sexual patches, making up a whole of fabric, many colors and stories of sex. The innocent curiosity of childhood sexuality, losing virginity, sex and illness, pregnancy, urgency of lust, desire, the best sex, the worst sex,— all aspects, facets, and layers of sex and sexuality in the experiences of women.
I cannot wait to read everything. “Sex is life— no more, no less. As many of these stories demonstrate, it is the life force.” Sex is about being human.
SUGAR IN MY BOWL
AUTHOR:
EDITED by ERICA JONG , With Contributions from: KAREN ABBOTT, SUSIE BRIGHT, HONOR MOORE, ELISA ALBERT, SUSAN CHEEVER, GAIL COLLINS, EVE ENSLER, JULIE KLAM, ARIEL LEVY, DAPHNE MERKIN, MEGHAN O’ROURKE, ANNE ROIPHE, LIZ SMITH, REBECCA WALKER, JENNIFER WEINER, FAY WELDON, JESSICA WINTER, MOLLY JONG-FAST, JEAN HANFF KORELITZ,LINDA GRAY SEXTON, ROSEMARY DANIELL, J.A.K. ANDRES, JANN TURNER, BARBARA VICTOR, MARISA ACOCELLA MARCHETTO, SUSAN KINSOLVING, MIN JIN LEE, MARGOT MAGOWAN & ERICA JONG
PUBLISHER: ECCO/Harper Collins
DATE OF RELEASE: June 14, 2011
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