sex and thinking!

I was invited to participate in a threesome the other day. I don't think it was a serious invitation: as two young men got out of their car one of them grinned at me and said, "Will you come with us and let us massage you?" There was a world of suggestion in his grin and I smiled back at him as I declined their invitation.

It made me start thinking about sex. Ive never truly understood the concept of sex - why we determinedly combine affection with the means of reproduction. People talk about the need to reproduce and how in lower primates and animals there is no 'love' just a need to procreate.

Animals don't rationalise a need to procreate - they feel lust and act on it!

sex and monogamy also entrances me. Again we entangle two disparate actions. Firstly, the need to know parents. Well, paternity actually, mothers are rarely confused about their own maternality and secondly enduring love. So sexual exclusivity becomes tangled with enduring love and we have many problems.

I personally believe humans are designed to have group sex. We are group oriented, we eat together and we used to defaecate together. I believe we used to do this because the smell of shit exposes the health or lack of it in the individual and in small groups health would be vital.

Sex is an olfactory experience and in such small groups the smell and sound of other members having sex would have aroused the group as a entirety.

There could be advantage on this. if women menstruate together they probably are pregnant and bear their children together. This makes guarding and nurturing the group easier than constantly having one or two infants at all times.

Group sex with multiple partners is also good for the construction of babies. The stronger sperm will get the egg!

So my smile to the young man who offered me the opportunity to explore something i never had was heart felt. I'm too old for this now but as they say - we regret what we don't do not what we do!

I make books

because I love them and have always loved them from the moment I understood what they are and what they do.

I love them as artifacts and constructions, I love them as repositories and I love making them from stuff I find.

This book is one of my post-apocalyptal artifacts. It is incredibly fragile and lives in a small box of its own. It is an empty book - I have yet to write the poems it will hold.

I love the process of turning pages - even empty pages - its the ACTUALITY and experience of 'page' that I love in that moment.

I remember having to relearn how to turn pages as I regained the use of the right side of my body. I was determined I WOULD turn pages, WOULD read books again.

The moment when scroll transformed into folio must have been delicious!

post apocalyptal beauty

it's curious that post apocalyptal imagery these days is almost always hideous - we have moved completely into the realm of the dystopia. In all things - if we are as evil and destructive as we are good and creative - maybe PAF's will be similar to what we have now.

For me - as a collage artist and poet/anthropologist I wonder about the use of objects in such a time.

What will become precious if we lose the means to make new stuff. As the stuff in the world decays and disintegrates what will we treasure and how will we store it?
I began making books!

this haiku is for Julianne

magical to find old friends - I'm looking forward to visiting Christchurch again to revisit and relearn an old friend.

I remember a glorious girl with glorious red, red hair and a way of looking at the world I deeply envied.

I wrote this haiku after watching my daughter play in the piles of leaves in the playground after school when she was tiny . The playground was full of these minute creatures swathed in uniforms and aprons far too big - maternal frugality at its most curious!

Haiku for Marion

Small hands in red pockets

scattering winter's leaves

scarlet, floating feathers.

On a roll!

It's been a while since I blogged and I had almost forgotten how much I enjoy it. Its a lot like, and completely unlike, writing in my journal. I've not explored this difference yet - just enjoyed very much the experiencing of it.

Blogging here has also changed the way I write in my journal - I'm less precise and wordy - more cut and stick and play!

This piece is to hold another of my older haiku. I wrote it after my divorce in the deep pain of being left.

Did a year go by

and the Blackbird's song return

while I was crying

a remembered haiku - and a thank you!

I very much love it when people say something on my blog and it reminds me also of the reciprocity of this read/write business!

This I wrote some time ago.

Give me lions' claws

and talons of an eagle

mice are not gentle.

new haiku

I ask myself clearly,

"Why do I want a motley?"

The answer eludes me.

matriarchal cultures

seem so very seductive but I wonder if they would be so very different. The problem we have is the synthesis between patriarchy and commercialisation and commodification - the mix with matriarchy might not be so very different - if the overwhelming function remains the aggregation of money and power. I hesitate to think what a powerful matriarch would be in that situation.

I love the matriarchy of elephants and the idea they talk as they walk and they walk at the pace of the smallest walker.

perhaps that is the fundamental difference between patriarchal and matriarchal leadership.

the patriarch will achieve a set objective and will count and mourn the cost but consider it the price that has to be paid. the matriarch will consider the objective and will ensure everybody gets there.

When my sister died I wrote this poem. It was for her death and mine.

Song for the Triple Goddess

Death, when

you come for me

I'll be waiting.

My sons have taken the cloth from

my loom, folded it neatly

and put it in the basket I wove last

fall.

My favourite skirts,

folded in the other, are scented with

the bay leaves I collected.

My grandson has gifted me

the stick he hasn't finished carving.

It's beauty lies

within the wood still.

My daughters have washed my skin,

perfumed and plaited my hair; flowers tucked in my braid

remind me

winter is still not

quite here.

Death, we can sit awhile and drink together.

There is a brew there in the third basket.

We made it this summer.

Visions and pathways.

I am not lost.

In my hand I have the flower

I gave my love

when, as children,

we looked into each other

and saw who we were

and were to be.

he kept it.

I leave him the laughter and tears

of our life.

I love my bedroom window

I sleep with my windows open summer and winter. I love waking up to clean cold mornings as much as I like the honey drizzle of a summer daybreak.

I can hear the motorway in the distance and I can see the moon from my bed.

My feet face east when I sleep - when I die I will take my first step of my new life into the morning sun. This thought gives me pleasure and comfort.

There is a tawny frog-mouthed owl in the tree beside my bedroom. Her call vibrates through the night - in a register so low it is more felt than heard.

She has babies in that tree and brings them out of their nest to the long stretch of a branch where they waddle up and down watching the garden.

The Road

I went to see this movie last week and was deeply affected by the experience. The movie is almost as sparse as the book - almost as harrowing. The movie form requires a little more explanation than the book and loses something because of this.

Post-apocalyptal fiction fascinates me. I remember Stanley Roach, my literature professor at university as an undergraduate and an incredible woman - telling me every generation had to rewrite Hamlet and also had to place itself at the end of the world to ensure its immortality.

I believe this to be the function of post-apocalyptal fiction - without us there is no future. I'm curious about the savagery of these futures we now envision, although I know we are as savage as we are humane.

I think, for me, this is the passion of The Road - the absolute and unconditional love of a father for his son.

We don't hear much about such a thing in these days - we know about maternal love; we know about the power of the patriarchy but the deep and simple love of a father for his son has been lost and we are less for it.

The closest we get is the pieta created in a photograph after 9/11 when a fireman cradled the body of a man he had pulled from the wreckage.

When I find that image I will add it to this if I may.

I'm also deeply touched by the concept and the imagery of the pieta - as my grandmother said when my mother died and she was destroyed by her loss. "parents just aren't meant to outlive their children."

That pain is implicit in every pieta I have ever seen.

This one is mine - made when I was mourning the destruction of my own self .

wolf woman

This collage made itself for no reason than I held her in my mind!

a new haiku

Was it easier
to love him as a young man
than as your own son?

I am fascinated by Iocasta!!

Haiku

I adore haiku - for me its the construction of metaphor to create meaning. I admire the old Japanese form and have toyed with the possibility of learning archaic Japanese to enjoy it properly.

I have yet to begin this project.

My son says haiku cant be properly written in English and I disagree with this - for me the form itself follows how humans construct and synthesise thought and I don't need to learn Japanese to explore that.

My friend Julianne introduced me to a haiku ((I so want to write an haiku - both seem totally right and totally wrong)) blog and I have been enjoying so very much exploring the images other people create.

I wrote this haiku after I had been to Italy and visited Cuma, where the oracle lived. It is a magical site and it was a magical visit - made more so because I spent my whole time there completely alone. I got to walk down to where the oracle was!

And I wrote this haiku:

At Cuma

I waited alone

to hear the Sybil answer

my unasked question

The beautiful coffee man

I love beautiful men - and by this I mean I love the visuals of beautiful men. I have no need to know them or talk to them - I blatantly objectfy them and enjoy them in private.

Which is not to say I fantasize about them - I don't - I just love the aesthetics of beautiful men.

The man who makes the coffee at the cafe I go to every Sunday is such a man, but he's more than that as well; he makes the second best coffee in Melbourne - Sofia in South Melbourne makes the best, but that's a whole different story.

In the years I've been going to Camberwell Market and getting a coffee to sip slowly as I walk around, the beautiful man and I have developed a friendship. Its a little friendship; he tells me about his kids and asks me about mine - we talk a little about music and dance and the weather - he's a nice person AND he's beautiful.

The Sunday before last I had to stop at the ATM on my way to get coffee and as I did so I noticed a new cafe and so I grabbed a coffee there instead. I felt bad, I felt disloyal and I was strangely pleased when this more expensive coffee was shallow and nasty. It made my treachery feel justly rewarded.

Later on my trip around the market I needed to use the bathroom and so I went back to the beautiful man cafe because their bathroom is clean and always smells of flowers! I tried to sneak in but he saw me and waved as I went through into the stairwell. I sneaked out feeling bad.

Last Sunday, lesson well learned, I went back to get my coffee and was greeted with, "and what exactly happened to you last week, young lady!"

I am no longer young so this complement was a lovely addition to my morning and so much nicer than being called a 'girl' which I so patently no longer am.

he has seen me go up to the bathroom and had made my coffee but I had not returned to collect it - what had happened.

I did the only thing I could: I fessed up and told him the whole ugly story and then I walked into the market sipping the second best coffee in Melbourne!