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Saturday

May042013

Surrealist Café: Sensual Surprise

05.4.2013

Last week we asked friends around the world to "Send us a paragraph or a poem or a photo or a drawing of absolutely anything sensual—food, love, beauty, dance—that you experience, observe, dream or imagine that takes you by surprise."

This week, from France, from Switzerland, from Vietnam, from Norway, from Washington, California, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Ohio, from around the world, your responses. Thank you for playing with Paris Play. (All texts and images (c) 2013 by the various artists.)

Cassandra Lane: Excerpt from her manuscript, Seed of Strange Fruit

Our obsession with food eventually moved to Jay’s kitchen. A trained chef and winemaker, he sautéed scallops in the finest of butters and wrapped their plump bodies in caramelized onions. Placing his creations strategically on stylish plates, he drizzled a creamy red wine balsamic sauce across the scallops and the saucers—a dazzle of color. “Let there be light,” he joked. We placed each scallop whole into our mouths, where spices awakened my taste buds and my flesh.

Chilled glasses of white wine—always sweet, despite that Jay preferred red— refreshed our palates.

He drove me to wine country, fingered grapes while waxing poetically about their complexity, and introduced me to his winemaker friends, who offered me sip after sip of reds and whites. At a cottage restaurant, we shared a goat cheese soufflé and port-glazed figs, and I told Jay about my fascination with figs, rooted in the fig trees that grew in my childhood backyard. In its raw state, the purple-black skin is the sweetest part of the ripe fig. When you peel away the outer layer, you’re left with the milder, milk-white surface underneath. Not as sweet, but pliable and swollen, a lactating breast. One gentle nip releases its cool red ovaries, and here is where the fig’s sweetness returns, trailing the tongue.

I was drunk on our love. We were bound, Jay said, by a soul connection most people would go to their graves not knowing. We reeled each other in with our words—whispered words, written words. In emails and letters, Jay poured words into me that seemed as whole and fresh as the juice of a mango. I would read them out loud, holding the syllables in my mouth, believing them with my entire being. Somehow, I had forgotten that everything is skewed in the first stages of romance. Add to that an illicit love affair, and the sparks of distortion turn to flames. Reading astrological charts and Sabian symbols, I tried to confirm that this man was my soul mate, that we had not—could not have—destroyed our lives for naught.

At least, I could not have.

Nancy Zafris

I doubt you'll find a more sensual or appetizing food photo than this -- Ohio State Forest deep in France...

Scott MacFarlane: Excerpt from novel-in-progress

Maybe my malaise went far deeper than this current contaminated mess. Hell, I didn’t understand my own chronic alienation, except that now, without a doubt, the old model was badly cracked. Even the morning wind through the firs sounded weary to my ears, and the late August sun burned dry from above the Cascade Range to the east––a deep red ball shining through a pallor of dark gray inversion. The remains of Vancouver and Seattle still smoldered. The murk settled over the Skagit Valley like an omnipresent reminder of collective doom.

“As fine she’s looked all year,” I heard Uncle Harley say in his smoker’s voice when he turned the Sheriff’s attention away from his barn and toward the river.

“Are you talking about Signe or the Skagit?” Bucky asked, with his eyes downhill.

“The river,” said Uncle Harley.

I continued unloading boxes while the two men in their 60s watched my mother on the sand bar step from her violet, silk kimono and into the cold, slow eddy in the small slough where it entered the outermost bend of the Skagit. All but my mother’s white bun of hair submerged as she followed her daily, ritual meditation. Hers was a cold water baptism that I had observed for decades whenever the river turned clear––summer, autumn, winter, or spring. It was August, so she remained in the river for minutes instead of seconds. I remembered how Derek and I, as naked lads, used to join her in the ritual.

“Do you think she minds us watching?” Bucky asked my uncle, shifting uneasily from foot-to-foot when Signe emerged from the river.

Droplets glistened on her long naked body like morning dew. She closed her eyes, slowly stretching and lifting her arms away from her side. She faced the sun and seemed to bow. I couldn’t tell if her expression was happy or sad, but she looked centered, almost serene, when a slight smile curled at the corners of her mouth.

When her eyes opened, I wondered if she only pretended not to notice the men who watched her bend, then slip so smoothly into her kimono. Thinking of my mom as still flirtatious bothered me more than her lithe and natural nakedness that had always been commonplace during our sporadic sunny days here in Fish Town.

Mary Duncan: Pillow Gifts

On her wedding night, a virgin bride found a beautifully wrapped small gift on her pillow. She gently took off the gold ribbon and unfolded the soft, silk gold cloth. She laid the box on her lap and let it nestle in the soft folds of her white embroidered gown.

Her groom, dressed in a luxurious blue robe, sat quietly on the side of the bed.

As he touched her hand, he said, “Please open it.”

Perhaps she expected a piece of jewelry or a small ornament for her hair.

She hesitated and then did as she was told.

A slight gasp, a blush. Inside the box was a small, ivory, two-inch hand-carved figure, showing a man and a woman entwined. The bride and groom had barely touched until this moment.

The gift of the netsuke (net-su-ke) or (net-ski) was the beginning of her sexual education and could have occurred in Japan in the 1600’s, long before The Joy of Sex was written. In China and Japan, gifts of erotic illustrations and netsukes, were how wealthy families educated young brides.

Not all netsukes are erotic. Animals, people and abstract objects are also highly prized. Japanese men used them to tie their sashes and used them as toggles on small sacks to carry their money and tobacco.

Eventually the netsukes fell out of favor because their sexual positions became too tangled, complex or controversial. When animals and multiple partners were introduced into the delicate erotic carvings, they were temporarily banned.

Today these intricately carved, erotic netsukes are collected and shown in galleries and museums. They are made from ivory, bone, wood, amber and whale's tooth. In modern times, a combination of resin and ivory dust is also used. Be careful that your gift doesn’t encourage the killing of elephants for their ivory tusks.

Prices vary depending on the age, material used, the artist and origin of the netsuke. Before purchasing or investing, talk with an expert and do your homework. Newer ones are on the market and are far less valuable than those from the 1800’s and earlier.

Netsukes can be the perfect gift for a lover, male or female. Surprise the special person in your life with a gift on their pillow. Hopefully, you’ll both be pleased with the results.

Suki Edwards: Yang of Sensuality

Gayle Brandeis: Flora

I've always liked the term
"lily-livered." I know it means
cowardly, but this is how
I see it: the liver, sleek
and wine-colored, bursts forth
with lilies; petals drift
and ride the streams of blood.
Think of it: the body
opens into flower, turns orchid-
spleened, jasmine-lunged, breath
tropical, humid with scent.
Poppies bloom between the legs,
wisteria vines wind
up the spine, each bone filled
with pollen and sweet nectar. The heart
is a rose, of course, plushly
blossomed, and inside the skull,
with each new thought,
a tulip unfurls
in the brain.

Jane Kitchell: Red Bird Woman

Eric Schafer: Excerpt from his short story "Married," from his collection The Wind Took It Away: Stories of Viet Nam

I have always loved Miền Tây, the Mekong Delta, one of the loveliest places on Earth. Blue rivers, sometimes mocha with rich silt brought all the way from Tibet; gold-green rice fields; high, clear skies that are almost green with the intense reflection of the rice fields at the start of the day and turn reddish cream at sunset; golden brown rice drying on the roads and green-pink thanh long fruit growing everywhere; hundreds of thousands of coconut trees; red-dusty roads, women wearing nón lá and plaid shirts, gracefully pedaling bicycles; schoolgirls in white áo dài with black trousers, little children running, laughing, shouting back and forth along the side of the road; the scent of fresh air and sweet fruit; the red clay earth running into the rough green grass...

Bayu Laprade

Ren Powell: Sensual Surprise (Dissonant Seduction)

We are taxiing on the runway now. I’m flying to Oslo to swear that I no longer want to be an American citizen.

For it to be real, I have to say it out loud. And someone has to hear.

There is nothing supernatural about oaths and prayers and curses. They are waves in the physical world. They move us, just as the sea moves the shore: imperceptibly and absolutely. Events as solid, as physical, as the moment of held breath before a kiss.

I swear.

There is a beauty in physical ease: dance, the smooth gesture of a master carpenter’s hand, the whispered words of a lover that ride the breath - measured carefully and given over. With ease.

Language is the core of identity. The physical world clings to itself.

The juxtaposition of diphthongs and fricatives reveal everything. It is an unavoidable intimacy of push, of pulse.

And I will never pass as Norwegian, regardless of my appearance or papers. The second generation Somalian, whose broad vowel æ resonates without an edge, proves that the visual is trumped by the sensual. Appearances deceive, but the breath can not.

There are so many vowels I cannot sing. Cannot measure.

And though these sounds I make are not beautiful in themselves, they gesture toward something - toward the kind of beauty that is evident in a dissonant chord: the charm of an accent. A necessary contrast, a drama –

May the waves of my breath, and the surrounding silence, penetrate your chest cavity and finger the hollowness there. May I make you aware of the disruption of molecules – which is heat, after all.

Rachel Brown

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore: Cobalt Blue

Cobalt blue! Whose
very name alone would
make me a believer, but whose
color in transparent glass
against light from a window

lifts the mind to a fantasy of
deep darkness, of
sea-depths, undersides of
sunken hulls, treasure,
deepsea tropical caverns,
night. But

night with a holy radiance,
cloisters, Mediterranean
monasteries, Greek
bottles on high walls overlooking
the brighter blue sea --

cobalt blue glass!

Shadowy translucence!

Sexual celestial!

During the day:
night!

Nice Art One

Diane Sherry Case

The first spot of sunlight after my sister's death fell on the peach tree outside my front door. I had not perceived life in color for months. And suddenly there was my favorite fruit, abundant, as many peaches as I could eat. My favorite hues of sunset and the texture of velvet. I sat on my porch and let the sticky juice run down my chin and mingle with tears of grief. I made primal sounds like a famished baby and devoured one luscious peach after another, amazed, simply amazed that life goes on, life goes on.

Nice Art Two

Bruce Moody: With Elephants

With elephants everything
volumes
down.

A cascade of cliff,
on four limber pillars.

A fog of stone
always slowly
moving west.

A strolling Niagara.

Wearing a wardrobe
of loose-fitting determination,
she looms
her great sweet
daunt.

You have felt their stone-tough,
bristly,
sensitive
proboscis.

It snouts around like the foot of a snail.
until it clamps the morsel of crackerjack,
which it,
like an undersea thing,
daintily,
and confidently
and insouciantly
and speedily
imparts
into its heart-shaped maw.

Bad for the tusks?

Well, elephant dentists and nutritionists say
Elephants must eat
for their health and satisfaction,
every day,
of popcorn,
a silo.

So who am I to lecture an elephant –
vegan as she is –
about weight-loss?

Elephants remember
to diet on whole savannahs.
And toss their mighty heads about,
making gales with their ears

and, with their Cyrano noses,
announce ––

Triumphals!

Nice Art Three

Rachel Dacus

Nissa speaks in kisses.

A dog’s mouth isn’t made for English,

so she sounds her vowels with swipes

of tongue – that best pink instrument.

She covers the face, the lips

from which my voice emerges

and patiently investigates

the curves, tasting the salt

of meaning behind my ear,

pressing on the place

that looses my giggles,

which I am sure she knows

as her real name.

Nice Art Four

Kaaren Kitchell & Richard Beban |

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Paris Life

Friday

Feb152013

The Youngest Established Permanent Floating Art Museum in Paris

02.15.2013

The clock is ticking on one of Paris' newest contemporary art museums.

No, not the big clock on the face of Musée D'Orsay, the former train station turned high art Mecca in Paris' trés chic, Seine-hugging seventh arrondissement.

The museum to which we're referring is Le Bloc, waaaay out in the non-trendy nineteenth, accessible by a tiny Metro spur line, and the clock is the administrative clock that began ticking Wednesday, when the museum's founders received a summons asking them to leave the seven-story, 7,000 square meter former office building they've occupied since early November.

Okay, Le Bloc is not technically a museum, it's a squat, and the artists/organizers are following a grand tradition of artists that goes back at least as far as Pablo Picasso's Montmartre Bateau-Lavoirs--find a rent-free accommodation for your studio/living space, and use your money for your art and food.

Squatting is simple. Find an empty building (the Le Bloc folks Googled to find theirs), move in, invite friends, and stay for 48 hours, after which, according to French law, you cannot be forcibly evicted. The owner must then take you to Paris Administrative Court and get a ruling against you, an administrative process that could take months, stretching into years. In France, it's illegal to evict anyone in the winter.

Before the legal hammer falls, start working to prove that you're an improvement over having an empty building in the neighborhood. This means providing public spaces for social services, community events, artists' studios, or affordable housing to satisfy an overwhelming demand in an expensive city of 2.5 million people where up to eight percent of residences are nonetheless vacant at any one time.

It's a long shot (and people squat for different reasons, not just because they're artists), but some of the more famous artists' buildings in Paris, like the 200-occupant Les Frigos, and 59 rue du Rivoli, which houses thirty artists amid the posh neighborhood clothing stores, are examples of successful conversions from squats to legal spots. The City of Paris paid $12.5 million dollars in 2006 to buy and refurbish 59 Rivoli, for example, and reopened it in 2009. Artists can pay as little as one euro a day rent.

More squats disappear than get embraced by the city, but artists are born to play the odds; it's hard to imagine a more insecure profession. Pile on squatting, which often means living with no hot water, heat, light, and other amenities, and this life looks like a game for the young, with supple bones and thick pelts. Most of the squatters we know are young, or at least under forty.

Le Bloc is seven stories tall, with four additional floors underground, and incorporates an old parking garage. On February 9, we were given a guided tour of all eleven floors, save for the roof, because the person entrusted with that key was elsewhere. Each of the aboveground floors has at least a dozen small offices/studios that are now all occupied by about 180 working artists, and common rooms that are decorated spaces.

Our guide, who is one of the squat organizers, told us he prefers working artists who will be in their offices daily, rather than offering space to more established artists who might only show up once a week or so. While art is often a solitary undertaking, artists are also asked to participate in community, and help run the place.

The four underground floors, and the circular ramps and old parking spaces, are a new contemporary art museum, a venue close in spirit to Nathan Detroit's underground craps parlor ("Guys and Dolls," of course). Amid dozens of old tipped-over metal bookcases, with the contents of cardboard boxes--paper forms from the health office that was the former tenant--strewn about, and in rooms with standing water a few inches deep, art is flourishing on the walls. Various artists and crews are creating murals and tags that may never survive past this present temporary occupation, but the symphony of color and spray art technique is worth the visit while it's there.