Anna refused to die, and so she lives

It’s final. The old version of Courtly Love, He said – RIP.I’m actually not as sad as I thought I would be. Room for improvement is always good.

Deleted the epistolatory fragments. That was just spew I needed to get out of my system first. Now, I’m planning a project of twin pieces. An article (I’m thinking of submitting to Nerve, may be the best place. Names and scenarios will be changed to protect the not-so-innocent, but I know what I want to write about. A meditation on the human condition and the neediness, not for sex but intimacy, which leads us over the textual edge) and a story. They will cross-refer. Can’t let all the data go to waste.

I have other stories to write. I’d love to write about sexuality from a more postcol/orient-based perspective because it is so underrepresented. When we are portrayed, we are often, very often exoticised. Perhaps sometimes it seems the lines are drawn very strongly here, but in fact, even more ambiguities exist. I am a walking ambiguity and testament to that. Writing here is my assertion that even if I do not cross a certain line in reality, I am not denying my inner, sexual self. But there are other lines to be drawn, even then.

My other stories that I should try to complete sometime this century, even if my main writing profile/portfolio takes up most of my time (what little is not dominated by academic pursuits):

(1) Not Without Giovanni! (still doing research for historical inaccuracies)

(2) The Piano Story (interstitial/erotic work which deals w/ my favourite theme, the ambiguities of internet interfaces and eroticism)

(3) Touch (A story that has haunted me for years and which I originally planned to submit to Nerve)

(4) Choli (A nice little academic romp amongst diasporics, looking forward to writing this, someday)

(5) My hybrid story, crossing two cultures. This one had a RL inspiration, a cook in a restaurant I’d been eyeing for years I decided to turn him into something else.

(6) Courtly Love, He Said (I’ve said enough about this loss)

(7) Elementals Quartet (Dare I rewrite this? I miss Water. That was the most acutely erotic piece I’ve ever written. And the most shocking.)

(8) My Library Story. I miss this one the most. Lost it during a computer crash sometime in `98 and it nearly made me weep. That story is the reason why I am writing erotica today. I’ve tried to duplicate it, but can never achieve the precise mixture of emotions, sensate and synaesthetic poetic detail which was in that piece. Perhaps it is because I have not been that unhappy, and I should be glad for that. The mixture of Joyce and classical literature and Yeats and so many others, however, the significances of what happened – well, duplicating this will be 100x harder than reconsitituting Courtly Love, He Said.

And I thought I could give up my erotica portfolio? Ha! Barely scratched the surface.

27 words, instead

I received news from the people at the Storytime listserv that it will be quite hard to track the one possible place the story could be. I’m kicking myself all the way to forever at the loss. It’s my fault, I should have made more backups.

So, it’s past midnight and all I can do is try to write down the words I remember. I memorized it once upon a time, loved reciting it with vengeful pleasure. Now, from 99 words, we have 27. And yet, the story still gets told. So, I’m posting the 27-word MAJOR flasher version of the story first. It may be fun to flesh it out later, a 100 word flasher, and then a full-fledged short story. Here it is.

Courtly Love, he said

(the express edition)

(c)Anna L. Nathan, 2003-2006

Courtly Love, he said. Souls touching, never skin. So I married my fuck-buddy instead. Twenty-five years of heat. My courtly scholar’s in the obits today. Damned Coward.

99 words and more

I’m mourning the loss of Courtly Love, He Said, a story I shared on the ERWA listserv some years back. It was the first, and only piece of flash fiction I ever wrote, and had some special significance for me in what I was trying to achieve within 99 words.

I could re-write it now if I wanted to. I still remember a decent amount of it, but I am afraid it would change too dramatically, the essence of the original “from the womb to the tomb” kind of message I wanted to convey. On the other hand, I will have ample opportunity to change the one line I always wanted to change.

“So I married my fuck buddy instead.”

Which is just ridiculous, actually. Even in my limited worldly experience I know this. Perhaps, 20 years ago it may be different, but not in these millenial times. Then again, the persona was writing this after 25 years of marriage. So perhaps she married her fuck-buddy sometime in the `70s? Perhaps they were both high on something when they got hitched? Perhaps my persona was a flower-child in love with a courtly scholar. Who knows? The possibilities are endless. And now I start wondering if I shouldn’t just turn 99 words into 9 thousand words.

But then I wouldn’t have the succinct edge of the last line. And it wouldn’t be as cool to recite as 99 words.

I have lost other stories as well. I mourn the loss of the Raoul and Aryadnie stories, as well as the Elementals Quartet. I never got around to writing Fire and Earth, but Air and Water took a lot of work and research. Particularly Air, which required me to read up on sky-jumping as well as on homoerotic fiction. My first and only attempt at homoerotica, unfortunately.

My friend and soul-sister (or perhaps soul-mother, would be more accurate), disagreed when I told her I should write these things again only after 20 years or more, when I’m old, married or a mother. I think she’s right. It’s necessary for my sanity right now, in more than one way.

Circle of Stones

Previously published at Eklektika Press

(c) A. L. Nathan

Spiral

Dedicated to my Animus.

(Previously published in Alchemica Erotica’s first and only issue R.I.P.)
nuzzle your way into my
consciousness

i exhale
your presence when leaves fall
upon my face
twigs entwined with
hair as we gape
at branches laced
together directly above
upraised faces.

back and forth
left and right
the wind will
shake me and dawn will break
upon my spine as i worship
your strong

…

no words just interlocking
thoughts like interlaced
undersides of treetops
- vaulted ceiling to witness
palimpsests of thought
so wickedly allusive!

….

air will i breathe as
thighs fall apart and
knees splay in wonder

alone in this verge of eternity
with your breath
almost on my nape.

I savour your feigned
innocence spiced
with thickest carnality
only to reach
- this moment beyond you!

must
…
acknowledge this
power within the spiral
of my soul

…
with the only prayer
i know.

Thrown off the Scent

(c) A. L. Nathan

This was previously featured in one of the ERWA’s seasonal galleries.

Consummation

(c) A.L. Nathan

For Xylia Sylva, muse, friend and sister-soul, who told me to keep writing erotica despite my bashfulness.

(Previously published in Alchemica Erotica’s only issue)

Dancing Between Lines

A column by (c) A. L Nathan ( 2004)

I feel it difficult to separate writing, and literature from the sensual, sexual aspects of human nature because writing is a sensate and intimate act no matter the genre. When I tried to explain this to someone, they automatically assumed that it meant writing one-handedly, which doesn’t sound like a very efficient way of going about it, in my opinion. I prefer to write, both hands on the keyboard, fingers moving at high speed as words pour out of me and elaborate pictures swirl about in my mind. No, for me the act of writing equates the act of creation, something both spiritual and holy, and linked to everything that makes us human. You have to be aware of your senses, and your surroundings, and transcribe it down into words.
As a word-child I have ever felt this pull. The same thrill I have when reading a new book is translated whenever I write a new story. It is a thrill that is almost forbidden, almost sexual. For me, the link between the two is a mixture of spiritual and earthly, sacred and profane. It calls up images of marriage which from an early, traditional upbringing I had seen as something sacred, something linked into the mysterious act of procreation which was a mixture of both love, and creation.

The image of the marriage bed back then, was veiled in shadows and secrets. It represented a place in which in some mysterious act of induction occured; transforming the bride into both wife and mother. It is an image which is recorded in the arcane tomes of Alchemy, and which I refer to in the name of this e-zine. Consider this image against the various discourses masked in online erotica, whole sites and categories dedicated to…”slut wives” and thinly veiled rape fantasies in many bondage and gang-bang type fiction.

It is a splicing of both the “Angel in the House” and the “Monster”, a violent deconstruction and defilement of the Madonna, which has very little to do with sexual liberation and has a lot to do with… well, who knows? I’d like to say a subconscious hate, but the truth is very probably more complicated. This is not to say that I find any literary value in these pieces I’ve read, but it does provoke thought from a discursive angle.

C.G. Jung and various fairytale scholars have touched upon what may have tickled at the back of the minds of many of us, that the interplay between the male/female protagonists of these fairytales touch on something deeper than most of us may have imagined. For me, this isn’t very far away from the picture I cradled: something intimate, personal, and private. Erotica, I posit, can be a celebration of words and the very human condition of being sexual. I do not limit this to heterosexuals alone. These images are also found, once again, in Alchemy.

However, this is not always the case in our society where erotica is stygmatized as being a mere function, much like an auto-erotic spasm or a public latrine. And this is what I often feel when I read some of the less seminal (there’s an irony in some terminologies, yes) works on the internet, that focuses on the fluff, on the more underdeveloped of fantasies which seem adolescent to me.

In fact, before the internet, I had very little idea of what erotica really meant other than my own imaginings and timidly handwritten tableaus, and the words of people like D. H. Lawrence, Anais Nin and yes, writers of various genres: Historical, Romance, Speculative Fiction and Literature. Because I read in various genres, I saw erotica as being a composite of all these, but sexier. And my own fixation on mythic and spiritual themes made me wonder how much more could be told.

But you do not often see these subtleties, these dancing between themes in erotica. Often it seems to be a banquet of extremes, or a choice between this pigeonhole or that. Every now and then, though, I do find myself pleasantly surprised by stories of depth, and angles both mythic and spiritual. But often, on both sides of the fence, these lines are drawn, though they may not have always been separated in ancient cultures. I suppose this `zine is one of the ways in which I am trying to dance between the lines of these extremes, only this time I am inviting others to dance along with me in this masque of words.

And I know there are others out there asking these questions, trying to define the lines in their own ways (and words). Sure, erotica can be nice when it’s just about the thrills, but by adding these nuances, it becomes something better.

In future issues, I shall talk about related themes in this column, dancing between the motifs of sexuality, mythology and yes, alchemy.

Ed: Unfortunately, that was the first, and only issue of Alchemica Erotica. I would love to resuscitate it, someday, but for now, this will suffice.

Posted by A. L. Nathan