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.