“If you are not generating as much culture as you are consuming, you are in trouble” Antero Alli
My brain is full. I’ve had a few hours of consecutive free time for the past couple of days. Life always slows down for me around the major Christian/Mainstream/Americana Holidays because so many people are preoccupied with capitalist obligations that they stop making appointments with sexual liberation specialists like myself. What that means for you is that I’ve been able to cruise the internet and find many tasty things for my brain to chew on. Oh and the chewing is very satisfying.
Let’s generate some Aphrodisiacal Culture Together.
First go look at Joanna Frueh,/a>, yes go on, look at her.
She is a brilliant performance artist, academic writer and intentional generatrix of the Body of Love. I accidentally found her book when Kathy McKeever and I ducked into a bookstore in Vancouver, CA when we went up for the Vancouver BC Witchcamp visioning this past October. We had about 20 mn of free time and it was pouring rain. So here on a shelf was the intoxicating title “Monster/Beauty.”
I opened the book and on page 2 I read “ Self-Love comes from aesthetic/erotic attentiveness and many of us are at a loss when it comes to trusting and working with our own aesthetic/erotic capacity in order to know, in soul-in-mind-inseparable-from-body, the beauty of the following complex: self-consciousness, self-pride, self-pleasure, and self love. For how does one live within yet live against a society in which the perfect picture of beauty thrives” I close the book and press it to my chest. I am swooning, I can’t breathe fully.
This book has 319 pages. Chapter 1 is called Aphrodisia and Erotogenesis. There is a whole section called Icons of Pleasure and Chapter 9 Dressing Aphrodite is a luscious 20 pages. I am obsessed with a yearning to know this woman whose embodiment of Aphrodite is intentional and compelling. I now have her book CLAIRVOYANCE (for those in the desert). These books have many photographs of Joanna recreating famous poses of Aphrodite from statues and paintings: Aphrodite Salacia, Rhodian Aphrodite, Aphrodite Knidia names of statues whose poses I have memorized. Images of beauty I have not had anyone to discuss with. Suddenly I am reading the words of someone as steeped in these images and mythologies and narratives as I am. I weep with relief and recognition. I got new flowers for my altar and feel the presence of Aphrodite more strongly when I am alone reading now as well as when I am meditating or speaking with another person over tea. Thank You universe for creating a space where Joanna Frueh could exist. Thank You Joanna for generating your own culture!