Florentine

I was briefly a Florentine when I traipsed the streets of Florence, went to a French film festival there and drooled over the Uffizi.

I watched a TV series in Israel (back in '98) called Florentine: I watched without subtitles and enjoyed it nonetheless. I missed a few key details, such as the show was named after a Tel-Aviv neighbourhood.

The soundtrack for the Floretine series is quite something. I haev been listening to it all this time and it's still a joy. My favourite song is track 7, called "We Stand Between Twins" (I think) by Yehudit Ravitz. I am gradually getting around to asking Motorbike Man (El Caballo Blanco) - so NICE I named him TWICE! - to help me work on a translation of the lyrics. As it's something I've been mentally chipping away at for years.

I finished a literary sculpture yesterday. Today I have assembled two thirds of my next literary sculpture. They will not bring on a revolution but they are not dross. I am self-funding my own little arts grant with the remainder of my acorns. The result will be fifteen stories, about boots, erotic rope, house plants, pomello trees, teachers, headcounts on rainy nights, peacocks and opera. Regret, hope, arousal, desire, compromise, memory and experimentation are the loosely heaped themes.

Still to come today, dumplings with Gao Rui, and a second encounter with DYC, the Jewish Brazilian - as initited by ... him!

Floretines might hurt the teeth down the track but the sticky marriage of nuts and chocolate is often irresistable.

Boots Sunday

November's hottest Sunday got even hotter. I indulged in some creative photographic art pursuits with the delectable Mrs Mia Wallis. The boots, sourced from Viviana Creations in Katoomba, are too small to dance or walk comfortably in, but I cannot yet let them go. They are tasseled, charcoal black ankle boots perfect for stripping the willow and swining one's partner round and round with a doe-si-doe. In this image, my Joyce library and Joyce finger-puppet are teamed with La Nouvelle Chaise to sharpen the contrast between fluffy blanco frivolity and dark bootsome bootesquery. A hint of flank adds to the diagnol vectors of white hues, and the spine of Peter Robb's book "M" adds a subtle M-ness to the mise-en-scene.

7 Ks Later

Fires are acrackle over the Barrington tops and Sunday's joggers were on the hop. McFimo and I took up the Sri Chinmoy Challenge in Centennial Park this morning. Our 8am kickoff became 20 past as we farewelled the marathon maniacs, preferring our sensible quarter-marathon. The kilometre countdown signs were welcome sights as we trundled through the undergrowth and sprinted to the water stations. The best part was wearing a bib number (644) and spotting a Naveen Andrews lookalike in our division. McFimo and I have been yoggling for some time now but as a duo. Placing ourselves in the midst of a group of hundreds of healthy people was always going to have a strange effect on our athletic ability. In short, we get the giggles, and this morning we got them badly. At the sound of the starting gun we yelped in hilarity and struggled to maintain decorum. The first few hundred metres were spent in fits of debilitating giggles about the massive group of runners we were now trailing, bent double in gut-clutching laughter. My teacher voice told me, "you two will have to separated if you can't concentrate" and I sobred up somewhat. Still, the feeling of being stoned from sheer idiotic humour inspired by nothing much was insane: McFi called it "abreaction" regardes-voo the red guards of China wailing for Mao or going mental at Roxette concerts.

The only ab reaction I got was painfully cramped tummy muscles from trying to mute our mirth. Somehow we struggled through the first kilometre and returned to planet earth. The course, apart from some creative weaving through Tina Turneresque palm tree shubs was pleasant but dull: we came up with our own version of themed jogging events: literary jogging, with the Alice handing out water cups labelled "Drink me" and Asterix handing over "magic potion" before the race. We fancied the Chariots of Fire chaps egging us on with what ho sally forth banter and Lawrence of Arabia emerging from the dust and sunshine with a checkered headcloth for all and optional horse ride to the finish line.

Jelly is not jam, but it still goes on the shoulder

Let us spend a moment with Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground. He sings thus in "Some Kinda Love".

"Put jelly on your shoulder, 
lie down upon the carpet. 
Between thought and expression, 
There lies a lifetime. 

Put jelly on your shoulder, baby,
let's do what we feel most. 
That from which you recoil, 
but which still makes your eyes moist.

I don't know what it's all about. 
Just put on your red pyjamas and find out." 

Jelly is what we Aussies call Jell-Oh, the gelatin-set transparent hospital food or popular children's dessert. If you were to literally put it on your shoulder, it would slide downwards, perhaps down the front or down the back. I hesitate to suggest that Lou and the gang have given me some ideas, except that  I would not wish to get jelly on my red pyjamas (the cowgirl print pyjama bottoms, it came topless with an eyemask, sadly since lost.)

Just like my friend Kinkcatlady, who has written about her experiences here, I have released my inner switch in the loving arms of my motorbike man. For the vanilla beans reading, and the the jargon-hungry, a switch is some who is both a submissive and Dominant in kinky play and scenarios, who can choose what to be when with different people. Some people do not switch and they remain top or bottom. Switches interchange these roles.

Lou Reed's little ditty which I have sung since the tender age of one's late teens, recurs again and again, and now in honour of having done what one felt most. It is possible to enjoy vanilla sex and huggabye hushikins snuggles for hours on end, I am sure. Somehow kink seems to inspire similar multi-hour marathons just as with a new vanillan paramour: that feeling of there being so much to try and, with switches, for each party to "have a turn". It's the ultimate equality amongst persons fascinated by control, power and giving both up.

There are mere physical differences between kinky and general relationshippy rapports that ensue: it is a matter of deciding who is worthy of you giving up your power to. Most people call that love, when the hole of desire and need gets wider, and object-of-affection shaped. It's the agonising wait of not knowing whether object loves subject as much as vice-versa that grates, and an agony you wouldn't want just anyone putting you through.

Thus, before asking if someone is hot and amazing enough to visit sadistics smacks on your posterior, and have you visit a similar assault with a handy spatula, before asking yourself if someone is literally fit to lick your boots, it helps to let love in as a litmust test and ask:

1) Do I want to be dumped by this person?
2) Do I want to have my text messages ignored for a weekend by this person?
3) Do I want to have my name bandied about as someone clingy by this person who accuses me of ineffectual serenading and subtle stalking?
4) Can I handle a no in any of its dismissive to viscious forms from this person?
5) Could I handle benign but humoured indulgence of my attention from this person?

Follow my logic (please, it won't take long!)

If you answer "yes" to the converse of these questions, obviously it is a lover worth pursuing. But, if the desiree is so fantastic, hot and amazing that you would even answer yes to these above 5 questions, then you know they are someone really worth it and worth, in my admittedly cynical opinion, giving up your power for.

The frustrations I have felt in the past due to actions involving 1 through 5 were reasonably heinous. Most of the time, the persons in question weren't worth the kvetching. It's when they are that makes love a possibility.

Love is just dandy, and I can always pretend to myself that it doesn't involve admitting to need, selfishness and power failures on my part.

One frighteningly admits here in blog and white how it actually took the six months of prodigal return to realise that love is what makes a lover. Slutburgering had its place, and produced fry-ups. Love, it's music made edible, a feast for the inner power-brokers who can put their feet up on the board-room table for extended tiem-out, sit back and lick their sushi fingers.

Ma Nouvelle Chaise

Une chaise que voudrais si parler en Francais. Regardez-vous la (furry stuff) blanc, le dot tall, et les legs sexy. C'est super, no?

Life is a Camemberet

Put down your knitting, the book and broom, come hear the music plaaaaay ... I saw the odd billboard recently for Liza Minelli around town. I thought briefly about how much I enjoy Cabaret on screen.

Today Hosty's (flatmate's) son Grasshopper asked if he could attend some kind of cultural event, "this French thing". I piped up that he would need parental permission if he was off to a camembert-eating competition. The Grasshopper said he would easily win it because "everybody would be like what's a camemberet"?

The child is a natural punster, I tell you.

In other news today, I put too much salt in the cinnamon tea bun. This is rather upsetting as it was the first recipe with yeast I have made since the cinnamon scrolls I made in the kitchen at Chonburi did an impression of an overactive Vesuvius in the oven.

Too much yeast, too much salt: will I ever get a yeasted recipe right? The story ends happily with today's cinnamon bread: Hosty and SIB (Sober Irish Boyfriend) loved it. They said it tasted a little like Irish sodabread. It, the loaf/bun/cake, doesn't taste overly bad, and is really rather nourishing: I found it an excellent means of replacing my salts depleted in an energetic boxing class and my electrolytes happily balanced.