“Let’s do that again!”
“The dynamic principle of fantasy is play. Play is also a characteristic of the child and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy, no creative work has yet come to birth.”
—C. G. Jung
We shun pleasure and fun at our peril, especially the value of timeless play. We make time only for certain types of scheduled play—play dates—even as adults: going out for dinner, seeing a show, visiting a museum, attending a barbecue.
What about sitting outside on the grass under the wide shade of an old oak tree, putting hats back on bald acorns that have lost theirs; gazing at reflections on a drop of water; looking down on dark streets glistening with rain, hearing not one car; watching the sun lose its white as it fireworks into colors at day’s end—magentas, mangos, roses, and deep purple reds?
I carry those colors to bed with me as I lay my head on my pillow, and my hand reaches down for my own tight rose, my own fireworks. “Self-pleasure is too much work,” you say—you who find it hard to stay in the pleasure of each stroke, letting each rose petal open slowly.“Stay, stay, don’t rush ahead in your head. Let your pleasure unfold at its own pace.”
Let out the sound of your pleasure as it mounts, the sounds that come from your true voice. A voice and sounds you may never have heard coming from your mouth—musical notes that skyrocket off the treble clef. These sounds underpin the power of your words—words you put together effortlessly with glee, those you repurpose, and those you’ve been searching for your whole life.
You are growing impatient to finish. Stop. Tease yourself. Relax into the moment. Let your climax surprise you like a birthday present you’ve yearned for, but never expected to receive. You are right at the edge of the nowhere place. Now you are tumbling over the waterfall of magenta, mango, rose, and deep purple red, shaking you into that sweet, still place of all done. That was fun! Let’s do that again!
“The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers.The female body has been both territory and machine, virgin wilderness to be exploited and assembly-line turning out of life. We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children (if and as we choose) but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console, and alter human existence—a new relationship to the universe. Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed.
This is where we have to begin.”—Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born, pp. 285-86.
