i felt it was time to play. most of my thoughts, time and energy had gone into creative effort. and this restriction of the love drive, the headshrinkers will tell you, is the greatest urge one really has. when one sublimates the sex drive into creative work, it puts a person in high gear, mentally. i admit it. but it is against my nature to bottle up the biological plans of pleasure for any length of time. i hope i don't sound as if i have discovered the secret salve that soothes the universe, but i do want to add my small footnote on the subject.
- mae west
this past week has been all about the idea of pleasure. scripts & books come into my life at interesting times in my life...when i need to learn something from them or have an aspect of my personality or shadow personality illuminated. funny that this week i worked on a script in ela's "directing actors" class by a wonderful writer named wendy sax. the scene was about two 50-something yr olds who meet and are attracted to each other, but are also guarded because they've been down the road of love and been burned by either illness then death or heartbreak and abandonment...the inevitables of life. the two go through the initial push & pull of when you first meet a new love interest. the man hasn't had the experience of pleasure in ages, and the woman challenges herself to see if she can get him to feel any sort of pleasure. she succeeds. by the end of the scene, they decide to take a chance on each other and once again, the hope of love.
wendy gifted me with a book called "mama gena's school of womanly arts" which is all about a woman finding & creating her own pleasure. not waiting for the perfect time, location, or man to swoop in with this delectable delight. i'm craving more pleasure and fun in my life but between financial and work (hallelujah!) obligations, i'm usually left with sore pinkie toes, a checklist of things to accomplish, and exhaustion that begs me to rest my head on my pillow for 30 mins which turns into deep slumber. pleasure hasn't seemed to make it's way high on the list...well up until this weekend that is. according to mama gena (the purveyor of pleasure in the book), "the path to pleasure...begins with a decision, a simple decision that each of us must make: we merely must acknowledge that what we have is good now. not 'life will be good, if only...' not ' life would have been good, except...' no....it is good now." alot of my friends are traveling and bbq'ing this holiday weekend. i'll be working, but that doesn't mean i can't create a little pleasure for myself. decision made.
let me know in the comments section how you plan to create pleasure for yourself this memorial day weekend...
*source: mama gena's school of womanly arts, by regena thomashauer
*source: mama gena's school of womanly arts, by regena thomashauer
.JPG)