Don't you worry 'bout the wicked

Anais Nin, the erotic, and the opposite of self betrayal

me, twelve years ago, looking for bodies and souls to rub with

A woman rooted in her aliveness cannot be controlled, cannot be domesticated, and will not betray herself for approval

-Ailey Jolie (like this idea? see also this legendary essay by Audre Lord. Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power)

HI there,

I’m sure I’ve told you this story before. Maybe more than once. The smelly man on the plane. The chemistry and conversation struck between him, myself and the other man in our row who was  flying to NYC, seeking American citizenship. 

I’m sure I’ve told you how that night, all three of us ended up sleeping upstate at the home of the parents of the smelly man’s, who incidentally turned out to be a nature guide who hadn’t showered in days. How I was so fresh from my divorce that everything was new, volatile, magic, and so tottery between grief + life, I was trembling all the time. 

 

It was on this night, that smelly man’s mother reverently handed me a thick book. The look in her eyes held me still, as if she sensed an importance about me that I didn’t quite believe about myself, but secretly hoped was true. 

 I don’t remember what was in the book, I only remember this quote on page one:

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

-Anais Nin

I read that quote and suddenly everything I’d been holding inside around these strangers came flooding out in soggy tears. Sweet relief. Sweet confirmation. Those simple words wholly validated why I left my marriage. They gave my constant trembling meaning and purpose.

I now suspect the book was one of Nin’s famous diaries. Maybe several of them since the book was so thick. Diaries I am only getting around to reading now, twelve years later. 

Why didn’t I read the diaries before? Because I am wild. But she was even wilder. More experimental. More Taboo. Without children. Willing to surrender —-or perhaps incapable of stopping herself from giving in completely - to chaos and her own mythology.

For twelve years I’ve feared the erotic spark at Anais Nin’s center would meet my own and ignite into a fire I would never be able to contain again. 

Although I’ve always been wary of artists romanticizing their drama, suffering and amorality, I’m also…..one of them. A goddamn, tragic romantic. Hungry to be as alive as possible. Pressing at every edge in the name of expanding consciousness. Contending with my narcissistic shadow. A believer in something beyond this dualistic, dogmatic world that tries to trap us endlessly in its puritanical binaries.

Its only now, at 42 when I’ve met myself at my own bottom more than enough times to trust what I’m truly made of, that I expose myself to Anais Nin’s sparkly, pioneering, kind and duplicitous erotic influence.

Which is all to say: I’m finally reading her unexpurgated diaries and…..Holy Shit. 

The INTIMACY.

The POETRY.

The FATALLISM.

The never ending DRAMA triangle (victim + rescuer + persecutor).

The non-cleansed SELFISHNESS.

The •non-pathogized infatuation with and pursuit of so many of our subconscious MONSTROSITIES. 

Reading the diaries is like crack to me, if you want the truth.

Even as I tire of the narcissism unleashed, the pained children hiding in grown up bodies bumbling around in their privilege and scandal (I can’t decide if I want to tell them to take a nap or grow up) —I confess, I delight in equal measure. 

I allow myself to be mesmerized by the full surrender to chaos. I allow myself to feel refreshed by pages where emotionality reigns supreme, mostly untouched by all our modern psychobabble - despite Nin seeing an analyst, who, yes – she eventually seduces. 

I’ve never been able to get into reality TV, not even a little, but these diaries may be the closest I’ll  ever come. 

I am able to forgive it all because I am interested in the lineage of women claiming their desire. 

I am interested in desire as a path to reclaiming sovereignty over one’s body. 

I am interested in the foremothers of the river that is eroticism as life force itself. 

I am interested in the dreamers, however much parodies of themselves they may seem to my modern sensibilities.

I am interested in how the  inner world  creates  the outer reality. As Andrew Bird sings in one of my favorite songs, I’m putting my weight behind the dancer. In this world where madness is the news, a coyote is our president and homes turn out to be battlefields, I’m trying to trace how we got here–I’m trying to find the life, or maybe the heart at the center. 

We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance. The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, andleads us to accept many facets of our oppression as women.

-Audre Lorde. Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

I believe returning to that heart has to do with returning to the body. 

I believe  that sensual desire is one path of many one can take to do so. 

I know its the one I took. I know it certainly didn’t take me to where I thought I was going. 

“The erotic is not just about sex. It is about how fully we inhabit our skin. How breath halts at beauty, how music moves us, how we ache for what we cannot yet name.” Ailey Jolie

This morning I sat down and made a list of every erotic adventure I intend  to include in the manuscript I’m working on. I took myself through brave, frequently heartbreaking, more dangerous than I remember it being at the time (uneasy laugh), lusty inner landscapes of memory. 

There are so many wild stories to tell. So many layers I’m excited to unravel. Years of feeling  numb, sex based hail mary’s, only to discover a different kind of numbness pointing me always toward true and truer love, - raw and more raw self. 

The last few mornings I’ve woken up with fear clenching my heart.  More accurate to say, the fear woke me up, and not exactly in the morning, but more like 3:30am. When this happens, my mind spirals to everything happening in the world. Fear whispers the million and one reasons I should give up. Fear places this odd force field on top of my body – its like gravity, but so, so much heavier. I’ve never known how to describe it except to call it anti-life. It wants to freeze me in place. It wants to trap me in my mind where I am easy to control. I speak back to the fear, the way I have all my life, my voice wiser than its ever been at 42, though it doesn’t necessarily feel stronger.

“Thank you, but no.” I say. 

“I do not have to listen to you. You may feel heavier than ever but this soul, in its infinity, is light.”

Then I lazily meditate. Then I summon all my will power to move my achy body at the pace of love, in the rhythms of humor and belief. 

Finally writing the whole story of my sexual awakening is so much more than the fun it is to talk about sex. Its using what I have, what I’ve lived and what I’ve learned to claim life. Its tracing  creation to its primordial expression. My hope is that my story connects with you in a way that returns you back to yourself and your power and helps cut through the anti-life illusion.

 

So thank you, Anais Nin. 

Thanks for not staying tight in that bud. 

I haven’t—more importantly — I won’t either,

Yan