Delta of Venus, Anais Nin

"And you can be Henry Miller, and I'll be, Anais Nin
But this time it'll be even better we'll stay together in the end
Come on darling, let's go back to bed."

Jewel's Pieces of You was my first CD, and still an enduring favourite. I've wanted to read Anais Nin, because of her ringing name, her cameo in my favourite song, and the imminent separation.

Erotica aside, Anais Nin writes with such clarity. Her sentences are precise. Nin speaks of creating a "female sexual language," whatever the stereotypes, her language is scientific, psychologic, more than flourid or sensual. Fetishes are the main subject matter: but there is a plot to the stories that is not merely coincidential to lucid details. Events progress because of someone's sexual desires.

What marked my own maturity this year was the awareness, by hearsay, of people's sex lives. My desire to be a write had for a long time been accompanied by some vague notion that it required a bohemian lifestyle, a familiarity with the nuances of casual sex, the intimate knowledge of an enigmatic other? I think Anais Nin illustrates that casual sex is not merely a lifestyle imbued with glamour. I think her characters' sexual fantasies are a... key to their character. One's sexual comportment has so much to do with how s/he perceives him/herself.

how true this is of first loves:

When she first met him they were mere children ... Miguel had been drawn to Elena magnetically, following her like a shadow, listening to her every word, owrds no one could hear, her voice so small and transparent. ... a romantic attachment, in which each one used the other as the embodiment of the legend or story or novel they had read. Elena was every heroine; Miguel was every hero.

When they met, they were enveloped in so much unreality that they could not touch each other. They did not even hold hands. They were exalted in each other's presence, they soared together, they were moved by the same sensations. - pg. 81