thy bed of crimson joy

I was recently reading two books that presented the face and body as landscape. The first was a book I ordered on the Chinese artist Ah Xian, who imbues the traditional sculptural bust with the look of Chinese pottery; the second was “The Sick Rose” by Richard Barnett, a book of medical illustrations from before the days of color photography.

It was only coincidence that I read these beauties at the same time, and yet they spoke clearly to each other. Both books offered corporeal images intricate and exquisite, but one was kind of dreamy and impossible, and the other vivid and all too gruesomely real.

I suppose that, in the imagination, breaking out in a rash or weeping sores could be like sprouting the flowers native to your homeland.

I prefer to wake up plain. 

I don’t have any particular reason to mention this now, except with a beach vacation approaching, I was thinking today of mix-n-match bikinis, and the notion of swapping one look out for another that might fit a body just as well brought this juxtapositional reading/art experience to mind. I'm not much for the grand display of my own design and intricacy: my favorite beachwear is the cover-up.