Women without clothing

Some events stick in your mind forever, no matter how long ago they occurred. I suppose that is because they made a strong impression. I have many such memories. One popped back into my mind the other day.

When I was much younger, my family would spend weeks each summer at the New Jersey shore. We would rent a house near the beach, either in Point Pleasant or Manasquan, spend days at the beach and nights at the boardwalk or at home relaxing. One summer - I can't recall which, but I was somewhere around 10 - 12 years old, I would guess, we had rented a home in Manasquan. It was on the beach, but behind a row of houses that directly looked onto the ocean. Between our rented house and the house closest to the beach was a wooden walkway and a bit of sand. One afternoon I was standing on the wooden walkway, leaning against a low concrete wall that separated our house from the adjoining one. I was facing our rented house, dreaming for some time. Someone said 'Hi' from behind me. I turned to see one of the lovely young women currently occupying the rental next door. She was probably at least 16 or 17, with blonde hair and a pretty face. She covered the front of her body with a white towel, apparently having just emerged from the outdoor shower. She smiled impishly and then turned quickly to enter her house. In so doing, I learned that the towel only covered the front of her body. I was treated to a lovely view of her naked back and buttocks. She was tanned except for the white buttocks. It was lovely, and I was stunned. In a breath of time she had flipped open the screen door and disappeared into the darkness. I stood for many minutes watching, hoping she would emerge again, but I never saw her again, not on that day or on any other.

I believe it was my first view of a live, naked woman. I look back on the incident with affection; she was so pretty and it was all so surprising. I do believe this experience is partly responsible for my inordinate fondess for women without clothing.

Dimples of Venus

'Dimple of Venus' is the the name for the two dimples that may be seen on the human lower back, as shown in the photograph above. Given the propensity for women to expose their lower back on a daily basis, with low-riding pants and high-riding shirts, these dimples are now seen more frequently than ever before. Their symmetry and softness are quite lovely.

Apparently others are fond of back dimples as well: here is a website devoted to their discovery.

Hugging

I'm sitting at the kitchen table, finishing a glass of red wine and reading last Sunday's paper. I wasn't around last weekend, and haven't had time to read it yet. The paper, not the glass of wine.

I'm reading the 'Modern Love' column which I quote here a lot. It's a column by a woman who is a staunch feminist but also loves men. The picture above is from the column. I like the hair.

She writes:

"...no matter how enraged I become, I still adore men and the possibility for romance they bring. I love the smell of a man's skin. I enjoy the breathless feeling of waiting to see if he'll call back. And nothing beats the feeling of a man's arms wrapped around me. Nothing."

I guess she likes being hugged. Men like hugging, too. Or else they wouldn't do it.

Memories

I was putting my son Devin to bed the other night when he suddenly said, 'Do you know how to feel better when you are sad? Think about your good memories. Once when everyone was yelling at me, and I felt bad, I came to my room and looked at my old Winnie the Pooh stickers, and they made me feel good'.

I'll have to try it sometimes. Kids and often incredibly wise.

More Duras

A few posts ago, I recalled the story of Marguerite Duras' young years in Colonial Indochina, and her affair with the son of a Chinese landowner. This affair formed the basis of her short book, 'The Lover'. I became intrigued by this story and went to amazon.com to purchase the book.

While I was browsing, I learned that Duras also wrote the screenplay for the movie 'Hiroshima Mon Amour', the black and white film made in 1959 by Alain Resnais. Apparently this is 'a cornerstone of French cinema...one of the most influential films of all time.' It is 'the story of a French woman and a Japanese man who become lovers in Hiroshima. The film reveals the miserable and mortifying experiences of each character during the war and suggests the obvious healing properties of their relationship in the present....nothing can quite prepare one for Resnais's extreme yet intuitively accessible experiments in fusing the past, present, and future into great sweeps of subjectively experienced memory. ...audiences have never had trouble relating to this bold milestone of the French New Wave, largely because at its heart is a genuinely affecting, soulful love story.'

So I bought the DVD, too. Such is today's digital way of browsing. And it can only get better.

Booby Trap

Each night before bed, my two younger children read for at least 15 minutes. They enter what they have read into a log: name of the book, how many pages, type of book, and a new word that they learned while reading.

Tonight my son Devin wrote the word "booby trap".

He said to me, "I wrote two words, booby trap, instead of booby, so that my teacher would not think I was using an inappropriate word. It means girls' breasts. Bathroom talk".

Fack Offf

File for use in a movie:

A man and woman sit at a small wooden table, having dinner. There is a single candle on the table between them. The woman is Italian and speaks English with an accent. They have been arguing. For the woman, this is natural, it is part of her culture. She says to him 'fack off'. Instead of 'u' in that word, she pronounces it like a long 'a'. And the 'off', she lingers a bit more on the f's than do Americans. Like 'offff...' 'Fack offff'.

He says, 'I like the way you say that'.

She responds, 'Fack off. I'll say it as many times as you wish'.

My Grave

Last Sunday in 'Modern Love', a journalist wrote about how he briefly flirted with a Bengladeshi woman, a policewoman no less, during a brief stay in that country. They didn't do very much, just went to parks and such for a while. At one point, she scribbled something in his notebook. Later, after they had parted for the last time, he went back to his hotel and read what she had written:

When I will die
please come to my grave.
Don't cry for me,
only say I love you.

A Pale View of Hills

I finished reading "A Pale View of Hills", by Kazuo Ishiguro, Sunday evening. It's a beautiful book but difficult to completely understand. Perhaps I need to read it again. The switching narrative was somewhat confusing to me.

For the most part, the book flowed evenly, and I found little that jumped out at me. One exception came during a dialogue between Niki and her Mother, Etsuko, towards the end of the book. Etsuko had just asked her daughter if she had any plans to get married.

"Well, why should I get married? That's so stupid, Mother. So many women just get brainwashed. They think all there is to life is getting married and having a load of kids."

I continued to watch her. Then I said: "But in the end, Niki, there isn't very much else."