Stories as Maps of a Sexual Topography

Traditionally revolutionary men have gone out in the wide world searching for new territory. Women have been left at home, within the shape of their bodies, with simply one rule that is to not cross the borders of that shape, so of course they must do exactly that in order to feel free. As the revolutionary man travels the world, the revolutionary woman travels within the worlds of her body, meeting other bodies and crossing those illegal borders. Like this: I was 16 the first time I saw a whole landscape with cities and forests fall out of a boy’s back, and he hadn’t even done any travelling himself. I was 19 when I thought I could lie own in bed with the whole world one bit at time. Impossible of course, or is it? When I grew older I discovered magic. My own back turned out to be an open book with thousands of pages and it wasn’t a question of only this world alone any more. As borders break, landscapes unfold. And within those landscapes, fragments of other worlds or even planets and the infinite depths of stories emerge.

A meeting between lovers can be a mythological journey. The stories of eroticism can unfold in any number of different directions. Some patterns may still recur, like circles on the water, belonging to the specific water source of this or that relationship. It might be a story that goes between certain jo-ha-kyu’s following particular visions, such as a coral reef, a pattern of floral circles in red and black, and then beyond the white giant jaw. And it could go on, from layer to layer – to some other place transforming into something else. It might be some sort of ceremonial ritual, such as dedicating an altar to the giant night itself, or achieving astronomical dimensions by flying through rings in a solar system. It can be raw, animalistic, metallic or beautifully winding with whatever synesthetic associations there are to be found, a cave or an oasis, through explosive colors or shapes that are difficult to grasp. It can be in the open air or more or less lost, in a narrow jungle or along endless spiral stairs. We may feel awake or asleep. Hang on to each other under grids or open windows. It is an opening to something else; a quiet language that goes beyond. A root system without endings.

It is peculiar that some people take their loved ones on a trip when all they need to do is climb each other’s bodies. Not just as bodies of course, it’s rather about the desire to explore all the worlds and stories that are hidden inside. Layers that are invisible unless the bodily limitations are dissolved. That is, if you dare to dive in, if you get through your fears of castration and let yourself become a part of the landscape itself. And when you are down there, far below under the roof of Eros, try to

look up and the world might never be the same again. But of course, all may not get there. The physical traveler, as we all know, can be more or less like any holidaymaker. A lackadaisical charter tourist on one hand or an explorer with a very specific interest in details on the other, for foreign cultures or just the dissolution of the ego in a context that may seem more or less escapist or real. It can, of course, unfortunately also be colonizers or missionaries who have not taken a single breath of the world they have just been faced with – and they might not even be particularly interested in learning.

The sexual act – as a part of and like the lyrical behavior in general – is a journey into the unknown. If you can look up, see the whole sea and not just the circles on the surface of the water and get stuck in the patterns – or well, get lost in the patterns towards some other distant sea, but then you have to sink or dive. Or if we are on land you better disappear into that forest, even though it never ends. The point of being swallowed by that convulsive landscape is perhaps one of the basic preconditions. If you allow yourself to lose whatever borders there might be, the communication multiplies and you dissolve in whatever landscape, whatever story that arrives. Not just with your mind but with your body, finding new shapes to lose yourself in further on. In retrospect, where there were walls, there is now a complete root system. There are no endings, just evolvement and even genitals do unfold. After crossing that threshold the exploration may begin, through and beyond the bodily shape of oneself.

The beaked coral reef, by ELKN