Holding my book tenderly
A few days ago I found myself rereading some of the messages readers have sent me about my book Pearl: soft and wild eros.
Writing the book was a deeply personal experience and, once it was published, it left my hands and entered the lives and imaginations of other people. There is something a little vulnerable about that, you spend months, sometimes years, living with your words and stories, carrying them with you, tending to them, and then one day they begin a life of their own, separate from you, out in the world, being held by people you may never meet.
One of the things I enjoy most is seeing how they are received. Like a painting hanging in a gallery, the same book can be experienced in completely different ways. One person notices the colours, another the style and technique. One lingers on a single image while another follows a thread running through the whole piece. Every reader brings their own memories, longings and way of seeing, and so in a sense, each person reads a slightly different book.
Peter has now read Pearl three times. As I read his reflections, I was touched by the attention he gave to the small details and the themes woven through the pages. He noticed connections I had made instinctively rather than consciously and followed threads that run subtly beneath the surface of the book. Reading his words felt a little like looking at my own work through somebody else's eyes.
With his permission, I wanted to share his reflections exactly as he wrote them.
"I think I'm on the third reading of this book now. The first was way too fast. It shouldn't be considered as a book to read in one go. It's a series of reminiscences, declarations, longings, appeals and pleas for understanding. Reading through in one go and you will lose the point. Segments read in quiet moments is the way to absorb this beautiful piece of art.
Reading it, I feel as though I'm wandering through your private journal. It's as though your words are being gently whispered into my ears.
It's a magical mix of clearly personal experiences, third person fantasies (but maybe also personal), romantic longings and self analysis and examination.
I loved the descriptions of your relationship with your body. It being the fountain of your eros. Your breasts and yoni having their own both strong and soft personalities and the need for treating them with love and respect.
Your use of words I found entrancing. You put words together to describe something or to put across a meaning that I would never think of putting together, but in every case they work. You use words to hold themes together when they appear and reappear in the book. There is a major theme of being in communion with the earth. Not the macro of the planet, but the micro of the warmth of the soil beneath your skin. The reader will immediately grasp your point.
The girl who once danced barefoot in the forest feels grounded in later life when she touches the earth. When you write of seeking or discovering permanency you look to your body to put down roots into the earth.
I love how you describe learning to overcome the negative culture of being frowned upon for overt shows of romance or sensuality surrounding you as a girl and as a young woman, or even for having that mindset. Being able to recognise and welcome the fire of passion both in your mind and throughout your whole body. Being able to search for and find the same in another person who would be able to fan the fire by being able to truly see you.
There are elements of the book which are truly joyful. Where you are able to project the absolute love you have for the other person in the story or poem, where falling asleep in his embrace or with your head on his chest feeling the steadiness of his heartbeat leaves you feeling at one with the world.
There are also examples of triste. There is a thread of longing for something not yet found. Both in yourself and as or in the personality of a potential partner and how you would long for him to accept the whole of you.
The sentiment of aloneness, not loneliness, rises to the surface quite frequently. Aloneness is more of a positive choice but can still reverberate with the need to fill a void. When your writing was of joyful love, I felt really happy for you. When it was of unfulfilled longing it made me feel sadness and I felt welling tears.
Your descriptions of how you honour, give and receive pleasure from your body in a style of such fire and innocence at the same time were written in a beautifully restrained manner. Erotic in the most beautiful sense. They moved me.
With each reading of the book I wanted increasingly to be assured that you were safe, that you had actually found your home, that you had someone in your life who truly saw and accepted you as all you are, because this is not like reading a fiction. Your book is real, it is raw. You put everything out there in its softness, its wildness, its joy, its pain and its vulnerability. It's a revelation to read, and I'm sure too for many men who may not have been led into a feminine garden before."
Peter, thank you for holding my book so tenderly, for turning each page slowly and allowing yourself to spend time with it.
If something in Peter's reflection has stirred a recognition in you, the book is waiting.
Pearl: soft and wild eros is available in three formats:
The cover reflects the spirit of the book and includes one of the photographs featured inside. Some readers are perfectly comfortable carrying it on a train or reading it in a café, while others may prefer a little more privacy; for them, the Kindle and PDF editions offer another way to enjoy the book. The paperback contains black and white photographs, the PDF edition includes them in colour and the Kindle edition contains no photographs.
Love,
Rosie x