The Ritual of Pleasure

Know pleasure and be the promise of pleasure.

By Delphin Enjolras (French; 1857 - 1945)

“I am fit for high positions by God
And am going my way with pride
I allow my lover to touch my cheek
And bestow my kiss when he craves it.”
— Wallada bint al-Mustakfi

The world we live in is more often than not, the world of strain and effort. In that world of strain and effort, we long for the Paradise that we remember. We look for the pools of fresh water to delight us, for the fragrant meadows to seduce us, for the juicy fruit and honeycomb to bite into. We long for the Song of Songs, for the meeting of our long-lost lover on the hills and for them to speak to us, not with a word, but with a gaze or a movement of a limb. Paradise for most of us, is simply the end of pain and the initiation into a pleasurable bliss.

A young girl, the meadow frolicking Kore is curious about the world. She fears not to smell the flowers nor to be stung by the bees. But as she grows, and she looks around her and sees the faces of her mothers, grandmothers, and other women veiled with the expression of tension and contempt. Once the girl played too hard, and the mother told her that playing too hard summons demons and tempts men. The girl too, over time, adopted her mother’s tension, and denied herself the meadow and its flowers. She sat in the house and gazed at the meadow from behind the window glass. Her mother said: “See, you can have it all the same.” But the girl knew it is not all the same, still she adopted the mother’s curse — she began to live behind the glass.