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Thursday
Jul292010

Anne of Carversville | Impromptu Photo Session | Unretouched & Real

DateThu, July 29, 2010

A close friend wants to know what I look like these days — up close and personal.   

You can’t understand the relevance of these photos without understanding how I got here. That is the story I tell in Sensual and Superyoung, my online manuscript. 

Marilyn Visitation

I never know when Marilyn’s coming, but I am so incredibly pleased to find her not only alive and well inside me, but thriving and breaking out of her self-imposed cocoon. 

When I first began the image-taking this afternoon, I saw my grandmother Marie everywhere in my face. Truly, I am only a Roscoe visually, although the Swedish, Danish and German genes express themselves in the totality of me.

Forget the hair which only looks Scandinavian and suits me best.  It’s fake but I will die blond. 

Marie was English and very hip, although apparently only with me. I could do no wrong with her, and it’s always great to have someone like that on your side. To be someone’s favorite at some time in your life seems not too much for any of us to ask for.

I once had a profound dream with Anais Nin and my grandmother hashing out the subtleties of eroticism in Marie’s living room. Not too many grandmamas make that kind of appearance during sleep-time, unless they are French or Italian. 

It’s important, too, not to neglect my other grandmother Clara who suffered tremendously from devastating arthritis and was bedridden until she got her hair done on Saturday and swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. 

Clara read her poems to me and sat in a wheel chair making the most spectacular May baskets, sewing crepe paper ruffles into flowers and making garlands for my doll buggy. I don’t recall if we had prizes for the best doll buggy in the parade or not. I only remember that both my buggy and May baskets won the beauty prizes hands down. 

It’s rather strange to have two grandmothers show up out of nowhere, followed by a photo-taking session far more complex than I expected to take when I opened my eyes this morning. Before we make up Hallmark stories about my afternoon, this life is not filled with continuity. 

My journey to selfhood has involved getting off the path and returning to those doll buggy days, where I really did have all the answers. Truly, I was smart as a whip at age 3. It’s adulthood that messed me up.

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Wednesday
Jul142010

Aging French and American Women Aren't In the Same Life Game

DateWed, July 14, 2010

My passion for what French women can teach us increases with my age. Minutes ago, a friend called out the NYTimes Style Aging Gracefully, the French Way.

Having just pushed the upload button on a new chapter of Sensual and Superyoung, I was prepared. This is my comment on French and American women, when the topic is aging:

I was lucky enough to spend 10 years of my life, working in France nearly one week a month. I was lucky to age in France, where older women are celebrated by both men and themselves.

This is my subject. I write about French women and American women, just logging out on Obesity Alert | French Women Have More Self Respect

The Dove Global Beauty study interviewed women worldwide, asking many questions about aging and self-image. Dove asked women the age of ideal beauty.

48% of American women answered ‘twenties’ vs 11% of French women.

12% of American women answered ‘forties’ vs 39% of French women.

These enormous disparities help explain why ALL French women have an aggregate national BMI of 23.5 and 90% of French women over 50 are having sex.

In America, married women just told iVillage we would rather read a book, see a movie or sleep than have sex. Our national obesity rate — let’s not talk about it.

This issue is not confined to Paris vs New York. Sorry.

French culture celebrates women of every age, and French women celebrate their sensuality and vitality with self-love and discipline.

I believe American women should consider that we have no idea what “joie de vivre” is about. We should become students of French women, rather than assuming that we lead on a subject where in fact, we trail far behind French women.

Every American woman should spend a year in France. Link to article.

The French women have something precious. It’s called self-respect and not believing the life is all downhill after 25. And then there’s the matter of understanding that sex is actually good for you and not a duty or favor to men.

Sorry for the passion on this topic. French women taught me well. Anne

There’s no doubt in my mind that French women have a lot to teach American women, and I’ve written extensively on this topic. Here is another article, including photos of the apartment hotel I stayed in, once I decided that I wanted a more intimate experience, rather than luxury hotels — which were grand.

More Reading:

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Wednesday
Jul142010

Anne | An American Woman Madly in Love with Paris

DateWed, July 14, 2010

We’re in a hugely Parisian, deeply sensual mood today. Blame it on my NYTimes comment on aging in France. The sensations are flooding over me today — memories, beliefs and convictions about the city that helped me to age brilliantly and with confidence.

When I start reflecting on the past and whip it this morning into the future, who knows where we may go?

Actually, we’re headed for Cannes — metaphorically-speaking  — as we being our journey for real to Positano and the land of “la dolce vita”.  

I had a last-minute breakdown, worrying about a backlash to my effort to seduce Americans into changing our sensual appetites into a more life-affirming one. As always, we’ve come up with a superb solution to a pothole in the road: Brain will not handle all the tough love dialogue. I only want people to love me.  (See Obesity Alert | French Women Have More Self-Respect).

Today we are on the road to checking into the Cannes Carlton Intercontinental. Read our Sensual and Superyoung journey so far. 

For the Love of Tango

Back to Paris from Cannes. On Facebook, we are tango lovers and I can’t ever let go of “Last Tango in Paris”, without one more listen to sounds that say: “Keep going, Anne. It will happen.”

Inspired and full of conviction, I drive too fast on the open road, convinced now that I know where I’m going. That is progress. 

Sepia - Last Tango in Paris

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Monday
Jul122010

Diane Root Inspires Our Inner Pleasure Woman

DateMon, July 12, 2010

35 Look the Birdie

Well-written words bring such delight to our lives, if we are listening. Working hard on my own writing, I relish compliments and encouragement from friends and strangers, especially when they describe the impact of my words on their senses.

This short reverie “The Artful Dodger” , written by Diane Root, an artist aka Matakia, gave me more luchtime pleasure than a peanut butter sandwich when I first read it. Ms. Root seduced me completely with her delightful tale of a childhood lunch in Nice, with her beloved uncle and Picasso, the great. Dad was there as wallpaper.

Now that we are leaving for France, traveling through Nice on our journey to “la dolce vita” in Sensual and Superyoung, her impressions of pleasure are a “must read”.

Because I’ve spent so much time in the south of France, passages like this one unearthed my own memories:  “We were to meet for lunch at one of the many bistros that blossomed near Nice’s flower market — a riot of parakeet-feather colors — and the vegetable market, so fragrant that the aromas competed with the blooms nearby. The restaurant, which very probably no longer exists, was a typical family-owned place where the tables were bedecked with red-checkered tablecloths covered with embossed rectangles of white paper.”

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AuthorAnne | CommentPost a Comment |
Wednesday
Jun302010

Reflections on Female Sexual Desire: Anais Nin, Marilyn Monroe & Isabelle Allende Join Forces with Anne

DateWed, June 30, 2010

NOTE: my ModernLove Examiner friend Tinamarie is quoting Anais Nin this morning, and I dusted her off for the occasion. 

(From Anne’s original journal) Anais Nin, the deeply sensual, erotic writer, has lived with me most of my life. Marilyn Monroe arrived five years ago, and now the Three Sisters trio is complete. 

I crashed into writer Isabel Allende yesterday afternoon, when I wasn’t even looking for her. She was living all this time in plain view on the bookshelf facing my bed, waiting patiently on the top shelf, about six inches from Marilyn Monroe.

Hovering overhead on the bedroom wall, my guardian angel Marilyn emits a soft sigh of relief: ” Honestly, Anne, I thought you would never find Isabel. Sometimes you are so obtuse, almost defiant in your inability to see the life path before you.”

American women continue to struggle with the idea that sexual focus is not only in her heart, but is also expressed in her sexual core, the sensations of physical desire below her waist, between her legs. Anne

Sometimes it helps to be sick. I am always the go-go woman, but I’m consumed with malais this weekend: coughing, chills and Theraflu, which did absolutely no good.

My unconscious mind knows when to seize an opening, and it grabbed the precious moment Saturday afternoon at about four o’clock.

I was sitting in the Western sun, like a cat lounging in a window, except that I was attached to my laptop as usual. I could make up some wonderful story about an exciting Internet adventure in learning, but truthfully, I was organizing my Firefox bookmarks into a workable system, five years too late. Pathetic, I know.

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AuthorAnne | Comment3 Comments |
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