Bougainvillea House

[bougainvilleahouse]

She would bite her lower lip and raise her eyebrows, while her eyes went luminous with the anticipation of pleasure.

Louis de Bernières, ‘The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts’

[bougainvilleahouse]

‘I give him my thunder, and I give him my bolt of lightning that is in my fingers.’

Louis de Bernières, ‘The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts’

[bougainvilleahouse]

It was not the kind of beauty that makes a man priapic, the beauty of a Bahian mulatta; it was the kind of beauty that is like a blow in the stomach and which physically hurts the eyes.

Louis de Bernières, ‘The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts’

[bougainvilleahouse]

They would lie at first side by side, allowing the day to slide away and allowing the interpenetration of their bodies’ warmth and mustiness, until it was time for their hands to seek to wander. Then would begin the journeys of the tongue and lips, he over her long limbs, she over his rougher savannahs, until at last they would be fast asleep, exhausted and contented, while the frustrated mosquitoes coated the net with a black vibrating mass that would always unaccountably disappear at dawn.

Louis de Bernières, ‘The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts’

[bougainvilleahouse]

The caboclos allow the dolphins to take fish from their nets, and when the dolphins become human and emerge from the river with their different-coloured eyes and their beautiful muscles, they make love with whomever they choose, because it is bad to refuse a lover who loves so tenderly.

Louis de Bernières, ‘The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts’

[bougainvilleahouse]

Says the poet whose vision she trusts: I cannot consider death as anything but a removing from one room to another. Should she prefer the slightness of death or the magnitude of the room?

Conchitina R. Cruz, ‘Elsewhere Held and Lingered’

[bougainvilleahouse]

Any given night can be an emblem of beauty. Take the white of the tablecloth against the blue of the walls, the full moon unscathed by the grid of the window, the song in the air faint but intact, the lyrics discernible, despite the dumb clatter of cutlery on plates, the persistent static of talk from table to table.

Conchitina R. Cruz, ‘Elsewhere Held and Lingered’

[bougainvilleahouse]

There. On your neck, the litany of quick breaths.

Conchitina R. Cruz, ‘Elsewhere Held and Lingered’

[bougainvilleahouse]

The mouth in secluded places. The tongue and its conclusions.

Conchitina R. Cruz, ‘Elsewhere Held and Lingered’

[bougainvilleahouse]

To slip into a dream without edge. To dedicate the ode to the surface. Say, the body in this bed not its absence in another.

Conchitina R. Cruz, ‘Elsewhere Held and Lingered’

[bougainvilleahouse]

As you see, within our bodies each of us has the elements needed to produce phosphorus. And let me tell you something I’ve never told a soul. My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn’t find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted. If that happens, the soul flees from the body and goes to wander among the deepest shades, trying in vain to find food to nourish itself, unaware that only the body it left behind, cold and defenseless, is capable of providing that food.

Laura Esquivel, ‘Like Water for Chocolates’

[bougainvilleahouse]

Just as lovers know the time for intimate relations is approaching from the closeness and smell of their beloved, or from the caresses exchanged in previous love play, so Pedro knew from those sounds and smells, especially the smell of browning sesame seeds, that there was a real culinary pleasure to come.

Laura Esquivel, ‘Like Water for Chocolates’

[bougainvilleahouse]

Tita knew through her own flesh how fire transforms the elements, how a lump of corn flour is changed into a tortilla, how a soul that hasn’t been warmed by the fire of love is lifeless, like a useless ball of corn flour. In a few moments’ time, Pedro had transformed Tita’s breasts from chaste to experienced flesh, without even touching them.

Laura Esquivel, ‘Like Water for Chocolates’

[bougainvilleahouse]

At once their passionate glances fused so perfectly that whoever saw them would have seen but a single look, a single rhythmic and sensual motion, a single trembling breath, a single desire.

Laura Esquivel, ‘Like Water for Chocolates’

[bougainvilleahouse]

All of a sudden she had a thought that made her run outside to look at the stars. Having felt it with her own body, she knew a look could start a fire. Even to set the sun itself ablaze. What then would happen if Gertrudis looked up at a star? Surely the heat from her body, which was inflamed by love, would travel with that gaze across an infinite distance, with no loss of energy, until it landed on the star she was watching.

Laura Esquivel, ‘Like Water for Chocolates’

[bougainvilleahouse]

Is there anything odd in finding on earth that union that Plotinus longed for? Unity is expressed here in terms of sun and sea. The heart is sensitive to it through a certain savour of flesh which constitutes its bitterness and its grandeur.

Albert Camus, ‘The Sea Close By’

[bougainvilleahouse]

In the evening or after the rain, the whole earth, its womb moist with a seed redolent of bitter almond, rests after having given herself to the sun all summer long. And again that scent hallows the union of man and earth.

Albert Camus, ‘The Sea Close By’