Quim

i have started reading this book by Regena Thomashauer, Womanly Arts, and it feels like a homecoming to me. it speaks of coming into one's full-blossomed womanhood through the power of following one's pleasures.

i could say i know this already; this has been what i have been doing all along (remember my blog on "A Sinful Pleasure"?, which is only one set of many womanly pleasures)!

following my bliss--no matter what, even if other people say i'm insane, silly, ridiculous, exasperating, unpredictable, ... "bad". hey, so what, this is my life. i'd rather live it following my bliss and being who i am; than running after other people's idea of bliss for me, and forgetting who i am, and in the end dying without having really lived.

i could say this is Women Who Run With the Wolves revisited for me. if Wolves was an important scholarly and foundational book for me, Womanly Arts is more like a practical manual and reviewer. : )

anyway, i am getting to that chapter on The Power of Feminine Pleasures, and according that woman's powerful part (aside from her mind, heart and soul) -- the vagina -- the rightful respect and understanding and cherishing that it deserves, first and foremost by the woman herself. in short, the chapter talks about pussy pleasure.

and as i was skimming through the chapter, i was reminded of Erica Jong's novel, Serenissima, which coined up a new term for "pussy" but i forgot what that term was. in the novel, the heroine, Jessica, shares that the term was handed down to her by her mother, a self-created term, and Jessica says she prefers that term over "pussy" or "cunt" because while these have a sleazy, derogatory connotation to them, this new term sounded more intimate and affectionate, the way a woman's pussy should be properly treated. so i flipped through Serenissima again, three times, to find that term: "quim".

as with all adventues of exploration and discovery, i then tried to look for the term in google, which took me to different sites. i learned that quim is some sort of a web design term (quality in use integrated map), a skateboarder (quim cardona), a Catalan writer of note (quim monzo), and a nickname for "Joaquim", among others, aside from it's being "a slang term for pussy".

more importantly, i was disabused of my belief that the term was indeed coined by Jessica's mother in Serenissima. i learned that the term is a U. K. english term, and dates back to 1613. what's more interesting is it has equally more adorable-sounding equivalents in other languages -- which makes one wonder how Americans perceive the pussy vis-a-vis how other nationalities do. hmmm.

one site says it has its origins in the Welsh "cwm", which means "a valley of pubes" (pubes? as in pubescents? pubic hair?) and is a refined way of saying "mapatasi" (which is a shortcut for saying "Map of Tasmania", which looks like a woman's quim). The British also call it "muff" while the Australians call it "minge". in the Philippines, it is called by many names depending on the dialect and the company-- from the euphemistic "flower", to "puki" in Tagalog, to "monay" in Visayan (which is also the name of a bread), to what i use with my children, "muning", which means little "monay" but is pronounced as "mooning" or can even be pronounced as "moaning". heehee.

anyway, this little scholarly adventure of mine brought me to certain sites, among which is a series of links to blogs dedicated to sex, erotica, pornography and the like ( i didn't realize there were so many blogs like those!!!) .

finally, clicking here and there as my fancy directed (follow your pleasure, remember?) i was taken to a site which depicted pictures of real-life couples having sex. i was not offended because they were just the usual everyday-looking couples making love and having fun.

i gazed and gazed and sighed and sighed.

it has been sooo long and i just gazed and gazed to recall how it was, how it could be again... i wondered if i still knew how to do it... and so i gazed and gazed and sighed and sighed.

... and oh, how my quim quivered...!!!


; D