Blood oranges

I spent a very restful weekend with F, finally getting the breather and connected time I needed. Lots of snow, lots of lying about, a bit of skiing. Actually read most of a a novel for the first time in months, it feels like. Spending, by Mary Gordon. Some passages that made me gasp with resonance.


This one is about the artist (the protagonist) reflecting on how her work has changed since she acquired a "muse"/lover/patron:

And the sex did make the work better. I was a lively body, looking at bodies. The rind that covers the sexual underskin when you're not having sex, the one that keeps you from despair, was pulled back. The fruitlike flesh was exposed, palpable and porous as the skin of an orange. A blood orange, a mixed color, orange bleeding into red. After sex, I was free of anger and bitterness. What others did, how they moved ahead of me, how I hadn't got what I deserved and they'd got so much more, all that was melted. What's it called when something disappears on brass or copper, and the fresh plate is there, ready for impressions? That's how I was after we'd been together; a peeled fruit, a fresh copper plate. That was how I worked when I left his bed and went to the Brera. It almost frightened me to feel so alive.