Fertility

Brillat-Savarin's first Meditation from The Physiology of Taste provides an outline of six senses. There are the five of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. The six is physical desire and is in the service of procreation. An impish me wants to invoke a translation of this seductive six sense. I want to drop the procreative imperative. I want to recuperate the six senses in the name of the sensus communis and make the erotic impulse flow heroically as the quotidian social glue that is not genitally affixed.

Read with a nice glass of wine in hand, M.F.K. Fisher's translation invites the reader to use a wee bit of imagination to universalize the satiation offered by a good digestive act which magically results in the will to share one's life with someone.

This active, troubling, imperious sentiment is common to both sexes; it brings them together and unites them, and when the germ of a new life has been fertilized, the two people can sleep again in peace; they have fulfilled the most sacred of their duties in thus making sure that mankind will continue.

There is no glossing over "the germ of a new life". Pregnancy is the aimed for condition. Those of either sex coming together with those of either sex do also participate in the continuance of "mankind" read in the wide sense of humanity. They may or may not sleep again in peace. The fertile can sleep so. It doesn't mean they will.

Fertile or not, rutting does engage the full five and a lively imagination to boot.


And so for day 74
26.02.2007