Snailhorn (fragments)

from the afterword:

"The Kamasutra conjures four basic types or orders of women, each a different shape, a different animal-type, a different elemental persuasion and humor. The Conch Woman (Shankhini) is explained to be somewhat testy, ‘colicky’ is the word used from the older translations. She seems to correspond to my own rhythms—someone who was of a portion of the monthly moon’s cycle and irritable from this cycle.

So her mood as a correspondence to the mood the poem would elicit by staying, by not retreating, opened an elemental association to the time in duration spent within her.

Shankhini became the belly of my beast as well as base, the muladhara of my human form, accessed through this social encounter."