As we do every year, we prepare the statues for the june festival... I go and fetch them in the cellar and I install them in the garden - they are so heavy ! And you remove the dust from them, and wash them and then you help me with the settings and the final tuning which is always a bit delicate
The garden is composed of small but very sunny "à la française" clearings, dropped here and there among a vaster and thicker arrangement of far more english inspiration - not to say worse. The whole garden is not very big but it is very rich as regards the multiplicity and diversity of the view points
I carry the statues with the wheelbarrow and I put them in the clearings
There are several sorts of statues...
First, there is the ones that are conveniently distributed at the corners of the greenery.
It is a type of statues in the shape of moon crescents set on a column of about 15 centimers wide and of some 60 centimeters high
The inside of the moon crescent is concave, a bit like a guttering or a bicycle mudguard, the concavity being wider and deeper on the front side and narrowing and getting thinner towards the rear.
All around the column, tall weeds are let to grow freely with ears large and furry enough and extremely sweet to the touch. To increase the effect, during the days when festivals are held, long and coloured feathers are almost always added all around the columns, such as pheasant and peacock feathers for instance.
The women who come to the june festival know quite well that they should not wear anything under they dresses on such a day. That would be a pity. Just as they also know that they should rather wear simple, long and wide skirts, made of one single piece of material tied around their waists, like loinclothes, in such a way that they may be opened and closed in one swift movement, at will.
When a lady installs herself above a column, her skirt hides the column entirely, so that no one sees whether the lady is sitting on something or whether she is just standing
In the case of the moon shaped statues, the lady let the moon enter under her skirt, riding the crescent so to say, with the higher end of it before her, but she does not sit. The peacock feathers are kindly touching the higher part of her thighs and the tall and fresh weeds caress her legs while the warmth accumulated in the moon shaped stone radiate towards the lower parts of her belly, so that the lady let herself go with a graceful and natural ease
The precious liquid then follows the moon shaped stone guttering, is collected in a cupel located at the rear, right under the lower end of the crescent. From there it runs along a small groove that passes through the core of the column and finally arrives in a bowl surrounded with moss and marshland plants in such a way that the lady may see her gold run, dance and glitter in the sunlight
while she gently flows away
Part2
Other statues that are in general installed at the top of small mound - where smelly flowers grow - are made of a quite similar sort of column, although a bit shorter, on which is put a kind of terracotta bowl, gently inclined in order to make a rather elegant sort of seat.
The bowl is quite wide-mouthed, but not very broad and the seat is hence not that big but its curve makes it nevertheless very comfortable. Moreover, this seat is mobile in such a way that it may be inclined in more or less any direction depending on the way the lady who uses it adjusts it by moving the lower part of her back.
Towards the lower edge of the bowl, in line with the column is a hole through which a kind of terracotta mushroom may come and go. A mecanism automatically starts up each time someone passes at the top of the mound and the mushroom goes up and down with slowness and majesty. In general on festival days, this mushroom is covered with a transparent rubber sheath which is lubricated with each move by the sap of a special plant that we grow in a corner of the garden.
When the column detects the shadow of a skirt dawdling close by, the mushroom wisely retires in its hole for a few minutes, long enough for the passing by lady to sit comfortably and then , slowly, surreptitiously, the top of the mushroom, which is round and glowing, points its little nose outside (not more than two or three centimeters out of the edge of the bowl) and starts to delicately move.
Since it is made of terracotta and the wheather is beautiful, the mushroom accumulated the warmth of the sun rays, so that when you sit against it towards the end of the afternoon it is warm exactly as it should be - you should not do that in the middle of the day, of course - and still loaded with the vibrations of hot air.
After a couple of minutes, the mushroom becomes more daring and starts to come and go - very very slowly - while lengthening its course and while rocking a bit from side to side like a drunken sailor or a drunken ship would do. Once the mushroom has reached the maximum length of its course, its speeds automatically ajusts to the ardour of the lady's movements
From far, the passer-by, absorbed in himself or vague who slowly glides away sees nothing but a woman with a long skirt at the top of a mound, a woman with a strange pose of course, who softly sways and oscillates, there, around her centre of gravity - humming maybe - without suspecting the slightest from the depth of his evening walk the inner fervour of the lady, so that she may openly go on with her game, as she pleases, in the open air, in the dark fury of the evening, among the scents and the perfumes without taking the risk of being surprised nor interrupted
I must also mention a third kind of sculptures better adapted to relaxation than the ones i just spoke of but not less to pleasure.
It is a certain type of chair, a sort of low chair, only made of two boards assembled in such a way that they make a square angle - like these african chairs in which, in spite of the hardness of the seat and back you feel so well seated - that are arranged, facing the sun, alone or by pairs, preferably in the hollow of a green and south oriented hemicycle
The middle front part of these chairs is curved and comes back a bit towards the rear so that one has to sit legs open and even a bit spread, the lower part of the belly of the tired passing-by lady precisely applied against a mould, that looks like these "chastity wedges" or "female wineleaves" that Marcel Duchamp once built
On the right side of the chair, some fashion of armrest may be found, quite adapted to the nonchalance of the arm, which allows to control by means of some slight finger movements only the discreet device that I shall now describe
The bottom of the seat - except the chastity wedge - is mobile - put on a bearing made of a crown of caged ball - and reacts to the slightest movements of the lady's spine
In the upper part of the chastity wedge - as close a possible to the place where ladies blossom - a small vibrator is installed - a very simple one, derived from an old aquarium pump - the frequency of which may be finely tuned to the lady's changing needs by only one of her fingers mouvement while her hand lies on the mobile sphere located at the end of the armrest.
And that's not all. The edge of the chastity wedge widens and opens at a certain place, giving way to quite strong curved rod made of flexible plastic and ending by an elegant and incredibly sweet hemisphere. The lady may adapt the movement of the rod to her needs and fantasy as regards the length of its course and its speed by manipulating another mobile sphere that is located just beneath her thumb on the left side of the armrest.