More harnesses (this was originally going to be long, but I thought, what the hell, I'll just take it one by one)










Images found here, here, and here.

Alas, the search continues. This was originally going to be a very long and extensive post about various harnesses and the different sources I am using to understand it. This includes Norse mythology (see: American Gods by Neil Gaiman), sexual fetishes and Japanese bondage, and armory. It is interesting, but I think it will be more interesting if I just continuously spew out smaller post, comprising of the images I have found so far, so that I can see how my thoughts change and develop, rather than work on one, huge post. I mean, it will come eventually, the more theoretical stuff, but I feel like I need to read and understand more about it. Otherwise I might as well just give you the Wikipedia article (this one is interesting, if you're looking to learn more about Japanese bondage, and also this one).

On another note, I find it exciting how the harnesses in high fashion, the ones that make it into the magazine, stems from a variety of sources, one of them being so-called "sexual deviance." Will return to this later.

A Poem


Snake Tree
By Yang Lian

1

fatal fancy grafted beyond the window
this instant     the garden is part of a toxic city
green perfected in a flood
swollen horse     or crow pecking at rotten guts
a child stares at a tree and says     snakes
a fizzing in sunlight’s torpid ears


2

storm brings you alive
storm     artist lashing the snakes
twice-fictional branches
tails sealed knots on shrill flutes
like acrid embryos imprisoned in the womb


3

finger
that prises spring’s scales open     that’s covered in spittle
that slides on its belly


4

where to begin     these are trees     and those are snakes
from one dead person to another
how does the snow in the body bear the pain of sloughing skin
and fall outside


5

the garden     is part of a toxic poem
all the weather has just been folded up
all the trees     follow
what hatched into a snake
what was fear in a child’s eyes     was fun
teeth held deep in your throat
inventing that birdsong     night sky
pressed down into a dark green swamp
crawling in opposition to a piece of blue
freely famished words
bearing plentiful fruits of madness


6

in every minute how many breaths
in every breath how many snakes
in every snake tree how many organs that yearn for death


7

shape that sin hangs in the innermost hear     gathering
     ground
branches continually growing from your persistence
curling down     a circumcising rod of pure flesh
putting out a bud that fears no poison
four seasons     expound a sombre aesthetic of winter
cold blood seeps into any fragile joint
feet regressing in the wind     tangled as tongues
and the poet still stripping the leaves
when the stripped snake is more cruel it’s just a plant
using associations of childhood
to run the child through
like a snake tree accidentally achieved in leisure


From Notes of a Blissful Ghost, by Yang Lian