I finished writing Aphrodite in a few weeks and added erotic recipes from Dadá’s kitchen in Bahía as well as others invented by my mother, and then I asked Lori to design the book, a good way to lower her defenses. Amanda was my accomplice. Once the three of us went to a Buddhist retreat, at Lori’s initiative, and, after long sessions of meditation, had ended up sleeping on pallets in cells with rice paper walls. We had to sit for hours on safus, round, hard cushions that are part of the spiritual practice. Whoever can survive the cushion is already halfway to illumination. This torture was interrupted three times a day in order to eat a variety of grains and take slow walks, circling a Japanese garden of dwarf pines and rigorously arranged stones. In complete silence. In our austere cell we choked back our laughter with the safus, but a woman with gray braids and limpid eyes came to remind us of the rules. “What kind of religion is this that doesn’t allow you to laugh?” Amanda asked.
