Sometimes I feel like I live my life teetering on the edge. Of what, I have no idea. I have something to say but maybe I don't have the courage to cut it out of me or vomit it out of me, or whatever other disgusting metaphor I can conjure up. Did you ever wonder what it would feel like to have a metal rod penetrate you from your stomach to your pelvis?
Neither did I. Until Friday night when I saw some things, some raw unfiltered things hanging on the wall of the art museum. Except those paintings and pictures weren't just hanging there, they were opening mouths and screaming obscenities at me. They were making out with me. We were having an angry dialogue. And then we were having make up sex. Looking at the work of Frida Kahlo was like understanding all that was ugly and all that was beautiful in the world at the same time.
Truth be told, I may not know what it feels like to be pierced by a metal rod, but I do know what it feels like to be penetrated. We women spend our whole lives being penetrated. The fate of the human species depends on our willingness to be penetrated. Isn't that insane?
I love having sex, so don't start thinking I'm some puritanical, frigid prude. It's just that sometimes when I think too deeply about things that happen every day and I whittle and whittle and whittle away at them I come up with a realization that makes me cry. Not in a sobbing, sad way. But in that futile sense where tears come into your eyes but never fall. When I think about sex, I realize that the act removes all the trappings of civility, it reveals what we are at our most base level. At the risk of being crude, when we're getting fucked, ladies, we're being conquered. In those moments, you are somebody's property. It is difficult not to feel a sadness about that. And it makes me think about the limitations we have as humans...about myself as a woman and all the women who came before me doing the exact same things and feeling the exact same feelings. I shudder to think about the way evolution has made us vulnerable. No matter how hard we work, no matter how much we educate ourselves, no matter how much we pretend that men and women are the same, it doesn't matter. We, as a gender, will never be stronger. Submission is innate. It is necessary for the proliferation of our species. And I am very ambivalent about that fact. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about my place "in the family of things".
There is the goddess pose in yoga - Lay on your back, bend your knees, touch your feet together and spread your legs. This is goddess. Opening myself to the universe...letting go. And even though I hate this about myself, I am very comfortable in this asana.
Part of me is appalled that I put these words down for your consumption. But it is all just ideas. I think about Frida Kahlo and her beautiful, strong, winged eyebrows. I think about her lonely art, sitting side by side with herself, heart outside of chest, holding her own hand. I think about Diego Rivera, the husband never faithful, but in the end the only suckling child she would ever embrace as her own. I imagine her lying in traction, like a pained statue, still, except for her hand ever painting her pictures. Without hope, sin esperanza. So vulnerable, open mouth, funnel in, force fed meat. I am sick for her empty-wombed soul.
It is amazing to me that out of all that misery, her only progeny was born: Art. Art so lovely it took my breath away. It is in this way ugly becomes beautiful, surrender becomes power, the ephemeral becomes tangible, death becomes immortality. In a small way, I am part of that life cycle. Not just because I am a mother, but because I am a writer. Writing for me is like being penetrated - it is letting something foreign into the most sacred part of me. It is being brave enough to tell the truth about things, about my thoughts, even if they are horrible, even if they are sick or violent or obscene. You can't create anything beautiful if you lie. And you can't learn anything either.
I guess that's why I have this desire to strip everything down to its bare bones. I want to learn what I am, what my purpose is, before it's too late. I have to believe that I have something more to contribute than this...this miserable existence. And maybe you think I'm strange and maybe you think I'm gross and maybe you think I'm pathetic, but at the very least I let you in ...and I never lie to you.
1 day ago
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I feel a little uncomfy to be the first comment as a male.
ReplyDeleteAhem.
But I have to say that this was lovely and well written. And an interesting point. My brain works in ways that I think is similar to yours from some of the stuff i've read of yours. Not that we always think alike.. but that we think of things that others may not consider. That's why really enjoy your work.
Meanwhile, about this subject...
I can be a male feminist sometimes. That's one of the reasons that I think the bible is horseshit.. but that's a different discussion.
So forgive me.
The way I see it is the woman is in the place of power in sex. I feel like i'm being surrounded during it. I feel like i'm involved with someone that has only allowed a certain few to be enveloped. I was once in the many... but now are the few.
Sure, sometimes I act like a monkey like any other guy. But not on a good night. :)
Thank you.