Some Writing--Part 3

THE FINAL INSTALLMENT. . .

As a woman born after or rather, in the throes of the women’s rights movement, I have searched for a means to identify my own unique feminine power. In the 1980s, too many people defined power as a purely masculine energy. Women wore the shoulder pads and forged ahead, accommodating their feminine power to fit in a masculine world.

As a woman, I am loathe to give up my own brand of power in order to mimic an unfamiliar source of strength simply because the world identifies power in a different way. Many of my female friends feel the same way. Today, women are reimagining the shape and nature of power.

I want to be who I am—without pressure from cultures old or new. I am embarking on a journey to identify power that is particularly recognized as feminine in order to fine tune my inherent strength. I want to know what iconic gifts history has already bestowed upon my gender and use that knowledge to extend my present reach.

As I walked through the museum, weeping over tapestries and pots, I chuckled at my hormonal reactions to such simple visions. How utterly weak to cry over a clay pot! How very womanly of me! To empathize with a human being long dead, with no connection to me beyond our physical need to create something. And I wept again.

In the center of the exhibit, there were two paintings. Both paintings were done by men in the 1940s. The first image was of the Aztec goddess Xochiquetzal, painted in 1947 by Guillermo Meza. The painting is dark and frightening. Her breasts are healthy and perfect, her shoulders and collar bone denote health and vigor. But her breasts and arms are covered in blood. It isn’t clear whether the blood is her own or someone else’s. It doesn’t matter. Her eyes aren’t pained. Her eyes are clear, but vacant. They are beyond judgment. From her head grows a plant. Her face juts forward into the future. The goddess represents fertility, life, flowers, pleasure. She also represents death that comes with birth and the cycles of life that follow war and desolation. In her presence both life and death cling without particular adoration for one over the other.


As I stared at the goddess, I tried to imagine the moments where women have stood as pivotal figures in war, death, birth, and pleasure in history. I felt power in my feminine connection to birth and death. As I pondered this connection, I pictured an experience from just a few years back. I was sitting at the bedside of a dear friend as she clung to life after giving birth. Her skin was pale and yellow. I felt the sickness of her body as her organs threatened to shut down. Without really understanding why, I began to chant softly, very calmly requesting that the cells in her liver begin to function, I requested that her empty uterus heal, that the cells in her organs begin to work together in an orderly fashion. I felt her heart break inside my heart as I thought about her child, taken to another hospital with a better neonatal intensive care unit. I asked that her heart be healed. I felt it was my privilege and duty as a woman to say these things with her as she sat as a vessel of birth on the brink of death. I left her room and just hoped for the best, not really believing that I could make any difference. Truly, despite exercising the power, I felt quite powerless. The doctors and nurses had the real power to help her now. Three days later, she called and asked me when I had come to visit her. I told her the time. She told me that before falling asleep, her condition was worsening. After I left the room, the doctor came in and to his surprise, her body had started to heal. He said, “I don’t know what dwarves were in here over the last hour, but they sure must like you. This is amazing.”

I share this not to brag. I feel as though I’m breaking some ancient feminine code in revealing this intensely personal moment. But, I understood that somehow, by virtue of being a woman, I had a power over life and death that needed to be exercised at that moment. I stared at the goddess in the painting and smiled at our shared connection.

Next, I came across Raul Anguiano’s painting “Desolacion”. The first thing you see is the sorrow on the woman’s face. The scenery is empty and desolate, but for this lone woman. The next thing you notice is her bare feet. She has nothing. No evidence of a past, and only bare feet to carry her forward. Her emptiness is overwhelming. Yet she exists. In the middle of emptiness and destruction, she alone emerges to carry forward. Not a plant, not a bird, an animal or any other sign of life exists as evidence that anything has ever existed before. But not only does this woman have the power to survive such destruction, but she marches forward, out of the desolation and towards something else.

In identifying traditional images of female empowerment, I can’t help but wonder at the power of my male counterparts. If feminine power is traditionally linked to life and death, pleasure and suffering, what on earth is left for the men to rule? I think back to kings, princes, laws that left women without representation, money, and at a general disadvantage in all things between life and death.

So what do stings, dreams, clay pots, tapestries and paintings of iconic women have in common? They all exist within a day in the life of this particular woman. They contribute to my own unique search for my place within this post modern world. As a woman, I am my pain, my pleasure, and my power to heal and embrace a world beyond the logical and the practical. All these factors came together to create a moment of connection between myself, the women of Mexico, and the iconic goddess. I still have so many questions: how do I identify my own particular power as a woman today and adapt this power into a livable wage? I have no interest in setting up shop as a doctor or a midwife. I don’t plan on opening a brothel or a funeral parlor. As I come to understand the gifts that history has recognized as particularly feminine, my next journey is to identify a way in which I can live up to my sex, while paying my bills. In the meantime, I’ll just write about it.

THE END. FOR NOW.

Some Writing--Part 2

And the story continues . . .

The first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t angry. I was just empty. I wasn’t ready to embrace any kind of overt joy, but whereas before my heart had been swollen with anger, confusion, pride, and regret—now I was empty and open. I had no intention of filling it up with anything or anyone, but I felt safe being open to whatever the day might bring. I methodically showered and dressed. I went to an appointment. Again, I let the sad songs play and I cried. But I also let the happy songs play too. And I read comics and I laughed.

I decided to tell Elijah’s father about the dream. I did. And that felt nice. I don’t know why I had had this dream about Elijah, but I did and I thought it would be good for his father to know that in my dream, Elijah is an awesome being who gives peace to everyone who comes near him, even me. I could sense that my words meant a great deal to his father. I felt a sense of power at my ability to heal with words.

By this time, I noticed that my finger was about half the size that it had been the day before. I let myself smile. I got in my car and made a beeline for the University of Utah Art Museum. I parked my car and walked inside.

I felt like I was floating. The museum housed a collection of art from Mexico. The sunlight fell in the pristine museum and the art stood proudly on their individual perches. Each piece was catalogued and identified for me on a card. I methodically studied each new piece, breathing the work in and out. I stood in front of a little clay pot and imagined the fingers molding the clay. I imagined the dust and the sweat from the artisan mixing in with the wet clay. And I cried at the miracle that had somehow connected me to the artisan across centuries and miles. I cried over a clay pot.

In awe, I stared at the weaving that the women of Mexico had created years before. I imagined a woman weaving her cloth in the dirt, one end attached to a small tree. Her heart must have been filled with responsibility, pain, and anguish. At some point, she probably got stung by a yellow jacket, or worse, by a man. And yet, here I was staring at this beautiful tapestry that she created. Despite the heat, the pain, or perhaps even the promise of pleasure, she dedicated herself to creating something beautiful. What is it that compels us to create in a world that stings and swells? I wanted to discover my connection to this woman.

Some Writing--Part 1

""> Here's some writing I finished up a few weeks ago.

My finger was the size of a small breakfast sausage. I know this because Sunday morning, I had sausage with my family. Three pieces. My finger resembled a sausage. It itched like crazy and I thought my skin would explode. I had this insane desire to cut open my finger in order to let it deflate, but some small rational part of me kept me from finding a knife.

I sat in church staring at my finger. I could feel it getting bigger. Every time someone spoke to me, it took every ounce of strength not to bark my reply. I finally found some ice in the kitchen and tried to freeze my finger. It seemed like a healthier alternative to mutilating it with a knife.

I enjoyed a nice roast with my brother and my grandmother. I pushed through all the allotted tasks, knowing that to stop, was to collapse. After musing over whether to go to the hospital or not (the finger was actually bigger now) I decided to just run to a drug store and get some allergy medicine. I swallowed the pills, iced the finger, and watched it grow.

As I drove from one obligation to another, songs would play. I skipped the happy songs. For every song of anger or heartbreak, I sang out and only then did the tears race down my cheeks. I didn’t want to feel better. I wanted to feel exactly how horribly lost and alone I was and I did not want to feel anything else. I felt like I had wrapped myself up in some dream of hope and that dream failed me and I wanted nothing but unadulterated reality. Raw reality. I think my favorite song was “We Do Not Belong Together” sung by Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin in Sondheim’s Sunday In The Park With George. In the song, Dot tells George that she’s leaving him because he doesn’t need her. As I raged with Dot, I shuddered with tears. But I always wiped my face before I got out of the car. Clearly, there was more to my pain than an allergic reaction to a yellow jacket sting, but it’s so cliché I’m loathe to share.

Monday night, I fell into bed at some ungodly hour I’m sure. I took a Claritin, two ibuprofin, covered the finger in cream and curled into my pillow. That night, I dreamed of a boy. The boy had brown curls and a pale face. He was my friend Elijah and his father had left him in my care. In the large mansion, a gregarious homeless man with a nicotine stained beard played video games with a boy with cerebral palsy. Other children with various ailments came in for sodas, played cards, or just gathered around Elijah. There was nothing formal about the evening. Everyone was having a nice, relaxed time. I noticed that here with Elijah, no one felt out of place or handicapped in anyway. Everyone just enjoyed one another’s company. Including myself. My main goal was to figure out something that Elijah could eat. I know Elijah in real life, and I knew that there were specific foods that he couldn’t eat, and in my dream I felt this overwhelming need to make sure that he was well fed and cared for. I finally decided to give him mashed up green beans. I remember mashing and mashing the green beans. I wanted to make sure that they were perfect for him. When his father came home, I was happy to tell him that Elijah had finished his grean beans. Then I woke up.

Antelope Island

Saturday I went out to the Antelope Island Stampede with my parents. It was a great time! A little warm, to say the least, but I got a great henna tattoo, watched professional kite flyers--(I want to go to there . . .) and listened to some live music. I'm not gonna say it was wonderful music, but it was fun seeing all the people enjoy it. They also had a hula hoop competition!