Because I Can.

I've been giving alot of thought to women lately, to goddesses and girls and ladies and queens.

I used to hate women. I'm not kidding. My best friend and I used to roll our eyes and declare that we hated women. Hated female actresses, hated chick music, prized out male teachers over our female ones and thought lady authors sucked hardcore too. So I missed out on Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolfe, I hated all the roles for young women out there and spent my time learning lines for Shakespeare's heroes instead. I sincerely wished I'd been born a man.

And then I embraced my female sexuality and found that very empowering, though I still detested most women and resisted the conformity of being a high school girl. I watched gangster movies and listened to my brother's music and looked-up-to only male historical figures.

In thinking about this self-loathing, because surely hating women is in large part hating my own identity, I can't think of when this distaste for all things female finally faded. 

I think... I think the first time I actually liked and respected a female character was probably some Katahrine hepburn role-- either Eleanor or maybe Tracy from Philadelphia Story.  And then I know I liked Bette Davis in All About Eve too... and the first female role that I played that I actually felt empowered performing, empowered in a similar way to the male roles I'd play at?  It was Paulina in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.  I was seventeen, I was an apprentice to the incomparable boston theatre scene legend Nancy Carroll, and I was enamored of this part.  It is a fucking badass part and my hat is off to Billy Shakes for this amazing piece of work. And we did the play outdoors, in nature, which is an holy communion of ancient and sacred power unlike nothing else I have experienced (besides love-making), and it was life changing. Since then it has been my endeavor to root out the meaty roles for women, seek them out and celebrate them.  And I think that may have been the summer I stopped hating women so very much.  

Now?  Now I am really quite a fan of women.  Of all things female and feminine.  I celebrate women and believe we should do more of it.  When I re-learn history, as one should endeavor to do once outside of school and outside of the main-stream understanding of history, I look carefully at the women who were movers and shakers.  At women who stand out among the crowd, and this isn't easy to see always because history for thousands of years has been recorded largely by men-- misogynistic, patriarchal, penis mightier men.  (And if you were wondering, yes, I just referenced Darryl Hammond's outlandish Sean Connery impersonation in my celebration of women blog.  I can do that if I so choose.)

I embrace the goddess, I embrace my affinity for growing things and gardening and I embrace my secret desire to be an apothecary and know which herbs do what to my body and so forth.  I celebrate women and girlfriends and the power of mothers and sisters and daughters and wives and lovers.  I wink at the moon and I smile at birds and I want to be a better woman, a more woman-centric woman.  I want to be a better Aunt and friend and sister and teacher, a better daughter and a better wife-- but not 'better' as defined by the male, better as defined by me, by what makes a strong, healthy, happy, loving, productive wife. (ha ha, sorry aaron)

I've spent so long trying to ignore my feminity, trying to behave like a man, but you know what?  I love my sex, I love being female.  I love the cliches of it and the unexpected things too.  I feel so empowered and vital and strong lately.  And I'm looking carefully at women in history, looking closer and trying to see myself in them and them in me.  I'm looking at Anne Boelyn and seeing one of the most fascinating and powerful creatures that may ever have walked this earth.  Not just some slut who turned a king's head, I'm seeing a person who changed the geo-political landscape from that point on, a woman whose light touch is still so evident today in our lives though people forget, have forgotten and can't comprehend the extent of her reach.

And you know how they killed her?  Know what one of the charges against her was when Henry was ready to behead her?  Among incest and adultery and treason charges was a leveled the charge of witchcraft.  She was accused of bewitching the king into marrying her.  

Hah.  And that got me thinking about Salem and our witch trials here.  How the men would say of a woman: "She must be a witch, she came to me in my dreams and made me aroused, she's a wicked woman, a witch!"  Like being attractive and alluring was more than a sin, it was downright unnatural.  These repressed guys were having wet dreams or getting erections when these women were around and because they didn't understand their urgings they blamed the woman for beguiling their bodies against their will.  

Laughable now, but also not so much, because of what still goes on in many regions of this globe.  The same barbaric bullshit.  Because femininity has an inherent and immeasurable power in this world, in nature, in the lives of men.  We are the origin of everything.  We are life.

And yeah, yeah, we can't do it without men, but we can do so, so much without them and I think that must be alarming to them on some level.  So over the centuries they've saught to diminish us, make us chattel, subserviant, weak and dependent.

It greives me that we lost so much of our history, our power and ourselves.  Because of rape and brute force and bullies and the systematic genocide of a culture, an ideal, a way of life.

I won't talk about the The Virgin Mary now, and the catholic church and the destruction of the goddess and of the earth, because I'd be here all night.  But I know alot about it, lol, so if you ever want one hell of a long coffee date let me know.  I think I like Eleanor of Aquitaine so very much because she stands at a time in history where she straddles the catholic movement toward virgin worship and the ancient secrets and wisdom of the pagan goddess.  Because she embodies female empowerment while simultaneously being restricted and hemmed-in by a growing patriarchy, and she is legend.

Anyway, why the weird blog?  I was having trouble getting into CF tonight, couldn't decide which storyline I wanted to follow and yet I still wanted to wrrite something, nay, NEEDED to write, so I asked Aaron to give me a writing prompt.  He did.  It goes like this:

First line of the piece must be:

The last time i\he\she stood in that\this spot I\he\she was a different person.

 And the story must include the following:

Rules: a length of rope, a piece of fruit, a type of career that no longer exists in the mainstream

Here is what was birthed.  Just now.  Not more than an hour ago.

**********************

The last time she stood in that spot she was a different person.  A girl.  A thing entirely apart from what she was now.  Silly and free and unencumbered.  The last time she stood in that spot she’d seen the world through different eyes, heard it with virgin ears, tasted it with an innocent tongue.

Now she looked about her, looked with unblinking eyes at just how same that spot had stayed, and she knew sorrow.  Felt grief.  But not regret.  Never regret. 

The bower still stood, though now no roses bloomed upon it.  There had been fat pink roses then, on that day.  And fat yellow bees and a fat little holy man with a fat black tome. 

But she was lithe and trim and what had they called her?  A whisp-of-a-thing.  And they’d dressed her all up in a sweet little costume of lace and silk and satin and taffeta and tulle.  They’d unbound her plaits and she liked the way her unbound tresses felt streaming down her back and she’d giggled.

Standing in the spot now she didn’t believe she could ever have been so pure and untouched.  With a mirthless smile she decided that even if she were so inclined she didn’t think her new body could produce a giggle.  She doubted it had the capacity to form something so light and frivolous and un-knowing.

Because she knew far too much now.  Had seen, and once a thing is seen it cannot be un-seen.  She was changed.  Deep down.  And irrevocably so.  Like those curious nudists and their fat red apple, she was a different person now and though the spot had stayed steadfast her presence within the spot was new and alien and distinctly other.

Beyond the bower, suspended on a low-arching branch, hung a timeless rope swing with a wide plank for a seat.  It was all so picturesque, so evocative of legend and stories and the stuff of myth and memory.  It was so permanent in its seemingly ephemeral grace.

She wondered how many young, frolicsome girls had been wooed and won here, how many dolls had been costumed and led to their fates, pulled by the inevitability of time and custom to this unchanging spot.  How many virgins had been sacrificed to a paternal god by the big tree with the swing, beneath the bower and the pretty pink heirloom roses and the thorns?

The last time she’d stood in that spot she’d made promises, recited oaths, but she understood little, comprehended even less.  She’d smiled and blushed delicately and been kissed for an audience of on-lookers, and then she’d become his.  She had become property. 

And the last time she’d been in that spot they’d plied her with wine and bade her to dance and she’d been giddy and dizzy and silly and it had all seemed so amazing and bizarre and enchanting.

And later he’d forced himself onto her, into her, through her and she’d screamed, but no one would help.  He’d ripped into her and defiled her and hurt her and the lightness had left, the joy had bled out of her, and she had understood herself to be something else.  Something caged and shackled and owned.

Later there’d been an apothecary and later still a midwife.  She’d become a mother and a widow and free but not free.  Now she stood in that spot a different person, a changed person, a new person; a new creature altogether.  She did not feel light.  She did not feel pure.

But she felt wise and honest and vital.  She stood in the spot and she saw the bower for the cage that it was.  Recognized the length of rope that suspended that romantic, picturesque swing for the travesty that it was. 

She looked at the place and grew strong.  She spat on the ground and felt release.  She turned her back on that spot, and on the ghostly memories of smiling faces and merry music and streamers and petals and sacrificial rites and with a grounded, self-assured confidence she walked away and made a vow she did understand, a promise she knew she would keep. 

And she knew she would never look for this Eden again, never seek out this lost paradise for anyone or anything.