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WOMAN AND NATURE -- THE ROARING INSIDE HER |
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BOOK THREE: PASSAGE -- Her Journey Through the Labyrinth to the Cave Where She Has Her Vision The Room of the Dressing In woman dressed and adorned, nature is present but under restraint, by human will remolded nearer to mans desire. -- SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR, The Second Sex The spiraling descent. The legend of endless circling. The labyrinth from which none return. She falls into this labyrinth. Into the room of the dressing where the walls are covered with mirrors. Where mirrors are like eyes of men, and the women reflect the judgments of mirrors. Where the women stand next to each other, continue dressing next to each other, speak next to each other as if men were still with them. As if men could overhear their words. The room of the dressing where women sometimes speak in code. The room where each makes her own translation. The room where the women keep to themselves and she teaches her daughter to put on makeup. The room of the half-real. Where the women partly see each other. Where the women partly laugh. Partly laugh at the shapes they see in the mirror and the girls once reflected there. The room of the giggling girls. The room in which the girls whisper secrets about each other. Where one is said to have larger breasts. Where it is whispered she does not wear a bra. The room in which the girls run giggling to catch their friend with her breasts uncovered. The room of the disowned woman. The room where the women deny she is anything like them. Where they will not acknowledge the one who frightens them, the one who screams too loudly at her children, the one whose face is frozen to madness, who wears too many clothes. The room in which the women fear time. In which she is afraid of becoming her mother. This labyrinth. The place that turns back on itself. The room in which the women grow up. In which they are no longer awkward in their clothing. In which they grow out of clumsiness. And where she blames herself for not gracing her clothes. The room in which women praise their clothing and sigh that they are no longer children. The room in which time is a mirror. The labyrinth in which the women fear aging. She circles this maze of her fears, of her fear of seeing, of her fear of being revealed, of her fear of touching. The room of the dressing where the women are afraid to touch. Where the women are not close. Where the women keep themselves at a distance. Where the temptation to speak becomes large and the fear of speaking larger. Where all her words are dressed. And the mother teaches her daughter how to wear her hair. The room of the dressing in which the women shoulder all blame. In which the women agree that women are dangerous. The room in which women lament the darkness of women. And stories are told about women. The room in which the women cover themselves. And put each other at a distance. The room of the dressing where the women tell each other they are happy and in which the women look for secret unhappiness. This room where the women gossip. Where she carefully dresses all her words. And the mother teaches the daughter to pull up her slip. This room where they never touch. Where the women complain about each other. And say they cannot stand the company of women. The room of women who laugh at women. The room of women who know about each other. Whose looks are painful to each other. The room of women who have never really spoken. Who cannot be close. Where the sins of the father are visited upon the mother. And she looks at herself with his eyes. Where her daughter turns from her, though she carries her mother's knowledge in her bones, and will pass this on. The room where the daughter denies she is anything like her mother. The room of the dressing in which the women do not trust each other. The room where she finds herself in danger from herself. And she says she is suffocating. And she says the horizon is a lie. And the air is filled with stories about her. And she says space denies her. The room in which the women are lost. The labyrinth from which they do not escape. Which keeps them going around in circles. The room in which the women lose their way and are no longer anywhere. The room where women die. The labyrinth where she is afraid of perishing. The Room of the Undressing I go where I love and where I am loved. -- H.D., "The Flowering of the Rod" Startracks. Spiral nebulae. Craters of the moon. She lets herself fall. She falls into the room of her wants. The room where the demands of women are endless. Where her voice has endlessly demanded her to go. This room which reveals her. Where she is clumsy again. Where she is awkward in her grown-up clothing. Where she aches. This room of the revelation of all she thought horrible, and of her endlessly demanding body. Of all she shrank from in herself. This room filled with herself. She fell into this room. This room of outcasts. Where we uncover our bodies. Where we meet our outcast selves. The room in which she does not mock herself. This room filled with darkness. Where we go into darkness. Where we embrace darkness. Where we lie close to darkness, breathe when darkness breathes and find darkness inside ourselves. The room of the darkness of women. Where we are not afraid. Where joy is just under the surface. Where we laugh. Where laughter fills us utterly when we see what we thought was horrible. Where our demands are endlessly received. Where revelation fills us with glee. The room which she said she needed. The room without which she was sure she would perish. The first room in which she experienced space. This place where she could finally breathe. The place where she breathed out the stories she had not believed. The room where we confess we never believed those stories were about us. The room where she cast those stories from her forever. Where we began to feel the atmosphere wants us. Where she began to believe the horizon. This room of her wants. Of her desiring. This room of her desiring to live. This place which allows her to exist. Where the women stare into each other's eyes. Where the daughter feels the life of the mother. Where our words are undressed. And we touch. This room of our touching where the mother teaches her daughter to face her secret feelings. The labyrinth of her knowledge. Where she has her own reasons. The coral skeleton. The crystals of frost. Of her knowing. This place of her wandering. The circles of the tree's growth. The beehive. The room of her first wandering and of her finding. This place where she finds her way. THE CAVE Above all, there was the sensation of moving physically over the contours of fulnesses and concavities, through hollows and over peaks -- feeling, touching, seeing, through mind and hand and eye. This sensation has never left me. I, the sculptor, am the landscape. I am the form and the hollow, the thrust and the contour. -- BARBARA HEPWORTH, A pictorial Autobiography The shape of a cave, we say, or the shape of a labyrinth. The way we came here was dark. Space seemed to close in on us. We thought we could not move forward. We had to shed our clothes. We had to leave all we brought with us. And when finally we moved through this narrow opening, our feet reached for ledges, under was an abyss, a cavern stretching farther than we could see. Our voices echoed off the walls. We were afraid to speak. This darkness led to more darkness, until darkness leading to darkness was all we knew. The shape of this cave, our bodies, this darkness. This darkness which sits so close to us we cannot see, so close that we move away in fear. We turn into ourselves. But here we find the same darkness, we find we are shaped around emptiness, that we are a void we do not know. The shape of a cave, this emptiness we seek out like water. The void that we are. That we wash into as sleep washes over us, and we are blanketed in darkness. We see nothing. We are in the center of our ignorance. Nothingness spreads around us. But in this nothing we find what we did not know existed. With our hands, we begin to trace faint images etched into the walls. And now, beneath these images we can see the gleam of older images. And these peel back to reveal the older still. The past, the dead, once breathing, the forgotten, the secret, the buried, the once blood and bone, the vanished, shimmering now like an answer from these walls, bright and red. Drawn by the one who came before. And before her. And before. Back to the beginning. To the one who first swam from the mouth of this cave. And now we know all she knew, see the newness of her vision. What we did not know existed but saw as children, our whole lives drawn here, image over image, past time, beyond space. *** The shape of a cave, the bud, the chrysalis, the shell, what new form we seek in this darkness, our hands feeling these walls, here wet, here damp, here crumbling away; our hands searching for signs in this rock, certain now in this darkness, what we seek is here, warm and covered with water, we sweat in this effort, piercing the darkness, laying our skin on the cool stone, tracing the new image over the old, etching these lines which become dear to us now, as what we have drawn here gleams back at us from the walls of the cave, telling us what is, now, and who we have become. This round cavern, motion turned back on itself, the follower becomes the followed, moon in the sky, the edge becoming the center, what is buried emerges, light dying over the water, what is unearthed is stunning, the one we were seeking, turning with the ways of this earth, is ourselves. This cave, the shape to which each returns, where image after image will be revealed, and painted over, painted over and revealed, until we are bone. Where we touch the ones who came before and see their visions, where we leave our mark, where, terrified, we give up ourselves and weep, and taken over by this darkness, are overwhelmed by what we feel: where we are pushed to the edge of existence, to the source which sounds like a wave inside us, to the path of the water which feeds us all. The way of the water we follow, which has made this space, and hollowed the earth here, because the shape of this cave is a history. *** The shape of this cave is a history telling us with each echo of the sound of each wave rushing against its sides: "I was not here before; my shape changes daily. I was sand. I was mountain. I was stone. I was water. I was shellfish and sea anemone and sea snail, I was fish, eel, urchin. I was plankton. I was seaweed and sea grass. Here I am black and polished and round, here I am yellow, here I am covered with moss, here I gleam with a purple reflection when the light lies across me, here I curve outward, here I sink back. "When the water approaches me, the shape of the wave is changed. And when the tide ebbs, you will see, I, too, have changed." *** The shape of the labyrinth. The shape of the cave. Space divided and not divided. Space mutable, we say, separation becoming union. Space changing. The new shape. Melting and transformation, the crystal and the seed, the endless possibility of form, as in the metal measuring rod, which changes its shape at the speed of light, we say. The Hexenhaus destroyed (the witches reborn) the zoological garden opened (the reappearance of species) the prison razed (crime renamed) acoustics transformed (madness released) the buried (plants to flesh to earth) uncovered. The rectangular shape of his book of knowledge, bending. The shape of our silence, the shape of the roofs of our mouths. Darkness.
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