Ichabod's Tartarus

One concept that dominates my mind is that of spirituality.  Spirituality is one of those things that no one can distinctly identify, but everyone knows is there.  The very definition of spirituality is personal, and so there can be no solidified definition.  In my opinion, it is the acknowledgement of the condition of the soul or spirit.  There may or may not be one or more venerated beings in control of this condition, but it is the soul's condition nonetheless.  Tying oneself to a religion makes this condition precarious, because the soul now becomes one's sole means of bartering with the gatekeepers of paradise and purgatory, Elysium and Tartarus.  And, for the truly nefarious, eternally scorching molten torment.

There is no Rosetta Stone  that can translate the workings of the human soul.  Our spirits are all stained by the ink of our fraudulent words, scarred by the jagged rocks of our misfortune, and poisoned by our noxious misdeeds.  We have all, at some point in our lives, seen a spark of glory struggling for breath and snuffed it out without a second thought.  It all makes me wonder, how does the mind cope when the human soul has gone beyond glory?

I have complete respect for those whose faith is the spark that brightens any dark room.  Their spirits are cheerful in public and in private.  Each sip of water is a blessing God wanted them to have and each stubbed toe is a lesson God wanted them to learn.  These are not the figures with whom I have always identified.  They have determined that they are headed for paradise and they have the pearly gates in sight.  I have always been drawn to the tortured souls.  For a time, I had a notion that Dan Brown was my favourite author.  Put simply, he is off his rocker and his writing is not the glorious work of art I thought it was at the time.  He caught me with a common fascination, self-inflicted penance.  Many religions, not just Roman Catholics, use self-inflicted pain to show that they acknowledge their sin and want to suffer as, in the case of Christians, our Messiah suffered.

This is not to say that mortification of the flesh should be a widespread practice or that I have a flagellum by my bedside for use between brushing my teeth and going to bed.  However, I do think quite a bit about sin and redemption.  My mind is often preoccupied with this stain I constantly feel the need to scrub from my spirit through acts of mental penance.  I feel pain shooting through my body as I type and I wonder if this is my purgatory, if a trickle of glory has left me because of my inherent evil.

When I was young, I wanted to become a nun.  I called my mother crying one day when I was 16, because I had decided I could not wait a day longer and I was going to find the nearest convent.  My soul was writhing.  I cannot explain that feeling.  I cannot explain the feeling of knowing with your entire being that you want to serve God and that the only way you can do that is to forsake all else and focus solely on Him and His work.  Well, I suppose those who have actually taken that path know better than I do what that feels like.  I had my reasons for ultimately choosing not to- first and foremost being that I am not Catholic (that may have been important).  Sometimes, I wonder if that trickle of glory is a leak, a leak from the crack that has formed from all these years of trying to contain my thrashing soul.

Cuban Nun (Old Havana), Howard Moo Young

Shade on Woman

There is a piece entitled "Letter to a Good Man" on a blog I follow written by SHD.  In it, he lauds the efforts of the ideal man, should he still exist in this world, and laments his destruction at the hands of our current culture.  The piece is exquisite and brings to light any number of factors that will come against a man attempting to live up to this expectation, which has quite likely surpassed realism and entered the realm of the imagined.

While the death of the good man is surely a great loss for which society should drip in remorse, I wonder what standards have been set and violated for the good woman.  The image of the upstanding, generous, brave and faultless man has always been accompanied by that of the gracious, accommodating, dependent, and unmarred woman.  Tradition dictates that she is a nurturer, supporter and the base of the home or any such establishment.  She is faithful to a fault and stellar with a pot and needle.  She may be intelligent or dim, but she is wise in the ways of the considerate.

Ultimately, she is property.  The kaleidoscope of cultures we inhabit has varied in colour and intensity over time.  I like to consider civilizations like the ancient Nubians, Romans, Egyptians and Hittites as deep, but vibrant tones, waging war and conquering their enemies.  The ancient world was full of strong cultures and equally strong personalities.  As such, a dominant woman was not such an unsightly image, whether as mother, queen or goddess.  Queen Hatshepsut of the 18th dynasty of Ancient Egypt, for example, is considered one of the first great women of documented history, a remarkable pharaoh in her own right and buried in the Valley of the Kings.  Though she was not the first queen to assume the role of pharaoh, she seems to have been the most successful.  However, there is a reason she is known as "the Queen who would be King".  She embodied the role and donned the attire of a pharaoh, distinctly not a simple queen who stood as the overwhelming beauty in the shadow of her husband.  This is not to rob anything from Nefertiti or Nefertari, who were great women as well.  The fact is, they were spouses, and the known world never forgot it.  History is not completely certain of how Hatshepsut seized the throne or how she came to lose it, but what was certain for a long time was the soap opera that was her life.  Of course, for a man this soap opera is a tale with which one regales the ears of the ages.  For a woman, it is a stain.  That is why Cleopatra is often considered a harlot who slept and pillow-talked her way to the top, rather than an intellectual of high standing who used cunning to maneouver an intricate and venomous political system.

I digress.  This post is not a feminist rant about the fight for dominance of women.  I often think, though, on how feminism has mangled Woman.  Woman is no longer obligated to care for those around her as she once was.  She no longer needs to be chef extraordinaire, as it is adequate to be an aficionado of the tin can.  Woman needs no longer to be well spoken, rounded, groomed, or mannered in the sense that she once was.  Instead, she can be as crass as a sailor and disheveled as a decrepit building.  Woman now strives to not simply become Man, but usurp the authority with which history has bestowed him and beat him into sniveling submission.

I have no quarrel with Woman in her quest for equality, vindication and acknowledgement for the things she does.  I have those same goals and am inclined to crave dominance myself.  I, too, believe that the concept of a woman being more credible and stable if she is tied to a man is farcical.  There are many single women who are stable, considerate people, and many attached women, whether to husband or Jesus, who should get a slap in the head for being as insufferable as they are.  At some point, being a woman took a turn for the vicious and the world will suffer for it.

As SHD says of the good man in his piece, the good woman will also be maimed by those of us who believe that independence and vindication call for the garb of the caring woman to be shed (both figuratively and literally).  She will also be emotionally assaulted by the men of today, who feel that she is a puppeteer.  They will see her attempts to embrace and protect them in her heart as a sign that later she will wound them in their beds.  They will smother her in the pus of the expectation that has festered in their souls from being discarded by real and imagined pin up girls.  She will gain a pound here and a wrinkle there and these trophies of the full life she has lived will be the cues for society to strip her status as 'beauty' from her.  Those of us who have hardened our own souls to the lace-lined frills of weakness will deal the final strike, and watch her as she leaks her last breath with furrowed brow and quivering lip.

We have already slaughtered much of the good in this world.  We will continue to believe that it is because the face of good has somehow changed.  Decency does not morph with time.  It is no different now than it was in the ancient world.  The day that our amnesia is lifted may be the day we regain a modicum of hope.

 Katherine Hepburn,

the woman who proved to me that you can still be a lady in a man's suit

Athena Rising

Incepto ne desistam- "May I not shrink from my purpose"

I am often told of my fragility and volatility.  I consider myself to be Pallas Athena, virgin goddess of war, strength, art and all around gracious intelligence.  However, the world tends to view me more as her pretty, but temperamental priestess- still unripened fruit obeying the laws of the divine and liable to being plucked by Heracles, Zeus or some vagrant atmospheric element that sweeps through the temple.

In a way, this image was superimposed on my fate as a sort of stencil by my doting and well intentioned family, along with almost everyone I came across.  I was the delicate, pink-cheeked child who cried at a moment's notice and hid her toys from inexorable damage at the hands of visiting peers.  Throughout my life, though, I have allowed the markings of my being to follow this hovering stencil out of respect, obedience and the understanding that I was to be a proper, well-mannered child and grow into a proper, well-mannered woman.

I questioned very few turns of this guide when I was young and I like to think I have become something of a lady.  However, every now and then I climb a hill, play with a reptile or sit on the floor and I can hear the aghast gasps of everyone who groomed me.  A series of realities becomes apparent to me as if strung together by the hooked paper clips of every "yes ma'am" or "yes sir" I have ever muttered.  In my mind, I am berated by my high school Headmistress for daring to munch on that oatmeal and raisin cookie while walking in public.  In another scene, I am scolded by my father for being clumsy and falling on the rocks in Hellshire...again.  In yet another, I am consoled by my grandmother for being pricked by thorns while attempting to pick fruits from a tree.  Maybe if I weren't so delicate, I would know how to cut that can open without slicing my finger in the process.

When these thoughts come up, I am tempted to imagine some sort of wretched constraint placed on me by the society in which I was raised.  It is a society which, after all, often places frailty on a pedestal- or, in my case, a low stool from which I am in no danger of falling.  When I think things through, I am grateful that those who love me have sheltered me from experiences that may very well have scarred me for the rest of my days.  I remember telling one of the researchers in Hellshire when I first went there that I wanted a scar, because I had never had one and I had always wanted that discoloured trophy that I could flaunt as a symbol of having done something significant, daring or even just fun.  He warned me that I may not like the event that led to that scar or the scar itself once it was permanently stitched into my skin.  Nevertheless, I wanted it and I got it.  Well, I got many.

My point is this.  I cherish each scar and memory of pain as an effigy of the person I was in that moment.  I may not have had the most exciting life, but I am content with the wonders I have seen and the love with which I have been showered.  I am thankful for the experiences that were snuck into my tapestry of time by my family and friends, and for those that are still to come.  I still chuckle when I touch my ear, because I remember when my aunt (my 'Big Mommy') defiantly took me to get my ears pierced without my mother's consent because she just thought I was ready.  I have kept every ticket stub for every movie I have laughed at, scoffed at or just seen nonchalantly with my friends.  I have had a life, and I look forward to filling it with even more moments of awe, basic contentment and every emotion between and beyond.

I will close with these messages.  To those who see me from a distance, I am stronger and even more temperamental than I look.  If at first you do not believe this, I will show you, possibly forcefully.  To my protectors, I am the lady you have built, with a few kinks indented by many falls from that stool on which you placed me.  I am okay with a scar or two and a few patches of dirt on my skin.  It is okay to let go, because if I fall again I know how to pick my pieces off the rocks that constitute this world and glue them back together.

I am a haphazard mess inside a well defined exterior.  I am proud of that.  If I am not yet Athena, all I need is time.

Pallas Athena, Rembrandt, ~1665