I have tried to remain faithful to writing something here every week since the earthquakes became such a large part of our lives here in Christchurch nearly a year ago. It was an act of fearlessness. To write some of my thoughts and put into a public forum, was in fact for me, a very frightening adventure.
Each time I push publish, I hold my breath.
Will I offend someone? Will I push someone over the edge of ambivalence to outright hating me or my mushy mind? It took an act of nature to make me not really give a damn. I had witnessed my own mortality, as well as the mortality of many friends and fellow Cantabrians. Life had become uncertain in the extreme sense of the word.
I still hold my breath. But, I push send anyway and hope that those who read, will read between the lines and guess that I am simply trying to discover a voice that might one day be consistent enough to write a complete version of many of the things I have only touched on.
Things like...morals (and not the prescribed ones, but those found through searching the self)...honesty (the kind that comes with confessing beliefs, or the lack of such, in the face of known consensus amongst friends, family and others)...passion (the kind that embraces activities other than sex)...confessions (the kind that reveals long withheld thoughts that I did not want to die without giving text)...
I use to be very afraid of technology and what might happen to me if I put myself 'out there'...meaning here...where others might inspect and find me lacking, confused, or worse...just plain boring. And, I admit, I am all of these things and more, but what is nice now, thanks to all the rocking and rolling with truly no where to run...
I am proud of myself for simply showing up, when the most appealing course of action was to run away and hide.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Petulant Princesses
I have seen a phenomenon that drove me back to university studies in my fifties. I use to have some very ‘airy fairy’ ways of describing this thing I saw/see/saw that troubles me even more now that I have learned new names to call it. For now, I will revert to a descriptive metaphor, ‘Petulant Princesses’, that suddenly came to mind while I was ranting about the need for lobotomies to a friend of mine who has her own Petulant Princess to thwart her family’s existence.
These are young women who openly ‘eat’ their mothers and some ‘others’ for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but most assuredly their mothers are the most palatable and the easiest to chew. Unconsciously these 'fire-y' maidens understand who is the most powerless, and I cannot say as I blame them, I am just trying to learn how to live through the uprising I have seen/see/seen happen right before my eyes to other mothers and me who cannot justify the extreme hostility that is reflected back at us.
Young women today are very angry. And, not just a little bit, but they have had a ‘bloody guts full’ and unfortunately, the only people they know they can take it out on, is ‘Mommy Dearest’. After all, if you cannot trust anyone to treat you as an equal across the game board, who needs a Queen? She may be powerful in chess, but that is the only place she is and this is obviously finally becoming a very big problem. Thankfully, but ouch!
It all began a long time ago, but Petulant Princesses do not KNOW this, they think their own mothers just now invented it, their loss of power. And, this powerlessness has some very ugly ramifications that are displayed in outright rage that clouds even the most educated minds at times, and to a childish and uneducated woman, has little if no opportunity to be expressed without many psychological slaughters, defamation of character and turmoil that will certainly finish the ‘nuclear family’, but then, perhaps losing the ‘nuclear family’ is not such a bad thing?
Personally, I am very happy for the many gay men and women brave enough to want to raise children these days. There is something to say about the strength of character it takes to come out and live authentically in a world wherein a 'fatwa' exists just as much in a Christian nation as in Islam. Unfortunately, I pity anyone raising a Petulant Princess, they have no loyalties to anyone and take no prisoners, they just leave bloody guts and mayhem, so inexperienced are they to their new powers of mobility with no real power at all.
However, even a great education does not preclude these consequences in some instances; Alice Walker’s daughter has done a good job of showing the world just how far a Petulant Princess can go to get a toe-hold within a world that is still, bottom line, a patriarchal society. I ache from and for this phenomenon, perhaps we are not so far away from collectively crying out and saying, “I will give my Petulant Princess in exchange for a Kingdom’.
These are young women who openly ‘eat’ their mothers and some ‘others’ for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but most assuredly their mothers are the most palatable and the easiest to chew. Unconsciously these 'fire-y' maidens understand who is the most powerless, and I cannot say as I blame them, I am just trying to learn how to live through the uprising I have seen/see/seen happen right before my eyes to other mothers and me who cannot justify the extreme hostility that is reflected back at us.
Young women today are very angry. And, not just a little bit, but they have had a ‘bloody guts full’ and unfortunately, the only people they know they can take it out on, is ‘Mommy Dearest’. After all, if you cannot trust anyone to treat you as an equal across the game board, who needs a Queen? She may be powerful in chess, but that is the only place she is and this is obviously finally becoming a very big problem. Thankfully, but ouch!
It all began a long time ago, but Petulant Princesses do not KNOW this, they think their own mothers just now invented it, their loss of power. And, this powerlessness has some very ugly ramifications that are displayed in outright rage that clouds even the most educated minds at times, and to a childish and uneducated woman, has little if no opportunity to be expressed without many psychological slaughters, defamation of character and turmoil that will certainly finish the ‘nuclear family’, but then, perhaps losing the ‘nuclear family’ is not such a bad thing?
Personally, I am very happy for the many gay men and women brave enough to want to raise children these days. There is something to say about the strength of character it takes to come out and live authentically in a world wherein a 'fatwa' exists just as much in a Christian nation as in Islam. Unfortunately, I pity anyone raising a Petulant Princess, they have no loyalties to anyone and take no prisoners, they just leave bloody guts and mayhem, so inexperienced are they to their new powers of mobility with no real power at all.
However, even a great education does not preclude these consequences in some instances; Alice Walker’s daughter has done a good job of showing the world just how far a Petulant Princess can go to get a toe-hold within a world that is still, bottom line, a patriarchal society. I ache from and for this phenomenon, perhaps we are not so far away from collectively crying out and saying, “I will give my Petulant Princess in exchange for a Kingdom’.
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