The Space Between

20 Jul 2024 2 Comments

by writingforselfdiscovery in Feminism, vision board Tags: , , , , ,

What faces you when you’re on the throne? I’m serious, what is literally in the space directly in front of you? What do you gaze upon multiple times daily doing what natural urges require?

In my private chamber, the Vision Board occupies that place. It’s four feet eight inches from my eyeball to the center of that informative piece of art. I measured. My visits provide ample time to peruse its content, mull over its many meanings, stew, and ponder.

Be who you are, Be where you are, compelled my first attempt to share revelations gleaned from the Board in a post, Becoming Small. Satisfied with my conclusions, I moved on to, The Space Between. That phrase was glued beside the image of two very old women smoking cigarettes and wearing vintage wedding gowns. Beneath them were the words, the future, and as old as time.

First I asked myself, The space between what? Staring at me were those two ancient broads. I had the uneasy premonition that I was seeing my future. So the space was the present. The now. The time existing between the past and the future.

But I couldn’t leave that alone. How big is that space, I wondered?

A wise woman once told me that the present is the only time we have in which to create. I would change that to say, the present is the only time we have period. Our minds can dwell on the past. We can imagine the future, but our physical being cannot be in either of those places. We are only in the present.

Who thinks about these things? I should have been born in the era of Socrates, Aristotle, Plato. I’d have fit right in disguised as a man. The female philosophers came later:

  • Hypatia of Alexandria: An early female philosopher who worked in astronomy and mathematics
  • Heloise of Argenteuil: A French philosopher from around 1100–1164 who advocated for adequate education for nuns
  • St. Hildegard of Bingen: Lived from 1098–1179
  • Catherine of Siena: Lived from 1347–1380
  • Christine de Pizan: Lived from 1364–c. 1430
  • Moderata Fonte: Lived from 1555–1592 and was a critic of religion and feminist
  • Tullia d’Aragona: Lived from c. 1510–1556 and was known for her intellectual conversations

Who’s heard of any of them? Ok. A subject for another day – sometime in the future!

Back to the questions at hand: How long is the present? Is it measured in conscious time, from the moment I wake up until I fall asleep? For the sake of sanity, I think I’ve always thought of it that way. I plan what I’ll do today. Yesterday’s gone, tomorrow is yet to come, so…

My literal brain wasn’t having it. No, Sherry. Think. The present is the most infinitesimally small unit of measurable time, a zeptosecond, one trillionth of a billionth of a second. Like it or not, everything else is past or future.

But… (I argued) I move from one zeptosecond to the next… Explain that! If I’m always in the present then my present isn’t the smallest measure, it’s unlimited, until death I depart. I thought about it for a minute. Both the logical and the imaginative sides of my brain seemed delighted with that explanation.

Whew! Glad that’s settled. What a relief. I’m not bound by the zeptosecond. I have unlimited time to create. That’s good news because I want to write another novel. And I want to live long enough to see the one I already wrote, Nettle Creek, picked up by a publisher. Hopefully, there’ll be enough space between for all that and so much more.

Am I woman?

12 Oct 2021 6 Comments

by writingforselfdiscovery in Bali, Feminism, wisdom Tags: , , , , , ,

Scrubbed and polished sky shone brightly overhead as Dan navigated the twisty coastal road into the City. “It’s carmageddon,” he said, and I translated it karma-geddon thinking my own private thoughts. I was unaware that the term referred to actual cars. Unaware, as well, that this weekend marked the grand finale of Fleet Week in San Francisco, that traffic would be snarly, that people would be out in droves.

Our destination: the Legion of Honor Museum.

I hadn’t Googled it, so when we pulled up to a structure resembling a Roman temple on a hilltop overlooking San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, I was surprised.  I’d assumed something more on the order of Frank Gehry architecture; edgy contemporary, in-your-face innovation.

Instead, the structure bore witness to what I’ve been taught to consider the ultimate in cultural refinement – the Roman era – art, poetry, literature, scientific breakthroughs, palatial homes with sumptuous furnishings. Power and privilege.

Perhaps I was off balance from the get-go. Perhaps two years of pandemic lockdown in Bali, isolated, uncertain of everything, stripped me of social resilience. There were people. Everywhere. And that was before we even entered the building.

Had I done my research I’d have been better prepared.

I’d have known that the brilliant work of a female artist, Wangechi Mutu, was being featured. But I didn’t know, and I wasn’t prepared.

The following quote appears on the Museum’s website and describes Mutu’s art:

Over the past two decades, Wangechi Mutu has created chimerical constellations of powerful female characters, hybrid beings, and fantastical landscapes. With a rare understanding of the power and need for new mythologies—the productive friction of opposites beyond simple binaries and stereotypes—Mutu breaches common distinctions among human, animal, plant, and machine. At once seductive and threatening, her figures and environments take the viewer on journeys of material, psychological, and sociopolitical transformation. 

Her bold interpretation of femininity, unrestrained, superimposed on a backdrop of paintings by male artists depicting women as we’ve been taught to be seen, assaulted my nervous system. Wild emotions churned through me and I could only identify one of them as I navigated the exhibits: anger. What was it that made me furious?

I’m not someone who processes quickly. I tend to go first into a state of overwhelm where I can’t think, can’t verbalize, I just absorb information. Then piece by piece, over hours and days, I bring it out and sift through the layers.

It slowly seeped into my consciousness that I was angry at myself for living small for so many years…

for buying into the lie that men hold all the cards and women’s role is subservient…

for judging my value based on how I was valued by the men in my life.

I was angry that Mutu was the ONLY female artist represented in that vast collection of paintings. And yet, perhaps that was intentional, the productive friction of opposites…

I was f***ing furious that the standards of beauty – sensuality – sexuality – purity – allure, all of it, all of what I was supposed to be, has always been dictated by men. F***ing furious.        

And there was Mutu’s art. Mutu’s depiction of the feminine going beyond simple binaries and stereotypes.

Feminine images, sleek, gritty, organic, metallic. Alien. Alien. We have alienated ourselves from our true selves by allowing patriarchy to define us.

I’d identified another emotion. Grief.