Musing 25

The house a woman creates a Utopia. She cannot help it - cannot help trying to interest her nearest and dearest not in happiness itself but in the search for it. Marguerite Duras, Practicalities (1987)


Vintage adverts & 1945 ad Hart Schaffner & Marx men's fashions; sidebar: 1948 ad for Proctor automatic pop-up toaster

The Suburb of Femininity

Marguerite Duras (Practicalities, 1987) writes a lot about womanhood and the inextricable motherhood. In Musing 26 this topic emerged out of a pressing need to rethink our world economy. I believe we are going about the equality-thing between the genders the wrong way. I am happy to leave the trend to transition or remain undefined in the middle of everything, since that is not relevant in the slightest. That topic pertains to the Individualisation Process, and our dawning realisation that I am not my body. I is someOne alltogether diffferent. I is the difference between heaven and earth, and thereby also between he and she and this and that.

I IS Awareness.

So leaving that in the middle of gender, I quote Deborah Levy (“Things I Don’t Want To Know”, 2013) with:

Some mothers go mad because the world that made them feel worthless is the same world with which their children fall in love. These are the mothers who got stuck in the Suburbs.

When Duras (in Levy’s aforementioned biographical musings) speculates that women and martyrdom go together, I think back to how our mother's martyrdom was what bothered me most about the woman she had become; specifically because I know my sister resents this (I don't resent it but lament it). It hinders my sister most in finding her own role as a woman. She feels dependent on clearly outlined rolemodels or life-patternings. Her autism would love to depend on a role, but this autism also prevents her from slipping into anything more comfortable than her great generic discomfort. Our mother’s example is impossible to interpret with an autistic mind and a deficient capacity for empathy. What we don't understand makes us angry or very, very sad.

I think the melancholia of women my age and the fury of younger women has a similar root on a larger scale. How to be what we are supposed to be? How impossible this may be as long as men aren't being what they are meant to be.
But what do I mean by this if I am not speaking in clichés but trying to explain a spiritual principle, around which all economies, all house-holding, all life-management skills are organised?

  • [The Seven Year Itch, Marilyn Monroe &Tom Ewell; by Billy Wilder, 1955]

Our advertising world is all about bringing men and women together. We may embellish on the theme and make it about a more random interconnectivity regardless of gender, but the stablest economy depends on the family unit or some kind of homebuilding ambition: some kind of dream kept alive, American or not. The children are very literally our future, and eventhough they've made their first (2 day old embryo) mouse out of its own stemcells (creating blastocystic cells which are different to previous clone experiments as far as I can make out) and one day we won't need sex to reproduce ourselves, so far we still have genetics to help us understand who we are or who we are not.

I can testify to the fact that "woman needs man and man must have his mate" disregarding sexual desire. I am not even referring to the need for a complementary part to an incomplete self (which is the sure path to a rapid parting of ways again). Our gender is not our identity it is our pathway. Throughout the ages we have tried to pave this way as best we can, imprinting it into time and matter. When two souls meet in the form of a man and a woman they get to read some of the original (Platonic) code - if they've both learned to remember the same spiritual language. It's not to be found in a kamasutra class, specifically. You may just find it in a rocking chair on a verandah, watching the sun go down, saying absolutely nothing, except maybe to inquire whether the other knows if that is a marsh or a willow warbler.

Neither sex nor longevity is the way forward

Duras says:

A house means a family house, a place meant for putting children and men in so as to restrict their waywardness and distract them from the longing for adventure and escape they've had since time began.

This is a very powerful spiritual truth, even if she may not know it meta-philosophically. As spirit beings - unspokenly, intuitively - we have agreed to find a way to make ourselves believe in the song and dance of man and woman (romance) and it's reproductive consequences.

Is it all about sex then, that we are born a specific sex? This would imply we only need to be man or woman as and when we need to do the deed. And to a point it is boiling down to this, with the emphasis on gender equality.

(It is this materialistic regard towards our gender which we signal also underlying the absurdly violent frustrations of complexly toxic men who identify as Incel - involuntarily celibate.)

Where do you think our desire to make babies really comes from? It may precede our attraction or even forgo it - that biological clock can drive some women bananas. Clearly without any sexual attraction at all, ever again, in some kind of Orwellian techno-society, at its most technical level, there would be no more copulation and no more babies born. The State would have to order the act to be performed as and when the statistics determine.

In fact, the spiritual temple rites and the highly incestuous marriages of kings and queens (pharaos notably) all point to there being something sacred left when there is nothing else left (or naturally forthcoming).

Adrienne Rich, also quoted by Levy, says:

Feminine fertility and pregnancy not only continue to fascinate our collective imagination, but also serve as a sanctuary for the sacred.

However, even with only self-indulgent sexual appetite (i.e. a happy romantic life) we could very easily end up in a similar situation, between the rock and the hard place of contraception and homosexuality (as the most obvious impediments to procreation). If you think about it: the more we think about it (become rational beings), the less it will make "sense" to sexually reproduce ourselves (demanding sacrifice from the woman). We'll have to find other procreative ways to regnerarate the Human Project. Yep, the times are upon us that we need to start doing some serious tinkering; scientists, furthermore, have determined conclusively that the human body is not designed to last beyond a maximum of 123 years. Amoebes move over, and mice pack in your stemcells, here come the mechanically engineered.


mechanical sleeve tattoo by victorportugal.com

Sanctification

What happens if we all become spiritually enlightened like the spiritual industry with all its healthy diets, exercise and life-style plans so hopes we will become? You can't go around hoping for lust to spark you to fertilise your eggies, ladies! That would be a most unconscious, primitive, desire-body modus. You men can't go around poking about willy-nilly anymore, either. Once purified of astral egoism and animal instinct, you'ld have to pick who to impregnate by the sense of LOVE. Mind you don't mistake any sensation of comfort and consolation or otherwise a powerful adrenalin burst of self-assurance for love though.

Can we know anything about the creative power (god-likeness) that is love without sex?
Can we have sex in order to fix love (instead of genes)?

Indeed, as any artist or paraplegiac or owner of a kitten knows (in very significantly nuanced ways!) sexual desire, purified and spiritualised, IS clearly seen as an expression of love that exists within its own right as an energy source.

When it then, next, wants you to "fuse" what he has and she has, subsequently, potentially, making a new monad, or child together what is is exactly expressing ? We call such babies born out of an ardent desire "love babies". Leaving to one side how happy they will always be, psychically seen, such a creative act is the experience of the God Force pulled down into matter, the true impregnation of substance (atoms) by love - which is that awareness of I - which is found in the difference.

Is this difference to be found between any I meeting any other I, and the way forward to disregard one's natural gender? Is gender and sexual attraction only a natural "trick", anyway? With a sell-by date (naturally:menopause). Is sex something fully mature and independent, so called "accomplished" souls can by-pass altogether (like the Dalai Lama or the Pope)?

If the answer is yes, then, what are we waiting for?! We must all become "better", "nobler", "purer", "perfect" and call eachother losers if we dont want to be. Snap to eroding anything which divides us unnecessarily, I say! Erase the gender division wherever posssible and be perfectly masculine/feminine without any externalities defining me as male or female.

(Coincidentally, my son is not allowed to address people as sir or madam/miss in his new job as delivery boy: to not offend the Transitioning or gender neutral people. I've alway wanted that. I hate being called Mrs X, because that is my mother! But my dentist - a female, roughly my age - refuses to drop the formality. So much for trying to set me at ease...!)

If the answer is no, we must hurry up and understand what makes us different. Why we "attract" by polarity at all, if at all. What can I do to sanctify my femininity if it is not about choosing a new colour nailpolish. Or maybe, that's a start?... That it may show us women we are not trying to become honeypots in different shades of red, but just like the Papua New Guinea men know: we have (elementary) gods to appease.

Indoctrinating shining examples

The ascetics and monks and nuns were always aware of the trickery we had bought into. Natures little slaves, shackled to our private parts and private dreams. Hooking up to keep the kingdom ticking over. The only free self-rule was to opt out of that and declare yourself into the Kingdom of God.

The early post-World War years (50's & 60's) wonderfully come with printed and televised illustrations of how we tried to liberate more of us by means of free choice: an array of happy gadgets to choose from to keep everybody smiling. The fixative of a spiritual concept is beginning to wear very thin, precisely by being nothing new and only a change of costume and interior -psychological- design (reflected in our homes).

Taken but for a natural precondition to life on Earth our sexual nature can only be curbed by certain (normative) parameters. This gives us do's and don'ts, taboos or libertine attitudes, punishable acts of love and/or warped minds with second-hand fantasies. Our entire lives end up banal because of sex - be they dressed up in powdered wigs and corsets or fedora hats and aprons. Jeans and T-shirts have made no difference. Those illustrations of then now (hopefully) must look like we were dupes. Isn't it too artificial for words, how we contrive to keep two opposites together, who often have nothing more in common than the kids by the time of the Seven Year Itch? So now what? More Hugo Boss and Brazillian waxes?

Elsewhere life goes on


from the video about the"Integrated Rural Development Program" financed by the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation for the Development (AECID)

Levy realised as a child already, looking at her Barbie doll’s painted on blue eyes, and meeting a cousin who was a Barbie looky-likey, that women are always “making themselves up”(as they go along). They are always dressed for the part. The play never ends, the scenes flow in rapid squence, back and forth: mother, cook, cleaner, seductress, sister, secretary, chaufferur, accountant, gardener, personal shopper, agony aunt, plumber, … Is there any time left to be Me? Just this?

There may be drawbacks to discovering your feminity. It might be that you no longer understand why you would be selfishly occupied in an occupation that is a career.

Even the most arrogant female writer has to work overtime to build an ego that is robust enough to get her through January never mind all the way to December. - Deborah Levy

When women are career women, they seldom are much of anything else. Then again, would it surprise me to hear Angela Merkel makes a mean boeuf bourgignon, knows how to shake a cocktail, prunes all her own roses and is great in bed?

No pantsuit can cover up that it is this femininity that makes the woman different to the male, who choses to play his masculine roll. May it be clear that he can do this made-up and with a soup ladle in hand.

Resident of Papua New Guinea Chef Raymond Blanc Erbore boy, Ethiopia

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The Suburb of Femininity--once removed from city center. Makes me want to paint my nails blood-red.

Brilliant as always. I laughed thinking about Angela Merkel's mean boeuf bourgignon.

As an aside, have you looked into the #freewrite stuff on here at all? They're having a contest and I'm thinking of entering. Not positive yet, though. I think it's the sort of thing you'd excel at, if you're able to get yourself to write in only 5 minute increments. Here's the link to the contest rules.

I've seen a LOT of freewrites come past.... I hesitate to say, but if I whisper it quickly, I have to say, if it takes such a random prompt to write anything, what are we all doing here? Is this writing school? But okay, it's the socialising initiative what makes Steemit great.

My excuses are clear: I don't do selfies (also not with a paper bag on my head) and I don't have 50 days left (see count down). I had my stint at a writing challenge with the fifty-word competition (or non-competition, with nothing but an honorable mention to be won) and that took me at least 20 minutes, so I don't think I could get much done to my satisfaction in just 5 mins. What's with the rush, anyway? 5 min reads, ok, I get the point of sale on that one. But a 5 min write tends to make for an unsatisfying 5 minute read.

Can't wait to see you prove me entirely wrong. (I'm probably too long out of school to be a good sport in these random challenges).

Well, personally, I've had a hard time keeping up with writing every day (though the long hiatus had more to do with life stuff--issues at work, a sudden unexpected health thing, and my grandma's passing in quick succession, with that vacation stuck in the middle of it). The one freewrite prompt I ever responded to got me writing fiction for the first time (in adulthood), and it went better than I had expected, though it did take a bit longer than five minutes, and I suspect I'd cheat like that just about every time. But hey, who's checking anyway?

But yes, part of it is the social aspect. Always good to get to know a few more interesting people here, lest your writing go disappear into the abyss without any readers at all, and some of the people involved in that have interesting things to say. My main hesitation with entering this is that I don't want to post a bunch of low quality nonsense to my page out of desperation to keep up with the contest and dilute the hard work I actually have put in, but maybe I'm taking things too seriously.

Why don't you have 50 days left? Is the world exploding? Oh dear...

No, no, no, don't ever post low-quality nonsense! But I challenge you to (you couldn't even if it paid you out in whale-loads).

Have you not heard about my due date? I am leaving on 31 st May. (As decided from January). My Musings are couning down....

What! Why are you leaving? Why would you do such a thing?? You would abandon us, your loyal fans? I must insist that you rethink this.

Dear fan, I'm going to miss our missed opportunity.
It's not for me to rethink. The date is part of the experiment. Or this becomes a Limbo one cannot write oneself back out of again. Must keep Dante in mind on this rough terrain where the soul roams naked.
Something has to happen that makes it Really worth our while to make this a point of presence (see Musing 24).
It is not doable to have this place as your main point of presence unless your life is endorsed by it. Fame fades, fortune feeds.
For the first time in my life I realise I will never write again after 31st unless I get paid enough to persuade me. After 20 years or more of Long-Distance sociala life I cannot buy into that aspect of Steemit anymore. It makes the lonely feel a hell of a lot lonelier (especially when they never feel lonely when alone).
Your loving fan.

Does it need to be a main point of presence? What if it was a once or twice a week thing--just a supplement?

It would be an unbearable shame if you never wrote again. Talent like this shouldn't go to waste. Unless it's not very fulfilling to you emotionally, which I suppose I couldn't argue with...

That is precisely the question. I touch upon this also in the previous reply.
It is, indeed not emotionally fulfilling - but I mean this in a positive way (not a reason to quit); at 50 emotions are pretty much put to one side in most things. Or so it was my aim (in my spiritual pursuits, which value feeling, imagination, inspiration and intuition more). I write anyway, always have, just like you; and I've got used to not being read. When I know I have to be read (letter, official report) I feel ueber responsible about how others read to the point that it prevents me probably from ever publishing anything for real.... So is this only meaningless scribbling? Silliness, like you also wonder, a part of aiming for something more meaningful but then how...? Or what is it exactly?

I started off not taking this platform seriously as a place to be read, and so a safe place to post things that had to be said but never to the people who couldn't hear. It was a problem for me when one or two turned out to be reading me fairly thoroughly (even if they did very little with it - which is just fine by me). But the others started reading me critically, which is also fine, but I could tell they were pretty clueless as to where I was really coming from. This leaves one (the eternal teacher and communicator) in a tricky place regards who to write for and whether to cater to an audience at all. After all, just being me is not really what Steemit is about (go start your own blog!). It is predominantly a social platform (even if they say it isn't). Then I have to be honest and say, it's not really my kind of party. Can we slip in some other records, invite some other guests? I don't know. There are some issues that arise indicating it is fairly impossible. I am, of course, extremely tempted to see what can happen now you're back.

In any case I have to check in on my account if I power down/shut down or if I stay humming in the background I am likely to take stock after the 6 months of no-activity have passed. (6 Dec).

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