An Essay

She. Yes, She. How can so slight a word carry so much polarity? Yet, there it weighs, like gravity: She. Each of us from woman born.

Each unable to sever that primordial umbilical cord still permeating every vessel, every echo, every core. Aye, to tear the skirts asunder, climb back to the womb, pull the shackles in. Curl up. Rest awhile. Oh, to be safely hidden. Free from guilt and fear—in Eden. Shake off this impending shiver: Mother, pray for me, a sinner.

Alas, the conscious coming to terms with our heritage: Materia, Fantasy. What we leave behind; What we pass on. The cloth our Mama wove for us wears thin, even the gray matter beneath our silver, balding, hair; but the apparent Nothing that Father instills, in multiple memories lives. Not fixed in palpable ways to whatever soul was sired—a false positive, a true negative—who can prove threads of Paternity with any certainty? Though we might curse his lust for living, it's Mom who nursed this flesh for sinning.

He can slip unseen across the square, but there in the center, there She'll stand, fully in the round. Ask, for what will She gain the most scorn? For giving Life, out of the social norm. Putting her self first, as it were. And for what, perchance, esteem and highest Praise? For giving birth with the best charade; in the proper time, the proper place. Oppressive that wicked dichotomy—of the Harlot and the Holy Girl.

Snippets of a film come to my mind: "The Artist and the Model." Pointing to inevitable incestuous origins, the dying Sculptor chides his Muse: If God felt alone, why the devil, should he make a man?! 

Turning Genesis inside out, upside down.

Indeed. Imminent carnal knowledge, and Adam in the middle. It's She who fell from grace with Infidelity. To what, hereafter, is every Eve condemned? And he—that perpetual Infidel? Each to their own Labor.

There's no one out there to blame. 

No snake in disguise; no personal visage. Take a pregnant pause. Lucifer is a state of being: witness the awesome power to murder, and Create. Tempt us with the glory of the realm. Bring to Light each newborn babe. Tie us in tangles of allegory. Elucidate us. Smolder us in shame. Confound our inherent desires, till we fully doubt what our heavy protracted existence is all about. And again release... Light in the last unburdened breath of Life.

She: conjuring up so much Love; so much Hate.

I am conflicted. 

There's no escaping this seeming blasphemy. Accept it as dramatic Reality.

Yes, I am alarmed to see—in all that latent potency—I am She.