petak, 17.07.2015.
Dijete na prsima
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Predprošlonoćni san; Bilo je jedno malo dijete, beba, mala beba. Izgledala je zaista loše, bila je potpuno mlitava i neprirodno kreč-bijela. Bila je između života i smrti, izgledala je više mrtvo no živo ali znali smo da je ipak još iskra života u njoj. Donjeli su je k meni , jer ja sam žensko i očekivalo se da ju ja podojim. Pomalo mi je bila odbojna ideja da dojim dijete koje nije moje ali također, bila sam svjesna da će bez toga beba umrijeti. Nije mi bilo jasno kako bih ja to, tako na zapovijed, trebala imati mlijeka... Pa dojila sam kćer prije nekoliko svjetlosnih godina. Ipak, u trenutku očaja. i ne imajući ništa drugo za učiniti, odlučila sam staviti to dijete na prsa, znajući da je uzaludno, ali ipak kao znak dobre volje i prepuštanja neminovnom. Kada se je dijete primaknulo prsima, na moje veliko veselje u kombinaciji sa nevjericom, mlijeko je poteklo :)) I tako je dijete sisalo.... i oživjelo. ... "That women are considered inferior, or, at the very best, that female traits are equated as complementary to the male's, has to do with the manner in which males and females approach knowledge," she explained: "Generally speaking, women are more interested in power over themselves than over others. Power over others is clearly what males want." "Even among sorcerers," Nelida interjected, and the women all laughed. Esperanza went on to say that she believed that originally women saw no need to exploit their facility to link themselves broadly and directly to the spirit. She said women saw no necessity to talk about or to intellectualize this natural capacity of theirs because it was enough for them to put their natural capacity in action, and to know that they had it. "Men's incapacity to link themselves directly to the spirit was what drove them to talk about the process of reaching knowledge," she stressed. "They haven't stopped talking about it. And it is precisely this insistence on knowing how they strive toward the spirit; this insistence on analyzing the process that gave them the certainty that being rational is a typically male skill." Esperanza explained that the conceptualization of reason has been done exclusively by men, and that this has allowed men to belittle women's gifts and accomplishments. And even worse, it has allowed men to exclude feminine traits from the formulation of the ideals of reason. "By now, of course, women believe what has been defined for them," she emphasized: "Women have been reared to believe that only men can be rational and coherent. Now men carry with them a load of unearned assets that makes them automatically superior regardless of their preparation or capacity." "How did women lose their direct link to knowledge?" I asked. "Women haven't lost their connection," Esperanza corrected me. "Women still have a direct link with the spirit. They have only forgotten how to use it; or rather, they have copied men's condition of not having it at all. For thousands of years, men have struggled to make sure that women forget it. Take the Holy Inquisition, for example. That was a systematic purge to eradicate the belief that women have a direct link to the spirit. All organized religion is nothing but a very successful maneuver to put women in a lower place. Religions invoke a divine law that says that women are inferior." I stared at her in amazement, wondering to myself how she could possibly be so erudite. "Men's need to dominate others and women's lack of interest in expressing or formulating what they know and how they know it has been a most nefarious alliance," Esperanza went on: "It has made it possible for women to be coerced from the moment they're born into accepting that fulfillment lies in homemaking, in love, in marriage, in having children, and in self-denial. Women have been excluded from the dominant forms of abstract thought and educated into dependence. Women have been so thoroughly trained in the belief that men must think for them that women have finally given up thinking." "Women are quite capable of thinking." I interrupted her. "Women are capable of formulating what they have learned," Esperanza corrected me, "but what they have learned has been defined by men. Men define the very nature of knowledge, and from that knowledge they have excluded that which pertains to the feminine. Or if the feminine is included, it is always in a negative light. And women have accepted this." "You are years behind the times," I interjected. "Nowadays women can do anything they set their hearts to do. They pretty much have access to all the centers of learning, and to almost anything men can do." "But this is meaningless as long as women don't have a support system; a support base," Esperanza argued: "What good is it that women have access to what men have when women are still considered inferior beings who have to adopt male attitudes and behaviors in order to succeed? The truly successful women are the perfect converts: They too look down on women. According to men, the womb limits women both mentally and physically. This is the reason why women, although they have access to knowledge, have not been allowed to help determine what this knowledge is. "Take for instance, philosophers," Esperanza proposed. "The pure thinkers. Some of them are viciously against women. Others are more subtle in that they are willing to admit that women might be as capable as men were it not for the fact that women are not interested in rational pursuits. And if women are interested in rational pursuits they shouldn't be because it is more becoming for a woman to be true to her nature: a nurturing, dependent companion of the male." Esperanza expressed all this with unquestionable authority. Within moments, however, I was assailed by doubts. "If knowledge is but a male construct, then why your insistence that I go to school," I asked. "Because you are a witch, and as such you need to know what impinges on you and how it impinges on you," she replied: "Before you refuse something, you must understand why you refuse it. You see, the problem is that knowledge, in our day, is derived purely from reasoning things out. But women have a different track, never, ever taken into consideration. That track can contribute to knowledge, but it would have to be a contribution that has nothing to do with reasoning things out." "What would it deal with, then?" I asked. "That's for you to decide after you master the tools of reasoning and understanding." I was very confused. "What sorcerers propose," she explained, "is that men can't have the exclusive right to reason. Men seem to have it now simply because the ground where men apply reason is a ground where maleness prevails. "Let us, then, apply reason to a ground where femaleness prevails; and that ground is, naturally, the inverted cone I described to you; women's connection with the spirit itself." She tilted her head slightly to one side, considering what to say. "That connection has to be faced with a different aspect of reasoning. An aspect never, ever used before: the feminine side of reasoning," she said. "What is the feminine side of reason, Esperanza?" "Many things. One of them is definitely dreaming." She regarded me questioningly, but I had nothing to say. Her deep chuckle caught me by surprise. "I know what you expect from sorcerers. You want rituals, incantations. Odd, mysterious cults. You want to sing. You want to be one with nature. You want to commune with water spirits. You want paganism. Some romantic view of what sorcerers do. Very Germanic. To jump into the unknown," she went on, "you need guts and mind. Only with them will you be able to explain to yourself and to others the treasures you might find." She leaned toward me, eager, it seemed, to confide something. She scratched her head and sneezed repeatedly, five times as the caretaker had. "You need to act on your magical side," she said. "And what is that?" "The womb." She said this so distantly and calmly, as if she were not interested in my reaction, that I almost missed hearing it. Then suddenly, realizing the absurdity of her remark, I straightened up and looked at the others. "The womb!" Esperanza repeated. "The womb is the ultimate feminine organ. It is the womb that gives women that extra edge; that extra force to channel their energy." She explained that men, in their quest for supremacy, have succeeded in reducing woman's mysterious power, her womb, to a strictly biological organ, whose only function is to reproduce; to carry man's seed. ... Being in dreaming Florinda Donner Grau |
