Women/Wilderness

Ursula K. Le Guin AND Susan Griffin  (!?!) on the oppression of women and wilderness.
from Le Guin's essay "Woman/Wilderness" in her book "Dancing at the Edge of the World":


Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is Other—outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I want is what matter is for. I am that I am, and the rest is women and the wilderness, to be used as I see fit.

To this, Civilized Woman (in the voice of Susan Griffin) replies as follows:
"We say there is no way to see his dying as separate from her living, or what he had done to her, or what part of her he had used. We say if you change the course of this river you change the shape of the whole place.
"And we say that what she did then could not be separated from what she held sacred in herself, what she had felt when he did that to her, what we hold sacred to ourselves, what we feel we could not go on without, and we say if this river leaves this place, nothing will grow and the mountain will crumble away, and we say what he did to her could not be separated from the way that he looked at her, and what he felt was right to do to her, and what they do to us, we say, shapes how they see us.
"That once the trees are cut down, the water will wash the mountain away and the river be heavy with mud, and there will be a flood. And we say that what he did to her he did to all of us. And that one fact cannot be separated from another.
"And had he seen more clearly, we say, he might have predicted his own death. How if the trees grew on that hillside there would be no flood. And you cannot divert this river.
"We say look how the water flows from this place and returns as rainfall, everything returns, we say, and one thing follows another, there are limits, we say, on what can be done and everything moves.
"We are all a part of this motion, we say, and the way of the river is sacred, and this grove of trees is sacred, and we ourselves, we tell you, are sacred."
(reminds me so much of this poem of mine: http://alexceberg.blogspot.com/2014/07/dear-mountain-love-river-part-2.html)

The Pattern

This is the pattern:

Mothers
too-good
too-strict
just trying to protect us from
men
with broken glasses taped together by long
tales and compliments that steal
our sight.

This tale--
two girls
two men
two rooms

this is where the sheet rips
and the pattern is severed in
two paths,
the same truth.

(Why couldn't I save her?)

Ten years later
the gravity hits me hard
in the bathroom
brushing my teeth at my mirror-self
and feeling compassion
for the one staring back,
strong, unblinking, gaze
and wondering why I stopped
looking people in the eyes
and holding my head high
like I do
in the mirror.

And then I remembered
the exact moment
in the room
with the man
where that stopped
and all of this started.

Oh the legacy of a moment,
of a few words,
perhaps an offering,
but that robbed me of many things,
and not even close
to everything she lost
in the other room.

~~~

Our mothers are waiting.
When they find out their hands wring
(broken heart-strings)
they scream
that they will kill him.
My mom drives to his house
day after day
for a week
and sits in her car

waiting...

waiting...

too-good. 

~~~

This is the pattern:
Men, taking what they want
and disappearing.
And women
waiting...

Waiting...

and in the meantime,
weaving back together
the tattered patterns of our lives
into some semblance of wholeness.
Mending the tears,
tending to tears
flowing out like an endless river
of sorrow

while the violence rages on

and we wait.

~~~

(What are these silhouettes
that shape so much
of the landscape we live on
with their mining
and their walking away?)

surface [above, beneath]

once again
this aching desire to feel
alive to feel
the whole shattering force
of the wave of the world
crashing into me
surrounding me and soaking
me through like a new tall stone on the shores
on the towering cliffs above, engulfed
surrounded
windswept sea-swept
lifted from this low.
lifted and submerged in the grasp
in the sweet arms
in the sweet suffocating breath
in the salt. oh the sea.

[why didn't I dive
in? and will I not
again?]

my lungs burn from drowning
in a scream
I swallow
salt and choke
I know will come back churning
burning to be released.
Will be released--
from my eyes or mouth or from my
incoherent erratic
violence.

[I am so tired of being silenced]

Oh aching lungs
lips
hips
heart and the tips of my fingers desperate
to find the words
the motion
the truth behind this urge.

once again.
[spinning
spinning
pink shape
circle slips off my reaching
reaching outstretched hand
and flies into the sea.]