Femininity and the Present
As taken from current draft of The Body’s Long Madness:
Femininity is no more a result of womanhood than womanhood is a result of flesh. Femininity and being a woman are constructs of history and are cumulated in the present and in society. Those words have no relation to one’s own self but by the degree for which you fall for them. I believe, moreover, that one can not know what it means to be anything, whether that something is female or male, a person and human, an artist or an ignoramus, an owner of a short time on this earth, until one’s premise for belief has been destroyed. Then, and only then, can one re-create out from the ashes; build up clear and as one’s own. Then you will see who you really are and more than likely, you will be afraid. To enter into the world reborn is to make most other efforts seem like child’s play.
I did not know then, how much of an effect Sonia’s words had on me. I would catch her phrases through the portal of memory, at times, when they were the most fitting. I would see her matronly silhouette and think of her: spinster. I would hope she no longer had to daily climb up the hill and that she was enjoying the blue somewhere in Tunisia.
We parted in the rain which spilled from a dreary morning. I drew my coat tighter as I strode across the piazza towards the sea, as Sonia went in the opposite direction, to the hills. There was no sentimental rushing of emotions, it was just a good-bye; I had already had my share and there was no counting Sonia’s.
I stood in the midst of another grey drizzle, my back to the grey sea. I stared at the arches, at the small quaint houses and at the terraces that climbed the hills, covered with tarpaulin where underneath the branches lay laden in lemons. I did not think of Sonia, I didn’t think of anything, not even the water which dripped off my nose. I was the legs of my journey and I was walking along another shore. Where I was going did not concern me, neither did where I had been.
It was the seagulls still swooping with their maddening cry and the arches, thick brick and brown. A few souls who darted across the piazza, seen in slices through the arches. Umbrellas, the frantic oscillations of the windshield wipers as the cars passed quickly by, the water poured from them, it streamed. This was my present moment and it entered me, as well as it could.
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