‘There must be rites,’ [the Fox said].
‘What’s a rite?’ asked the Little Prince.
‘It is a thing too often neglected…’
The Little Prince,
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
p.61
I have a young man coming to see me for boxing training. His older brother bought him a ten-session package for an eighteenth birthday present, because learning to ‘handle yourself’ is considered one of the quintessential rites of passage.
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Anyone who has been abused by a family member, or a partner, understands unconditional love.
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You embarrass the roses
I see them leaning together, whispering, looking,
Murmuring in spiteful, jealous consensus
As you pass by
The authority of your stride moving through your skirt
with the subtlety of a breeze
You’re wearing your Mona Lisa smile
And I know
That the secret that fills the vortex
at their centre is darkness, emptiness –
Their petals shamefully shroud this painful secret
Until time undoes the strings of their bodice
and they are dissolute
The roses know
That your eyes, your centre, is filled with liquid electricity
that is ever lustrous
That liquidity, that electricity
Is the current that animates your animal grace
So potent that, at forty-four,
It’s begun to scorch the filaments of your jet-black hair
And the roses know I ache for you,
and they also know
that your light
and my ache
are the same.
I’d never read Flannery O’Connor until lockdown. I’d seen her listed as one of the outstanding writers of the twentieth century, specifically in terms of her short stories. I had time on my hands, so I bought her collected works.
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The first disturbing event of first-year university was the day I went to meet a childhood friend of mine when he was discharged from the insane asylum.
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2.
When Lisa Wilkinson explained on ‘The Project’ television program that Eurydice Dixon was murdered by a man who was the pointy end of a patriarchal culture which is driven to murder women as it sexualises them, I was outraged.
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1.
The patriarchy is like Satan, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. Sure, there’s some kind of cause and effect involved, but the figure itself is bought into being by those wanting to explain more subtle and complex phenomena, but are happy to settle for an easy answer with a face on it.
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“You think,” [Jacques] persisted, “That my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself why they are.”
“Why are they – shameful?”
“Because there is no affection in them, and no joy. It’s like putting an electric plug in a dead socket. Touch, but no contact. All touch, but no contact and no light.”
“I asked him, ‘Why?”
“That you must ask yourself,” he told me, “And perhaps one day this morning will not be ashes in your mouth.”
– James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room,
P. 49
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I act nonchalant and brush off people’s demonstrations of care and concern, but the truth is, I fear hospital like your dog fears the vet.
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The Goddess stirs within the temple deep
Candles flicker on the sun-burnished gong
Waked by the rasping of her naked feet
I observe the enigma of the throne
With their robes and candles, their cymbals and bells
Priests conform to scripture, and its motions
Down through the dark universe of her smell
I track along instinct and devotion
Attendant and vigilant to her needs
Obedient to her hands and what they hold
Faithful to her heart and what she loves
My beating heart and her unsandalled feet
The separate, susurrant, resonant poles
That span these sun-warmed, midnight temple stones.
