The passage into womanhood is not a climb to a summit but a descent to the depths.

It wasn’t until the dear ones 

Dressed as dragons and bedevilments

Arrived at my door with packing boxes 

…

To be woman is to be defined by accommodation, the unconscious and acquiescent adherence to non-native habitats, or the unconscious swing of the pendulum of backlash that is the predictable result of any animal living in a state of perpetual adjustment, lost in translation. 

This is for you, my muse.  The man who I would do anything “for”.  Stalwart, strong, honorable. And far enough away to run the electrical line for the current to flow. The man who would infuriate, infatuate, baffle, delight, never ever be pinned, leave me slack jaw in awe of his generosity and cunning, his warm heartedness and precision withdrawal.  I love you in the loop of all things chased, the eternal run of cat and mouse and the play that bestows meaning.  That play so noble that when the world with its profits and losses, its spreadsheets and its demand that all expenditures be accounted for, not only justifies itself but is the meaning everything else is for. You who would graze my lips but never kiss, play the song for me but quit at the peak, meet my gaze to allow me to glimpse the eternal light show that animates what to others is but a face. I do it because I have you and because I do not. I do it because it is the lust of my function to create for one who functions to inspire my lust. Funktionluste. This is us.

The rite of passage from girl to woman is from illusion to performance to self-abandonment to disillusionment to influence to the essential self, one’s true nature.

What would you have to believe about woman to accept the ubiquitous prognosis of trauma, the indictment that she is too fragile to withstand the grazing of a hand, a harsh word, the male gaze?

We’re locked in our ideas of heaven, enlightenment, and higher consciousness. All that is below is beneath us, and beneath is slovenly, dirty, and profane.

We have a thinking problem in the United States. We are ignorant to simple basic operations of thought. Ignorant in the denotative meaning that we were never aware. A great portion of the population is unaware, for example, that two people can concurrently hold culpability.

We learn to not reject, renounce, block, or placate. Or put anything over. You simply meet it nakedly, listen to it and engage with it, allowing it to inform you.

In The Feminine Land, there are no clocks. Any mention of “time” is gauche, like a toupee or a spray tan. Instead, everything moves according to natural rhythms. Like animals, we follow the internal compass guiding us toward food, nourishment, sex, fullness.

What’s fascinating about Dogville is how accurately it depicts the rapacious nature of that hunger. She can’t get small enough. She can’t get subservient enough. And every woman thinks, “If I continue to get smaller and more subservient, then it will eventually (how could it not?) turn.”