What if one rather becomes a woman?

Every now and then, I enjoy taking "The second Sex" out of the bookshelf and read a couple of pages. Mme de Beauvoir is witty, sharp, rebellious and that book is supposed to describe the condition of women around 1949.
Here is the point where I get irritated.
Every.
Single.
Time.
I can hardly believe how much its description fits in today's reality.

A western 'oh so post post modern' world, where I still hear a member of the European Parliement shouting that women are smaller and less intelligent than men, so they obviously have to be paid less, where in my country, in many cities, a woman cannot exercise her legal right to interrupt pregnancy, because all gynecologists are "conscentious objectors", where a woman still has to think twice before she wears whatever she wants, so she's not "asking for it", where a creepy man who happens to have become President of the United States...ok, I'll spare you this one.
Worldwide issues get other proportions: denied access to education, human right gap, infibulation, children brides, just to mention some aspects of this complex matter.

The question is still open, even though, as Mme de Beauvoir points out, enough ink has been spilled and the voluminous nonsense, that has been produced, does not illuminate the problem.

What I wish is that the general view on this subject turns to be more similar to below statement.
I wish to open "The Second Sex" one day and smile, relieved, realizing we are finally past 1949.

"I cannot be fair about books that treat women as women. My idea is that all of us, men as well as women, whoever we are, should be considered as human beings."
Dorothy Parker

Murales in Orgosolo, Sardinia

The map is not the territory, image and self-image

Mirrors say the truth.
They display everything, conspire with the light to show a second you, ruthlessly.
That shape, that is not you, is the appearence of you.
Of your self.
So that's what everybody sees, when they look at you.
Maybe, maybe not.
Perhaps every one sees something else, adding their own features to yours, to make you fit better in their view, as if they were composing a painting.
They are no mirrors, after all.

So different than what you see from the inside, isn't it?
So unlike the self you know you are.

Now, that you realized it, how much do you care?
What are you going to do, to make the map more alike the territory or, at least, more similar of your own one?

Remember, whatever it is, that is, it is as it is, not as it should be.
Beyond evaluations.
Not good, not bad.
It just is.

Vintage memories of the land where lemon-trees bloom

In the garden by the house where I grew up, there were orange and lemon trees.
They were ancient, generous, wide, never trimmed.

Watching them from above in summer, they resembled to white clouds floating over the soil.
In the cold season, their broad branches were bent to the ground, surrendering to abundance, while created golden falls, as the might be replacing the missing rays of sunshine.

In my culture, you always bring presents, when you go to someone's place., something to thank your hosts for their hospitality, for opening their doors and letting you into the intimacy of their home.
They say "the honor is with the one who gives, more than with the one who receives a gift".

When we were invited to visit someone, my mother used to fill some bags with fruits. That was our  offer as guests, to participate to nature's generosity through a small gesture, particularly with those family members strewn around the island.
She still does.

I don't miss the island.
Most of all, I don't miss the people there.
But I still miss the time, when taste of oranges was the most natural thing and the feeling of sharing could set you in harmony with the whole world.

Memories sometimes feel like red wine, soft, round, with a dry aftertaste, entangled in curls of smokey persistence.

8D Report of inner damage - Trust is made of the thinnest glass

Soheyla B. Fahimi- Osiris, 2009, Terrakotta in Bronze patiniert
http://www.soheyla-b-fahimi.de/

There is an exercise, in theater, in team building training, in psychodrama: you let yourself fall down on your back and a peer is there to catch you.
It enhances confidence, trust,  responsibility toward yourself and others.
Lately I did this in a real life situation.
Someone should have caught me.
He didn't.
He let me fall.
CRASH,
SBAM,
on the floor, without net.
I was suddenly falling, didn't have a clue what was going on.

During those fractions of seconds, I heard something was falling with me, it was my trust.
And I heard the sound of glass shattered in a million pieces, when it touched the ground.
Do you remember the sound of crashing glass?
It vibrates, reverberates, while the air fills with sharp tones, similar to the highest-pitched notes on a piano or a dream catcher in the wind. It was made of the thinnest glass I've ever seen, my trust.

In that moment I realized: I was lying on the floor, there was nothing I could do to prevent it from happening, it already happened, it was past. My trust was smashed in slivers on my left, on my right, everywhere.

It was brand new, only a model. A beautiful one, though, one of my dearest creations.
I would try to collect all the pieces and recreate it exactly as it was before.
Or I would leave it there and walk away, disappear from that disgracious place.
Or don't do anything, look at it, contemplate. Linger in the moment, outside of time.
Then slowly feel, more than see, if and what could be saved and brought into time again. Which pieces would I use, how could I make a more resilient?

Days before, I took part to a sculpture workshop by a talented artist, an amazing woman. She taught us to give life to our thoughts with steel wire and paper, solid stuff that embraces a more malleable one.
In the end, there is no wire to see anymore, only you know that your thoughts, that look like paper, are made of steel.

I was lying, the floor was cold, could feel it through the fabric, on the skin. I turned my head, once, twice, straight, a whole world around and above me. A whole world. New frontiers.

In that moment, I could have been falling into hell forever, just to wait for Dante and Virgil to meet me and tell my story.
Perhaps I was chained to a rock, an eagle eating from my living flesh, the punishment for disobeying. More likely, for not disobeying.  Wasn't it worth enough, to gain back fire?
Yeah, the Fire.
Perhaps I was bursting in blue fading flames, holding on, before I rose from my ashes.
Although I felt burning, freezing, melting, there was no trace of ashes, no drop of blood.
It all had an indefinable esthetic.

What happened there?

Most of all, did it happen to me alone, was I the only one involved?
Was it similar to those intricate figures of domino chips, where a single touch makes them fall gracefully, to leave in place a carefully designed plan? If yes, was my chip at the beginning, in the middle, in the end?
Was it a chess match, my piece is captured, so I had to go out of the chessboard? Was there a strategy behind that? Where was the pattern?
Good questions, no answers, wrong way.

Again, what happened there? My honest answer is: something.
I cannot explain the whole situation, because I don't see the whole picture, as I am not the whole picture. I am in it, maybe a part of it and yet something else entirely, the one who reflects about it.
I can only interpretate what happened to myself.

In my no more so short life, I learnt that your experience of things, what you call "truth", is nothing but an indistinct image, formed through the spider web of your inner filters, a precious gift you have been building into yourself your entire life. In fact, maybe you don't know it, but you are an architect, who bears his most valuable cathedral inside of his own mind.

Leaving back the mythical insights and the abstact speculations, I started acquiring a sense for the meaning I intended to give to the event. I finally stopped looking around, wandering in transcendence and watched inside, where everything begins, where the source is.
I started remembering who I am, who I was, who I want to be. What I can do, what I love to do, what I'd love to learn. There it was, the big picture. No matter what circumstances will cross my path, that mesmerizing story will be my company, while I go on writing it.

Trust can be built on someone else's words, promises, intentions.
It can be built in institutions, positions, beliefs.
Though the place where it's born is in yourself, in your core.
Don't ever think it can exist without you, or that it depends on something else, on somebody else but you.
Trust is always a jump into the unknown. What you can choose is what you carry with you.

The world passed through that door (un cartello giallo con una scritta nera)

Un cartello giallo con una scritta nera - C. Flore-

The world passed through that door.
One at a time, they crossed.
They smiled, you smiled back,
they didn't, left you to cope with it.
Papageno came in, every day,
walking as a winner, though he knows he's not.
One day Beauty came in,
in his voice scent of the seas,
stands up when he shakes lady's hands.
Some swore under oath,
through floors of beliefs, they'll never let you go.
So you packed your stares, shook the walls of belief,
following those lost smiles.
You're going and you're gone for good.
In the world that passed through that door.

Zwei Seelen in einer Brust oder Hymne an die Vielfalt

"The saddest phrase we ever got drummed into our heads was "Make up your mind!" There are people in this world who seem to be born for one single purpose, but they’re the rare exceptions", schreibt Barbara Sher.

Es gibt Zeiten, wo es möglich sein soll, mehrere parallelen Leben gleichzeitig zu führen. 
 

Denn das Herz schlägt heute für das Eine, morgen für das Andere. 

Vielleicht IST man heute ein Mensch, morgen ein anderer und jeder von ihnen hat seine Vorlieben, seine Talente, seine Leidenschaften.

Ist es nicht Schade, sich für etwas entscheiden zu müssen und den Rest verderben zu lassen, wenn man eine innerliche wunderschöne, bunte Vielfalt an Potentiale verbirgt, die unsere Welt bereichern können?

Ist es nicht eine Schande, dass die Welt sie nicht sehen darf?

Wer oder was hindert uns daran, diese Möglichkeiten auszuschöpfen?

Gewohnheit, Bequemlichkeit, Angst, Sorgen, Ratlosigkeit, Beharrlichkeit, Kindern, Eltern, Pläne, Schulden, Verträge, Anderen, Umstände?

Sicher?

Wann haben wir gelernt, die Fülle aufzugeben? Da die Überzeugung, dass man nur EINEN Weg gehen darf, nicht eingeboren ist, sondern das Ergebnis einer kulturellen Verbiegung.

Eins meiner Vorbilder ist Odysseus, der Wendige, Geschickte, Flexible, Anpassungsfähige.

Was ich euch damit sagen will ist letzendlich...

 Stay polytropos, stay Odysseus

Arnold Böcklin- Odysseus und Kalypso- 1883

Last night a poet saved my life... Salesmen, rappers and marble faces

It was more than two years ago, when moved to the apartment where I still live. The guy who lived there before, a salesman who enjoyed wearing t-shirts of metal bands, left Germany and his student life back, together with the furniture and some books, mostly uninteresting. One thing I found particularly attractive about that IKEA bookshelf, full of dusty thriller novels, economy manuals and souvenirs of Spain: Ovid's Metamorphoses.
The speculation about the story behind such an exception, an interruption in the pattern was soon replaced by an inextinguishable desire to make that moment, those stories, a starting point of the next chapter to my own, everchanging story, my metamorphosis.
 And indeed, I started my journey on that day At first fighting against fear of tomorrow and shadows of the past, always feeling something great was waiting for me, if I would just dare to go through the threshold. The last two years brought me in places I could not even imagine to step in. I was blessed.
Today I received an update from Youtube.
An italian rapper I follow, who started a project in which he describes with every rap song the heroic life (btw, I love that "Heldentaten" in German is the perfect translation of "res gestae"*) of a classic hero published his new creation about Ovid (link from Youtube below).

I sat and listened to it, feeling like the time had come to realize that my destination was here.
I am home. I always have been, I will always be.
Because my home, my roots are much older than I am, they are inside of me and all around.
A journey comes to end only when a new one is going to begin, though.

Therefore, let's start from there, from the beginning:
Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And Heav'n's high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of the Nature...

Isn't that beautiful?

Incipit of Ovid's Metamorphoses from from: http://www.lateinoase.de/autoren/ovid/ovid.html

*it sounds perfect to me, it's not objectively perfect, of course.