On my walk today, I found a painted blue trail blaze on the ground. The tree it had been painted on had been stripped of much of its bark. I remembered making a piece about this blaze months ago: it was called Cobalt Blues.
So I picked up the blue bark, and put it on my face. Like an explorer on an ordinary dog path, I physically played with the idea of wearing veils. I covered this half of my face, then that half, then another. Why did people ever decide this? Veiling faces? I took photos, and made phone markup art.
There are four ways to block half a face. There are more ways to block half a human.
History and culture has many answers to veiling, but my personal knowing says: veiling is not only about modesty of the body: it is a symbol for modesty of soul.
For awhile now, I’ve been hiding the grief of knowing how things can really be, the shadow side of life where people can be selfish and angry and grudge-bearing, including myself. And I’ve been aging into an adult’s loss of innocence and the grief of knowing all things pass away, and many are gone forever. Parents losing memory and riddled with physical needs, children growing up and choosing friends over family, career failures.
This adulting1 process is something like the blues, but with no chain of fools, no beer bottle fights, no coarse moaning or guttural guitar solos. The spiritual blues are about seeing the way life works, and attempts to shield others from this darkly depressing perspective. It’s protectiveness in a wild world.
Quick musical interlude: women play the blues.
Minor Modesties & Social Decorum
For ages, women have been bound or hidden in parts. The methods change, depending on the time and place, but the practice of hiding or controlling the power of women goes way back to the inception of the patriarchy.
Noses and mouths for half-face veils. Coverings from other times & places: glove the hands, bind the feet, cover the hair. Bridal veils and netting on the brims of important hats. Chastity belts.
“Tower of Babel: chastity belt on my mouth” EM Matteson. Pastel on Paper. Collection in NYC.
Yet metaphoric veils are the ones that interest me most:
How many of women have cultivated a “good girl” persona atop a hungry whore or pissy brat underneath? How many wilderness women hide their competencies in PTO meetings and friendly brand-like personae? How many women act like they are in control of our lives, but get plunged regularly into a dark side where cause and effect swirl into a mess?
And who can even follow how life really works? Or make axioms or sense of this wild web of inter-connectedness? For years I found it easier to hide my confusing shadow side and play the socially sanctioned dance of decorum by being an apt mother and approachable career woman, because at least in these realms, you can have some fun, and experience a win now and again.
But I’m thinking now it may be better to appear plainly and only share what I know when asked. And to remember to add the disclaimer of “I don’t know,” because no one does…
If you’ve followed my writing of the last year, I experienced a rather ghoulish plunge into the dark side of awareness lasting about 18 months, and now I’m beginning to discover that the world is more forgiving and benign than I would have guessed.
I know this because I’m still alive, and can enjoy a walk through lady slippers, give gifts, make art, and hug friends.
It’s been hard won, this life of mine. Not a walk through the tulips.
I thank several loving spiritual leaders for their lasting leadership, even beyond the grave, and new ones for helping me hone new understandings into a workable daily practice. So, that’s all I know, and it has taken me a long a$$ time (again) to see a bit of daylight and write to you. Maybe you know what I mean? Maybe you don’t. It’s all good. We play in different places at different times in life.
These days, I’m playing in the depth of what it means to be human. Especially, a woman.
Dipping into deep knowing is a cycle that most women know: dip below, rise above, rinse and repeat. No wonder worldly cultures have tried to keep us veiled for millennia: our glancing hits seem to literally kill.
Presenting v Knowing
No matter how most of us present ourselves, women know there’s so much more “under there.” We can enact so much by whispers2 and wishes, and others follow the breadcrumbs we leave behind. Some of us can notice what can get done without lifting a finger. Recognizing our bodies as vessels, we know how many of our creative gifts come from swirling mystery, and are not quantifiable (or controllable) by spreadsheets, social tallies, or our conscious minds.
And we can’t own all our creative gifts either, like the children that spring forth from our bodies. We can just go for the ride and try to love and live as best we can.
I feel like we all have huge parts of ourselves buried in the earth, in the dark. Almost like some aspects of self are literally underground. Embedded3 in nature like the dead people we’ve loved.
I wonder sometimes if the darker aspects of ourselves are just grief?
If we take a Jungian view on individuation4, we may name these aspects as our subconscious or unconscious, and we tend to treat these parts of self as hidden or mistrusted, maybe because they can just plain make us feel ashamed or sad. Society teaches us how to burnish the good stuff, stick it out front, and hide the rest. Presentation is burnished, after all, its the part that sells us to society as valuable.
The axiom about not judging books by their covers may mean you can slap something attractive on your facade and call yourself done, or you can fool folks into judging you for that, and remain safe.
But I’m learning, not so fast! You still have to write a really good story that fills all those pages between. Your life story has only just begun being told well once you notice your darkest, bluesy self.
Doubling down: where knowing comes from
One woman friend says “she just came up for air” after the death of a parent and disappearing for a while. Another says she “goes dark” from time to time, and can’t handle so much as a phone conversation. We are all familiar with experiences, but we can’t always articulate what’s going on. These dark times are often called “depression,” but there is so much more to them. They are deep excavations in the dirt, our communal connecting point to the natural aspects of each other, and sometimes they even tap new spiritual waters.
While in our personal underground, we may trip on a tough root, or slop in mud pies, or wail in despair for all that’s been buried there. And these responses are as they should be. But the one thing we can’t do is control that realm. It just is and it cannot not be manipulated, only recognized and related to with good faith and ideally, wisdom.
That’s because control is a concept of society, not of nature and underworlds.
Depression, anxiety, burnout and other deep drops into the dark sides of our lives can be fruitful, in time, if we trust the process and try not to hide or run away. We have no choice, really, so may as well believe the best and try to learn something. These difficult experiences are not an aberration nor illness either, they are as natural as night and day. Cycles are part of nature. And nature is okay. It birthed us in a way.
Our felt senses about complicated and irrational things are natural too, even if not easily articulated in plain language. “Knowing” senses have made people marry their spouses, pick up new professions, travel and make big decisions. But societally, the sense of knowing is often repressed or discounted, or assigned as only valid if they come from priests and teachers. I think this is because knowing can include profoundly negative emotions, shameful ones even. But knowing is real and meaningful to each person, and to society in general.
Is knowing a sense?
Do you know it?
If you’ve ever seen behind the veil of the mysteries of life5 you may wish to once again to feel “covered” by something in society. And some women turn to men to provide this function. And many men enjoy taking on this role, because protecting others feels good.
Some men can seem to provide this to a greater or lesser degree, but authentic protection is always an inside job. I occasionally yearn for the days when life seemed simpler, with great passioins and a nostalgia of feeling freedom and un-called-upon courage. Times when I danced with my body, and talked daily with fairies. When spirits called me in the middle of the night and I built forts all day.
But at that time I had an active parent.
And now that I am a parent, I know I can do this for myself. I think we all can.
Yet if we’ve grown accustomed to fawning behind silence, clothing, and “proper” behaviors and affectation, we may for a few minutes believe our surface self is who we are. If we are good at society (or capitalism, the ugly overlord of society), we can feel safe within our families and within the walls that make up our homes.
But homes and appropriate life styles are all veils. And veils are not opaque, they are shields at best. You are seen for your entirety by more than you know. As am I.
So now I’m learning I am safer in acceptance of our darker shames and furies, as long as I keep sharing our higher, unique loves and practices with those who need to know too.
So, today, I’ll just toss a bit of blues out there, write a bit of my story, and consider my daily work done. I hope this post has helped someone feel seen and understood, or at least not feel so alone. Life’s complicated, and maybe makes no sense, but that’s why we have songs and singers, why we have women and wombs, why we have life and death, and the fall of expectations along side the growth of great forests.
- Spiritual Adulting. ↩︎
- Next post is about whisper campaigns, a societal art form perfected by women over millennia ↩︎
- “Embedded” will have to be a future Term of Endearment ↩︎
- “The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona on the one hand and the suggestive power of primordial images on the other.”
Jung (1935) ↩︎ - “seeing behind the veil” is an expression that could be thought of as a spiritual awakening or a rude awakening, depending on how it felt and how much quality help you had. ↩︎
