Always looking for that ultimate paradigm, the archetype of
womanhood Lost, when I lost my childhood innocence, or
was it beaten out of me?
Split between the goddess and the whore
My subconscious got strewn between these poles.
Evaluating and unresolving my relationships They usually
fell apart when I realized the truth, I was either repulsed or
she remained forever beyond.
Torn between desire and admiration, the goddess in white
garments and the woman in the lacy black lingerie.
To have infected all those relationships, all those pathetic
pursuits to nowhere, so much effort and obsession After
fantasy and images, dreams and pre-conceived fragments
To be followed by the inevitable repulsion or rejection does
it matter which?
Strung in both cases between those awful poles of
isolation.
But now in ageing, I see clearer.
For I have inevitably been forced to finally appreciate what
was so precious, what was so refined and subtle, what I
had missed all along... that Sargon femininity, that ultimate
image etched into my subconscious, first and lastly, the
picture of my mother holding the violin playing her
Paganini piece or Beethoven Romance as she won the all
India violin competition, that iconic image of her in her
black velvet dress, the low cut appeal of that black velvet
despite her innocence, and the ability to hold both purity
and seduction without loss of either, the freshness of her
gaze and guilelessness.
That precious absence of manipulativeness, of
deviousness, of pseudo-naiveté that I have known in
encountering other women along the way. At some point, I
had lost that image. Where had I forgotten this deep
feeling?
That primordial image I had seen all my childhood like
those Sunday afternoons with the Sargon women hugging
the walls and the men with their Arabic playbeads in the
middle of the large living room in Wembley. On puffs and
small ottomans, speaking of world affairs and business
and the women chatting on the sidelines; of pleasantries.
But those very women come back to me now as I realize
that what I really needed all along, what I had been
searching for without knowing it, was that precise notion of
womanhood. That innocence and lack of guile, yet
attraction and desire, the absence of that conflict, found
only in Sargon women.
Even more so, all those women who brought out the worst
in me were really a gift bringing me to this place of
realization. This place of return of the past and the
ancestors, the Sargon women.
Holy sisters, mother, aunts, Becky Florence, Matilda, even
Diana, Ray, Myrtle, and my beloved Nana, then nieces
and daughters ... and now as I stare at my granddaughter
playing, 7 months old, her coyness as she places her tiny
hands on my beard inquisitively, I bask in the reflection of
this knowledge that those values will continue, that I have
come to peace with the mother goddess.
That my notion of Schechina has come full circle as I
welcome the bride each Sabbath projecting onto her all
those virtues of the eishis chayil.
Thank you for the gift of womanhood
Of innocence yet desire
Of purity with the body
With no guilt or shame
The refusal of the lacy black, but the retention of the
burning and yearning desire. Thank you.
