Thursday, December 18, 2003

Compulsive virtues Long ago I added to my list of Unifying Principles this one: "Don't indulge in compulsive feminine virtues." By "compulsive feminine virtues" I meant, of course, things like "being nurturing," "listening well," "cleaning up other people's messes," "encouraging others," etc. Nowadays the examples might read like a list of characteristics of the classic enabler, the compulsive helper and codependent. It's the compulsiveness, especially for women, that makes these virtues self destructive. Today I realized that there must be equivalent "compulsive masculine virtues." These are things that a male is socialized to do, not only to feel virtuous, but to feel like a real man. Perhaps they include "protecting others," "supporting one's family at the level to which they aspire," and other virtues that I can hardly imagine. Of course I'm not saying that any of the masculine and feminine virtues aren't good things. The problem lies in the fact that they can interfere with being true to oneself - to the Deep Self. They become compulsive masks that begin as protection and then eat away at the flesh of the wearer. (Now there's a plot for a horror story.) Here's one of my best loved quotations, this one from John Middleton Murray, translated into womanloving language: "For the good woman to realize that it is better to be whole than to be good is to enter on a strait and narrow path compared to which her previous rectitude was flowery license." 3:49:16 PM    comment []

Dream Interpretation: Someone has driven through my studio Dream: Someone has driven through my studio. I go in my blacksmithing studio. I'm shocked to see tire tracks right through it! They go through to the back door and then stop, as if someone expected to be able to drive right through the whole building. I'm horrified. I feel so invaded. I must have left the front doors open, and someone drove right in. I go out the back door to see where they might have been trying to go. (I may be skipping a part where a couple, or maybe even three people, want to see my studio and I show them, apologizing for the tire tracks.) I go out the back door. Sure enough, right behind the studio to the east, is some kind of active business - an auto repair place, maybe. I go around my studio to find someone there. I want to ask them if they know who drove through my studio. Their building is a metal building with an open front. It's sopping wet - deep puddles on the floor, rain streaming in through too many leaks to count. I'm amazed at how awful it is. I remember that a neighbor put this building up - what a bad job. My roof is metal but it's much better than this. Interpretation: When I wrote that I found a business to the east of my studio, what popped to mind is "east is the direction of ideas, of thought." The dream tells me that my "east" has been taken up with some man's business, and that's why my studio, my artwork, has been invaded. In other words, I've been entertaining patriarchal ideas. It's true, I haven't guarded against this or evaluated ideas this way for years. So I've probably "learned" all kinds of patriarchal ideas. This includes the things I "must do" and how I must do them, to make art and to earn a living as an artist. What popped next to mind was Alice Walker's "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens" and how it put the ground under my feet back in 1983. My impulse is to go straight to the library and find that book! I'll do that next. What about the rain streaming into the empty building behind me? "Patriarchal ideas don't hold water?" Flooded with emotion? In the dream I feel some pity for the owner of this building because it's useless. Perhaps the dream is telling me not to worry about tossing out patriarchal ideas, since they're useless anyway. (Note: The dream isn't suggesting anything bad about men, or that I reject men - it's the patriarchal ideas. Patriarchy is a system based on "power over" - certainly in a completely different direction from the kind of effortless living I want. Women usually entertain and live by patriarchal ideas as much as men.)   9:58:49 AM    comment []