No longer was she a river
banked and bounded
thirsting for futile Union
rushing into the embrace
of the mighty ocean
taking with her a little bit
of every land she crossed
never saying no to the umpteen
filth and follies of people
living on her shores
muddying her eddies and waves

now she flowed and frolicked
over river, oceans and mountains
unfettered, boundary-less
flowing up and down
with equal ease
for no other reason than to please
and fulfil herself
she stopped nowhere
nothing stopped her
uncontained, uncontainable
taking nothing, owning nothing
she belonged nowhere, to none
she became wild and free
She became…
… the Wind.

she was always restless
this Tigress of mine
pacing endlessly
bouncing off walls and bars
tighly locked within
all keys thrown away.

threatening to shake
the very foundations
of structures too weak
to withstand
her sublimal, primal,
repressed energies

befriend her. talk to her.
let her free.
they say.

but how can I?
there is no place for her
in my rational, compartmentalized
pseudo-world…
cubicled containers
of whats and hows
doneses and not-doneses
where tigresses need to exist
but only this way and that.

she needs acres of freedom
this Tigress mine…
to streak across
my soulscapes
flaming orange. fierce.
potent. proud.

i am faced with choices.
to live in this world
where We – my tigress and I
have no place Here
and there is no other There either.
if there was one,
I would take it.

so I have transformed her
a metaphorical Hobbes
to my caustic Calvin.
a caricature that
still seemingly exists…

her fiery oranges hues
now a manageable ochre
her claws little lumps of cotton-balls
her strange, powerful eyes
now mere shiny buttons
her toothless smile
threatens no one – not even me.

a ghost now – she only
haunts my dreams.

when i was that, i knew i was not this

now i am neither this nor that

now i don’t know who or what i am.

Please share with all who you care!

I don’t meet her often – only during the weekends I am at home. But those are the days I just prefer to hang around doing nothing… letting my world go to the dogs. The house, if W is not around, is a proverbial mess… to Roshan’s angst. She tries to prod me in many ways to get off my ass, mother-in-lawing me, often with not-even-veiled digs at how everything is done when W is around! She makes it clear that as far as she is concerned, I am a blot to being a Woman – not only doing nothing to play the Woman’s role, but letting my man do it to boot! Surprisingly she hasn’t yet made any comments to my smoking… considering that W doesn’t smoke.

I enjoy the banter too… teasing her in return whether being a woman can be much more than a tied-to-the-house-and-babies role… though she wonders at my freaking out lecture when she wastes water… and telling her I thank the good lord that I don’t have her for my m-in-law!

I wonder what she must make of the gender roles in my house. While W does a marvellous job of house-keeping, he doesn’t really fit into the typical description of a cuckolded, hen-pecked male role… and while I seem to do nothing, obviously I don’t “run” either the family or the home… the relationship equations are clearly not in favour of one over the other.

I often see Roshan struggling with herself to understand the dynamics in my house… and trying to do her best to beat us back into a shape of conformity that would fit into her social, gender role models…

“If I could realize my will to action, my will to engagement, and my will to manifestation, what format would it be?”

… was reading this about archetypal energies… and I thought what would be mine? I thought of all the deep, intense, dark archetypes that play inside me and finally realised that no… if i could shine my light in the world I would like it to be playful, bright, catalystic… in that sense my archetype would be Krishna… the master-player of all… non-emotional, catalyst, moral code-breaker changing social rules, political, counter-balancer, engaged but not involved, committed but not attached, who was Maya himself yet played with Maya, the ever romantic, who could get many to realize love, yet he himself was self-contained, human yet above being just human… yes! it would be a krishna.

What would be yours?

enmeshed, entangled
en-merged – (is that a word?)
no longer distinguishable
or delineate-able
or separate-able
if I extricate parts of You
parts of me get extricated too
as I try and remove
strands of you,
now woven into Me
it leaves gaps …
… like ladders in stockings
disturbing a seeming pattern.
which is Me? which is You?
i no longer recognise myself as Me.
i have become a You-Me.
i don’t know about you.
do you feel like this too?

’REAL isn’t how you were made,’ said the Skin Horse. ’It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become REAL.’

’Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.

’Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ’When you are REAL, you don’t mind being hurt.’

’Does it happen all at once like being wound up,’ he asked, ’or bit by bit?’

’It doesn’t happen all at once.’ said the Skin Horse. ’You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are REAL, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are REAL, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand… Once you are REAL, you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.’

- Margery Williams, “The Velveteen Rabbit“

- Dawn Bodrogi
www.theinnerwheel.com