Some matters are of the present, they fire up from deep inside and explode on the scene. We can prepare as best we can for this unexpected moment, we can anticipate the surprise, but the event can be nothing but a strike from out of the blue. Then of course, after the fact, we can justify ourselves, we speak of inevitabilities, of scarcities replenished or a desire that was, we might say, attached to something that serves the world, not just our own satisfaction. But these simple defences are a lie, a sort of masculine ordering, which diminishes the instability inherent in the experience.
The event, the unexpected moment, the surprise, effects not just us, but whomever else happens to be there, including those who watch the aftermath. Imagine now we are those looking on. This isn’t hard, we have all watched the lives of others when they explode. These stories are told endlessly on screens and in books. It is especially exciting when we find the stories of others whose misfortune we almost shared, but luckily swerved. Like the story of a woman who gives up everything for someone or something after one such unexpected moment, but instead of fulfilment, finds she is left sitting at a red light, forbidden from moving forward. Oh, how we can slow down for this story, crawl past looking for a glimpse at her face, consumed by the thought: what had she needed so desperately that made her give up all other possibilities in her life? What promise was held in the desire she fell prey to? That thought excites our imagination. We can satisfy ourselves by pitying her, by blaming her and by marvelling at the selfishness of her impulsive decisions and her prurient interests. There is a thrilling shiver as we rest our eyes on her and wonder how long she will sit, forbidden to move. There may be some among us who might feel we would ask her into our car, but even the thought of it feels like a sort of robbery. We drive away.
For men, I suppose, the story of a destructive desire, an explosion, a near-fatal attack from the unknown is woven into a rope that they might, if they wish, tie round their middle and allow themselves to be yanked out of their car, bundled into a van and eventually, chucked back into the crowd. The story is of idiocy and weakness, it is rarely malevolent. For him, there was a temptress, a liar, an unholy rebel who led him astray, he has had to pay, but somehow, the firm story forms: he was her victim. Once a woman is no longer a girl, she relinquishes the story of victimhood when her desire is in play. Her own sisterhood has to battle with their disgust, and sitting at the red light, she may start to feel transparent, that her story is unspeakable.
There are avenues, of course, to rehabilitation and reintegration into a community for a woman whose concupiscence left her at a red light. But to partake in this she must silence her complicity, her desire, she must deny the moment that it fired up deep inside her and decide instead to perform a story that was not hers; ‘it was madness’ she learns to say, ‘I wasn't myself,’ which of course, was never it at all. A woman in the moment when her full being is at work is a very powerful thing, neither good, nor bad, but of the earth, of stories far greater than the minds that obscure them.
In the aftermath of that moment of being, if she stays where she was, she may become the receptacle of many different things; blame, bitterness, excitement, violence and rage, she is not recognisable any more. Now if she speaks, she would be accused of some savage act of self-importance. Eventually, bored of her silence, bored of watching her fixed in trauma, sitting under the same red glow, people will start to throw things from their crawling cars, and finally, they will make her disappear. Many women have been lost like this. What must she do? She must go first.
This isn’t as terrible as it sounds, for it is quite simply that inside herself, she must start again, regenerate into a consciousness that will neither diminish or lionise her desire, but place it quietly on a new stage of awareness which allows her to ask, what shall I do with this? This is our uniquely human ability to transcend the limits of our lives. We are not trees, we are not tied to cycles, to shedding our leaves each autumn, to an inevitable death, our bodies will die, but our consciousness is regenerative, always. You see, our awareness allows us to live beyond our bodies, therefore we can disappear and appear again. We can dream the world with a greater understanding of the powers we hold; there is no need to leave them in a fist of trauma and silence. There is no need for our body to be full of the dread of other people's stories.
In fact, women are the lucky ones, in rejection, we have a chance to step onto new earth. We die in the stories of others, and inside us something is reborn. We must take this journey alone, but this initiation creates a space for belonging which sits beyond the lives of others and yet works through them, stranger and friend. In the end, we are in a crowded place, with self-regard, with love.
