StompStompStompStomp
Crash.Whirr.
What was this? A ten ton rhino storming past my work station on its way to disembowel lunch? No, 'twas the waif-like female from the next department, asserting her presence in high heeled shoes.
Do so many women do this - this stomping, aggressive walk - because they have so much suppressed anger or rage and it's the only way they can express it? Or do they think, perhaps, that they appear more commanding, more assertive, more...errr..masculine if they walk as though the ground offended them?
I'm not sure. I do know that the House martins were swooping joyously this morning, under a lowering grey sky, and that my Cape Sparrow friends, having ignored me on Monday when I came back from a week's leave, scolded me on Tuesday and gleefully eaten my grain offerings this morning (with many a happy chirp)would consider us mad, the way we dissociate ourselves from our Mother.
Or encase Her in concrete and steel. Or subject Her to continual ploughing, pesticiding and draining of Her nutrients. Or, for that matter, ignore Her completely.
I know that I spent the greater part of my life in the dull-witted paradigm in which only humans matter, have value and can think, feel or create. What a crock of shit. Unfortunately for all of us, it's the same paradigm that the majority of human animals live in, and with. Not so much a wanton cruelty as an almost wilful ignorance. It's not to be excused, even in myself - well, especially not in myself.
How to hand the keys to freedom of being to other humans? I don't know. It could be a gradual awakening, I suppose - but we've not got time for that. It may have to be a shocked rousing from slumber.
In the meantime, I'll try to go easy on the female stompers. It's also not really fair on the rhino.
hell, i don't even think rhinos are carnivorous to begin with...definitely might want to go easy on those visions of disembowelment - heehee.
ReplyDeleteof course, if i had a horn, i'd probably aim it at a few habitat-fouling civilized humans, high-heeled or otherwise.
...but don't we always deflect our agency with one million if i had a's & other excuses...i might not be horn-equipped, but i could probably find something else to aim at those ploughing, pesticiding, nutrient-draining, concrete/steel-encasing slumberers - if i weren't such a coward.
ah well, keep fighting for & with your flocks over there!!! oh, and you're also probably right about the female stompers...you/they've been fucked with almost as bad as the rhinos, at the hands of this culture. about time to overthrow patriarchy alongside all human hierarchies.
hope to see ya on the other side of all that oppressive rubble, where we can walk lightly on the land once again.
<3
Yeah, I know rhinos are vegetarians - just getting my metaphors mixed, as usual!
ReplyDeleteDon't you also find an almost conscious compulsion to, as you say, walk lightly on the land -both metaphorically and in reality? I know I do.
Love,
Terri in Joburg, who will certainly see you on the other side.
i definitely do, especially if i'm wearing damned shoes which would leave their molded rubber sole tracks behind me. if i'm putting my full weight on the earth, let my marks be only heel, pad, toe, and claw (if one could actually grow out their hind claws, instead of trimming them to fit into shoes/cultural norms).
ReplyDeleteoh hey, i'd love to see you on this side too, if i ever get all the freaking way over there sometime. in the longer/shorter meantime - be well terri.