By: Theresa
C. Dintino
Because
we forgot how to console ourselves, because we forgot our connection
to the earth, to the sky, to the smallest cell within us, the most
encompassing black hole surrounding us—because of this, we know despair.
Once,
we walked to Newgrange. Once
we knew, the snow crunching for miles beneath our feet, we knew how
important it is to remember—to remind ourselves, to experience rebirth
and so, believe again.
I
laughed when you said this. I,
who only just walked into the river.
I, who was so cold, so alone that to me, the water felt warm.
Newgrange
County
Meath, Ireland
2400 B.C.E.
It was cold and there was nothing to
do. Imagine! Nothing to do? We had stored
all our food, stacked all our wood, set ourselves up for the darkness.
All there was now was to wait for the snow to become so deep,
we could not think of moving about. The days became shorter and shorter. “The sun is leaving us,” I said.
“To Newgrange,” you said.
The work had gone so well. We were quite
pleased with ourselves. You
said I had big feet.
“I went every year with my mother,” I
said. “My mother.”
“Your mother,” you smiled.
I loved you so.
“Big feet are good,” I said.
“Yes.
We will travel quickly.”
“Have you ever seen it?” I asked.
“No. Always a day late.”
“So with me,” I said.
“We’ll leave early.”
“Plenty of time.”
“We’ll travel, you and I, not to be held
back by the group.”
“But the group—the group is safer.”
“No.
No. Don’t want to miss
it again.”
I
closed the door to our shelter, boxed it in tightly with twigs and
branches. When we returned
it would be difficult to find, at first, the snow—the winter—concealing
it. But inside would be dry; ready for the time
within.
The snow arcs and crests in hills around
us. The wind has blown it
smooth. The sun reflects off
its vast, shiny surface. Tinkling. Glimmering.
Shimmering. In our
darkest season, so much brightness, so much whiteness, surrounds us.
Snow so thick; in some places the paths
blown over, the snow’s drifts covering footprints. Our feet sink deep to the knee for long distances,
our legs lifting, lifting—heavy hurting—only to meet our own knee
deep prints again—only to realize we have circled back and around.
London
1941
The
war was raging. I was raging.
I know, I was about to fall apart.
I knew I needed to let myself fall apart—the layer upon layer
of affectation. In order to rebuild myself, I needed to let
the glued together pieces finally expand; burst open. The anger. I needed to go
beneath the anger; under. There
was something down there, black and shining.
I had only begun to glimpse it.
But I could not bear the look on your faces. Your worry. Your disappointment.
I could not take one more pill.
You
see, I wanted to feel it. I wanted to know it, as difficult as it would
have been, exhausting, to experience it was the solution—the key to
it all.
While
the biggest part of me was being pulled like a magnet in, I fought
to keep myself from dropping deeper and deeper for you. The resistance was killing me.
All my being was grabbing and grappling. My mind was losing ground. I
was losing ground. Then, I
realized, there is another way to get at it—to free this thing, black
and shining—rotating—at my core.
*
* *
“Hurry. Hurry.” You rushed me.
I have never been that strong. It was always I who held my mother back.
I wanted to keep up. I moved. I
pushed forward. I kept thinking,
“Big feet. Big feet.”
You were big. Your footsteps twice as long as mine. I pointed that out to you. “Look,” I said, “I must move mine two times
as much as you. Only to keep
up, I must do double the work. Please,
slow down. I am growing tired.”
London
1941
“Why are you writing such things?”
The sight of my own anger on the page—how it
chilled me. I asked myself, ‘how could anyone react to the things
I was seeing with anything but anger?’
I know. I know. Still,
ultimately, it makes no difference to my feelings whether or not they
are ladylike. I cannot help
but feel it. How is it that
you do not feel it?
You told me, with your eyes and looks and sideways
glances, you said to me, ‘Everyone already has enough to worry about.
Pull yourself together, Virginia’.
But it is not the self that will not pull together. It is the
selves; it is these that seem to want to split and scatter.
Of course, I could not tell you that.
*
*
*
My
mother went slow for me. I
was always looking around—feeling everything.
After a few days, she would drop her frustration—tell the group
to go on ahead of us. A resigned
sigh, with the words, “Should have left earlier.
We’ll miss it again.” Then—hands
on hips, looking forward—watching our group of people trudge, in a
straight line ahead of us, “The solstice will come whether we’re there
or not. If only to see it.”
I
stood myself beside her, looking where she looked, toward the hills
of frozen white earth, curving. I
listened to the leafless trees around us.
I could hear them reaching, breathing—in spite of the cold—swaying.
I
listened to their tall, exposed bodies creaking—loud popping—as though
expanding, ready to burst open, break apart—yet they do not. They remain whole.
The
sun was dipping orange behind one of those hills, spreading itself
in pinks and yellows upon the snow.
“I
see it,” I said. “I see the
solstice, Mother. It is always
around us; in the light that flickers off the snow in pinks and yellows,
in the sun, though distant, ever present.
I see it mother. I see the solstice.
It is within us.”
“Yes,”
she answered. “Because of
this, you walk slowly. Perhaps
next year, I shall come alone.”
She
never did. We continued to
go, every year, together. She
stopped pushing and, I think, even stopped wishing.
The journey. The journey
became the thing.
But
you, your will is so strong and I, for some reason, I cannot fight
you. I can feel, I can feel how it is killing me—this
rushing, this doing things only for the joy of having them done. I am missing out on what feeds me. The shadows on the morning ice, the clouds,
drifting slowly by, the particular smoke of an early fire. I look at the piles of wood and think, ’I don’t
remember stacking them. I
only remember how late we worked—how fast.
I do not remember the precise feel of the actual stacking:
the feel of the wood beneath my axe, the sound of the blade on living
wood, the smell of freshly cut tree spirit, released, released, released
by the force of the axe’.
The
feeling of you loving me, I remember—the pride in your eyes when we
accomplish, the excitement in your voice at the thought of doing more. It is the love—the you loving me that I am
feeling now. It is this which
I am savoring.
London
1941
In the book I wrote, “Life for both sexes—and
I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement—is arduous,
difficult, a perpetual struggle.
It calls for gigantic courage and strength.
More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusions as we are,
it calls for confidence in oneself.
Without self-confidence we are babes in the cradle.
And how can we generate this imponderable quality? By thinking that other people are inferior
to oneself . . .Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses
possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure
of a man at twice its natural size.”
You
scoffed when you read this, but it was the scoff of recognition. Recognition, I know now, is not enough. Even in recognition will some—most—close their
eyes to others; the inflated image in the looking glass too important
too let go of.
*
*
*
Still, my mother and I were happy when
we arrived there. When, from
a distance, we could finally see the circle of stones, we would smile,
the joy stretching between our cold, separate bodies—walk faster. The shared vision of light flickering off the
domed, quartz surface, unified us—bringing the rhythm of our feet
into unison.
Arriving, we would circle around it slowly,
observe the carvings and deep incisions on the large stones of the
outer wall, lay our hands upon them, our fingers fondling the thick
grooves of moving spirals and spinning wheels; within Her sacred triangle,
planting our own prayer of hope for the sun’s return.
Mother peered longingly between the two
boulders pushed together in front of and closing the entrance—the
ones that only a few days earlier had opened to receive solstice.
“I’m sorry, Mother.”
“No. No. It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve
grown to like it this way. The
mystery. Come,” her hand extended
our toward mine, “we circle back now, to home.”
We both know, my feet are not big.
You pushed me even so.
I saw you, I saw you betting on me, calculating
with your head. Your head
saying, “She can take more. I
may push her further.”
I was already dying and I knew it.
It was this—the spark of fire before death—that you saw in
me and mistook for strength.
I did not correct you.
London
1941
“Let
me add a dream, for it may refer to the incident of the looking-glass. I dreamt that I was looking in a glass when
a horrible face—the face of an animal—suddenly showed over my shoulder. I cannot be sure if this was a dream, or if
it happened. Was I looking in the glass one day when something in
the background moved, and seemed to me alive?
I cannot be sure. But
I have always remembered the other face in the glass, whether it was
a dream or a fact, and that it frightened me.”
And
now, I feel almost certain—its seems more than evidently clear—that
it is this, this precise fear—the fear of the animal in the looking
glass—it is this
which
is generating all the hate, the destruction; it is this which is tearing
our world apart—scattering our selves.
“What have I done?” you said, when it was already too late.
“What, oh what?” Your scream echoed off the cold around us.
You carried me the rest of the way.
I understood it then, watching you force your tired body to
carry all that extra weight; it was yourself you had been loving in
me—your own weak self you were pushing. It had nothing to do with me. I could have been anyone.
You got me to Newgrange on time for the
solstice. What my mother never
saw—what she gave up because she could see me, you let me see.
I was scared until we got there. Frightened.
I never liked the darkness and so close to it.
You walked quickly toward the opening,
right past the entryway.
“Slow down. Slow down,” I said, pointing to that beautifully carved stone which
stands in front of, almost in the way of, the entrance. You took me back. You held me before its face full of smiling, triple spirals. I breathed in the wide, arcing wings of creation
expanding on the surface before me.
Even then, I could feel your impatience. After all, we had come for the inner chamber. We were not there yet.
“Perhaps the solstice, seeing the solstice,
will make you better,” you said.
“I have seen the solstice,” I said.
“It is always around us. This is only a symbol. It is not magic. Symbols are for people like you, to remind you of what you forgot.”
You looked at me. I think, for a moment, you almost saw me.
London
1941
Will
the women of the future know different?
Will they finally dig down and claim that thing, black and
shining—their essence? Will
they recognize the other face in the mirror as their own?
It will be difficult to dig out from under all those centuries
of rage.
*
*
*
We moved down the tunnel together.
You burrowed me through except for the places where I had to
crawl. The last of my energy
was spent slithering myself between two tight, squeezing, walls of
stone, crawling back in. The
chamber was as I had remembered it—three round, bulging, interconnected
rooms—the triple spiral—regenerating.
We had seen it every year, my mother and I. It was there, out front—it had always been there—displayed for
all to see.
The solstice
was near. The light of the
lamps was extinguished. We
sat in the darkness, with the others, waiting.
*
*
*
London
1941
I
know. I am not deluding myself. I know there will come a time when I will have
to do this work, the work I am turning my back on this time. I will return, someday, to do it. Here’s hoping for an easier place.
* *
*
The light came into the chamber—with startling brightness, the
solstice flooded the interior around us, with a whiteness—exposing
a stone room covered with engravings we could not, in the darkness,
perceive.
You grabbed my arm. You could see it. The pain was overwhelming you.
“It’s all right now,” I said. “I can see, darkness only the other side of
light. Light only possible
because of darkness. Nothing
separate. Look at the ceiling above us. See the circles, separate but one? I will go but I will not be gone. The two that you see, but two parts of the
same one.”
You looked at me. I was you.
I will go now. You heard me.
You heard me say it with your eyes.
The spirals above took me in. I felt myself swirling whirling, whooshing
swooshing--weight left me. I
was light. I was darkness. I am, always . . .
Yes,
Virginia, There is a Newgrange
