Celia Ingrid Farber, New York, 2009Night Vision
A Novel in 300 Peas
Chapter 1
Something is wrong with everything. One thing, but if we fix it we will be radiant once again, as good as the animals.
As if I'd seen a golden X marked on the pavement asking me to stop right there, I did. The air was wet with suspended rain and it felt nice to breathe. I wanted to keep walking, either up or down Broadway, just to think about my golden X, the thing that seemed to me to answer everything. Go home and write it down before you forget.
That man, I explained silently to the listener in my own mind, (the only one who censors nothing,) the one you met in the stairwell, the elderly Hispanic man with the Panama hat who held the doors open. Tell that story first. It's hardly anything. But it was everything, contained within the X.
You're going mad.
Keep going.
They won't like this.
Keep going.
It was like this. I came home with two heavy shopping bags. An elderly man of Hispanic origins whose name I don't know, who lives in my building, was exiting the building, he was already partway down the block. He turned back. He wanted to open the two heavy downstairs doors for me, and I tried to argue, before my inner voice caught me up and said: Let him. He wants to.
Senorita, he said, beaming a smile, allow me. He opened each door, and then he followed me to the elevator, and opened that door too, as I thanked him breathlessly. Of course of course, he said, of course I help you, what kind of society is this, that they don't want to help the women anymore? They treat the women so bad. He shook his head, and I realized he was going up the elevator to the top floor, with me, to open the final door, the elevator door on my floor. Just as we pulled up to the seventh floor, he pushed the door open as I trundled with the bags.
In this country, he said, looking me in the eye, and I stopped moving, to listen…in this country, the men, they want to be women, and the women want to be men. That's what the old man said.
Then he shrugged, smiled, and said, Adios!
Adios, I said, and smiled back.
And this was my X. The men want to be women and the women want to be men.
That is what is wrong with everything. But let me correct something about the X: The men, they want to be men, and the women, they want to be women. Now, how are we going to get there? There is bound to be hysteria, as we cross back over the bridge to our true nature.
I stood stock still on the busy sidewalk, and people looked at me as they passed. Has she forgotten something? Has she remembered something?
A formula was writing itself down, very short. What is it that makes a woman, number one, before all else, what makes her female?
That she can advance herself on a kind of fragility. That she can make people do things because they are moved by a kind of pity. She is composed of voids, of spaces that others penetrate, of strength unclaimed, of everything a civilization asks when it asks us to stop, to hold back, to have mercy. She keeps raw will in check, she is not born yet, not realized, not armed, not here. She has nothing with which to stab or penetrate.
And this is the horror of the new man, that he has assumed all this, he has taken her last and only weapon and he is using it against her. He is asking her to carry him, on her legs, on her horse, on her advantages. He is using the last weapon of a dying civilization: Weakness. It is the weapon that trumps all others, because it is composed of voids. Against it, we have no chance.
The new man has slowly become a woman. The new woman has slowly become a man. The new man is discovering the comforts of not being. The new woman is discovering the loneliness and consequences of being. His skin has become so soft, his heart so open. She no longer has the freedom to assume that she can't hurt him, that his world is elsewhere, that he can replace her, which, despite her half century of propaganda and protestations, was her only significant freedom. That he was strong and cruel and she was free to know that he was born, that he was out there, that he was in the world, that he was drinking of it, not of her but of it.
But he took the bait, he took the deal, he ate the sweetened bread in the trap to end all traps. He agreed to be bound, agreed to give up his legs, his arms, his will, his lance, horse, sex, everything. There was a time when she wanted him to do all this, to stay home, to return to her womb, as her son; It must have been that way, she must have a hand in all this, all women mus have a hand in all this.
This infinite, screaming, silent tragedy — this stillborn humanity.
The year was 2009.
Something was wrong with everything.
Comments (4)
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Presumably, the elderly gentleman epitomize valued male qualities by displaying a gallant initiative and perseverance. Would these same qualities, however, sometimes seem suspicious to a city woman (e.g., following her from the street to her floor)? The fear of provoking such suspicions may make many men suppress their innate courage and self-assertiveness, thus becoming overly passive - a witness rather than a participant. In any case, we need more of this kind of first person expression of personal attitudes so as to begin to understand what is going on behind the faces of the other person, the other gender, the silent otherness of the strangers in a crowd.
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Perceptions and the perceived are just that. Look around. How many of us correctly perceive reality? Perceptions are not truths. They are not reality. They are simply the perceptions of the projections that ones own self has put upon reality. It is not the full picture. Not the big picture. Not reality. Not truth. Not the is. It is nought but projections and perceptions of the projector and perceiver. One needs to drink it all in to see the whole. The universe is much bigger, fuller, and vastly more beautiful than our misperceptions and projections will ever allow us to see or know it.
So I will step back. I will choose a larger view. When I look again, I see how much more one can see when one steps further away to see from yet a higher place. And what I see holds not the old man or young woman to be describing reality. What I see from here is neither right nor wrong. Not good or bad. But a fuller and perhaps a truer sight is then beheld by me.
What perception can can I see by going yet further, yet higher? Can I perhaps see that male and female are becoming one with themselves first, in understanding that what lies within ones presumed to be male or female self is also within the other, that I had mistakenly believed was my oppositie? Can I see that male and female are growing enough to be one with each other, yet be fully independent of and within themselves? Can I behold that male and female through the current separation and emulation and exploration of each other by exploration within themselves of what they thought was only found in the other will soon allow them to come together with a new understanding, in a higher love of acceptance, allowance, tolerance for the weaknesses and strengths that are no different for either of us?
After centuries of women as chattel to be seen and not heard, after centuries of male domination through war and destruction, this could very well be a higher evolution I am about to behold.
Are we coming to understand experientially that the only difference between us is merely bodily form, and social programming of expectation of what male and female are that have been falsely projected upon us and perceived to be real to us? Are both sexes not but equal spirits in disimillar bodies?
Perhaps what the old man and young woman beheld was not truth, but their own false perceptions and projections. Perhaps what they actually beheld is evolution to higher levels of understanding each other, though both were yet too afraid to explore, that lead us all eventually to real love and real understanding and real oneness of humanity. Not based on neediness. Not mutually using each other for what the other has and the other wants or believes they need. Not projecting false beliefs or expectations of how one or the other should be.
But then again, perhaps this too is another mistaken perception, and another mistaken projection of the world and reality that I myself would prefer to live in.
What I behold in the old man and young woman is their perception of the coming merging of spirits of a higher and truer love that is yet to be, as man and woman are not yet ready to be joined as one. They are too busy placing projections and misperceptions upon each other. They know not yet what love is. But as they grow within and see the other in themselves, they will. Love will prevail. The universe itself is founded in it.
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Gentlemen and Rogues
Evolutionary psychologists (nee sociobiologists) offer a simple explanation for the frustration of many women with feminine-seeming heterosexual men and for their attraction to "bad boys." The latter exemplify male qualities of personal strength, independence, daring, and willfulness, which would be useful for survival in the primeval wilderness and in many modern landscapes as well. But helped by the cultural valuation of refinement and chivalry, the nice guy often seems to finish first, perhaps because of the women's perception of the strength of his self-control over his latent inner rogue.
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oh man
It is I mean terrible when a woman wants you to be tough and sensitive. Women themselves
aren't all that kind or sensitive. This new supreme court nominee let a man rot in jail.
so much for equality doled out by women. I think it is good your writing. Lots of folks just don't want to except that the moral fabric of society is crumbling. all efforts to "fix" the fallen nature of man will fail. Only the rising of Jesus from the dead fixed that, if folks don't have faith and believe...then it's all she wrote.(no pun intended).
I'm not in any speculation that women have been treated poorly, but look at the USA prison population. And the high rate of false convictions.The only method people have as a remedy for inequality is to reverse the inequality on to the perceived dominator.
so now, we live in a world dominated by folks who are victims and non-producers.
Also, I enjoy the constant spattering of "psuedo-White hate" as in the "kindly hispanic man. Why don't women just come out and say they hate white men and love men of color?
I have no trouble looking at chinese women and telling all the women i meet how hot they are, and the mexicans, and Israeli women look good too. The muslim women are ok looking but they stay undercover alot...some kind of mid-east KKK stuff.
Most muslims are better covered up, so perhaps I need more self-realization.
I also, like the writer lost my virginity to a flamboyantly Gay Puerto Rican!~
he said he was going to "rock my world"
it is better to have tried at least
toss my salad, and say I'm beautiful =]]
S. Dan
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