The Veil
One theme that has been coming up for me often is innocence. I’ve shaken hands with symbols of it: words I’ve chosen in my writings, the art I’ve been resonating with, even the way I behave in nature has taken on the wonderment of a kid looking at an ample climbing tree. The symbols seem to proliferate everyday, and have made me reflect at every point of contact. Often these reflections have been more assertive than mere static epiphanies, and have forced me to dredge old traumas, wading through the muck and mire in hopes of receiving some sort of healing now, as I decide on the woman I want to be.
Innocence, if you have a thesaurus handy, frequently couples with the word “purity,” which associates with being abstinent, or being perfect in nature, indicative of the heavenly realm. My pocket journal is stuffed with words I’ve jotted down and their definitions, the most recent carrying an angelic radiance, such as “dovetail” and “virginal.” The former a biblical symbol (Noah’s ark) and the latter a biblical principal. Having grown up in the Christian church, these were already vaguely familiar, now emboldened by the state of emotions I’ve felt in the last weeks. Their attraction seeded in the trauma I’ve been harrowing. In a way, I’ve been healing by reconnecting to the words that give these traumas a cushion. The homely tongue of the religion I grew up around, familiar to the prayers my dad had recited like poems with his hand on my head.
In moseying pinterest I happened upon a section of stone sculptures manipulated to look like soft material: sheets delicate like mosquito netting, waves and wrinkles like clay. Antonio Corradini’s, Bust of a Veiled Woman, stood out among the rest, a marble sculpture that completely metamorphosizes the material to look transparent, revealing a woman’s face beneath a veil. It’s visually striking at first glance, the lines he creates of loose garments hung on a bare chest. Sensual and evocative of the purity I’ve been drawn to.
A drive out to the desert the other day included a couple acres of ranches, and amidst the dust I caught sight of cattle, goats, and on one occasion, horses. I’ve claimed them as my favorite animal since I was a girl and so stumbling upon them out in the wild felt ethereal. I stood on my knees in the bottom rail of the fence that marked the land, propping myself up with my elbows to muse. The whistling of hot wind on cracked earth. A snort from one of the horses, and then still, quiet pasturing. I watched them similar to the way a child would, captivated by nature, awestruck by a novelty experience. This kind of innocence clings close to its definition. I met those creatures as an empty vessel, marveling at something that I’d never seen before.
Recognizing innocence as a theme in my life has allowed me to relate it back to my own quilt of experiences, and I’ve noticed that a lot of the snags are in moments where my innocence was absent. Adults in my life spun webs around me, and sheathed in a spider’s silk, I hung prey to empathizing with adult-sized wounds. I was only a little girl. I spent a lot of time worrying about family affairs when other kids were idly skipping rocks. I dealt with the fallout of divorce, one that was especially pernicious to my sister’s mental health, a bleeding mother, and an abusive stepparent. Now juxtaposed with the honest love and protection I’ve experienced as an adult, these traumas are grimy, blameful, and assuredly plucked the petals of my innocence prematurely. Acknowledging that was the first agreement I made with myself to heal. Language, sculpture, and my own behavior simply brought attention to a conversation I needed to have in order to move on. A conversation that started with twenty-year-old me sifting womanhood, and a conversation that extends into the wife, the mother, and the grandmother I’ll be once it’s sorted.
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There’s a palpable difference between being protected in the warmth of flesh, and being beguiled into false protection. In which the first is being touched and talked to with loving conviction, and the second is manipulation.