scenes from a life 2
i published a version of this a while back written from a third person point of view... i suggested i might ultimately put it in the first person... i did that last week while preparing it to be read at a local literary open mic... it is easier to be completely honest about oneself when writing in the third person... it becomes more compelling when turned into a first person account...
i was pleased that it was well received... especially by women... i always worry that my attempts to inhabit a feminine point of view will get something horribly wrong and offend the women in the audience... hasn't actually happened...
at any rate... here is a first person account of experimenting with shape wear and swimming in the ocean of the feminine divine...
a few weeks ago, before leaving for my morning walk, i ordered a v-neck bralette with removable pads; a t-back bralette with removable pads; and a v-neck, 3/4 sleeve shaping top from yummieā¦ i had been exploring shaping garments for a while, with limited success in finding a proper fit and physical comfortā¦ maybe these would be differentā¦ the one shaping garment i had that i could wear all day was a padded sports bra from yummie, which gave me satisfying little hillocks on my chest and a pleasing sensation of compression around my torso and across my breasts, such as they areā¦ it was outwardly subtle enough, i thought, that most people wouldnāt noticeā¦ i didnāt need them toā¦ it was my own inner sense of feminine that i was trying to enhanceā¦
for some time i had debated with myself the āethicsā of shaping and paddingā¦ what was i promising that i couldnāt deliver with these little hillock fictions?ā¦ this internal dialogue concluded that shaping garments exist because people, especially women, wished to sculpt themselves towards something they viewed as being more of whatever they wished or thought they should beā¦
i had no illusions about achieving feminine allure in the eyes and libidos of othersā¦ or that i might actually be taken as a womanā¦ my age alone argued against the former, even as the unconvincing-in-that-way fiction of my presentation argued against the latterā¦ but that was not the pointā¦ the point was how i wanted to feel myself inhabiting the worldā¦ how could the way i dressed, padded and made myself up further my immersion in the pool of feminine i so deeply desired to swim in?ā¦
thinking about what i was experiencing, i wondered if it was similar for women in generalā¦ to shape or not to shapeā¦ was that a question women routinely asked themselves?ā¦
i had assumed that when women dressed up, they dressed to be attractive to an established or potential partnerā¦ what i began to understand was that even as women might enjoy being perceived as attractive by others, how they felt about themselves when they looked in the mirror might be more importantā¦ that they might chose the under and over garments, as i do, that best supported the sense of self they wanted to manifest to the worldā¦
thinking about my journey towards the feminine, i remembered how uncontrollably compelled i was to rebuild my wardrobe with dresses, skirts, blouses, leggings, tights, and now, shaping garmentsā¦ this was not body dysmorphia so much as it was a deep and profound desire to participate in what i perceived as an ocean of femininityā¦
as these thoughts tumbled around in my consciousness, memory of a favorite passage from Moby Dick surfacedā¦
ā¦ we were now in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at the heart of every commotion. And still in the distracted distance we beheld the tumults of the outer concentric circles, and saw successive pods of whales, eight or ten in each, swiftly going round and round, like multiplied spans of horses in a ring; and so closely shoulder to shoulder, that a Titanic circus-rider might easily have over-arched the middle ones and so have gone round on their backsā¦
i remembered that within the calm at the center of the commotion, Ishmail and his crew mates were visited by playful and curious calves, and, as they peered down into the water past the calves, they found pregnant, birthing and nursing mothersā¦
then came my favorite passage of the entire bookā¦
And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the center freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely reveled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of un-waning woe revolve around me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.
in this moment of contemplation, it struck meā¦ i have remembered and returned to these passages again and again because they presented a cosmic literary mandala centered on the feminine divine i had been seeking outā¦ that this āeternal mildness of joyā was exactly what i experienced from my movement into the feminine and now, i realized, this was exactly the response i had to have to the mounting storm of humanity i found myself in the midst ofā¦ i had been compelled to seek out and immerse myself in the maternal calving center of the cosmos as the storm gathered and raged around meā¦