Juncture: Between Roots and Flight

“And I was afraid. She frightens me because she can knock me down with a word. Because she does not know that writing is walking on a dizzying silence setting one word after the other on emptiness. Writing is miraculous and terrifying like the flight of a bird who has no wings but flings itself out and only gets wings by flying.” -Cixous

We are in the middle of the juncture between early fall and autumn.  

Right now, I do feel afraid.  I do feel myself walking on a dizzying silence. I think it's because I've been struggling to find the perfect metaphor for what has been going on this past week or so.  Perhaps it's because  I am trying to build my words upon the emptiness of time. I just haven't had enough time to contemplate all that has been going on.  I need that open space.  I need the blank page. I need to face the blank page and sit with the silence. The discomfort. The fear of flying.

Flying.  My dreams keep filling up with air and space. So much vata.  I have recurring dreams of flying into space and taking plane rides to new places that terrify and excite in equal measure.

“Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time.
Write yourself. Your body must be heard.” 

With moving out of the time of remembering my ancestors, I decided to return to another  family. My intellectual and emotional family.  Hélène Cixous is one of my divine mothers.  Her book, Rootprints: Memory and Lifewriting is one of my favorite books. And it has occurred to me that for the remainder of this juncture, I need to read that book.  I know she will help me find the right metaphor.  She is my mother bird nudging me out of the nest.   She was that for me years ago when I embarked on my intellectual and academic career.  It is time to return to her for yet another push.

Between roots and flight. That is the juncture in which I sit. A cross section of contradiction. 

"Wouldn't the worst be, isn't the worst, in truth, that women aren't castrated, that they have only to stop listening to the Sirens (for the Sirens were men) for history to change its meaning? You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing.” -Cixous

It's time to laugh.