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This sculpture was
set aside after casting for several years because I couldn’t see how to
proceed. This Fall the color combinations, meaning narrative, and
technical difficulties resolved.
I received an email written by ‘Fred’ and passed along by a good friend as
‘interesting.’ Fred is apparently a journalist covering military issues
and his article purports to be a summary of all history. The first
paragraph warns of “…the gravest plague to afflict humanity: the infernal
and irremediable aggressiveness of males.” He continues, “What we call
statesmanship is, emotionally and morally, indistinguishable from gang war
in South Chicago.” Men cause all war, and our military wear, “baubles and
medals and patches and different hats, talk of honor and duty and valor.
Nah. Male dogs in an alley.” Fred the Journalist goes on to blame the
“commercial combat” and “unrestricted rapine” of capitalism on the
testosterone-fused brains of men.
Coming from the internet
and lacking a last name, I doubt Fred’s claim to journalist and suspect
the possibility he’s a nerdy HS senior in a Che tee-shirt wanting to get
laid, so it was surprising to be interested in responding at all. But
respect for my friend and as counterpoint to this work, I considered first
his history and recalled numerous women of power, from Makeda, Queen of
Sheba, to Eleanor of Aquitaine and Margaret Thatcher, and some of those,
like Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar, would shame even Idi Amin.
The direction of my
interest turned from power to the nature of women with recollection of
Kipling’s poem The Female of the Species, that begins:
When
the Himalayan peasant meets
the he-bear
in his pride,
He shouts to scare
the monster, who
will often
turn aside.
But the she-bear thus
accosted rends
the peasant
tooth and nail.
For the female of
the species is more
deadly than
the male.
My family still enjoys the
story of a paintball outing attended by my feminine and sweet daughter,
Diane. She was timid, reluctant and appalled by the aggression until her
10-year-old nephew took a hit to an unprotected soft spot that brought
tears to his eyes. Eyebrows shot up as Diane transformed into a Saxon
Berserker and charging, wiped out the culprits.
The liquid, nurturing
qualities of the feminine within us all, crowned with a hawk-like
perspective and ferocity, can not be diminished by the shallow rhetoric of
Fred. |
