Prayer Beads on the Red Body

An image has been stalking me lately. And I have been stalking her. Does this happen to you? I went looking for her, hoping to find a visual to represent the book that I have written, to preside over the website that I am developing, to go forth into the world on business cards and flyers. As soon as she appeared, I thought, Oh no.

I felt the same way when my daughter’s name came to me. Driving on an open road near Yosemite, having just unintentionally climbed Yosemite Falls (six months pregnant!), I looked out over the vast expanse of land. “I think her name is River, “ I said to Steve. “Yeah, I think so, too,” he agreed. I wanted to continue looking. Wasn’t there a nice, practical name that would be palatable to the Midwest relatives? But that’s not how it works. You ask, you pray, you kneel down, you open your windows wide to the wind. When the answer comes, you cannot, then, ask to trade it in for something else.

This image – it’s just her torso. Rounded bronze breasts, ruby red cum cum powder rubbed around the circumference of each. Prayer beads hang over her chest, in a beautifully disturbing line over her nipples. What does it mean? You know it’s something important. In the forefront her right hand reaches forward, bangles on the wrist, thumb and index finger in assume a mudra.

Confronted with perfect juxtaposition – beauty and fear, nakedness and unabashed devotion, raw feminine power and ancient maternal wisdom – I felt an immediate and simultaneous impulse to turn away and hide, as well as an equally intense urge to openly embrace her. For a minute I was caught in the act of both. This is how it is to face art that represents the divine.

As a mother, what I find refreshing about her (can you see her yet?) is that she represents darkness and illumination, life like the middle of a flower, and death like the blood in birth. It’s all at once intriguing and terrifying, but you don’t know why….and so you want to look and look again. You look into. You look around.

Why do we tend to pathologize that which is painful and worship that which is pleasurable?

Motherhood, like life, is wrapped in an intricate mix of suffering and joy. Ok, mostly it’s not so intricate. Worse, it’s plain as day. Suffering. Pain. Guilt. Confusion. Doubt. And then, who knew, a fraction of a second later, Whimsy, Silliness, Laughter, Gratitude, Tenderness, Joy. It’s all mixed up. And it should be.

It is nakedness at this late hour, nakedness in all respects, that I reflect upon as I head to sleep.