“Captured and starved women sneak all kinds of things: they sneak unsanctioned books and music, they sneak friendships, sexual feeling, religious affiliation. They sneak furtive thinking, dreams of revolution. They sneak time away from their mates and families. They sneak a treasure into the house. They sneak their writing time, their thinking time, their soul-time. They sneak a spirit into the bedroom, a poem before work, they sneak a skip or an embrace when no one’s looking.
To detour off this polarised path, a woman has to surrender the pretense. Sneaking a counterfeit soul-life never works. It always blows out the sidewall when you’re least expecting it. Then it’s misery all around. It’s better to go up, stand up, no matter how homemade you platform, and live the most you can, the best you can, and forgo the sneaking of counterfeits. Hold out for what has real meaning and health for you.”
— “Women Who Run With The Wolves” by Clarissa Pincola Estés, Ph.D.
“In order to converse with the wild feminine, a woman must temporarily leave the world and inhabit a state of aloneness in the oldest sense of the world. (…) That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one. It is the cure for the frazzled state so common to modern women, the one that makes her, as the old saying goes, ‘leap into her horse and ride off in all directions.’ Solitude is not an absence of energy or action, as some believe, but it is rather a boon of wild provisions transmitted to us from the soul. (…) I find that the ‘women’s places’ were used anytime, not just during menses, and more so, that each woman often had her own ‘woman’s place’, consisting of a certain tree, place at the water’s edge, or some natural forest or desert room or ocean cave. (…) I always laugh when I hear someone quoting early anthropologists who claimed that menstruating women of various tribes were considered ‘unclean’ and forced to leave the village until they were ‘over it.’ All women know that even if there were such a forced ritual exile, every single woman, to a woman,would, when her time came, leave the village hanging her head mournfully, at least till she was out of sight, and then suddenly break into a jig down the path, cackling all the way.”
— “Women Who Run With The Wolves” by Clarissa Pincola Estés, Ph.D.
In lieu of finally getting the chance to make it to Bonnaroo for the first time ever, I was pleased the lineup looked so great. Here’s a playlist of just some of the artists I’m looking forward to seeing this year.
