Blanche Fleur & Perceval
It’s funny how concentration on things come in swings and roundabouts. This time last week I was falling and feeling really awful. Today I woke at 5.30, wrote a bit, possible short story taking form there influenced by Puteri Gunung Ledang, cleaned out the fire place, got bathed and everyone ready by 8 am. Including breakfast thrown in.
I have been reading Pico Iyer’s The Lady and the Monk, and I’m very nearly at the end of the book. There is this passage which talks about the Spartan routine which the monks undertake in this temple in Kyoto, and a light went on in my head. I must get the household routine right. The kids and the family – if that isn’t right then nothing else will be.
So I propped myself up and wrote out a routine for the morning and the evening. A simple one, which involved the cleaning of the fireplace out, bathing, writing, cooking, and reading the kids a bedtime story. Simple things which I’m hoping will help me hang the rest of the day in a more restful way on.
It is so cold now. So cold and wet.
The rain seeps deep into the bones and the wet goes even deeper.
I’m reading Oisin the story of Perceval retold by this student of Joseph Campbell. I did not know it was such a rich story, really the travels of a young soul through life. But it also got me thinking about the travel of the feminine. Is there an equivalent of the feminine? In it the woman is to be rescued, to be won, to be captured. What is the woman’s journey? The journey of honour and love?
It is also coincidental that reading Iyer I’m reading about his future partner and her prescribed Japanese role. That of dutiful wife and obedient daughter. While the journey of Perceval is one of adventure and foolishness that leads to the path of wisdom, the role of the female it seems to be unchanging and anchored. While the male is single focussed, the female is multifaceted. She is not the action, which is necessarily of one mind, like an arrow, that travels straight. She is the canvass on which the action takes place.
And somehow, I cannot accept that, yet accept that there is a need for the unchanging, for the constant. Perhaps there principles must be divorced from the genders, their biology, and then unite in a single person. Is that possible too?
Still, I have not answered the question, what is the journey of the woman… the journey that resonates, that makes sense.
It is wonderful to have stumbled on the Perceval story. This is a story which my sons can listen to, which I enjoyed reading. It is about the warrior, but also the thinker. The lover and the son. The youth and the fool. And as I read it, even as I go, yes this is a story I am glad I found for them, I cannot but help feel wistful and envious that they have a story, and I have none. Or if I did have a story it is one that consigns me to being inactive… is that true?
About two years ago, I picked up this book called homemaking as a social art. It talked about the mother being the centre of the house and creating a rhythm for her family which enabled them to find comfort and solace and security in a world that is tossed and restless.
In many ways it was speaking of things which I agreed with… but felt it reneged against everything I had been taught as I grew up.
In Iyer, he talks about how the monastery was like his exclusive public school, where the rigour of the routine meant that the boys were being prepared to run the world. Whereas in the monastery, the aim was self mastery.
Perhaps that is what the home is like for the woman. It is a place where she learns self mastery. Could that be possible?
Certainly running a successful, clean, bright and happy home is one of life’s biggest challenges. It is something I must ponder. To be the thread that connects your children to themselves and then to the world beyond….Is that the challenge that is for the mother, for the girl?
----
Then i googled Perceval and read about The Lothely Lady. His hag which reminds Perceval of his quest, is supposed to represent sovreignity of the land and of the self. Most of all the female self.
It's fascinating...
I have been reading Pico Iyer’s The Lady and the Monk, and I’m very nearly at the end of the book. There is this passage which talks about the Spartan routine which the monks undertake in this temple in Kyoto, and a light went on in my head. I must get the household routine right. The kids and the family – if that isn’t right then nothing else will be.
So I propped myself up and wrote out a routine for the morning and the evening. A simple one, which involved the cleaning of the fireplace out, bathing, writing, cooking, and reading the kids a bedtime story. Simple things which I’m hoping will help me hang the rest of the day in a more restful way on.
It is so cold now. So cold and wet.
The rain seeps deep into the bones and the wet goes even deeper.
I’m reading Oisin the story of Perceval retold by this student of Joseph Campbell. I did not know it was such a rich story, really the travels of a young soul through life. But it also got me thinking about the travel of the feminine. Is there an equivalent of the feminine? In it the woman is to be rescued, to be won, to be captured. What is the woman’s journey? The journey of honour and love?
It is also coincidental that reading Iyer I’m reading about his future partner and her prescribed Japanese role. That of dutiful wife and obedient daughter. While the journey of Perceval is one of adventure and foolishness that leads to the path of wisdom, the role of the female it seems to be unchanging and anchored. While the male is single focussed, the female is multifaceted. She is not the action, which is necessarily of one mind, like an arrow, that travels straight. She is the canvass on which the action takes place.
And somehow, I cannot accept that, yet accept that there is a need for the unchanging, for the constant. Perhaps there principles must be divorced from the genders, their biology, and then unite in a single person. Is that possible too?
Still, I have not answered the question, what is the journey of the woman… the journey that resonates, that makes sense.
It is wonderful to have stumbled on the Perceval story. This is a story which my sons can listen to, which I enjoyed reading. It is about the warrior, but also the thinker. The lover and the son. The youth and the fool. And as I read it, even as I go, yes this is a story I am glad I found for them, I cannot but help feel wistful and envious that they have a story, and I have none. Or if I did have a story it is one that consigns me to being inactive… is that true?
About two years ago, I picked up this book called homemaking as a social art. It talked about the mother being the centre of the house and creating a rhythm for her family which enabled them to find comfort and solace and security in a world that is tossed and restless.
In many ways it was speaking of things which I agreed with… but felt it reneged against everything I had been taught as I grew up.
In Iyer, he talks about how the monastery was like his exclusive public school, where the rigour of the routine meant that the boys were being prepared to run the world. Whereas in the monastery, the aim was self mastery.
Perhaps that is what the home is like for the woman. It is a place where she learns self mastery. Could that be possible?
Certainly running a successful, clean, bright and happy home is one of life’s biggest challenges. It is something I must ponder. To be the thread that connects your children to themselves and then to the world beyond….Is that the challenge that is for the mother, for the girl?
----
Then i googled Perceval and read about The Lothely Lady. His hag which reminds Perceval of his quest, is supposed to represent sovreignity of the land and of the self. Most of all the female self.
It's fascinating...
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