"The girl and the woman, in their new, individual unfolding, will only in passing be imitators of male behavior and misbehavior and repeaters of male professions. After the uncertainty of such transitions, it will become obvious that women were going through the abundance and variation of those (often ridiculous) disguises just so that they could purify their own essential nature and wash out the deforming influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man, who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily fruit and who, arrogant and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity of woman, carried in her womb through all her suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she has stripped off the conventions of mere femaleness in the transformations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching will be astonished by it. Someday (and even now, especially in the countries of northern Europe, trustworthy signs are already speaking and shining), someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being." Rilke
i’m not sure if i ever told you about the summers he and i would spend apart. we were together for many years, during some of the most formative years of a person’s life. so some summers, we would “take a break.” we were scared to miss out on experiences. we were young. no one understood it, but it always felt like the right thing to do. and we always came back to one another. of course, until we didn’t anymore. but one year, one summer, when he got nervous, i wrote him a letter on a card that contained the most perfect quotation. and here it is:
“life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. delicious ambiguity.” - gilda radner
that’s it for me: the delicious ambiguity. i spent so many years focused on that notion. i’ve built an empire using that as my mantra. some think ambiguity is tantamount to…surgery without anesthesia? or like being tossed into a canoe without a life jacket. i understand them, but i don’t know any other way to be.
so here’s a blessing to a life filled with ambiguity. as long as it’s delicious!
