Quote:
Posted by
ulli
What a story, Giovonni.
One thing is important, and bears considering.
Men have feared women throughout history, even though only a few of them were beheaded by women.
But there are other ways of losing one's head, and that is probably the reason why that fear exists.
Here's something I prepared earlier as TV chefs used to say (a couple of years back actually):
The Arabian Nights are arguably the most powerful love story in all literature. In them, love slowly conquers its two opposites, which are fear and control – the desire to control people or the willingness to be controlled – caused by an illusion of separation.
There is no separation; all is one. What appears on the outside is really a reflection on what is happening to us inside. So the Sultan Shahriar, who executes his wives after one night because he finds women false and faithless, is actually afraid of his own feminine side, and so any separation is of his own doing. Similarly, Scheherazade obviously has unfinished business with her own murderous masculine side.
So she talks them both out of their fear and gradually they become whole, both as balanced individuals and as a couple. Basically, they chill out, bigtime, together. And everyone gets to benefit from it.
She tells stories of Sinbad the Sailor, Jinbad the Jailer, Minbad the Mailer, Ninbad the Nailer, Pinbad the Pailer, Quinbad the Quailer, Rinbad the Railer, Tinbad the Tailor, Whinbad the Whaler (as James Joyce describes it at the end of his novel Ulysses: his way of saying she does go on a bit, the way women – and his own feminine side – sometimes do!).
So we have these exciting adventures that become boring through repetition. Remember, she’s got a knife to her throat. But the effect is far from soporific or hypnotic; the Sultan discovers he likes this stuff and keeps coming back for more. It is actually doing him a power of good, by doing the exact opposite – adding a buzz to humdrum home life, for Scheherazade is describing their own situation.
Take Sinbad the Sailor for instance, who tells his stories (one per night, just like Scheherazade) to Sinbad the Landsman. So basically, you have the adventurer talking to his own home-loving side about his 7 voyages and 7 homecomings. Like some glorified breadwinner, he risks life and limb to make his fortune, comes home until he gets bored and sets off again. After doing this six times, he decides he has had enough, but the king sends him away again. Not being his own man any more, unsurprisingly he is made a slave and has to kill one elephant each day for its ivory. Finally the elephants rebel and cart him off to their graveyard where he can become extremely rich and regain his freedom without all this killing.
So here the Sultan can identify with both the controlling king and the murderous slave-owner, and the killing only stops when the victim explains to him that there is a greater prize in abandoning any pretence of being in charge.
There is still a long way to go, but the killer instinct is already losing its grip with each passing day, and Scheherazade finally stops talking when she has nothing left to fear. She has taken the man to heart, and he has let her in; they have fallen in love.
But what does the Sultan say to her? Perhaps he says ‘I’ve got a good story I could tell you if I could get a word in edgeways!’. Or maybe he answers a question, the only question, however she phrases it. The basic format is ‘Will you—(whatever)?’. He can answer No, as he does to his previous wives. Or he can play for time: his message a thousand times over to Scheherazade is basically ‘not tonight Josephine!’. Either way, he can take all the time in the world before coming up with the right answer, with no arm-twisting. There is no control freak saying this is a lifelong commitment. It’s more like a visual pun: is it a duck or a rabbit, a candlestick or two faces, an old woman or a young girl? When you have learned to see both at once, you cannot unlearn it. Can you see it? Yes!
I mentioned Joyce’s Ulysses just now. The final chapter is a long interior monologue by his modern-day Penelope who has just told her husband, back home at 6 am, that Yes she’ll make him two eggs for breakfast in bed, and then she rambles on to herself for over fifty pages without pausing for breath. It takes a miracle to shut her up. She recalls the time he proposed to her and her answering Yes I will; and the two last words in the book are that most empowering word Yes Yes! – Yes to that then, Yes to that now, one big yes to life, the universe and everything.
Yes I will; enough said. Life really is that simple – a piece of cake. Enjoy.