Unmanning
By Steven Allen
yes adam to the cry of
anti-semite
they will now add
the even more shrill cry of
anti-feminist.
anti-woman actually
for woman and feminist
are synonymous in
the discourse of the masters.
i think this is probably the most
heretical piece you have written
to the gods of
finance and their many and varied
divide and conquer schemes.
illich in one of his last pieces in
his time of power
attributed the great divide not to
agriculture or capitalism or
science but
gender. and mourned its loss.
i remember writing long long ago
how a feminist perspective was necessary
(carlyles logic varnish)
to justify the inability of a traditional
family to survive under the new constraints
of capitalist expansion.
(my exact words are lost)--but this
unmanning
of which you speak is nothing new and
understood
to be
consistent with if not the lynchpin of
the advance of the bankers.
these more recent words of mine i know well:
(i paraphrase): the public loves its bankers
and offers them the same tribute as it once
did
its kings.
eventually the many-headed beast decided it
didn't
need its kings, eventually it may decide it
doesn't
need its bankers
but it is more likely always that there will
be
a general collapse
than that
the people (aka the many headed beast) will
ever figure anything out.
i wrote those words originally just before
the arrival in my life of my last moment of
feeling something of a man; knowing
something of
love
real or pretend
with one young maiden, deeply troubled not
scandinavian fair but asian dark and sweet
and deep
and smart.
and very very young. (i remember you
suggested the
ancients touted a sixteen year old as the
remedy for
manly ennui, not that young but not far
removed)
it was my last counter-intuitive love
before
time and tragedy
(and the many dubious natures
of the girl, for the eternal;
once eternal now i guess
femme is always unknown, only held for a
moment
by us poor
fellows at best if we may, or once might)
ended my moment in the manly hope
of conventionally gendered
romance,
some love
some touch
some something
other than the usual
empty space, air or hostility between
i and another
she and him.
two sentimental hearts.
forever.
i have pursued i told you once of late
only the personal
but somehow my isolated personal
can also perhaps not escape the social
miasma surrounding.
for whatever reasons of individual
deception or
merely the workings of the weight of
a world crumbling under its
long past due date masters
or some combination thereof:
my hand no longer holds hers.
all these things too will pass and if
somehow
something green remains of the old virtues,
it will be no doubt a matter of the mercy of
god
as well as the fairness of maiden and honor
of
man
achieving once more some chivalry of fact.
in due time. (beyond yours and mine)