J'aime bien flâner...comme une voix.

Mound or Moon?

Inés of My Soul: "The soldiers took as many Indian women as they wanted, some by force and others who were willing, but surely they must have missed words of love whispered in Spanish. Men want what they do not have have. I was the only Spanish woman on the expedition, the captain general's concubine, visible, present, untouchable, and therefore desired. I have asked myself sometimes whether I was responsible for how Sebastián Romero, Lieutenant Núñez, and that boy Escobar behaved. I find no fault in myself other than being a woman, but it seems that is crime enough. We are blamed for men's lust, but does the sin not belong to the one who commits it? Why must I pay for another's lapse?

At the beginning of the expedition, I dressed as I always had in Plasencia--underskirts, corset, blouse, long skirts, head covering, shawl, dress shoes--but very soon I had to adapt to the circumstances. You cannot ride a thousand leagues sidesaddle without breaking your back; I had to straddle my horse. I obtained some men's breeches and boots, put aside the whalebone corset that no woman can abide, and soon abandoned my head covering and braided my hair the way Indian women do; it was too heavy on my neck. I did not ever, however, wear a low-cut blouse or allow familiarities from the soldiers. During encounters with bellicose Indians, I put on a helmet and a light leather breastplate and leg protectors Pedro had ordered made for me. Otherwise, I would have died of arrow wounds in the first portion of the journey. If that inflamed the desire of Escobar and other men on the expedition, I cannot understand how the male mind functions. I have heard Francisco de Aguirre say that males think only of eating, fornicating, and killing--it was one of his favorite sayings, although in the case of the human animal that is not the whole truth: they also think of power. I refuse to agree with Aguirre, despite the many weaknesses I have observed in men. They are not all alike.

Our soldiers talked about women a lot, especially when we had to camp for a few days and they had nothing to do but stand their turn at guard, and wait. They exchanged impressions about the Indian women, boasted of their conquests--rapes--and enviously recounted the exploits of the mythic Aguirre. Unfortunately, my name frequently appeared in those conversations; it was said that I was insatiable, that I rode like a man so I would be excited by the horse, and that I always wore trousers beneath my skirts. That last part was true; I could not ride astride with with naked thighs (142).

"When Agnes was sixteen, she visited some friends of her parents; in the middle of the night she menstruated and bloodied the sheets. When she noticed it early next morning, she was seized by panic. She slipped stealthily into the bathroom, got a piece of soap, and began to rub the sheet with a wet cloth; the spot not only grew bigger but soiled the mattress as well; she was mortally ashamed.

Why was she so ashamed? Don't all women suffer from monthly bleeding? Did she invent women's genitals? Was she responsible for them? No. But responsiblity has nothing to do with shame. If she had spilled some ink, and ruined her hosts' carpet and tablecloth, it would have been unpleasant and painful, but she wouldn't have felt shame. The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone" (248).

"Larry put down the phone. Downstairs he found Beryl at the table with the newspaper, her coffee and a pair of scissors. Pages were spread over the wineglasses and dinner plates.

He'd stopped commenting on this oddness of hers. She said the news clippings she sent to friends were a perfectly reasonable way to correspond. There were a thousand things to clip and they all said something about the way she felt. He watched her read and cut. She wore half-glasses and worked the scissors grimly. She believed these were personal forms of expression. She believed no message she could send a friend was more intimate and telling than a story in the paper about a violent act, a crazed man, a bombed Negro home, a Buddhist monk who sets himself on fire. Because these are things that tell us how we live" (Libra, Don Delillo, 261).

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on;
Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters some alien cage in its plight,
And tires to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks, on the sheltering bars

Georgia Douglas Johnson