A Skin Diary

I can't remember where I found this excerpt, but I did so think it was rather strange and hearkening back to a truth before all our oh-so-tiring civilization. Rather Phillip Pullman-like I must say, if he ever wrote adult fiction, oh what it could be. And I like that below, from the Indian Ocean, came the myth of the captive woman for it is true of Asia and its female children.

The Seven Seas
By John Fuller

The first symbol of life
enclosed by its masters was the
Mediterranean which celebrated rule and scale,
and the myth of the waiting woman

And the second symbol was
the Baltic, from which the
masters fled, fearing to be
lured into its deeps. The
terrified tribes brought with
them a new myth, of the fatal woman.

From the Arctic, where the
lights stained the air like
radiant hair and the gnawed
bone rocked on the threshold,
came the myth of the devouring woman.

From the Antarctic, where
straight lines are uncertain
and the only regularity is
darkness,
came the myth of the invisible woman.

A sea which is a true sea
will come up to its coasts
like an inquisitive animal,
lured by the fragrance and
by the weeping:
from the Indian Ocean
came the myth of the captive woman.

Where the wind blows
strongest there will be
voyages, and where there
are voyages there will be
partings: from the Atlantic
came the myth of the unfaithful woman.

And then when the clouds
roll back and the sky is a
perfect shell, when the line
is fulfilled in the circle, and
horizon confirms that the
only land is now contained
by sea, the light and the life
negotiate in the Pacific
the myth of the desirable woman.

So for a man the woman is a
home that will always be
there, the place he has come
from and will eventually go to.
For him, the interim is exile.
The story of his life is
the adventure of categories,
the licensing of names,
the geography of his exile.