In the mornings before work, I’ve been re-reading Mary Daly’s work. I can’t decide if it makes me feel uplifted or guilty. Empowered or helpless. I wish she was still somewhere where she could write books and publish them and I could purchase them and read them. In some sense it was like she was saving me. Dragging me toward life on the margins. For now, I feel as though in a lot of ways, am part of the problem and I see no legitimate way out right now. This is because I have forgotten how to view the world. I’ve only ever known how in small bursts. I expected her to live for as long as I needed her to so that someone would be there to guide me.
I had a dream about her before she died. I was driving my car and something was wrong with the gas tank. No matter how much gas I put into the car, it would always be three gallons from empty. I was pulled over by the police and they asked me why I hadn’t fixed the car. I explained that I was a graduate student and I couldn’t afford a major car repair. I was arrested because in the dream, being poor was a federal crime. I was sentenced to what I will call “diet crucifixion.” I’m calling it that because it wasn’t brutal like the crucifixion of the Roman Empire. I wasn’t nailed to anything. Instead, a pink cross was made from PVC pipe and erected in the parking lot of a used car dealership. I was secured to it with ropes and left in the sun to die of dehydration. At first dawn on the second day, Mary cut me off the cross. I was so grateful that I tried to hug her. To make her hold me like a mother would. She became annoyed and pushed me away. I became stoic and seemingly in response to my stoicism, because she knew I felt alone and afraid, she smirked, tossed me a very crispy and cold red delicious apple and said as if to correct my need to be embraced, “I’ve come to keep you company, my dear.” And I understood. The point wasn’t to be cut off the cross to be embraced or loved or even comforted. The point was that I was down and I had nourishment and in that, I had the ability to walk away. Mary was gone, but I walked off the dealership lot.
I’m glad I typed that somewhere, so that I can reference it later. It is important for me to remember that dream as often as I can because it is the only way I have to remember her work in my core instead of just in my brain. She would refer to it as “lusty leaping,” which is something at which I am not yet particularly talented. The less I pity myself, I’ve noticed, the better at it I get.
And further, the more I realize that I need to write. Even if only a few people read it. Even if no one reads it. This is what I am able to do.
