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Maiden elder
A regular reader of this blog, a younger woman who hasn’t yet posted anything, wrote me a long and eloquent email about women, beauty, and age. She included a request:
I’d love to read your take, and others’, on the tremendous soul-accepting difference between “looking younger” and “looking more beautiful.”
Immediately, an essay that I wrote recently and haven’t yet published jumped to mind. It’s called “Maiden Elder,” and I think that the excerpt, below, that I quote from it, initiates some satisfaction to her request.
“Maiden Elder” excerpt
In Issai Chozanshi’s The Demon’s Sermon on the Martial Arts, a philosophical “guidebook” for samurai written in the eighteenth century, the demon in the title advises a swordsman, “When you follow your own true character and are not a slave to your passions and desires, your spirit will not be troubled.” Speaking from my own true character, feminism works for the freedom of all human beings, glamour grows from a person’s knowing herself and following that knowledge, and maiden and elder have little to do with a woman’s age and everything to do with her exceeding their culturally determined boundaries, such as limitations on her self-representation and self-creation, both of which I equate with self-discovery. Self-representation is an external manifestation of one’s own true character. My definitions of glamour and feminism are intended to stir the imagination. Maiden elder is a term of endearment.
Essence and true character are equivalents, and according to the demon, “Essence and function are of one origin, are not distinct, and have no interval in between them at all.” If the function of feminism is freedom, then the feminist manifests freedom. Charisma powers glamour, so maiden elder, a feminist glamour girl, inspires others to be true to themselves. Although maiden elder is an idea, I do not intend for it to denote any fixity of appearance or behavior. As the demon says, “Relying on thoughts or concepts, you will become taut,” and he advises the listeners to whom he speaks to “use the clarity of intuition.” Maiden elder can serve as a model of living peacefully and vivaciously in soul-and-mind-inseparable-from-body, for while she is an idea, she more importantly supports the process of living one’s own life, which can only be done intuitively. Merely thinking for oneself readily brings about the tautness of disconnected body, soul, and mind, each existing in a rigid conformity to some concept or practice, whether it be the “right” way of a body, soul, or mind system, such as the Atkins diet or Pilates, a prophetic or a wisdom religion, or performative theories of gender or a Foucauldian philosophy of sexuality. Useful as they are for expanding our knowledge and discovering aspects of ourselves and the world that we may not know, non-intuitively “right” ways muddy true character. The potential discoverer exists, then, as a follower by resisting the flow of process, which implicitly means change.
I have heard “Change is difficult” so many times that my heart aches from its implications of enslavement to tautness. I say, Change is soft, change softens tautness, change is freedom, and change is glamorous. In his introduction to The Demon’s Sermon, its translator William Scott Wilson writes that “the kanji for ‘change’ and ‘easy’ are one and the same.” Easy, to change more and more into one’s true character. Easy, moving from soft–vulnerable, receptive, inward–to strong–mountain solid, storm-wind firm, and steady as a confident public speaker. Easy, to move from maiden to elder and back again an unthinkable number of times with such subtlety that no distinction exists between the two. Easy, to move from discovery to discovery.
- December 30, 2009
- Filed under: Beauty, Body and mind, Bookshelf, art, and media
- Comments 2
Thanks to reader for good question and Joanna for the writing.
I find that Change can be difficult sometimes (for example when it is sudden and challenging or adverse) or soft (such as when gradual, holds promise, is natural, even if it is challenging). And, context can create some of the challenge. The contemporary culture, and perhaps older cultures dating back to Buddha, does not value aging or dying; it may be the root of much of our neurosis. It seems an increasingly prominent theme in our lives. What about botox? Some people who use that actually treat their cohorts who don’t use it as if they are “older” and antiquated. How powerful these materialist cultural trappings are!
Aging and dying have always been challenging, and “real” problems; but acceptance and awareness, gratitude and seeing all of this reality as inevitable help us age with beauty, with grace, with compassion for those who understand and those who do not.
I like the closing lines of Joanna’s entry that transcend the superficial distinctions and acknowledge the more subtle realities. I know for myself, even though I may look older to others, and I do feel wiser now than when I was younger, I still feel (and I’ve heard this from many maiden elders as well as buckeen elders) as young, if not younger, than when I was “young.” I’ve often joked that “old people are really just children in wrinkling bodies.” I am also reminded of Dylan’s line, “ah but i was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” I get it. Change. Happy new year. Happy solstice. Happy blue moon over Sonora tonight.
All of the beauty in your response. Thank you. Especially on this New Year’s day in our gorgeous Sonoran environment. When change is everywhere (as it always is).
I was astounded when I read about the kanji for change–easy! I couldn’t help but say something about it. I realize that change in one’s body, such as aging, and therefore change within a culture that fears aging can be very difficult. I wanted to present another side of living, because facts and truth are often not the same thing. Like–aging being a terrible thing. No. I love that you quoted the Dylan line, because it is indeed true. But even his use of older and younger operate within the clichés of aging and youth. One of the things that younger people often manifest that older people don’t is a radiance (or a quality close to it). I think that generally the radiance is evident because they’re usually pretty unmarked by time–events, experiences, change (!). As people age, radiance often diminishes. Radiance is erotic, the life energy. When people see and feel the radiance of an older person, its rarity (and alluring beauty that catches one off guard) may awaken them to its possibility–for oneself.