Life mimicking life.
Metaphorical weaving.
I can’t seem to write any other way, this is how it originates in my mind. And yes like any other writer I am tortured by my own internal banter and annoyed by the relentless proclivities of it. Constantly making peace with the artist in me and always starting every damn essay with it too.
I’ve been thinking about a million things, but am sharing a selective weaving of two or three.
A few weekends back Nate and I embarked on a hike with radical elevation gain, across treacherous terrain. He had done it a number of times before, at the summit was his small hunting camp, made many weeks before. The difficulty was I surmise hunting strategy, the rugged terrain less trafficked by competition, safer for the elk, theoretically. He and my son made known the wear of the incline each time they found their way home for a few days rest, I knew, and yet … when it came time to break down camp and hike it out (after the hunt of course), I knew it was my turn.
Crazy making maybe, but neither Nate nor I doubted my capability.
After an hour-long drive up Mirror Lake highway into the Uinta’s, we parked at just above 8000 ft. across the street from the mountain we would ambitiously climb, a steep and densely wooded thing with no trail to speak of, just steep incline towards an 11,000 foot summit, something radical, to me at least.
The terrain revealed itself quickly;
as many trees down as standing, and as many rocks as trees.
Like Lincoln-logs poured out of a massive dump truck, and perhaps the clouds rained rocks, or maybe the entirety of the stars fell to the earth at some point in history. It smelled like elk sweat and earth dirt mulched with poop, and a swath of vanilla pine perfume occasionally passing us by.
My natural born flexibility supported the movements required to traverse this obstacle course, which made up for my lack in agility and conditioning. I found my mind a nicer place to exist than it had been on previous endeavors, I never questioned my ability to summit, but I did find my respiratory system ironically insufficient.
The last mile was hard on the entirety of my body, I moved more and more slowly.
The summit was a welcome relief.
Intimate with self.
Intimate with nature.
And lots of thinking.
About the metaphor of a steep trajectory.
Seems applicable to the economy and the collective financial story.
To the suffering of life spoken by all the humans speaking to me as of late.
To the dangerous mountain of unresolved trauma the species has collected and accumulated to date.
My own lived contributions in all of it.
The day before the ambitious ascent up the mountain and jello-like descent down, I had devoured a few consecutive times over Gabor Maté on Joe Rogan speaking about species wide trauma and what it all means, I think it should be mandatory listening.
I also think the few of us that are willing to hike to 11,000 feet across Lincoln-logs and sky rocks are comparable in quantity to those willing to do the momentous and treacherous work of trauma healing.
It’s many, but still a minority.
One jeopardizes human survival though…. And I’m getting worried.
My grandmother was an eccentric feminist living in a deeply religious conservative Mormon community, she had a framed black and white photograph of Marilyn Monroe above her dining room table. It was out of the ordinary.
This meant I knew a touch more than the kids growing up around me (in that same religious conservative community), about Marilyn. I even knew her real name from at least the age of 6, when I’ve recollection of singing Elton John’s Candle in the Wind, something I surmise I knew based on the listening choices of my grandmother.
Her son, my father, was similarly obsessed with Audrey Hepburn, thus the origination of my name. I come from a family smitten by Hollywood glamor.
I’ve never much fancied either woman honestly, maybe Hepburn more as of late, but when Blonde came out last week, something called me to the story, perhaps more Norma than Marilyn as it were.
Generally my review is one of appreciation, that finally artistic entertainment has come out of the mainstream(ing) film industry. A glaring depiction of our collective society plagued with mental illness, and for the illustration of what happens when childhood trauma goes unresolved, perpetuating into an accumulation of more.
(This is exactly what Gabor Maté speaks too, whenever and by whomever interviews him.)
Blonde depicts the treachery of society underfoot, and a story of how it occurs.
The film is officially fictional, something I surmise has a lot to do with the elite 1% that either made profit or pleasure off Norma. The underlying insatiable beast always needing to be fed, and never with any real consequence for gluttony, protected by privilege and money. They’ve built an empire, a pyramid of power, completely seen.
Unofficially, plausible scenarios given up-close recounting by those with nothing to gain from telling the truth about what they knew, a little research will take you deeper into the supposed secret stories.
Reminded me for a moment or two of Brittney. And the sort of bizarre going on there, we’ve all seen through the entrapment of social media. Captivity reflecting captivity as it were.
It’s a somber narrative of Norma’s life, a kind of depressive vibe.
And, while we are about the work of over-consuming entertainment through the screens we hold so intimately in our hands, let a few hours be a striking depiction and education on trauma that tells a collective story of the American girl born outside (and also sometimes inside) idyllic family systems with a touch of beauty on her objectified and exploited body, with no reasonable choice but to numb the pain, or die.
It’s not just a collective story. It’s our story.
There are notes of self in her, and 36 is when I too fatigued of carrying all of me.
How do we liberate as women from our own demise?
One woman at a time.
Norma Hiking Steep Incline's
Beautifully put as always
I loved reading this. Thanks my love!