Den 1 april i år dansade vi rituell dans baserad på mytiskt stoff centrerat runt Medusa. Inför dansen laddade jag mig med olika berättelser, olika tolkningar runt gestalten Medusa. Från mitt ihopsamlade medusiska arkiv plockade jag bland annat fram den här dikten av Gloria Anzaldúa. Hennes dikt skrevs 1984 men togs inte med i boken Borderlands som kom följande år.
Encountering the Medusa
Regular visitor she’s become
can’t seem to shake her
out of my hair
everyway I turns she is there
her cold piercing stare
one glimpse and I freeze
It’s no use reciting my list
when I make the slightest move
with my hand
they hiss and writhe
the snakes in her hair
stop me in my tracks
bring the sweat every time
Too familiar she’s become
you’d think I’d get used to it
I look in the mirror
see her numinous glare
know the daemon is there
what a nightmare
I want to take a machete
hack off her head
slip it on
turn my enemies to stone
deaden desire
She was a horse
moved with the speed of lightning
till something frightened her
someone laid a curse on her
paralyzed her
let’s go, Ice Maiden, move it
make something, do something
anything
Don’t just sit there
letting emptiness gnaw your bones
Move it
No use, I’m stuck in her grip
ice cold
in the mirror
her glittering eye
she can’t move forward
I can’t move backwards
frozen in this borderland
this no man’s land
forever inbetween
dry whisper of scales
fill my ear
They thresh and hiss
the snakes in my hair
my cold piercing stare
I’ll turn you to stone
Gloria Anzaldúa placerar Medusa och Coatlicue, gudarnas moder, enligt aztekerna. ryggrad mot ryggrad.
De är bristningar/förkastningar i den vardagliga världen och den inre förtärande virvelvinden i berget, jordmodern som föder alla himmelska varanden/varelser ur sin kavernösa livmoder...
De är inkarnationen av kosmiska processer oberoende av livets dualitet eller en syntes av dualiteten och ett omslutande tredje varande, något mer, något annat, något…
The Coatlicue State
protean being
…
image a ghost alongside the flesh one inside her
head the cracks ricocheting bisecting
crisscrossing she hears the rattlesnakes stirring in
a jar being fed with her flesh she listens to the
seam between dusk and dark they are talking she hears
their frozen thrumpings the soul encased in black
obsidian smoking smoking she bends to catch a
feather of herself as she falls lost in the
silence of the empty air turning turning
…
She has this fear that if
she takes off her clot shoves her brain aside
peels off her skin that if she drains the blood
vessels strips the flesh from the bone flushes out
the marrow she has this fear that when she does
reach herself turns around to embrace herself a
lion’s or witch’s or serpent’s head...
She has this fear
that she won’t find the way back
I mitten av vår danscirkel placerade jag Anzaldúas självbesvärjelse:
“I will have my serpent’s tongue—my woman’s voice, my sexual voice,
my poet’s voice.
I will overcome the tradition of silence.”
