personal thoughts – Short Prose

The Metaphysics of My Writings

I discover myself in my own writings. I dwell in the beliefs stored in my subconscious when I was a child, and in all experiences that followed.

Yet, my work is neither that of a psychologist nor that of an epistemologist. Beyond psychology and epistemology, I try to establish a metaphysics of love. That may make some think of Thomas Aquinas, but that is not what I am talking about. I do not want “to explore the ontological structure of the human person.” My work is not about how I experience love. It is about how I allow love to experience me. That is the very definition of my work.

Passions was a work of the heart. So is Woman: Splendor and Sorrow. Yet, Woman has more dimensions to it. Some pieces are constructed via reconciliation between rationalism and some of its rival thoughts: idealism, and/or surrealism. It depends on the matter at hand.

I like Woman because in it I do not only allow love to experience me. I also give permission to feminism, and to other societal concerns to explore me.

From Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :

The day I understood I can win, I stepped into hell.
That day was the day I lost my innocence and with that the paradise.

Oh, femininity! You are the goddess of vines, the mother earth, the chalice, the blood, the fertility of the womb. I mull over these desperate efforts to equalize the feminine with the masculine. There is nothing in these symbols that points to the intellect of a woman.

–

Early morning. I was in elementary school. A basic arithmetic problem was on the blackboard. The teacher asked M. to solve it. He did not know how. I was shocked. That day my entire life changed.

Late afternoon. Home. After much deliberation Mama asked: Gabriela, again, do you believe that everyone understands everything that you understand, and everyone can do what you can? Do you believe we all think the same?

Highly distraught, I answered:

Yes. Everyone can do what I can, and we all understand the world in the same way. Something wrong happened to M.

Papa was stunned. I could not grasp why. I was trying to make my parents understand a simple truth: we all feel and think the same. They did not want to listen. What was wrong with everyone?

That night in my bedroom I started questioning everything.

These days questioning is my second nature. My first does not exist anymore. Life experienced me.