Yesterday I was just not in the mood for anything. Not in the mood for stuff that had to be done, not in the mood for playing. Storms all around us, flash floods, downpours and possible tornadoes.
So I picked up two Alice Walker books that I had put on the big glass coffee table, when I re-did it with a feminist motif last month. So many books, so many possible themes. A lot of Goddess books there for folk to peruse, but mainly feminist spirituality.
Someone had given me the two books several years ago, and they were in the stacks in my bedside table for a while, until being discovered and put under the glass on the coffee table. Just to distract myself for a minute, I started to read Now Is the time to Open Your Heart, published in 2004.
This is fiction, but quite autobiographical, I expect. Kate Nelson, the protagonist, knows it’s time for change, and so leaves her lover behind as she undertakes a river journey through the Grand Canyon, with next a journey up the Amazon, with The Mother Vine, Ayahuasca, and other adventures in between. She explores friendships, her life work, the importance of spirituality in her life. Her partner / lover takes his own direction, exploring the choices males might make today. Yolo is not as fully fleshed out as Kate, but he is clearly able to be her equal.
Walker’s writing is astonishingly open, clear, an easy and fast read, and yet it stays with me / you. These are journeys many women are making now – no longer needing partners, financially or otherwise, yet being perhaps willing to choose a partner, after considering the choices, the prices to be paid, the risks to be taken.
A meditative book, not heavy and sad, but considering. Wonderful descriptions of her experiences, particularly the inner journeys. Light and fast enough to be summer reading, but with a quality that continues to work in the brain. Definitely worth spending time with.