Give Me Your Hand

Freud wrote about it a century ago. How we rummage through the armory of the past to retrieve the weapons needed to repeat, repeat, repeat past traumas. He said it was primitive, instinctual, destructive. Like a demon inside us all.

Let’s toast female hormonal madness! Let’s raise a glass for menses! Isn’t womanhood a dark and mysterious thing? Will we ever penetrate its surface, fathom its depths, dissect its enigmas, lay bare its witchy power?

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”

What is it like to die from your own heart bursting?

“last man standing is sometimes a woman.”

“You must never be fearful when what you’re doing is right.”
Both Diane and I nod. Those words. Marie Curie.

But why, then, he asked, are women so much more ferocious in their violence?
It has always seemed to me that the answer lies in the question.

The perversity of woman is so great as to be incredible even to its victims.

We were matched runners, and she had a will as iron-soldered as her heart.
Her blood ran cold and merciless.

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.