I'm living in a body that's always changing.

The feminine identity field in which woman is always a passive object to behold can be alluring, sick, fuel for my rebellion, or just another trope that floats around in my culture.

Sometimes (thanks to Sara Halprin) I understand that trope as the shadow of a higher dream of a feminine part of an individual as a creator of beauty. I see the debasement of that dream. I feel sad that sometimes, I forget my ability to create beauty. I catch myself evaluating myself and others based on our perceived nearness to an appearance that is most (superficially) pleasing to most (societally conditioned) people most of the time.

Sometimes all the different identities I can be feel overwhelming. But I can always return to one identity I know is mine and it contains and transcends what comes at my body and my gender: I create beauty and I see beauty.

I'm only human, and I can't help getting caught up now and then in a wistfulness for social rank, in an old pattern of wanting approval, in greediness for something pretty.

The best antidote is to love the roughness of the tree's bark, the swinging of the lioness' belly skin, the map of the elephant's hide, the yielding of water, the juicy salty goodness inside our variously gendered bodies, our humming nerve endings, our eyes that can see so much deeper than skin.