Veils are Sewn to be Seen Through

Rachel Navia, her long black arms dizzily contriving whirlwinds of cream, stood erect and veiled over the kitchen table.

The door edged open and Jonathan Woodworth made a timid entrance into the room.  "[Ahem].  Ladies, pardon me, Mr. Dew asked me to deliver these tomatoes from the garden..."  He had grown used to the fact that, though he was everywhere else beloved and welcome, in the kitchen he was a stranger in enemy territory.  Best to approach its door humbly, white flag in hand.

"Thank you, Mr. Woodworth!  Come in, come in!"  Deborah Dew accepted the basket of tomatoes from Jonathan's hands and replaced it overflowing with unshelled peas.  She indicated a chair in the corner, and with a cogent glance suggested he occupy it.  Jonathan smiled and surrendered with a graceful bow, making his way to the chair.  He issued gentle greetings to the other women in the room as he began to split the green pods.

"Hello Ms. Oak, Mrs. Alexander, Ms..."  He stumbled a little as he searched for a face to accompany the tall, slender figure of Rachel Navia.  But the graceful dark arms protruding from beneath her veil revealed quite clearly their mistress's identity.  "Ms. Navia..."

Anike Oak noted his hesitation and explained, "Rachel is contemplating some serious matter, Mr. Dew, and in consideration for those of us whose own faces are not accustomed to viewing (or adopting) so harrowed and desolate a countenance, she veils herself that she might not cause us pain.  She knows, as women know, that if we saw her grief we would share it."  Anike untangled her hair, now wound around the knitting needles from which she had been distracted, and blushed a little.  "But it shall pass to a peace soon, and she will remove the veil."

Jonathan resumed his shelling, having accepted easily enough the young woman's explanation.

He could have chosen no response more frustrating to Anike Oak, who viewed such blind acceptance (even acceptance of Truth, from an Authority) as the equivalent of retreat.  He ought, she thought, to have had at least some single question occur to him.  Look how silently he stares at his basket of peas!  Pursue, Mr. Woodworth!  

"We all wear them, on occasion, you know."

Jonathan looked up quickly and caught her daring stare, and for the first time since he met her he felt that perhaps he could hold his own... but all illusion was shattered by the sound of liberated peas landing on his shoe rather than in his basket.

He looked down as quickly, scooping up the renegade peas and continuing his work.  "For the same purpose, Ms. Oak?  To protect an observer from empathetic pain?"

"Ah, now we are asking questions!  Deborah!  Mr. Woodworth has asked a question!"  Mrs. Dew gave her a reprimanding look, but Anike caught the wink as well.  "He wonders why women veil themselves."

"Now just a moment, Ms. Oak.  Why they veil themselves?"  Jonathan's hands were still now.  "I have always viewed the veil as an institution imposed upon women by their men, and have heard many scholars discuss it as such.  Certainly the women of the east, who are required to veil at all times in public, would not do so if it were not the man's law."  With secret eagerness he awaited Anike Oak's inevitable overthrow of all his preconceptions.

Unexpectedly warm, she began: "Really, Mr. Woodworth.  This may be the case in some places and in some times, or perhaps it has evolved into such.  But how could it ever be so simple!  How could men ever perpetuate such a practice---in which they do not even participate---by themselves!  The women must have some reason to 'put up with it' if they do not indeed themselves perpetuate it."

Kassia Alexander, who had observed until now in uncharacteristic silence, chimed in: "Protection, for one thing, Mr. Woodworth.  I have, now and then, found myself in both Persia and North Africa, and how I wished I were veiled on the market street!  Wandering eyes, wandering words, and on occasion, even wandering hands have found their way into my hair.  Sometimes in the presence of my husband!"  She unconsciously stroked her thick blonde braid.

"Privacy, Mr. Woodworth,"  Came Deborah Dew.  "And power too.  Even Joseph, the most intuitive of men, has trouble discerning my thoughts when he cannot examine my mouth, my brow, my temples... and you say it is the man who is in control of the veiled woman!  She, who through her veil can see all, controlled by he who can see nothing but pale outlines and colorless eyes?"

Anike Oak's eyes were brighter and more fervent now.  "You must not forget, Jonathan, that there are two sides to every veil.  And you must ask thoughtfully: who holds the true advantage?  Who poses the questions?  Who grants admittance?  There is only one time in a woman's life that it is a man who removes her veil.  And even in that case, she gives her permission first."

The conversation paused a moment, as the corner of every eye caught the gentle spin of weightless fabric at the other end of the room.  Rachel Navia, who had washed her hands and dried them on her bright, cream-splattered apron, removed the veil from her ebony face.  Perfect serenity settled in its place.

Jonathan felt a sensation he had never before known, and which he would not define until much later in his education.  Gazing upon the freshly unveiled face, he felt himself a seer.

Rachel opened her mouth to speak, unraveling the spell of revelations she had sent swirling about the room.  The other women were less affected by it, having grown accustomed to Rachel's dreaming and waking, and yet they stilled themselves, awaiting her first words.

"You must not be afraid, Mr. Woodworth, of these hidden worlds.  I see the veil disturbs your mind, and that my sisters have perhaps portrayed it as too imposing, maybe even impenetrable.  I tell you that no veil is sealed against the earnest desire, the faithful identity, and the proper petition."

Rachel Navia quietly folded her veil and tucked it in a pocket behind her apron.  "Mr. Bickmore once complained to his late wife that he had to go about exposed, while women might veil themselves at will.  (Though you may know there are some Saharan communities, the Taureg in particular, in which the men do go veiled.)  He also worried over being separated from her face when she herself was veiled.  She penned a verse to comfort him, and he has carried it diligently on his person since her passing.  I believe it may give you some insight too, Mr. Woodworth:

Think not that what's hid isn't yours---

The tides often cover the shores!

Fret not that a veil lies between you:

For veils are sewn to be seen through.

I have had to learn again and again in my life, Jonathan, that the seeker shall indeed find."

To be continued...

The Changeling Stanza

I recommend you read the description at the left of the page before embarking on this journey.  Welcome to The Beginning!

"So, Mr. Dew.  What is your opinion of our authoress's recent claims?" asked Jonathan Woodworth, the most recent initiate into the presence of the inimitable Joseph Dew.  (And what an initiation!  To be described, naturally by means of a trite and poorly placed flashback, in future entries...)

Joseph stirred his tea, jovially concocted from the long blades of lemon grass blasting gracefully skyward from every corner of the yard.  "I assume, Mr. Woodworth, you refer to her claim that it was peer pressure which brought her, so helpless, into the blogging world.  Well, you and I might both easily refute her, for what man knows himself who does not know his maker?"

An uncomfortable, meek clearing of the throat from Jonathan's corner of the sun-speckled porch.  "As you may imagine, I have these past few days begun to doubt very much that I do know myself, Mr. Dew.  And as to my maker... you have quite called that matter into question as well."  Jonathan was more at ease in the presence of Joseph Dew (There it is again: "The presence of Joseph Dew."  But that is precisely and most perfectly what it was.  Presence.  Repetition can be important anyway.  Why throw out the mot juste simply so you don't have to use it more than once?  Seems an illogical practice.  So long as it does not inhibit poetry, if you give me the perfect word once, by all means give it to me twice.) than he had ever been in any other situation in his life, and far less at ease in his own presence.  Indeed, his own presence was to him a new and very large question, the answer to which he now constantly sought in the cosmic depth of Dew's eyes.

"Mr. Bickmore!"  Hailed Joseph Dew to the ponderous figure crossing the green and lively weed-strewn lawn.  "What is today's contemplation?  I do hope it is iambic."

It was sure to be.  This was Icarus Bickmore, whose every footstep was perfectly measured, but whose tongue was invariably traversed by consistent uneven feet.  He considered it his curse:

 "Iambic line may seem to thee

To fit, to flow, not forced nor free.

But lacks it, sometimes lazily,

That shifting shadow: Mystery."

"Yes, yes, Mr. Bickmore!  I see your point.  The best poetry follows pattern, surely.  But the real effectiveness of real poetry is that it builds pattern, and thereby expectation, and then suddenly breaks with it.  The break!  Surprise.  Alteration.  Yes, the changeling stanza: a perfect fit and yet an apparent substitution, deletion, or gloss at the same time.  The ideal challenge for any poet."  The lemon-grass tea was now gone, and Dew had moved on to the second course of his every meal: a book, the pages of which he somehow managed to consume and continuously turn, even while participating in so involved a discourse.  "What do you think she was really saying, Icarus?"

"'It is an empowering tide,' she wrote,

'That draws us out to cybersea

on simple waves of anecdote

or strokes of ingenuity!'"

Growling, Mr. Bickmore dug into his pockets to produce a metronome.  Turning it on, he tried to repeat his statement, searching desperately for at least a trochee---and anything but a rhyme---but to no avail.

"Icarus," said Mr. Dew with some seriousness, "My friend, you must know that will not help.  A man who wills to change his nature cannot simply alter it.  He must re-form it, and in order to do so he must have some knowledge of his original formation.  He must know something of the great Former."

Intrigued by the actual content of Mr. Bickmore's verse, which seemed to him to have been quite overlooked by Joseph Dew, Jonathan asked for an explanation.  "Are you saying it was some other force that brought her to this point, Mr. Bickmore, something other than the persistent request of acquaintances that she inform them of her life by these means?"  

Mr. Bickmore folded his arms, lifted his chin, and despairingly turned it only slightly to the right.

Joseph Dew smiled.  "It's a little harder on him than usual today.  Who can blame him?  Such an expansive and flexible mind, trapped in a little iamb!"  He offered Mr. Bickmore a chocolate by tossing it down to him from the porch, shattering both the rigid frown and frozen pose.

And Joseph Dew spoke, turning his beam once again to the resilient, searching eyes across the table.  "Jonathan.  You have not seen the hand that wrote you---though you've not a doubt in your mind it exists, or at least existed.  Yet you do know this: you must know, as every breathing thing knows, that you are important.  Even more, that you are crucial.  You cannot believe that you were written into existence, into a breathing and thinking and even creative existence, on account of any trifling force or reckless whim.  You, Jonathan Woodworth, are here to alter the universe."

To be continued...