EVE ENSLER Sarajevo, September 11,2015
Why women need to write.
when we write we exist
we develop an alternative persona that is free
we practice liberation
we are seen
we are known
we take up space
we give voice to what we know and don’t know we know
writing forces us to go deeper, be more honest
to face our demons and wrestle with our limitations
we become archaeologists mining the terrains of the subconscious
we become athletes developing the discipline and rigors of the body
we become magicians crafting our spells and tricks
we deepen our faith in direct experience –the most trusted force on the planet
we stay sane
we wake up and wake the others
we peel back layers
we delight
we embarrass
we disturb
we stir the witches brew
we find a path for articulating and catalyzing rage
into beauty and resistance
we connect
we burn
we are not alone and carve out a space in the larger
struggle and universe
we are ceaselessly humbled
we find our sisters
we write because we were told we could not
should not write
we write to question the givens
we write to defy the fathers that silenced us, raped us belittled us, undermined us. punished us for the hugeness of our knowing, sexuality and life force, burned us at the stake
we write to
formant revolution
to love our characters into breath
to ride the original stream that pulses each one
of us
to meditate on the particular
to inhabit a rose and a refugee
to expand the breath of our compassion
to grieve
to make people laugh and to touch into the absurd
to merge with the mystical
to establish our place in time and history
to radicalize
to say what many are thinking but are afraid to say
to unearth an alternative reality
to push boundaries
to break out of this prison of patriarchy
to breath life into a new landscape of being
to find allies
to provoke
to find justice
to explode taboos
to climb the orgiastic vibratory thread of language
to provoke
to refuse to be numb and dead
to provoke
to provoke
to provoke
we write because it’s exhilarating and terrifying and deeply pleasurable and wildly torturous and impossible and
engaging in the impossible is the madly generous ongoing endless work of women.
Write ON Sisters, write on!