|
This book explores the myth and ritual of childbirth,
using history and symbolic imagery to conjure emotion and opinion. Through
her choice of language, Ms. Browne takes us to an ancient world where
childbirth is a symbolic journey, a process of growth and yearning where
knots, windows, doors, combs, and axes take on special meaning. There
is an undercurrent of mystery, horror, and ultimate triumph.
afterward
I began this project as an attempt to examine a territory upon which I
had no material basis for walking, and so approached the subject of childbirth
and labor through the crumpled lens of history and photography. A question
out walking on one side of a chequered chasm. This chasm exists outside
of time and tense, (often outside of writing). I've gathered birth customs
and rituals from various periods and locations, and wandered between studied
and intuitive approaches to birth.
While examining photographs in Michel Odent's Birth Reborn, the
separation between image / observation and action encouraged my exploration
of the lapse between description and experience -- the seen and the unseen
or the physical and the otherworldly. I attempted to fill this open field
with language as a means of preparation. Of course it did not prepare
me. Ironically Odent suggests that no preparation is needed (which is
true, since none is possible).
Through birth impossibly suspends, the expected vanishes. Gravity -- inevitable
weight -- a date descending. Mirror dissolving silver premise. Here I've
traced one minute and sinuous approach towards a labyrinth, making use
of the hidden increments of mind which unfold before each step beneath
the surface.
--LB
see also:
http://www.twc.org/pplb.htm
|
