I want to be cohesive

Cities are usually referred to using a feminine pronoun, and I think that's appropriate.  Toledo is no exception.

"It's interesting that the most beautiful view of the city, in my opinion, is from the outside looking in."
"There's gotta be a metaphor in there somewhere."

I run through her almost everyday.  The side streets are charming and the way the road follows the land and doesn't battle it and the buildings...oh those buildings.  But I was raised in an ex-orchard and there was neither pared nor muro holding me in so it's only after I graze that city wall with the tips of my fingernails and trade the cobblestone for the sand and smell that enigmatic sweet-smelling tree and climb upward and upward and soar over that river Tajo and hit those prehistoric rocks and look back upon the way the rising sun hits her cheeks that my breath truly gets drawn out from inside of me. 

It's a pity she doesn't know. Sometimes--usually--people don't even know. Women don't even know. And that's a problem.

This past weekend, I watched the film Beasts of the Southern Wild as a sort of happy accident I stumbled upon with my travel companion.  It was one of the only films in English being shown at a theatre in Den Haag, the capital of the Netherlands, and our souls were craving the first movie in months we could watch having the advantage of our native tongue. 

But I got much, much more out of this movie than a simple English fix. 

The main character is Hushpuppy--a little girl living in a forgotten community cut off from the rest of Southern United States by a protective levee.  Hushpuppy is all that a woman should be, packaged in a calloused bundle of resistance to a negligent father with questionable motives and the threat of the destruction of her home with a single forceful storm.  Her strength is not in the bullets her father aims at the storm clouds.  It is not in her stiff jaw.  It is not in those tiny biceps her father makes her flex to prove herself.  It is not in her loud battle cries of frustrated dominion. 

It is in every breath she holds so she can listen attentively to the heartbeat of each creature sitting next to her.  It is in the way she looks into the eyes what she is most afraid of and stands her ground but softens her gaze.  And listens to his heart beat. And includes him as part of herself.  And watches as he bows down and walks away. 

It is in gentleness and love and courage that feminity finds her strength.  This is the art, the poetry, the beauty of being a woman.  And this beauty should not just be from the outside looking in.