Interlude with Diana

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I have by some miracle these two women in my life, my daughter and my wife. There is such fierceness in them. It manifests in different ways, but neither of them is someone you'd want to go up against. The kid is at war with the entire world. She's lost every battle, gotten her ass kicked hard. She never cries about it, never despairs. Just takes a deep breath and plunges back into the fray.

I don't know what it is inside her that drives her to war with everything we tried to give her, but she won't rest until the landscape is a smoking ruin as far as the eye can see.

Perhaps she will rebuild her own golden city on the burning plain.

Perhaps she will.

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That other woman, the one I married. You wouldn't maybe know it right at first, because of her quiet nature and her beauty and graciousness. But if you weren't careful you might brush up against something that made you want to back up a little bit, make some space for what felt like there might be a bear or a lion or a bull somewhere close by, something so goddamn strange and strong and indifferent to you that it makes the hairs on your neck lift.

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I make my living studying violence and passion and this has in no way prepared me in my lifelong dance with these two women. I am wrong about them over and over again, with little hope for improvement in the future.

I don't think it is my fate to understand everything about them. Obviously it isn't. 

But what sheer joy to be in orbit around them, careening through life, headlong, throwing sparks, watching things burn, hanging on by my fingertips as they break against the world or each other, or me, or themselves.

It isn't always easy, but it's a hell of a ride.

Thank you for the honor of your company.

*

To you brave warrior women!

Skoal!

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Namaste.

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