Sula

I'm re-reading Toni Morrison's novel, "Sula" for the third time. Morrison is one of my favorite authors and everytime I re-read a novel of hers (I own them all) it summons a new inspiration that I didn't receive in the previous reads. Morrison focuses on the book's namesake, Sula Peace, who from the time she was a child to adulthood shared an intimate bond with her bestfriend, Nel Wright. They considered themselves "one and the same" and shared everything from comparing the way one boy kissed, to deathly secrets. Sula and Nel's intimate bond finally shatters when Sula realizes all of Nel's treasures aren't hers to possess and it drives Sula into a wonderous despair that I find myself relating to.

Morrison has a way with words that brings to mind poetry, but she creates such an awesome literary imagination for the reader that it doesn't allow you to drift too far from the agony that Sula feels. Here's an excerpt that really spoke to me because it speaks about my ever-elusive "connectedness":

"...She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be - for a woman. And that no one would ever be that version of herself which she sought to reach out to and touch with an ungloved hand. There was only her own mood and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become as intimate with their own selves as she was."

As women, or to put it plainly, lonely women like myself, we tend to put too much faith in others, especially when it comes to relations with men. While looking for ways to validate oneself when the onset of lonliness seeps in and overwhelms, we become promiscuous, callous and even immoral. We search for satisfaction (convinced its only sexual in nature) within the wrong places and in turn we develop characteristics that forces us to suffer because of the consequences of our choices. When my "situation" with my ex-boyfriend was on the outs, I sat back and realized that since I lost my virginity at the tender age of 14, I've been sexually taken advantage of, even when I believed it was consensual because I was looking for a "connection" or an "understanding" of sorts. It was never about the physical or the intimacy but about being given a sense of security...and up to this point its all been false.
Another excerpt that's all relative:

"In a way, her strangeness, her naivete, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiousity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous."

I believe we all possess an art form but if we don't find it and hold on to it, life can be so unfulfilling, and what a sad life that would be.

I hope Ms. Morrison can forgive my usage of her excerpts without permission but I adore her work and it truly shed a bit of light on lil ole me.