I set the altar with a red cloth. It's been used many times before, a fact which is apparent from the candlewax stains and black smudges from burned sage. I place an earthenware jug on the corner and arrange my red cloth so that it is flowing out from the jug, a river of silky dark cloth that drowns my altar chest and splashes a stunning red stain on my white carpet. The silky cloth is too lightweight, it slips and slides along the smooth wood, defeating my attempts to create order, just as my body defeats my attempts at orderliness at this time of the moon. The unruly red was definitely the right choice material for my menstrual altar.
Next I place a wineglass, full and round like a pregnant belly, and filled to the brim with wine as dark and red as my blood that flowed down the drain in my shower this morning. I add a black candle, black as the darkness of our wombs and the mysteries they still present. I've been getting to know mine for 25 years, and still it sometimes seems a stranger to me. I sit back to contemplate my work. I want this altar to represent all that is purely feminine. To celebrate the rituals that belong to women alone, which cannot be taken away by force, or elitism, or even medicine and technology, though they may try.
As I work, my young daughter crawls over and pulls on the silk cloth, almost bringing my work to the ground. She is always attracted to this particulat altar. Perhaps it is the red of the cloth. Or perhaps some part of her recognizes that this is a celebration of her. Of her future, and of her very creation. As she cries to touch the smooth red cloth, or the warm black of the candle, I feel the familiar cramping in my belly. It is a small reminder of the pains that brought her screaming body into the world, the pains which now cleanse my womb to prepare it again to create such a miracle. I quiet my daughter with a small sip of wine, anticipating a day in the furure when we can share the wine together, in celebrationof our bleeding bodies. In celebration of our unruly, frightening, messy - and perfect - bleeding bodies. |
