Bassar (Inside Me)

This story begins with an arrow, its trajectory and its target. He who draws the bow and shoots the arrow is unknown, but what provokes him to do so deserves to be remembered. The arrow travels towards the path of its target, its creative axis calling it, the only will of its flight is its arrival. The arrow has only this desire, but, in the moment it stops at its destination, its arrival will open a wound. The desire has been transformed into a wound and the Eros that animated it will claim its victories and cure its fallen. It is the story of the first victim born out of desire. The arrow has arrived at its mark bassar (which means meat in Hebrew), it has stopped at the center of the abdomen, the abdomen of Ishah (the bride). Ishah seems to be sleeping in her waters; she is still confused with her interior femininity and she is nourished by mother’s milk. The pain of the wound awakens her in the vortex of her desire; in a dark womb she feels the pangs of labor. Ishah is a widow, but she carries within her the sprout of life of the husband; Ishah loses her blood, humanity is wounded. But Ishah is neqevah (the female), which also means containing, she who hides the power of the name. Upon her reawakening, Ishah remembers her husband. She expected everything from him, she awaited the rain from above to begin living. She longed for his loving arms to support her in each step, but they were gone. She sinks into this emptiness and experiences nothingness; now she is no longer confused with him. “I opened to my beloved, but turning around, he was gone! His escape forced me to give up my soul.” Ishah, the bride, becomes Bat Kallah (sister-fiance) again. Bat Kallah is also the adverb utterly. She no longer has a choice and must go to the end of herself; in the theater of her exile the promises of fidelity have taken flight one after the other, and in the scene of the world, her spirit has closed the first act. But Ishah is neqevah, she who contains the secret of her own name, and now that she has been doused and burned by her desire, once again Bat Kallah, as sister-fiance she will have to reveal to Adam, her husband, that she is also tzella, whose root, tzell, means shadow. She will have to take charge of her wedding. The husband’s withdrawal caused the wife to overflow with desire. Inside her, the arrow of Eros leaves the bow and takes flight. Now she must learn the breathlessness of her labor, the beloved is desire, awaited and creative receptivity, she will have to create in her womb the only person she is within the secret of her name. Bat Kallah will say: “Rise, sister, and go towards your self.” She has known more than one of these wombs, the pain of many births, but of her own birth she knows only the immense joy of participating in life.