I landed in Montreal on Saturday evening, and couldn’t settle myself, even though I was with my long-time friend Monica. We were both hyper, or ungrounded. Or so it felt to me. We later blamed it on the heat, and worries about our planet warming up. But I knew, for me, it was more about leaving my responsibilities at home with Peter, and being away from L, who is at camp, and O who is going through transitions. I was thrown off by all my parts getting louder, as I took an “self-indulgent break”.
The heat has proven itself a central character in my Montréal visit for sure. So too have sloth, greed, gluttony, and the rest of the gang of deadly sins, those loud self-judgy parts that live inside me.
All the sins are on exhibit at Musée beaux-arts Montréal in an exhibition called Bad Girls (or Présumées coupables). This is what got me thinking about why I feel shame when I have too much fun, too much privilege, too much freedom.
Have you ever felt badly for celebrating yourself, prioritizing rest over productivity, losing your cool, feeling jealous, acting on natural desires to have nice things, eat good food, or experience intimacy?
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.
It had never occurred to me that the “seven deadly sins” were a Christian morality code, created in The Middle Ages. Nor did I know that the patriarchal ruling class so feared feminine power that they weaponized shame as a means of controlling it.
The gallery was filled with images like the one below. I was interested both in the images themselves, all quite ugly depictions of women, and also in the print versions of the artist’s original drawings, mirror images, with some refinements made in turning them into prints.
I saw the exhibit with Monica, but had another, seemingly unrelated but not unrelated at all, conversation over lunch today with my long-time amigas, Sonia and Karina. Our chat was about gender and sexuality. Our views are wide ranging and I found it all quite provocative. One cannot have highly intelligent women friends and not have their thoughts provoked, after all.
But I’ll stick to the deadly sins for now. I find it sad that concepts started centuries ago, passed down through generations, can, centuries later, steer my ship. This nagging sense of guilt I carry, a sense that who I am is not enough or somehow wrong, plays too central a role in my life.
In the end, it’s been a wonderful, reconnecting, thought-provoking, thought-defending week. I’ve delighted. I’ve been stirred up. I’ve shared a lot, and I’ve kept quite a few thoughts to myself. I’ve felt joy. Guilt. A little shame. Even anger.
But, my God, the gluttony was delicious.
