The Tiresias Question

"Once, with a blow of his stick, he had disturbed two large snakes mating in the green forest, and, marvellous to tell, he was changed from a man to a woman, and lived as such for seven years. In the eighth year he saw the same snakes again and said ‘Since there is such power in plaguing you that it changes the giver of a blow to the opposite sex, I will strike you again, now.’ He struck the snakes and regained his former shape, and returned to the sex he was born with."

- Ovid

In Book III of Ovid's Metamorphosis, the god Jupiter, and the goddess, Juno, are happily drinking and chatting, when they suddenly come across the subject of sex and sensual pleasure. This conversation escalates and before long, the two of them are in high-disagreement about whether it is men or women who derive greater sensual pleasure (voluptas) around love, sex and sensuality. Jupiter maintains that it is Juno and women who have the greater pleasure, whereas Junos disagrees with this. To ascertain for certain, they call on Tiresias, who was a man who had once been punished by the gods for hitting two mating snakes with a stick by suddenly being turned into a woman, and had lived that way for seven years before he was then changed back into a man again, and so, as Ovid describes, "has known Venus in both ways." (It's not about to get much better for Tiresias, either). Tiresias confirms Jupiter's contention that, in his direct lived experience, it is indeed women who derive the most pleasure from love and sensuality. Angered that he has revealed this truth, the goddess Juno then suddenly blinds him as punishment (I told you it wasn't going to get any better for Tiresias!)

I've been thinking about this story quite a lot, recently, as, in a way, I have had a kind of Tiresias experience myself, although not around matters of gender and which sex finds sensual pleasure more enjoyable, but more of a lived experiment around a hugely interesting aspect of Ancient Chinese Thought. As some of you who have read my blog may recall, in terms of Ancient Chinese theory, I am a Yin Fire. This means that my energetic make up is principally composed of certain traits which are typical to Fire types: i.e., I am energetically more healthy and happy when I have things like connection with others, performativity and art in my life, fun, sensuality and Romance. The key concept here is Joy, as that is in fact the over-riding element of Fire. But, as well as Fire types, there are also four other elements as well: metal, water, earth and wood. And I, like most people, have lesser elements as well as the dominant one, which in my case is Fire. But because I have been on a very high dose of steroids for the last six weeks because of my latest CF health issues, I have experienced something which I'd not really been aware of before: the Wood element. And let me tell you, dear reader, it's been quite a revelation!

So, whereas my Fire element is in its fullest flow when it involves the things I have just listed above, the Wood element is rather different. And, to be honest, especially when I was on the highest dose of steroids for the first month, I felt like I was starring in an episode of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers as I could hardly recognise myself or the way I was now responding to the world.

For Wood personalities have very different energetics to Fires, and here are a few of them:

No. 1:
They are morning people ("...oh, the horror, the horror! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast!)"

No.2:

Irritable or Angry

No. 3:
They struggle to find the correct posture between confidence and arrogance (it's a fine balancing act, dahlings!)

No.4:
Frustration




And, to my huge surprise, I have been feeling all of these things to a degree that I have never experienced before. For the first two months of the steroid treatment, my sleep has been so affected as to have left me pretty much sleep deprived. I have found it much harder to get to sleep and have been waking very early in the morning and found it pretty much impossible to get back to sleep again. This has led to me feeling increasingly snappy and irritable, and although I think I have side-stepped the confidence/arrogance part of the wood element, I have also felt increasingly frustrated, and this is one of the areas that I have found most interesting to ponder. For it's not only my frustration at the huge change that Covid being in the world has brought to my life - in that I still have to be very careful and do everything in my power to not catch it, as I am still clinically extremely vulnerable to it - but I've also been feeling really deep-seated frustrations that go back decades. I had to give up my beloved professional singing and acting career when I was in my mid-20s, and although it was heart-breaking for me and I felt the loss terribly, there were at least other things to soften the blow. I was able to sing at open mics when I felt well enough; I had friends I could go out for a drink with, and I also met my Delectably Fine Lady a few years later, and we had a lovely circle of friends and attended many incredible concerts and events, and I even managed to study for a BA Hons cultural degree, which was a wonderful experience. But now, because of Covid, very few of these things remain open to me. I haven't sung in public since February 2020, and now autumn is here and winter is also lurking just a couple of months away, I won't get any opportunity to do so until next Spring at the earliest, when hopefully there will be some outdoor open mics I can attend. I have had a handful of catch ups with friends this Spring and Summer, but they were few and far between, and now it will be back to isolation as the temperature will be too cold to sit outside until next April. And as for concerts and events, well this is really in the hands of the gods. And at some point I may well have to decide: do I refrain from attending concerts and going to the theatre for the rest of my life, or do I take a chance, knowing that if I caught Covid at one of those events it could be very serious indeed. It's quite a conundrum. And my god do I despise whoever or whatever brought this virus into the human population, probably because of humanity's despicable attitude to the non-human, animal world, as well as the appalling response from the various governments once it had started spreading around the globe. I do, thank goodness, have my Lady to share my life with, but I would imagine that every single couple that has ever been or ever will be would struggle to not find a strain on their relationship if they were in the same situation as us. There are so many life experiences that we could have had if Covid hadn't happened. But, I guess, I have to let that all go, for contemplating that with too much thought is probably where madness lies, and mental health is rather precarious anyway in this fucked up world we have created, where we are busier than we have ever been, and are pretty much being forced to exist in a state of frenetic activity, yet not really achieving anything at all, (described as non-stop inertia by Ivor Southwood), and where we are more connected than ever because of technology, and yet, in reality, have never been more isolated from each other as communities vanish, and we all just stay within our little bubbles and watch Netflix rather than making the effort to genuinely connect with others. And this, for a Fire, means to be forced to sail on very tempestuous waters indeed. But all this bring me back to the original Tiresias Question, and from my direct experience, who has the richest experience of life, fires or woods?

Well, I'm sorry if this offends any wood types out there, and I hope some woody maniac doesn't do a Juno on me, but I wouldn't swap being able to experience this life as a Fire type for anything. Although business type personalities have monopolised our society with their own values (I bet most neoliberal capitalist CEOs/Tory politicians/Right Wing Think Tank robots are all wood types), there is no way they will ever persuade me that their approach to life is the best. "You can cut off all my fins but to your ways I will not bend... I'll die before I let you tell me how to swim", as another sensational Fire, Prince, so devastatingly wrote in 'Dolphin'. 

So there we go. In my experience, the Fire type wins, hands down. And as Tiresias knew, the Fire element is far more feminine than wood, so who am I to argue with one who experienced life as both sexes?

Until Next Time, etc...