Page 11 - GALIET ABSENCE AND Presence's Loom: Helen and Penelope IV

Helen of the loom weaves history in her Hegelian hour; hers is a progressive unfolding of truth that spans timelines instead of cyclical hours, where the tragic tensions of the War between Achaeans and Trojans suffered for her sake are immortalized, neither to congeal nor postpone inevitable events, as Penelope’s weavings reveal in their coming into being by day, and perishing away, by night, but to preserve her mythic presence. By contrast, Queen Penelope’s cyclical weaving and un-weaving evoke her inner struggle between genuine absence and presence: weaving threatens her with remarriage and departure, and un-weaving blesses her with the possibility of permanence.
Penelope leaps from non-existence to existence and vice-versa, in constancy; as if re-enacting a ritual in a finite number of same moments, which return to themselves, over and over again, where each woven turn becomes potential for absence, for nostalgia; and each fine thread unraveled, a potential for beautiful presence and gorgeous truth. Yet, unlike Heraclitus’ eternal return2 of same motions, hers shall be only a temporal motion to return to the same.
Penelope, unlike Helen, does and undoes her weavings during three disconsolate winters until her
2 Heraclitus’ eternal return posits the world comes to be from fire and returns to fire according to fixed cycles and for all eternity, given the cyclic nature of many natural processes, including theseasons. DiogenesL.,IV,9. Waterfield,Robin.TheFirstPhilosophers.ThePre-Socraticsandthe Sophists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• 11 •