Mother la Chose

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The only thing worse than seeing your mother cry is realizing you will never be able to see her at all. Your mother cannot be seen because she camouflages into the cupboards, recedes into the wallpaper, blends into the curtains. Her register is her imprint of coordination; harmonization. Printed on the scarf tied with precision around her shoulders are the same peonies arranged in the vase on the table. The tips of her fingers disappear into the tablecloth because they share the same hue. The curves of her figure cannot be differentiated from the edges of the sofa. The geometric lines of her features extend towards the cabinets and window frames until nothing but a ghost-like order remains. She selects textile that conceals her sadness. The curtains migrate towards her body as if to serve the same function of privacy. It is unclear whether she cuts herself out of the drapes or the drapes perform surgery on her. When her body is not present her phantom discretely takes its place.

 

 

 

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(IMG_n.goncharova. autumn evening, 1922-28) ---->

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"You who are of a younger and happier generation may not have heard of her - you may not know what I mean by the Angel in the House. I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it--in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all--I need not say it---she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty--her blushes, her great grace. In those days--the last of Queen Victoria--every house had its Angel." - Woolf

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Virginia Woolf could never meet her Mother because her Mother was everywhere 

and nowhere.

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Her Mother lived behind her ear.

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"The maternal caretaker is, at one and the same time, both overwhelmingly, stiflingly present or near, and, also frustratingly, uncontrollably absent or inaccessible; there is either too much or too little of her, never the right balanced amount. Therefore the mother becomes the forever-unattainable “Sovereign Good,” the fixed vanishing point of all desiring." - Lacan

 

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Lacan calls them The Thing

 

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Set them down for once

 

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