City of Tents

Imagine if you would, a world in which villages exist in a desert populated by people who live in, well… let's just say, tents.  Each of these communities of tents are divided by a straight bold bright white line dividing the women from the men.  The common facet of these communities is each person lives alone in each tent.

The land of Amatrimonia

The men's tents are far away from the defining line whereas the women's tents are closer, which of course symbolizes a whole bunch of ideologies including the male propensity for aloofness and feminine submission, etc.   For the male to have a dominant role, he must remain distant… 

There are other lands such as the valley of Homodom and the very rare and nearly impossible to find lost city of Equalibdom.  But, the majority of the cultures who exist in this sandy world live in communities like Amatrimonia.

Anyway, these tent people, who are often veiled hiding their faces from each other, live in these tents in the desert and go about their daily living. working, eating, sleeping, entertaining themselves and each other, and raising children.

When two newly bonded lovers, a man and woman, come together, they go to one of the romance or in-love tents up next to the line; most being on the male's side.  These tents are where people who fall in love, eventually get married, and live for a brief period of time.  These still veiled people stay together in these tends until after the romanticism has worn off and reality sets in.  Then the two still married X lovers despondently separate and return to their respective clans to go about their routine daily lives.

Sometimes one or the other may follow their mate to the other's side, but this place is so foreign and unacceptable to them that they will inevitably return to their own side.

When some time has passed, these two who have been betrothed in marriage will realize they have hatred for the other and will find themselves embroiled in a sometimes-bloody battle of divorce.

Then as often is the case, after these people feel that their wounds have healed, they attempt to venture fourth into the In-love tents again with another person, this time with much more trepidation and a much shorter stay.

This story figuratively characterizes the currently extraordinary sad times of marriages, love-hatred, gender specific intolerances, and the commonplace divorce.  It depicts an all too common occurrence of people who are blindly entering into an easily breakable Forever Until Death Do Us Part contract with a person of the opposite gender and often times, a deliberately-intentioned opposite mind-set. 

The two outer grouping of tents represents the segregation of men and women's minds.  Though we are physically in the same space with our spouse, we do not allow the other to know who we really are.  The tent is the cloak that we ware around us in so far as others are concerned.  It seems avoiding any inner connection to other humans including those who we are married to, apparently must give us a measure of safety. 

The inner tents next to the line are where two lovers go and allow their minds to intermingle (sort-of, think similarly).  Though they are still veiled, the two lovers are so driven by their affinity for each other that they are willing to, momentarily, alter their thinking to be with that other. 

After the romance has worn off, the coupled persons with dismay, quickly realize the dichotomy of their once loving union; that there is something radically wrong.  But feeling they are moral beings, they decide to try and continue with the nuptial agreement hoping that by ignoring the problems, the difficulties will simply just go away. 

Failing this, the wedded couple will then assign blame or sexist labels to his or her opposite in order to give themselves an illusion of wellness.  The realization that this was the way it was when we met, will now overshadow the starry-eyed romantic passions which had previously blinded them and allowed them to uneasily and uncomfortably be with the other in strained man-woman roles.  They simply both did things with each other they would not ordinarily do.   Now, For the sake of friends, children, and family, they feel they must stay together. 

This eventually develops into hatred for a once loved life long partner, simply because the mental separation causes both to become estranged from each other. This codependent association between anomalous strangers becomes a heavy encumbrance and spawns the desire to be free of the misery of misunderstandings.  So, divorce becomes the inevitable outcome.