“The mother’s daughter smells of blood, milk, sperm and bowels” by Amanda del Valle
The mother’s trauma comes along with a certain muscular clenching, a constriction of the physical, the jaws, the fists, arms and chest. It is the complementary dissatisfaction of the mother, as though no brutal breakdown can be quite brutal enough. It is a fissure, a crack, the lack of being. An insufficiency compared to the promised plenitude. The daughter’s failures are the mother’s victories, the mother’s injuries are to b handed down to the daughter. The mother’s failures are to be paid for by the daughter. The mother’s unhappiness is to be the daughter’s unhappiness. It’s as if the umbilical cord had never been cut.” the mother-daughter’s bond is the muscular being a daughter, is traumatizing it spans the gamut of anguish, agony, and annihilation of self, but also chart a pathway to a more balanced existence. As an argument between the mother and the lover-the daughter is just meat.
The mother is not to be understood according to the logic of selfish desire but under the loss of selfhood-which is akin to the experience of death. One becomes the life-giver of the mother, the source of nutritiousness, this work was born out of my parent madness and transmitted through the metonymy.