Elsa Gidlow > Quotes

“You say I am mysterious.
Let me explain myself:
In a land of oranges
I am faithful to apples.”
― Elsa Gidlow

“Day draws towards twilight:
I dream idly,
Heavy with longings.”
― Elsa Gidlow, Sapphic Songs: Eighteen to Eighty

“Woman, so gentle in my arms
Loving, you have opened to me
Fierce, my own dark heart
And found therein and to me reflected
My source of light.”
― Elsa Gidlow

“I leave it to the male humans to speak for themselves (as they have long done anyway) concerning whether their path to spiritual union is through identification with "The Father", a "God" image, or any other sort of male personification of a "Savior": including those who call themselves "Gay". Has it occurred to any psychological sleuths the extent to which male identification with a totally male God, Trinity, Christ-image, not to mention all the male Buddhas, partakes of homosexuality? Who condemns "the beloved disciple, John, because he "lay in Jesus' bosom"? It would not be hard to see the Christian church as an exclusive male homosexual club.”
― Elsa Gidlow, Ask No Man Pardon: The Philosophical Significance of Being Lesbian

“She glimmers with light
Like a moon.
[…]
She is the moon's ghost
Phantom and lost”
― Elsa Gidlow, Sapphic Songs: Eighteen to Eighty

“Does earth
Drowse with fullness or the pull of sleep?
Even girls in the orchard move slowly.”
― Elsa Gidlow, Sapphic Songs: Eighteen to Eighty

“Because we reached across the chasm
Self to self, dared
Touch
Dared move
Woman to woman
A new moon rises.”
― Elsa Gidlow, Sapphic Songs: Eighteen to Eighty

“still find you in all bliss
And know your lips on every mouth I kiss.”
― Elsa Gidlow, Sapphic Songs: Eighteen to Eighty

“The function of the male sexual equipment is insemination, for which in health it is well suited. I know of no statement to the effect that this validates his existence and is the measure of his value to society. This attitude probably comes from the recognition of the small part he plays in the necessary function of procreation. A man may become a "father", go his lightsome way and never even know, or acknowledge, his parenthood. The function of the female sexual equipment is inescapably more important and complex, encompassing the processes of conception, gestation, parturition and post-birth nurturing. A woman can hardly ignore or escape the knowledge and responsibilities of her motherhood if she conceives and gives birth, even though her total emotional and psychological being may not have become involved. Whether her motherhood was willing, reluctant or "accidental", these physiological demands, apart from outside pressures may pull her away from what feel sot her to be her individual needs, her destiny or spiritual self-realization. For a substantial period of her life she belongs in some degree to the race more than to herself. Even those women who in their procreative and nurturing years have felt themselves to be fully realized in motherhood become restive and seeking, more often than not frustrated if they can find no way out of their by this time exhausted role imprisonment, to a realization of their unlived, perhaps hitherto unacknowledged need for personal creative growth.”
― Elsa Gidlow, Ask No Man Pardon: The Philosophical Significance of Being Lesbian

“Today, and each dawn, Elsa lights a candle and burns incense before the ivory porcelain statue of Kwan Yin, Chinese Goddess of Wisdom and Compassion. She builds a fire in the stone fireplace beneath Ella Young's enchanting face, and sits in the curved chair. The cat, Lady Tiki, purrs on her lap. They gaze out the window at the "dancing dryads," madrone, bay laurel, live oak. Rose-lipped fuschias nod at them through the glass. Elsa's beautiful bright eyes watch the flames. She begins to write.

Abigail Hemstreet
San Anselmo, CA
April 1982”
― Elsa Gidlow, Sapphic Songs: Eighteen to Eighty

“Once we have left the womb
Are we not all
Outsiders?”
― Elsa Gidlow, Sapphic Songs: Eighteen to Eighty