Be Who They Be

Re-reading Alaine's poem, I am still shocked at it's power.  It's unexpectedness.  If it wasn't enough to hear it the first time, reading it doesn't take away any of the impact.

It's raw.  It's unexpected, further clarifying exactly who she is. The power of the introvert, thrown out in an explosion so random that none of us see it coming; it was her fierceness she described, lashing out in her moment on the stage.  Then, again, retreating.

I too have moments like this.  Moments when, my seemingly calm demeanor retreats and I throw my head back to the heavens in what Jonah calls a freedom stance and yell WHY.  Why am I here?  Why am I going to school?  Why do I feel the pressure to be an extrovert?  Why do I feel the pressure to impress ANYONE?

These moments of helplessness (or clarity, I haven't yet decided), although leaving me nostalgic at the prospect of my life, give me hope that I am aware.  I am absorbing, just like Alaine, and forming my own opinions.  And Alaine's presentation gave me just enough inspiration and motivation to form a big one.

I AM NEITHER AN INTROVERT OR AN EXTROVERT. (Yes, she also inspired me to capitalize whatever the hell I want).

Maybe according to others' labels, I would fall under the category of introvert after 5 p.m. on a weekday.  Maybe I would be called an extrovert on the weekends when all I want to do is be with my loved ones.  But at this point, I'm sick of trying to figure it out.  I'm sick of trying to put a label on myself to define what settings I best thrive in, because they change daily.  I change daily.

Introvert or extrovert, the question most commonly resorted to.  Why is is so important? WHY? Why can't we be both? Neither? How fantastic would it be if we weren't constantly asked to put ourselves in a box, if we weren't told what was right for extrovert and wrong for the introvert?  How wonderfully splendid would it be to relax or adventure into whatever action next comes your way, without feeling guilty about the choice you make?

I am adventurous.  I travel like nobody's business and take leaps sometimes way too big for me.  Meeting new friends is one of the greatest remedies I've found for any ailment, and I continue to do so on the daily.  Yet, I'm not out there go-go-going all the time.  I like to sleep in on the weekends.  I enjoy the mornings when I have the house to myself.  My physical activity consists of yoga and walking to school.  So give me a break!

Don't label me, and I won't label myself.  Stop trying to categorize and organize and find the answers to every fricking problem out there, because much of the time they aren't even problems to begin with.  Let people be who the be, guilt-free.

The Fiends of Dreamland

“The improbable, desiring, erotic, and violent world of romance reminds us that we are not awake when we have abolished the dream world: we are awake only when we have absorbed it again.” -Northrop Frye

The sky was turning darker as the day grew full.  Clouds massed on top of each other so thick that the girl began to wonder whether the sun had strewn from its normal, arcing path over the sky and had decided instead to rest on the horizon for the day.  There was no way to tell.

She stood up from the couch, too-quickly, and took advantage of the light-headedness to stretch her arms high above her head until she felt as if she would lift off of the ground.  She knew she wouldn’t.  She probably wouldn’t even ever lift out of this city.  The girl had been taught since grade school that humans can’t fly.  There existed things simply unattainable.  However, last night she had...

؂

Dream 1: Improbability. I’m walking up a wintery slope, the sun shining bright in my eyes, reflecting off of the crisp snow.  I am in a line of voyagers- I don’t know where we are going or where we have come from.  Frosted pine trees and dead weeds push through the edges of the path. I turn, and to my back is a man in furs. I reach out to grab his hand, and all of a sudden lucidly rise from the path, the hill, the pilgrims, and begin to fly over the Northern landscape.

The wind pushes my hair back from my face and bites my ears, cheeks, neck.  From the heights I gaze down at a silver lake that lies ahead.  I ache for it, and slowly descend upon the frozen banks.

When both feet have touched the hard earth, I look up and am face-to-face with a centaur.  He awaits me, and the air of desire only strengthens.  He steps forwards, I reach out, and open my eyes.

؂

Back in the small space of her life, the girl begins to brew her afternoon tea.  At least she thinks it is afternoon. Just as the kettle begins to whistle, there is a soft knock on the door.

She freezes.  The only muscle that noticeably moves in her body is her heart that visibly pounds through her shirt.  As if in response, the knock turns to pounding.  “Please open the door,” her mother calls from the stoop. “Please.”  She doesn’t open the door.  She doesn’t move until she hears the steps of retreat and the start of a car outside, then releases the breath she was holding.

She had never gotten along with her mother.  For as long as she could remember, their relationship had been an up and down train wreck of screaming matches and sullen silences.  It seemed as if every time she began to let her guard down, to love her, one of them would rip it painfully away, like a band-aid leaving repeated swollen welts that never quite healed.  To the girl, the days went by much easier without her.

By the time she crawled into bed later that night, she pretended to have forgotten all about the knock on the door.

؂

Dream 2: Desire. I sit, swinging my legs off of the end of a dock with my mother.  I’m not aware of how it happens, but suddenly two of her valuables are spilled into the water- a silver key and necklace.  I confidently pull off my clothes and dive into the blue-green water, summoned by the items, reaching slightly into weeds as I grasp the glinting key.  I need to breathe, and come up without the shining chain of the necklace.

          We have to leave right then, so although I long to have it within my grasp, I reason that I will find the necklace upon my return.  The cool water quickly dries off of my skin underneath the late-summer sun, and we move on.

          We take the train across the land to a ruined colosseum.  It is both eerie and beautiful traipsing through the archeological soil.  I feel comforted in this ancient place although the sky threatens with looming clouds.  Before I am ready, we must return to the home on the water.

          I run out to the dock to resume my diving search as soon as we arrive, but the lake has been filled with dirt.  Tractors roam in the the new basin, preparing irrigation systems as if the space will be used for agriculture.  I desire the necklace more than I can ever remember wanting something, and am still mourning its loss as I open my eyes.

؂

Lounging in the neighborhood park with a book, the girl involuntarily reaches for the hollow of her throat.  She is vaguely reminded of a something, a necklace, but brushes the memory off as unimportant.  She again turns her gaze down to the worn pages, but the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

           Ever so carefully, the girl brings her gaze upwards.  Sitting in a patch of evening sunlight across a bluff in the grass is a man.  It’s not the sharp angles of his face, nor the attractive way he leans back on his hard arms, nor the light playing off of his many rings that holds her attention; it is the way he is staring at her.  Not the kind of people-watching-in-a-park staring that can be excused as acceptable- he is holding her gaze as if hungry.  He wants to devour her.  Her mouth falls open, and she feels her body responding to the heat of his presence.  Then, as if awakening from a spell, the girl blinks, drops their visual connection, gathers her belongings, and retreats from the park.

           As soon as she is out of sight, she begins to run.  She runs and runs until her lungs feel about to burst, until her legs catch on fire, until she tumbles through the front door of her house and collapses in a shaking heap.

           She only rises to carry herself to bed, long after the sun has set.

؂

Dream 3: Eroticism. I am lounging in an old lake cabin with my lover, at his bon voyage party, knowing that I will soon have to say goodbye to him.  Throughout the day, we use a log to float far out on the water.  I’m introduced to many of his friends.  We lounge underneath the shade of the back deck.  We dance in an unfamiliar living room late into the evening.  We intertwine, his angular body and my soft one, sleeping and awakening again and again in an old blue bedroom.

I awake in the morning to arrive at the breakfast table, reintroducing myself to his friends before I’m reminded, to my shame, that I had met them the day before.  My skin flushes.  I am naked from the waist up.  My lover then joins us downstairs, lovingly brushing my light hair as I hug him around the waist as if it is normal to do so in front of a group of guests.

I simultaneously squeeze him and my shut eyes tighter, then let them open.

؂

The girl bolts up in her bed to her alarm shouting, covered in a film of sweat, panting.  Angry at her reaction, she grabs hold of reality by dousing herself in the cold water of the shower.  It’s Monday, and for once she is thankful for the dreaded day’s predictable nature and lack of excitement.

           Sitting in her first class, she immediately notices the figure slouching in the corner.  She doesn’t need to look longer than a moment to know who it is.  She fidgets impatiently through the hour, rising from her seat and out the door as soon as the class is dismissed.

           But the day continues in this way.  She notices him leaning against a tree across the road, watching her walk between class; she sees him ducking under an eave on her way home as the rain begins to come down; and finally, mulling through the shelves at the local grocery store, she turns a corner and finds him standing at the other end of the aisle.

           He is impossibly tall.  His gaze is just as intense as the day in the park, but this time holds an air of aggression, although she senses it is because he is uncomfortable and not towards her.  She could yell.  She could tell the creep off.  She could run.  Instead, she finds her feet stepping towards him, as he mirrors her, their bodies drawn closer and closer as if pulled together on a wire.  They stop when they are a foot apart.

           Just like yesterday, the girl blinks and suddenly realizes the strange reality of the situation.  She turns to leave, but he reaches out and grabs her by the arm.  As soon as he touches her, she is filled with a sense of empowerment and energy, a wickedness that she hasn’t felt since childhood.  Whipping her head around to look im in the eyes, she yanks her arm away, reeling with the high, and turns her back on him.  She buys her groceries and walks out without looking back.

           The feeling keeps her up long into the night.

؂

Dream 4: Violence. It is any ordinary night as I drive with my friend under the streetlights.  We talk about guys.  We laugh as we pass a restaurant with a ridiculous name.  We reach a pier, and it is revealed to me that the point of our journey is to pick up two friends waiting on the end of the pier.  She backs up onto the pier because she won’t be able to turn around on the narrow stretch once she reaches them.  It all makes sense, it’s all realistic, even the way she confidently drives backwards with speed down the pier.  It never once crossed my mind to worry, that is until I look ahead at how far we’ve driven from the land.

            “Hey, I think we’ve driven far enough-” I’m cut off by her slamming on the breaks, but it’s too late.

            We sail backwards off the pier into the churning, pitch-black water.  My friend starts to scream.  I immediately try the automatic windows, but they refuse to roll down.  The pressure against the door is too great to open.  My seat belt has locked up.  I am able to remain the calmer of the two while the car sinks because my subconscious tells me I’m dreaming.  Then the hiss of the water seeping through the cracks in our doors and windows becomes so loud that I know that’s it not.

           I hear her scream again, and gasping for breath, I open my eyes.

؂

    The girl wakes up to a knocking on the door.  She gets up to look out her second-story bedroom window, but doesn’t see her mother’s car.  The knock sounds again.

    She hurries down the stairs.  Peeking out the living room window that grants her a view to the front porch, she sees his figure.  Although she hesitates, freezes in an attempt to hide from him like she so well hides from everything else that might hurt her, she already knows what she will do.

For the first time in months, the girl answers her door.  She tilts her face up to meet his, searching his for answers only to find that same sense of primitive vibrance awaiting her.  He steps over her threshold, and she begins to live.

؂

Dream 5: Reality. I am lying in my bed, unable to wake, as our class surrounds me.  My roommate has invited the session into my room for today.  Joe asks, “Are you sure this is alright, Dr. Sexson?”  He replies, “Why yes, because Katie is a part of this class.”  I open my eyes.

Wicked Truths and Fallen Princesses

 

I found it quite coincidental (as we find almost everything said in this class to be) that our conversation turned to the Wizard of Oz the other day while discussing the Nicholas being the subject of the God Game.  Dorothy and Nicholas were both turned upside-down and inside-out by external forces in order to discover qualities about themselves that lay dormant long before their adventures started.  "It was in you all along," Glinda explains simply to Dorothy, communicating that her inner power had always existed, she just needed help finding it.  Similarly, the qualities Nicholas discovered about himself  by the end of The Magus had always been there, but were not discovered until Conchis acted as a catalyst for these discoveries.

I find this coincidental because I just finished a novel in which Glinda is revealed as a ditzy snob, Dorothy a naive problem, and the Wicked Witch of the West as a misunderstood heroine. Yes, I read Wicked, and loved every sentence of it.

I enjoyed this work so much because it is a well-known story told from a different perspective, revealing a reality behind the happy ending of Dorothy's adventure that makes us question the entire plot.  Wicked caused me to think a little deeper, and by the end I found myself questioning everything.

Even more coincidental is that I stumbled upon Dina Goldstein's series on "Fallen Princesses" just this morning. Just like Wicked, Goldstein takes what we've always known (and studied in this course) to be the basic fairy tales with happy endings and reveals their reality, but through photographs instead of literature.  I thought I'd share this photographer's modern inquiry with you all as to what happens after the "happily ever after".  I hope it will make you start to question, too.

 

Arcadia Ignorance

 
"You have a duty to keep her in ignorance!"

My initial reaction? HA. It's supposed to be funny, Thomasina's mother angry at Septimus for teaching her, awakening her to the knowledge of the outside world (although I think this reaction came from his lesson on carnal embrace).  Yes, a certain degree of censorship in front of children can be necessary to their overall development, but we find this statement comical because it is so blatantly mocks the opinion of too many adults: that children are children, and shouldn't know things until a certain age.

In many cases, this age never even comes.  So many adults want to shield their children from the "horrors" of the outside world for as long as they possibly can.  But what is the difference between a "horror" and knowledge? A horror is a horror if we believe it to be so, just as it can easily be turned into a lesson if we so choose.

Yes, there is a world of information I hope that my future children don't discover when they're five years old: the "ideal" (aka fucked-up) body image of an American woman, the overall influence of media over our minds, what it sounds like to hit a loved one, what it feels like to hurt someone so deeply it won't ever be forgotten, war, crime, rape, murder. The list goes on.

But I would hope that my children eventually learn these things, learn everything about them, so that they may develop their own opinions and own identities.  That instead of remaining in ignorance from these horrors, this knowledge, whatever you want to call it, they embrace it and learn from it.

I was blessed enough to be brought into this world by loving parents who have always treated me as an equal.  They have thirty years more life experience than I do. Thirty years more of loving and fighting and messing up and growing up than I do. They have thirty years more knowledge than I do. Yet they never belittled me. By giving me their respect, answering my questions when asked, letting me make my own mistakes and conquests, they gained my respect.  I hope that for every child.

"You have a duty to keep her in ignorance!"

My reaction after having thought about it from a different perspective? Ignorance can be used as a good thing. As Dr. Sexson explained in class, it can pertain to the belief that one must first empty their mind in order that it may be filled with knowledge.  I can think of a number of cases in which this is true.  In order to open yourself to new ideas without bias, you must let go of your previous beliefs.  If you attain to truly listen to what one is saying, you must quiet your own voice first.

And so, we reach the delicate balance (as everything comes to in the end) of emptying oneself, remaining in a state of ignorance in order to welcome knowledge, and soaking up information to create as many beliefs as we possibly can. Or perhaps we can simultaneously retain both states?

I think we can.

Hello, My name is Ammu

The re-creating, re-telling of the common myth.  That is what this class has taught me to look for in each book I read, story I hear, event I witness.

After being assigned the Magus, one of the main themes communicated was the characters' literal reenactment of these myths.  Not only were we given a novel to interpret on our own, to search for the stories within the story, but also a handful of scenes directly involving classical literature and Greek mythology.  Whether to aid in our search for the myth or merely to confuse us more, it was more than prevalent that the favorite activity of the majority of the characters was dressing up literally as Greek deities during an already-emphasized-as-important scene, often while referencing some important piece of literature.  It was exhausting to read.

And what does one (well, at least this sleepy girl with no weekend plans) do when they are exhausted from reading?  Read some more!  Having had so much assigned reading, it was the perfect surprise to receive a book from a friend in the mail last week.  A book called The God of Small Things. I decided to take the time to read solely for the purpose of enjoyment, and spent the weekend under the spell of this nostalgic tale.  I hope you all can read it at some point in your lives.  It is a beautifully written account of a terrifying time in a child's life- very hard to read at times, very strange, sad, but worth every sentence to reach the end.

One of the main characters is a young, troubled mother called Ammu.

Ammu is not a happy woman.  She is divorced, forced to move back into her mother's house, live with malicious relatives, and take care of her twins who both save her and kill her a little more with each loving look.  She realizes she is aging down a straight, foretold path in which she can see all the way to the end: her death.  During one scene, she inspects her almost thirty-year-old body in the bathroom mirror, touching her stretch marks from the birth of her children, feeling the width of her hips flare beneath her slender waist, tickling the small of her back with the ends of her hair.  She conducts the Toothbrush Test, inserting a toothbrush underneath a breast to see if it stays on its own, to see if gravity has already affected her body.  It falls to the floor.

The novel haunted me all weekend, as most stories do while we are in their midst.  However, last night my mind was in a thousand other places, happily buzzing with the days conversations and going-ons as I stood underneath the light stream of the shower. I let it quickly scald my body before stepping out, and without being conscious of my actions, scanned my body in the mirror.  I let Ammu's eyes, my eyes, look over each limb, each curve, and out of pure curiosity took the Toothbrush Test myself.  I laughed at Ammu in the mirror.

Whoa Katie, we don't need to hear about you sticking a toothbrush underneath your boob.  Sorry for getting personal, as that isn't the point of this blog.  The point is that as I stood there, I realized I was re-creating the myth, re-telling the story of the beautifully unhappy woman and her beautiful twins.  Just like Conchis's staged scene of Apollo and Artemis, his actors dressing up as the Gods, I stood there dressing up as Ammu.

 Dressing up with nothing on.

What I Wanted to Add to Our Conversation...

 

As mentioned in my last blog, the most prominent message the Magus conveyed to me was that of human nature's constant search for answers instead of acceptance of the unknown.  Another important theme came to me during today's discussion, however, which was the theme of sex.

Why is it that Nicholas becomes so emotionally tormented, so deceived, and so astounded at Lily-Julie-Vanessa's betrayal?  It's because she has sex with him.  Well, she also flirts, kisses, and feeds him all sorts of amorous promises, but the convincing factor for Nicholas of her trust is the offering of her body.  Although Nicholas doesn't treat sex as a sacred act himself, womanizing and even visiting brothels for release, he expects the sacredness from his female partners.  As he explains in his own words, "...no girl could pretend to want and to enjoy such things unless she was a prostitute."

The irony of the situation is that Nicholas uses sex in many of the same ways the young Lily uses sex: to trick the partner into believing in the love of the act for selfish benefit.  Where Nicholas uses sex for pleasure, Lily appears to use it for the game in which Nicholas is the experiment.  However, because Lily is female, Nicholas mirrors societies views that if she uses sex for selfish reasons she must be a "prostitute".  Only a morally corrupt woman could seduce a man outside the boundaries of love, whether it be for a moral test or pleasure.  "Why did she let me make love to her?" he incredulously asks her mother, astounded at how she could use her body against him.  She simply responds, "I understand it was her wish."

For this, I believe the novel is extremely contemporary for its time.  The entire group of the "God Game" treats sex casually, as one sharing their body with another, and for this can use it easily to trick Nicholas.  We find this attitude towards sex more often than not nowadays, used more as a natural connection (and yes, in many cases for selfish reasons) with less sacred or emotional attachment.  Although women still carry the stigma of being "loose" in comparison to men when developing this attitude, the stigma has softened from the time of the novel's publishing in 1965.

Sex is such an important component to human life, it is no wonder that throughout human history the act has been tied with the sacred.  I appreciate Fowles' challenge of it, especially in his decade, for there is no more interesting a theme to ponder than that of sex.

The Magus

 One man's search for answers.  This is what almost seven hundred pages of the Godgame comes to. Answers.

Isn't that what mankind does?  We constantly need solutions to continue in life, to become satisfied and reach peace with a topic before we can move on to the next.  The answer to one's happiness.  The answer to a relationship.  Even the answer to the future.  How many times this year has a conversation come down to the dreaded What are your plans after college? conversation piece?

Not only are we constantly searching for answers, but also providing answers.  More than this, we feel obligated to provide answers.  Society requires that you have a plan or solution to your future in order to achieve a state of contentment.  Everybody knows that.

So it is not a surprise that we find Nicholas frustrated and tortured throughout these six-hundred-some pages because he is given not one reliable answer.  He is given false truths, forcing him to continue to question everything he has been told and to think one step ahead.  Towards the end of the novel, he confronts the mother of the twins, Lily, about the "game" they have played of him.

"Am I ever going to be told what you really think you're doing?"

"You have been told."

"Lie upon lie."

"Perhaps that's our way of telling the truth."

By feeding him constant stories, the makers of this game show Nicholas a truth (although through cruel and harsh methods) that he might not have discovered otherwise: always questioning allows one to truly think, and therefore truly live.  To be left without a solution, to be left with the unknown, is an uncomfortable and often scary situation.  Our minds are muddled, the human nature of inquiry pushing to overcome the obstacle by resolving the problem.  However, is it a problem?  Is it a negative thing to be satisfied with pondering instead of an answer?  When we are thinking is when we are expressing our individualism and true self, challenging our surroundings and expectations of others.

"'An answer is always a form of death.'" Lily quoted Conchis.

"I think questions are a form of life."

That they are.  Maybe not all answers are a death- when one can find solace in a solution it is a beautiful occurrence.  What I will remember personally, though, is witnessing an individual step in the direction of the unknown and move forward into life without that solace.  To forever question and find acceptance in life's mysteries- that, to me, is even more beautiful.