Stories

I watched Avatar last night. It was everything I'd heard it to be: visually stunning and predictable. A friend called it what might happen if you tossed "Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, Ferngully and various Miyazaki films into a blender and pulsed." That's about right. And yet, I loved it.

Before I get to the meat of this, I have to give the story tellers props for putting me on the most believable alternate planet I have viewed since I first saw The Dark Crystal. I also thought the Na'vi were a believable fantasy race. Sure, they were 75% American Indian with a few dashes of Arab and African thrown in for good measure (just in case we missed apologizing to anyone we've pissed off in the last 300 years), but they worked as well as many races I've read in books. And it's terribly common (guilty too) of taking what we know about this world and altering it just slightly to make it somebody new, so I give them credit for taking the time to develop and show the same sort of background I might find in a book. It made me care...and that's important in a story with which we are all very culturally familiar.

Which brings me to the meat. Avatar was predictable, and this wasn't a bad thing? No.
I'm a tree-hugging, pagan-leaning, anthropologist at heart, and thus the story of progress-against-(in this case literally) Mother Nature and ethnographer-falls for the study subject and becomes more like the subject than the establishment are always appealing.

It got me thinking about something we'd discussed on the first night of class, back in September. There are only so many stories. Just as there are archetypal figures, there are archetypal stories. Certain of these types are always going to work for certain people, so of course I went to sleep last night, making a list of what else will work for me, so long as the story isn't poorly constructed in addition to following a predictable pattern.

I have come up with the following things, and gods help me if a story has more than one of these. It could have flying pink kittens, I would probably still gush over it.

1. The noble savage (agh, kill me now...I am a product of American literature...you win Prof Olson, you win) ;

2. Good ol' Sacred Earth. This, of course, is rarely without the noble savage, but I think I can list them separately 'cause they are not necessarily dependent on one another;

I think I enjoy noble savage/sacred earth stories because it becomes easy to cast one group, or character, as the bad guy, responsible for bringing "civilization" with its accompaniment of pollution and culture-crushing values to the scene.
Cheering against this villain, allows me to feel righteous (as awful as that sounds). Not that I don't drive as much as the next 21st century American (less than some I'm sure, but still...like my car). I don't always do well with not wasting, etc. It's my favorite sort of escapism.
I can also channel my Great White Guilt in these stories. I have taken my ancestors' poor decisions up like a cross. I should really let it go, but it dogs me, and I don't know why. I just always like to see a supposedly dominant power go down in flames for their narrow-mindedness/fear and shallow goal-driven lunacy.
This also sets up a values fight. Almost always: possible financial gain v. things that matter to the soul. It's nice to imagine a world where financial gain isn't always going to come out on top as the most important thing.

3. A redemption story (especially if a character dies to redeem his or her actions, allowing the hero/ine to do what they need to do: RIP S. Snape.);

The reasons for enjoying redemption are a maybe a little more difficult. I have long been aware that few things warm the cockles of my heart more than a "me for him" sort of situation. (And not in a lover/beloved sort of way. That still leaves a wreck of a person behind, and I can't stand to think about it.) If a character who has been a consistent thorn makes a sacrifice, I go all mushy. Maybe I just want to believe in the good in people. I'm guilty of being a Luke Skywalker. "There is good in him. I feel it." It seems like there should be more, but I don't know what it is yet. I've thought about this one for years, and have yet to come to the bottom of it.

4. I also like a good pilgrimage: hero/ine goes away for one reason or another and returns changed and strong. Related to this, there is the story of finding voice and the ability to do what one did not think one was capable of doing.
I love this because I firmly believe in the changing power of an out-of-the-box experience. My enjoyment of this story is firmly rooted in art behaving as life should. (Now, if only my life could move through its current "learning" phase into the "found voice and strength" phase in a classy montage with some uplifting music. I'd like to put in a request for the lovely choral music from The Lion King when Simba is running back to Pride Rock. Thanks.)

(Included as sub-categories of the pilgrimage are the sibling story and the mentor-student story. A split in either important relationship can cause the pilgrimage, and the end point of both--after voice is found--should properly be a laying aside of pride and learning on both ends. It doesn't always happen that way, but then the reader/viewer learns something. That's worthwhile too.)

So thank you, movie with rainforest-dwelling phosphorescent humanoids for reminding me that "predictable" isn't always bad. Sometimes "predictable" just means "archetypal", and that takes a story from boring to important, whether or no the visuals are mind-blowing.

Variations on a Theme in G Major: Winter Waltz

So Here I am...not actually being abducted by aliens in the middle of the Siberian wastes, but strolling through my neighborhood after a concert. I went to hear the Rose Ensemble sing carols from Elizabethan England. I made friends with the woman who sat next to me. She was somewhere between my mother and my grandmother in age, and she agreed the sound of music from the 16th century was transporting and just the right thing to do during this Solstice season.

For some reason the carols that moved me the most were those tunes that were cradle songs for the infant Christ. I think they do well to convey the hope and peace that is forgotten in the rush of Life this time of year. It's the solstice today, so I've been thinking about darkness and light. The long dark is peaceful and deep, but can also be oppressive. On the other side of the longest night, there is lengthening day, hope that everything that now sleeps will bloom again, and I feel that my mind understands that cycle well.

The church I grew up in always included a call and response portion of their Christmas Eve service; the responses were all things like "And celebrate a new birth of hope/light in our lives." There's a reason I always enjoyed going to these services, even when I didn't give a fig for Christian dogma. Christmas is one of the only times they really get it.

In one of my fictional worlds, Longest Night is the most contemplative of holy days. It is a time of fasting, meditations and visions, followed by the second biggest party of the year. I gave it that significance because that is what our solstice holidays should be. It's also very reminiscent of the Christmas Eve/Christmas structure my life had when I was little. Christmas Eve was for going to candlelight service, viewing Christmas lights in the city and opening presents as a family. Christmas Day was a day of excess...food from the moment of waking up. Cookies for breakfast if we wanted (within reason), and then Grandma and Grandpa's house...where we could bounce of the walls and eat more. (I can smell the ham and cloves now.)

Anyway...I realized that I felt absolutely nothing for the upcoming holiday week, and that needed to change. I took it upon myself to become both contemplative and festive. The music was wonderful. I met a kindred spirit from another generation (always a blessing), and the winter night was wonderful for light-gazing.

The iPhone doesn't do so well with evening pics, but here are a few...

This is the church ceiling. I kept looking at it. The upside-down boat structure is even more pronounced in this church than in most I've attended, and the whole building is really designed to draw the eye upward. I kind of like it, even if it does have that most-Catholic of icons: Christ suspended on the cross, flanked by his sainted parents. (I've never been a fan of the crucified. I like empty crosses in my churches, thank you. I am, at least, that Protestant.)

This doesn't capture the radiance of the light coming through the snow at all, but it's still cool.

These are the footprints of Duke the Newf-Bernard who lives across the street from me. He's a gentle giant, and the quiet of his snowed-over footprints struck me as significant.

Markers leading up to a jolly holiday gathering.

One of my favorite local trees. It's enormous. Someday, I'm going to catch people in the act of putting lights on one of these monsters. Do people really hire bucket trucks?

I flopped into the snow underneath the great big tree to see what multi-colored stars look like.

I walked home and decorated my own little tree. I hope people driving by are cheered by it.

"Safe in my frame" or in which I provide context...

...and quote a lot of Tori in order to connect some dots.

This is related to the last post. My brain is on fire with its longing to be just what I need to be.

Here are some things.

When I started this blog, I was very angry at DB for needing someone to inspire him....and that the someone inspiring him wasn't me. I whined around in my brain about having to put myself out as a Muse for Hire. Now however, I'm beginning to think that's not the point. Why should I inspire anyone but myself?
It sound very lovely and romantic to inspire someone else, and maybe that can be part of it, but I should start at home. I must inspire me. I am my own muse. I shall reflect my quirks, my spirit, my Shakti.

The "parasol" bit in the blog URL is a reference to Tori Amos' song "Parasol", which she writes about in Piece by Piece as follows: "I saw a painting by Seurat - Seated Woman With A Parasol - in a book on Impressionism. I was drawn to it and I started to think about Victorian women and then some women today, the type of women who don't want to intimidate their partner and so allow themselves to become reduced so the other person can feel confident."

Gods. That's the more important part here. It's not the Muse for Hire bit. It's the Parasol part.
I have very nearly become that seated woman "safe in my frame/in your house/in your frame". No. This is not the girl I was. She would hate that with all the fiery passion only a 16-year-old is capable of. This is not the woman I am seeking to honor and resurrect as of late.

As a pallet cleanser after the drag that was Outlander, I read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. What? Yes. Yes and more yes. This book brought me back to a time in my life when everything was bursting with potential. I was coming into myself (more than I realized) among strong girlfriends. We didn't date. We had no time for such Tom-foolery. We didn't need it either; we had each other. And I think that's still where my strength lies--between me and the women I have known since we were girls. Sometimes, I think it's no wonder we're having a bit of man trouble. It takes a certain sort of guy to stand in the midst of Us, and not feel intimidated by the bonds that remain.

But...the Pants. This is a book about four friends (ages 15-16) who separate for a summer (camp, relative visits, etc.) and share amongst themselves a single pair of jeans (that magically fit them all beautifully). The Pants are not to be washed; they must travel, carrying the summer stories of the friends with them. What they're really doing, however, is carrying the strength and support of the far-flung friends to each other--from Greece to Baja California. I'm not so far from any of my buds, but that these girls get how important they are to each other mattered to me. It made me remember the pieces of my younger self (who I have so often written off as having nothing important to say) that may have known more than I know now. I'm still sort of parsing this, but I think this book was a very necessary piece of whatever Growing I'm doing at the moment.

So, what did my 16-year-old self know that I need now?
Back to a Tori song from that time that I loved to belt as angrily as I could: "Professional Widow"
I didn't really get it at the time, but I did understand that there was a lot of indignant girl rage in this song.

Tori on "Widow": "[Professional] Widow is my hunger for the energy I felt some of the men in my life possessed: the ability to be king. I wasn't content just being a muse. I was the creative force. I was in relationships with different men where if they could honour that, they couldn't honour the woman, and if they could honour the woman, they couldn't honor the creative force..."

My 16-year-old self was hungry, and very few people had yet to tell her no. Ok. She was never going to be a stage actress under the bright lights of New York and London theaters, winning praise worldwide. She was never going to be a concert violinist either, but her mind was strong and full of good things.

I wrote more between the ages of 15 and 18 than I think I ever had before (or perhaps since). I had confidence in that writing that allowed me to share with people to whom I had hardly said three sentences before I handed them a manuscript. Maybe it was not so much the confidence in the writing, but confidence that I was not alone in feeling hungry. The young women who read about Armina all understood "the energy...the ability to be king."

I wrote it out very literally, true. Armina of that time was a warrior for her goddess, destroying false kings and her father--very subtle that, haha. I poured myself into that other young woman...all that desire to have all the pieces of myself recognized and honored.
Reading journals from high school is a little scary, but under the bravado--the statements of myself being fit for glory--was that desire to have the creative energy and the woman honored. I just wasn't quite sure how to get there.

My younger self also knew that it was ok to be herself. Loony, off-the-wall, different. I was always a little over the top. It is important to be a simmered-down version of myself at this point, but I knew something then about self-loyalty of which I may have lost sight.
"Self-loyalty" is a phrase which I rebel against for sounding too much like selfishness, but it's different. It's a matter of giving the best of yourself--to yourself and others. The ability to check in and say: Are you just afraid of something different or does this dishonor you? ...and make a decision from that point.

I think a lot of the friends I made, back in the day, I made because I seemed a little fearless. I stood on tables and gave recitations. I wore pleather pants and fangs to a formal dance at which I was another girl's "date." Some of this, certainly, is the strength of friends. "You want to be bizarre and out there--I'll be right beside you, laughing with you about your lunacy--just lead on, Oh Crazy One."

Sure, I can throw a lot of this in the "please please please notice me" pile, but that would only be telling part of the story, the part I've been telling for a long time. It dishonors that young woman I was. I've stepped out of my frame and into another frame...that I don't think that girl would recognize. Parts of it are good, but parts of it could stand to put on a little hot pink glitter, some rainbow socks and remember how to "Psycho Laugh" at exactly the right moment.

Being Woman

As I was writing my "spiritual memoir" for class, I came—belatedly—to the realization that so much of my spirituality was tied up in frustrations with my own femaleness. We are “made in the image of god”, but god was “god the father”. My young brain couldn’t wrap around that any easier than my more "mature" brain can. I don’t accept it. What I do accept is that I am part of the collective that makes the world full of meaning and sacredness. That sounds mad and more than a bit fluffy, but it doesn’t have the affect of divorcing me--in my body--as something that is the image of a god.

When I’m having a good dance night, I have no doubt that I am made in the image of god[dess]. It is easy to think “What if the world was danced into being, rolling off the undulating spine of the Creator?” In the power of a really talented belly dancer’s muscles, I see the flex and flow of all the possibility that women have.

If I may digress for a moment: I think that is why belly dance is unlike any other dance, and it drives me absolutely bats when people reduce it to “ohmigodsexy”. It is that. I’m certainly not going to deny it. I, and zillions of other people worldwide I’m sure, want to lick Sharon Kihara’s abdominals, but it is more than that. It is challenging. It is the body glorying in itself, expressing the potential of creation as it accents the most biological bits of a woman all the while melding them into the whole. It is the mind working with the body; it is very controlled. Belly dance is not reductively sexy. It is empowering—more about the dancer than the audience. And in spite of this, I have met so few conceited belly dancers. That, I think, is testimony to the power of dancing for oneself. No justifications, no false pride, as woman tries to reconcile herself with an activity that is not for herself.

Reaching this place with myself has been hard-fought. It is obvious, when I think of my younger self, that I have always wanted to get here. She was an angry girl. She wanted to be a warrior for women everywhere. She would, like Erik Draven in The Crow, find every perpetrator of violence (physical or otherwise) against women and beat that person to a bloody pulp, take away their power and their agency. (You dare make me uncomfortable in my body! I’ll show you uncomfortable!) It is amazing, just writing those words, how easy it is to still feel the rage of that young woman. I spent a lot of time cultivating that anger.

It was a false sense of strength, but I used it. I lashed out in words, thinly veiled diatribes in fictional form, but my words gave pause to other young women in my class who were feeling similar things. I shared this writing with girls in my high school, and for a time, I was a mini-celebrity among the other frustrated young women (and a few young men) of my class. The anger was not useful, but the outrage may have been.

For a long time, I forgot this part of me. In the arms of a good relationship, I grew a bit complacent, I think. I had a hard time connecting with the righteous anger that I needed to rewrite young Armina. When I was once again introduced to anger at a man who was directly in my life, and also a young woman who seems to desperately want to be a young man, I remembered myself as a young woman...so desperate herself to just be comfortable in her body. I, too, wished to be a boy when I was little. I would tuck my hair up under a baseball hat, trying to imagine my feminine roundness away. (And I was a round 7 year old.) I thought, perhaps not consciously, that the answer to being comfortable in my skin was to be a boy. That faded, of course, but my discomfort in my femininity did not.

I’ve only just now started referring to my peers and myself as women. This is not so much an age thing (though we are nearing our venerable third decade), as it is a desire to leave behind a diminutive. Woman, with all its baggage of disenfranchisement and inequality, is also the strongest thing to be, and I’m embracing that anew…or perhaps for the first time. It blows me away that humanity is still alive and kicking sometimes, and that is women. My ancestresses have pushed through feelings of unimaginable frustration, feeling love for their families, but perhaps equally boxed in, without other options.

I always (somewhat) laughingly think of myself in the 50s, drinking martinis until I float as soon as I’m alone in the house, or 1890s me with a glass of sherry, struggling to find meaning in being a mother, valiantly staying away from the opiates that I kept on hand for dosing sick children. And that’s just the recent memory stuff. The women on my walls have possibly had those feelings, though my IL grandma was employed all through raising a family. She had to deal with my grandfather telling her that she thought more of the job than she did the family. “It must have seemed that way to him, but I didn’t,” she told me. It was for the family that she worked so hard.
It is these women I join. My grandmothers are living evidence of sacred femininity. They have lived, loved and worked through times that could have diminished them even more than this one has tried to diminish me. We have struggled with similar things, and I hope to finally banish shame, discomfort and guilt from the blood of the women in my family.

The following poem was written not quite two years ago when my therapist was trying to drag me out of another period of being uncomfortable in my skin. I turned to Tori Amos' writings about archetypes and the divine feminine and decided to play with them a bit myself. I offer it up again in thanks and because I need to keep reminding myself...

“Archetypal”
They say that Cleopatra wasn’t Liz Taylor gorgeous.
It was her boldness and wit that drove Caesar mad.
In the stacks of the library at Alexandria,
they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

A continent away, Caesar’s men chased down Iceni daughters.
Their milk-pale, freckled bodies broke under the onslaught of centurion spears.
Their Mother-queen rode into battle,
bringing the night-dark wings of the Morrigan down on her enemies.

Rumor has it, both Cleo and Boadicea died of poison.
They might have talked strategy together,
red head, bent to dark one.
“Horses, my dear?”
“Oh no, elephants, like Alexander.”

And I really think that Jesus’ mother would have wept
to see her power consigned to her virginity.
“Why, Miss Magdalene can you go about with your hair unbound,
and I must smile benignly from beneath my halo?”

Hildegaard understood this.
Her Virgins went with their hair loose, under the sheerest of veils.
The bishops tut and tsk, and still the ladies of Bingen sang:
“How very hard it is to hold out against whatever tastes of the Apple.”

I would bring the apple to Hildegaard’s cell
and tell her of maidens whose bows shot snakes
that turned into herons.
“What crawls on its belly can also learn to fly,” she would say
and draw a mandala that would make it all very clear.

Mixed Feelings

I started reading a "fluff" book over Thanksgiving break. Other than Pratchett, I haven't had time for a lot of light reading lately, and--honestly--if everything I read made me examine the depths of my brain, I might go off the deep end. For this, I'm enjoying myself. On other levels, not so much.
This book I'm reading (Outlander by Diana Gabaldon) has strong characters and strong writing, great sense of setting, but holy stodgy plotting and no editing Batman! I can't really stop reading because its a well-constructed book, and when Gabaldon does get to the plotty bits, I'm really sucked in. However, there's a mountain of filler which amounts to:

Hero: I want you.
Heroine: I want you more.
Hero: You couldn't possibly.
Heroine: Wanna bet?
Hero: Let's find a [haystack, barn, pile of leaves, stream, bed if we're feeling civilized] right this very moment, rest of the world be damned.
Heroine: Oh you manly hunk of manmeat, you!
Scotland: I'm even prettier than both of you, so shut up and include me as a third partner.

(Gonna read the rest of it over a Friday night with some strong alcohol and see how trashed I get if I drink every time they boink or Scotland is awesome.)

One would think that a man outlawed, who has a whole lot of issues with a certain gentleman of the English army, whose uncles may or may not want him out of the way would be feeling a little more pressure to either get himself out of the country (I hear America was really nice in the late 18th century) or resolve things in court. He's got the potential favor of another English gentleman (who incidentally tried to prod his bum with something hard and heavy when the hero was just a "wee laddie"...but that's sometimes the best sort of favor to have, right? right.) His uncle's solicitor seems to like him. There are several ways we could be wrapping this up....or at least start in on some Jacobite uprising and start slaying people, so he winds up lord of the manor 'cause his uncles die heroically at Culloden, etc etc. Something's gotta give. Gabaldon's set up about six potentially interesting conflicts, but she's acting on none of them.

I've read romance novels; I've read historical fiction with a romantic component. I write gritty (realistic?) fantasy with a romantic component. I kinda dig on that sort of thing in my books apparently, but it's a matter of balance!

In a romance, there may be other external conflict, but the main conflict/question to be resolved is "will they get together"? That works for me. I'm not going to hate on it.

In the books I most often read, the conflict often goes: There is Political Unrest. Normal Person (and Friends) is sucked into said Political Unrest. There is growing. There are consequences. People die, people love, people betray, etc. The world may or may not be saved, but the ride was worth it somehow.

This book is neither one or the other so far. It resolved the romantic tension too early, so it can't be a romance. It's not hitting up any of the possible political conflicts, much to my great annoyance. There are so many good characters on the fringes with plottings going on. I want to SEE them! (Difficult when the story is first person, I know, but there are ways damnit.)

I completely understand how difficult it is to drag out a love interest for a whole book and not resolve it. As a writer, I often want to get to the juicy bits. Also, as a writer, I'd love to spend all kinds of time with my characters frolicking through fields and having nice days, but ah, I know that I should give these scenes purpose if they're going to there. You can't just hang out with your characters. That is the difference between the novel and real life.
I sit at my desk and yammer at people pointlessly all day and it's not world-altering, I know that, but in a book, the moments you can write like that are (or should be) VERY limited. Give your readers a few warm fuzzy scenes if you like, but don't give in to the temptation to write their most minute interactions just because you LOVE them.

I don't know that I'm always successful at this, but I'm aware of it. For example: I send Rak on a sleigh ride with a crowd of his "friends". This could all be picturesque "dashing through the snow" and singing and mulled wine, but it's not.
I use it to finally throw out some background on some monsters we'll run into later. I introduce a personality conflict that will grow into a political conflict, and also introduce a character for the readers to wonder about. (Is he sinister? Is he just a jackass?)

Really, this was a very long ramble to proclaim: Write with purpose people! Make us as fond of your characters as you are, and we may not mind a few pages of lovefest here and there. Make your stories full of action, and the moments of calm will be that much more appreciated!

Thank you and good night. :P