I get off on experience. Rather, in understanding an experience fully. No matter how minute it may seem to someone else, I like to delve into the intricacies of something and get a complete perception of the thing.
Boredom can set it quickly with me, though, and I often abandon the something when I feel like I know it completely, or if I feel like I can see the end of the ride. It takes a lot to hold my interest for a long time. It takes even more sometimes just to capture my attention.
Even Alice (Lewis Carroll's original Alice) wasn't so interested in the talking White Rabbit; she didn't find him to be curious in and of himself. It's only when "the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet.., she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge."
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.
She jumps down the hole, curious about the things she sees as she falls—the cupboards and bookshelves that line the walls of the passage, the empty ORANGE MARMALADE jar that she refuses to drop because she doesn't want it to land on anyone below her. And she doesn't look down, doesn't watch for what's to come, because it's dark and she can't see what's there.
Honestly, I'm attracted to rabbit holes. There's something alluring about the experience that looks like not much of nothin'. From the outside, from the onset, it's just a hole in the ground. There may be a rabbit. There may be a snake. There be just a hole. But you can never know until you look inside.
For Alice, the inside of the rabbit hole opens up a fantastical world of imagination and nonsense, of life lessons and epiphanies, but she does nothing with that. She wanders from place to place in Wonderland, questioning everything but never coming to any real understandings. Interestingly, the White Rabbit appears three times in the story, ushering Alice from one mad situation to another. He's not the reason she does anything; he's simply a catalyst to move her from place to place.
Eventually Alice becomes maddened by the surreality and wakes from her dream, having learned nothing about herself or life or anything. "You're nothing but a pack of cards!" She is, after all, a child. And it's Alice's sister's thoughts that close the story, hoping that Alice will keep her girlish whimsy and be able to share her curiosity with other children when she's a grown woman.
Conversely, Tim Burton's Alice—the grown, almost-adult Alice—is the one who doesn't leap down the hole. Instead she sees the White Rabbit (Nivens McTwisp) running through the garden and is immediately captivated, chasing him in an attempt to flee her own surprise engagement party. Just when she loses sight of him, he grabs her by the ankle and yanks her off her feet.
She was falling down the rabbit hole.
This time Alice is looking around as she tumbles, scrambling for anything that will help her make sense of what's happening, that will help stop her fall. She again grabs the empty jam jar, but this time she drops it without thought of who or what may be below her. She keeps falling, "...down and down and down into deeper darkness, where there was no longer anything to hold on to."
McTwisp still appears to help move Alice from one absurdity to another, but his role is much more intentional than it was for Carroll's Alice. He reveals that he had gone above ground to actively seek Alice, to return her to Underland (Wonderland) to fulfill her destiny of slaying the Jabberwocky. He does everything in his power to help propel her toward her eventual conclusion of self-revelation and self-acceptance, though he's still not a major character in any traditional sense.
Almost Alice's journey into the hole is not of her own doing, though it's certainly her choice to chase the rabbit that led her toward the discovering of it. Once inside, she again battles her own preconceptions to make sense of everything around her. Even though she seems to forget this third trip into Wonderland, she is left with the revelation of self-confidence that she didn't have before. She returns to the garden where she first saw the White Rabbit and finds herself clinging to the edge of the rabbit hole. She pulls herself up and out of the hole and returns to the party to share her insights with everyone else.
I tend to be a hole jumper. I often seek out the rabbit holes and go sometimes head first into them, just to see what's lining the shelves and to explore the possibly-unimaginable that I might find inside. I'm fascinated by those new things, no matter how dusty or potentially frightening they may be, because it's an opportunity to understand something in a whole new way.
Sometimes I'm dragged down the hole, pulled in by my own White Rabbit, and I'm more likely to tumble, to not be able to get my bearings until I hit the bottom. Hard. But I will eventually find a way to upright myself and take a look around and try my best to make sense of it all, even if it ends up making sense only to me.
The biggest fear, of course, is that it's not a rabbit hole at all, but just a hole, that there is no experiential advantage to be gained. In that case, I pull myself up and out, and I keep moving forward along my own garden path until the Rabbit rushes past me again, leading me on to my next discovery.
Ever wished you take that hot date on trip to Wonderland? You know, the place with those crazies that Alice got sucked into? Well if you happen to be in Tokyo any time soon you can. That’s right; Alice of Magic World is an Alice In Wonderland-themed restaurant full things straight out of the Lewis Carroll classic.
Playing card dining tables, a magic forest and heart-shaped chandeliers make this place the trip you’re looking for, without the need for those troublesome hallucinogens! It’s the fourth in a series of restaurants focusing on the fantasy theme and it looks incredible. It may not be the classiest food spot around — Cheshire Cat tail pizza on the menu doesn’t help that — but it would surely make for a fun night-out.
Go to Mara Davis's blog at 929dave.fm to see the rest of the photographs. This restaurant in Tokyo is amazing. It's almost worth a trip for me just to go see it.
I have some friends who are expecting a baby. They haven't found out yet if it's a boy or a girl, though they'll know in a few weeks if the baby's cooperative during the ultrasound. They've been back and forth about what to name the baby. Mom is convinced is a girl. (They have a boy name as a contingency plan.)
Mom wants something beautiful and unique. Dad wants to call her Yoshimi, regardless of her given name. I suggested Alice, but I don't think it's happening. Children of the 70's have both the Brady Bunch and Linda Lavin to thank for screwing that one up.
My name, Stephanie, is from the Greek Stephen and means something like "crown" or "crowned with glory". It's a reference to the Biblical Stephen, who is considered to be the first martyr of the Christian Church. (Wow, now that I think about it, that whole martyrdom thing could explain a lot about me....)
I wasn't named after Stephen, though. My mom always told me I was named after Stefanie Powers, though note the spelling difference. I was excited when I was about eight to learn that Stevie Nicks was also a Stephanie, seeing as how I'd been spoon-fed Fleetwood Mac since birth. (Later I would throw her over entirely for Lindsay Buckingham, but that's another blog post.) I didn't know any other Stephanies while I was growing up, just like I didn't know anyone else with a last name beginning with 'Q' until I was in junior high, and I was back to being the only Q in the school records, ever, when I got to high school.
I will answer to 'Steph' or 'Stephanie', though 'Stessie' was acceptable from my cousins when they were little. I've been known to respond to 'hey you', 'bitch, 'girlie, 'baby, 'honey', 'sweetie', or even 'dollface'-- but only if you're the one person in the world who is allowed to call me that. (If you're unsure, it's not you. Don't even try, because I will kick you.) If you're so brave as to try to call me 'Stephie', you'd better be able to run. Many have tried, but only two have succeeded. In a good mood, I'll ignore your attempts to use the uppity moniker. If I'm in a less-than-gracious headspace, expect to have your block knocked off.
There's an attitude of Stephie that just infuriates me. It's a spoiled, rotten, ungrateful, bitchy girl who expects everything to be handed to her. Yes, I realize how I'm opening myself up to the snide comments and maybe-not-so-facetious egging. I can be her, certainly, and sometimes I pride myself on having that ability. It's a persona I can step into when needed, much like my stupid blonde. It's not really who I am at all, but I recognize that there are times in life when being that girl can be beneficial.
Then there's the issue of the middle name. Until I was married, my middle name was 'Karen'. It was my godmother's middle name, though I can only remember having ever seen her once in my life. Like all Southern children, I could gauge the trouble I was in by how much of my name was yelled across the house: "Stephanie!" meant I the waters were getting warm; "Stephanie Karen!" meant I was in some pretty hot water indeed; and "Stephanie Karen Quinn!" meant it was boiling and I should probably start thinking up an excuse before they found me.
In part of my hometown, it's common practice for the daughters of the wealthy Catholic and (high) Episcopal families to be named Mary Moms-Maiden-Name. There were so many Mary Catherines, Mary Graces, and Mary Margarets, that someone thought they'd get creative. I knew a Mary Thomas, Mary Carver, Mary Tolbert, Mary James, and a Mary Smith. It totally fit each of those girls.
When I got married, I had to decide whether to keep Karen or use my maiden name for the new middle. I wasn't hyphenating, and I didn't intend to keep Quinn as my last name. So I opted for the 'Q' for the middle initial. It had become such an integral part of my identity that I couldn't just abandon it. 'Karen' didn't hold a substantial amount of significance for me. It was a pretty easy call.
Alice wonders about her name after she tumbles down the rabbit hole in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. She has already been shrinking and growing, and the crisis of identity is well underway:
"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!" And she began thinking over all the children she knew that were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of them.
"I'm sure I'm not Ada," she said, "for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all; and I'm sure I can't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she knows such a very little! Besides, she's she, and I'm I, and--oh dear, how puzzling it all is!"
She tries to remember the things she knows of math and geography. She tries for the first time in the story to recite a well-known poem, but she is flummoxed when she can't recall the words correctly, a commonly recurring theme in Alice:
"I'm sure those are not the right words," said poor Alice, and her eyes filled with tears again as she went on, "I must be Mabel after all, and I shall have to go and live in that poky little house, and have next to no toys to play with, and oh! ever so many lessons to learn! No, I've made up my mind about it; if I'm Mabel, I'll stay down here! It'll be no use their putting their heads down and saying 'Come up again, dear!' I shall only look up and say 'Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else'--but, oh dear!" cried Alice, with a sudden burst of tears, "I do wish they would put their heads down! I am so very tired of being all alone here!"
There's certainly an emotional connotation to a person's name, both from within and without. All of our acquired knowledge of a name--everyone we've ever known, or not known, with that name and how we recall that person--is intimately entwined with the name itself, even if the person changes. I have refused to date or get to know people because they happened to have the same name as someone else I didn't like. We also expect other people with our same name to behave in similar ways, as if they have applied the same emotional knowledge to the name itself. I fully expect other Stephanies to be strong-willed and obstinate, but also generous and loyal. We're also curious and smart and generally likable, though we have some substantial self-esteem issues that sometimes rear their ugly heads in our gilded mirrors. We also like cats and princesses, though nothing too froufrou or fussy.
I know nothing of the Stefanies and the Stephanias of the world. Those are wholly different names. Stevie isn't really a Stephanie, and I bet she'd back me up on this. And don't get me started on the Stepfanies. UGH.
But what if I'd been named something else entirely? What if I'd been Julia or Tiffany or Samantha? Would any other names have fit me as well as Stephanie? I've tried to imagine myself with some other name, but it's hard. Heather was an option for a while in my early teens, but then there was that whole movie. Natalie might have worked, but it's my grandmother's name.
If I had to choose a new name now, it would likely be Ardala, 'cause it would bring me one step closer to my dream job of intergalactic princess.
I don't know what my friends will name their baby, and it's completely up to them. I fully believe that the babies whisper their names to their parents when ithey're ready. Mom and Dad will know when they've found the right name for their child, and no amount of input from anyone else will change that.
Having had two children, I also know that it won't really matter for a while. They'll end up calling it "the baby" for a few weeks, and pretty quickly they'll christen it with some ridiculous inner-family-circle-only nickname that sticks with them until they rebel against it in their early teens. I like to think of it as their jellicle name. I fully expect to have my ass handed to me the first time I call my eldest "Binky Butt" in front of his friends, and I'm positive "Tricky" for the youngest will come back to haunt me.
I don't have the ringlets of an Ada, and I know too much to be a Mabel. Today, at least, I'm too sure of who I am to be an Alice. But I have the purple-streaked strawberry-blonde hair and too-loud-laugh of Stephanie Quinn Jackson, so I guess I'm sticking with that. It seems to suit me just fine.
My very favorite movie, ever, is John Cameron Mitchell's 2001 masterpiece Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It's a really spectacular film about soul-searching and pain and love and identity. The main character is a slightly-but-justifiably crazy blonde with an overwhelming affinity for glitter and rock 'n roll. You can't get much muchier than that! How could I not love her?
I started thinking about this movie toward the end of Iceapalooza 2011. It's not kid-appropriate, so I had to wait until they weren't around to watch it for the hundred-dozenth time. Last night, in a fit of self-indulgent moroseness, I curled up on the couch to get my glam and drag on.
The first thing I'm always struck by is how gorgeous the film is; it is deliciously beautiful, cinemagraphically, even in its grittiest moments. It's visually clever in its economy of field; sets are often small and cramped, and Mitchell is astonishingly efficient as using the small areas to their fullest effect. (Hedwig's play area in the oven in East Berlin is my favorite.)
The second thing that always blows me away is Mitchell's performance as Hedwig. It's a character he created originally for the stage play of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, then translated it to screen as writer, director, and lead actor. He is remarkably talented as both actor and singer in the film, and his performance garnered a 2001 Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor. (He also won a Best Director award at Sundance, along with numerous other accolades.) I remember watching the Golden Globes that year, which I rarely do, and thinking, "Wow! That's fantastic that such a performance got the nomination, but there's no way in Hell he'll win." I was right, of course.
The third thing that always kicks my ass is the music. The music and lyrics were written by Stephen Trask after he and Mitchell met quite by accident on a plane. Trask received an Obie award for the play, as well as a Grammy nomination for the film. For the production of the film, the musicians prerecorded the music for the songs and synced along during filming. Vocals, however, were done almost entirely live on set, to create a true feel of live performance. I can listen to this soundtrack over and over and still get something new from it every time.
As so commonly happens these days, I'm always on the search for Alice-y things to write about. Watching the movie again, I was struck by how much Hedwig is like Alice. So I started looking for other similarities between the two stories. Turns out, there's a lot.
The story that's told in Hedwig doesn't unfold chronologically. A lot of what the audience sees happens somewhat in flashback, as Hedwig is telling her story during her performances. For the purposes of comparison, I'm breaking it down into a neater timeline. (I still suggest you go watch the movie. Duh!)
[The best way to view Hedwig and the Angry Inch is to watch the movie, about 90 minutes, then watch the documentary "Whether You Like It or Not: the Story of Hedwig", then watch the movie again. It's amazing to see what they did with a $6,000,000 budget and some divine inspiration.]
SPOILER ALERT!
Hedwig is born Hansel Schmidt in pre-Wall Germany. He's the "slip of a girly boy" son of an American GI and an overbearing German mother, who flees to East Berlin as the Wall goes up, because, she says, it's better to be forever powerless than to be corrupted by your own power. Hansel grows up as flamboyantly as possible in this dark, austere environment.
"Our apartment was so small, that mother made me play in the oven. Late at night I would listen to the voices of the American masters, Tony Tennille, Debby Boone, Anne Murray who was actually a Canadian working in the American idiom. And then there were the crypto-homo rockers: Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, David Bowie who was actually an idiom working in America and Canada. These artists, they left as deep an impression on me as that oven rack did on my face. To be an American in muskrat love, soft as an easy chair not even the chair, I am I said, have I never been mellow? And the colored girls sing... doo do doo do doo do doo... but never with the melody. How could I do it better than Tony or Lou... HEY BOY, TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE!"
At the ripe age of 26, Hansel is sunbathing nude, surrounded by barbed wire and debris, when Sergeant Luther Robinson, stumbles upon Hansel and tells him that he's so pretty he must be a girl. Sergeant Luther plies Hansel with Gummy Bears, the brightly-colored, sweeter versions of the German Gummi Bears, then with other candy. They fall in love, and Luther wants to marry Hansel. To be able to get him out of East Germany, Hansel will have to prove he's a woman. Luther and Hansel's mom, Hedwig, hatch a plan to get a sex-change operation for Hansel, then to give the new her Hedwig's passport. "To be free," Mom-Hedwig says, "one must give up a part of oneself."
The operation goes horribly wrong. Hedwig's incision closes up, and she's left with the angry inch. Luther takes her to Junction City, Kansas, where he leaves her for another man on their first anniversary. Hedwig takes on odd jobs ("mostly the jobs we call blow") and babysitting to make ends meet.
While babysitting the infant son of a General from the nearby Army base, she meets the General's 17-year-old son, Tommy Speck. Tommy is instantly drawn to Hedwig and goes to see her perform at a local shop with her band, comprised entirely of Korean-born Army wives. Tommy and Hedwig begin a mostly one-sided sexual affair, but they also begin writing songs together for Tommy's burgeoning music career. Hedwig gives Tommy his new identity of Tommy Gnosis. Just as Tommy is finally beginning to accept the reality of what Hedwig is, he panics and leaves her. He goes on to become an internationally famous rock star, performing the songs Hedwig wrote.
Hedwig gets a new band, the Angry Inch, made up of Eastern European immigrants. She keeps all of their passports to keep them from leaving her. At some point she marries Yitzhak, played by Miriam Shore. (The juxtaposition of Shore soprano harmonies with Mitchell's tenor melodies is outstanding.) Yitzhak wants to be a woman, wants to be Hedwig in a lot of ways. He seems to love Hedwig even though he's scared of her, but he becomes more and more bitter about their relationship as the film progresses. He auditions for the part of Angel in a cruise ship performance of Rent, but Hedwig tears up his passport when he confronts her and tries to leave.
Hedwig hires a new manager, Phyllis Stein (Andrea Martin), and goes on a tour that shadows that of Tommy Gnosis. While Tommy plays huge arenas, Hedwig and the Angry Inch play at the neighboring Bilgewater's, a chain of family restaurants whose patrons are mostly offended and disgusted by Hedwig's show. She does develop a small following of loyal fans who surround her, wearing their own giant, yellow foam hair that mimics Hedwig's signature blond wig.
Hedwig has simultaneously filed a lawsuit against Tommy for stealing her songs. She tries to get close to Tommy ("You know how much I don't like that word, stalking"), to try to force him into admitting he stole her work. She becomes more and more irrational and bitter as her journey unfolds. One night, she reverts to working as a prostitute, and she is unexpectedly picked up in a limo by Tommy Gnosis. He eventually relents and apologizes for stealing her songs, which it turns out he never understood anyway. They argue and are in a car accident. The story becomes public, and the tables are turned.
Hedwig does her last real show, at the Times Square Bilgewater's, and goes fucking nuts. All the pressure and the drama and the strife culminate in this intense climactic performance where she violently rips off her drag while the crowd and the band are agape.
There's a sudden cut to an all-white room, everyone dressed in white, where Hedwig sings "Midnight Radio", a song of celebration of "all the misfits and the losers" of the world who are brought together by music through their own darknesses. Hedwig gives Yitzhak her wig, encouraging Yitzhak to go and be his dream. In the final moments, Hedwig is brought face-to-face with Tommy, alone on a dark stage, singing his version of "Wicked Little Town". Hedwig is now more Hansel in smeared make-up, having lost all of the female trappings. Hansel/Hedwig walks naked down a dark alley into the night. FADE OUT.
Okay, so back to this Alice analogy. We're working from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, being the original work from which all other Alices derive. The comparisons of Hedwig to Alice don't follow exactly in chronological order, either, between the movie and the book, so bear with me.
Hansel in East Berlin is a young Alice, playing in a world that bores her. He/she is distracted by the White Rabbit (Sergeant Luther) and follows him down the rabbit hole that is the crazy process of the sex change operation. Hansel is brave and reluctant about being with Luther, i.e. growing and shrinking, as he takes the brightly-colored Gummy Bears and the American candy bars. It's a total EAT ME/DRINK ME moment.
Hansel's mother Hedwig is the Mouse that Alice first encounters after she falls to the bottom of the hole. Alice has already been battling with the beginnings of the identity crisis, shrinking and growing to fit her round peg through the square door hole. She is huge and cries great, giant tears, then shrinks and is trapped in the pool.
"O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse!" [snip] The Mouse looked at her rather inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes, but it said nothing.
The elder Hedwig responds similarly to Hansel. She's never understood her son and why he can't just assimilate into the East German culture and relinquish his power to the forces that are greater than he. She seems to recognize that Hansel is drowning and helps push him to the dry banks, i.e. across the Wall to America.
The bands, both the one comprised of the Korean wives and the Angry Inch, are the birds on the bank and the other random, talking animals in the story. Their actions may have some momentary significance, but they mostly pass through the time as extraneous decoration to Hedwig's journey. She may interact with them, but it's often more to show dimensions of Hedwig than it is to illustrate anything about the musician. Much like the Dodo, the Dormouse, the Eaglet, etc.
Sergeant Luther (the White Rabbit) takes Hedwig (Alice) to Junction City, Kansas, and abandons her a year later in a trailer park. The trailer park is one of my favorite analogies in this whole comparison. I debated whether it was like the tea party (which is really Bilgewater's in all of its incarnations) or maybe the Queen of Hearts' croquet ground. But no! There's a not-so-well remembered scene in Alice where the white rabbit goes looking for the Duchess' gloves. He sees Alice and mistakes her for his maid servant, Mary Ann, and sends her into the house to get the gloves. She goes inside, but she starts to grow and gets so big that she's stuck in the house. A crowd outside the house throws rocks at her, which turn into little cakes that Alice eats and shrinks back to her normal size.
The trailer is the White Rabbit/Luther's house. Luther mistakes Hansel for a woman originally, and then still expects Hedwig to be a woman, even though the operation was botched. Hedwig gets stuck inside, trapped under the weight of her situation and her own identity. One of the best scenes in Hedwig happens here, the "Wig in a Box" performance. She sings about how she gets sad, not fitting in, and puts on different wigs to be different selves. The confident energy becomes so overwhelming that the sides of the trailer burst open to let her muchness out into the night.
Yitzhak is the Hatter. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Hatter explains to Alice that he and the March Hare are always stuck in time, having tea, because it's how he escapes decapitation by the Queen of Hearts for singing. Yitzhak often tries to sing his own song, in his own way, and is silenced by Hedwig. He is perpetually stuck in the maddening role of Hedwig's emotional punching bag. He is always seen wearing a bandana or a wig, never a bare head.
Phyllis Stein is the Cheshire Cat. She appears kind of randomly to tease and advise Hedwig. There's actually a deleted scene in which Phyllis has a cell phone switch installed into the roof of her mouth. To make her phone work, she has to click her tongue over and over. It's very reminiscent of the grin.
Hedwig's public crusade and attack against Tommy's plagiarism is very much like the trial in the King's court. The jury/public knows really very little about the actual facts and can only make judgments based on the absurdities they glimpse from time to time. There's a very large public gathering in the final Bilgewater's scene, which erupts into utter chaos, just like the Knave's trial.
Tommy Gnosis is certainly the Knave of Hearts. The Knave is put on trial for stealing the tarts. Tommy is accused of stealing Hedwig's tarts: her songs. Like the Knave, Tommy never really has a good explanation for what happens.
That covers most of the major characters, except my favorite: the Blue Caterpillar. Because I love the name Absolem that Tim Burton later gives the Caterpillar, I'm sticking with that for now. Absolem is a tiny, wiggling thing that obscures Alice's vision with his smoke screen. He taunts her and teases her, then tries to lead her toward the truth of her own identity. He builds and destroys her confidence and challenges her sexuality with his own phallic little body.
Do you get where I'm going with this??
Absolem, the Blue Caterpillar, is the Angry Inch. Not the band. The actual "one inch mound of flesh".
Hedwig is taunted and driven by the Inch, much as Alice is by Absolem. Both the Inch and Absolem control the relationship until the very end, when Hedwig and Alice respectively revolt against the madness surrounding them and wake from the crazy dreams they've been in.
And Hedwig certainly does wake. She becomes Hansel, reverting almost to his original form and state, though newly confident if unsteady.
Honestly, I was surprised by how many comparisons could be made between the two stories. Alice has been altered and changed and derived from so many times, that it's surprising when I see a new version of her. I have no idea if John Cameron Mitchell had any intention of having such parallels to Lewis Carroll. (I have searched online and found no reference to it anywhere.) Perhaps it works because Alice is so archetypical of the battle of the inner self with the outer perceptions.
No matter, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a masterful telling of one girl's struggle to really find herself in the midst of chaos and confusion and misunderstanding, all set to a kick-ass soundtrack. It's something every girl can relate to, as well as a few men I know. The added glittery glam and fanciness just make it that much better.
I have this friend. I'll call them "CC". Male or female doesn't matter for the purposes of this conversation, though I fully recognize that gender can lend a strong hand to determining how a person behaves in any given situation. I'll stick with an inappropriate editorial "they" for now.
So CC isn't exactly what I'd call a fair-weather friend, but they are inconsistent. Almost transient in their friendship. Our friendship usually plays out at CC's discretion, but not always. I know the reasons for it, and I probably should have known them at the onset of the friendship. That doesn't make it any less frustrating at times.
It's all very Alice. (What isn't, right? Right??) Specifically, it's very Alice and the Cheshire-Cat.
Alice first meets the Cheshire-Cat in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland outside the home of the Duchess. All the craziness is ensuing with the screaming baby and the smoke-filled kitchen. Everyone is irritated and sneezing, except for the cook and the grinning cat, lying on the hearth. Alice comments to the Duchess that she never knew that cats could grin. The Duchess gets mad and flings the baby at Alice, then leaves to play croquet with the Queen.
Alice tries to calm the baby, who turns into a pig and runs away into the woods. Alice is surprised to see the Cheshire-Cat sitting outside the house in a tree.
The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.
Alice asks the Cat which direction she should go and he retorts that it depends on where she wants to get to. She doesn't care where--"then it doesn't matter which way you go"--as long as she gets somewhere. The Cheshire-Cat explains that one direction leads to the Mad Hatter, while the other leads to the March Hare. Either route will lead her to people who are mad.
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
They converse a bit more about why the Cat itself is mad, then about whether or not Alice will be playing croquet with the Queen. The Cat vanishes but suddenly reappears to ask what happened to the baby. Alice answers "just as if the Cat had come back in a natural way" that the baby turned into a pig. The Cat responds that he thought it would and disappears again. Just as Alice is deciding which way to go and why, the Cat appears again, asking if she said pig or fig.
"I said pig," replied Alice; "and I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy."
"All right," said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.
"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!"
Alice goes on to the tea party with the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. She journeys to the Queen's croquet ground and is invited to play the horrible game, using hedgehogs as balls and flamingoes as mallets.
She was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering whether she could get away without being seen, when she noticed a curious appearance in the air: it puzzled her very much at first, but, after watching it a minute or two, she made it out to be a grin, and she said to herself "It's the Cheshire Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk to."
"How are you getting on?" said the Cat, as soon as there was mouth enough for it to speak with.
Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and then nodded."It's no use speaking to it," she thought, "till its ears have come, or at least one of them." In another minute the whole head appeared, and then Alice put down her flamingo, and began an account of the game, feeling very glad she had someone to listen to her. The Cat seemed to think that there was enough of it now in sight, and no more of it appeared.
"I don't think they play at all fairly," Alice began, in rather a complaining tone, "and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can't hear oneself speak--and they don't seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them--and you've no idea how confusing it is all the things being alive; for instance, there's the arch I've got to go through next walking about at the other end of the ground--and I should have croqueted the Queen's hedgehog just now, only it ran away when it saw mine coming?"
"How do you like the Queen?" said the Cat in a low voice.
"Not at all," said Alice: "she's so extremely--" Just then she noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening: so she went on, "--likely to win, that it's hardly worth while finishing the game."
The King becomes enraged that Alice is talking to a Cat who refuses to submit to the King's supposed authority. The Queen demands that the Cat's head be cut off, which triggers an argument over whether only a head can actually be beheaded. As often happens in Wonderland, the issue is never truly resolved before another nonsensical experience presents itself. Ultimately, Alice wakes from her dream of Wonderland and struggles to remember it before it fades into her reality.
It's very much like me and CC. Our relationship developed in its own nonsensical way, and it has pretty much followed suit since its inception. We are strangely kindred spirits who met in a peppery kitchen, for sure. CC appears when I least expect it and often when I most need it. In all fairness, they've been known to appear when I call. I will often ask them which way I should go, and just as often get the response of "that depends on where you're going," politely prompting me to look deeply at my own desires and drives and examine the impetus of my decisions. I know there's no use addressing them, though, until enough of them apparates to be able to see and hear me.
Like Alice, I can be exasperated with CC and then utterly delighted when they appear to share their impressions of the world with me. It's nice to have CC as a distraction from the day-to-day absurdities. They will just be there, asking how I am, as normal and incredibly caring as can be, then vanish just as quickly. Oddly, it all seems very natural.
The thing is, I really adore CC. Truly and completely. I don't want CC to ever not be there, so I tend to take on the difficulty of the relationship and accept it. I'm well aware of the strange nature of the friendship and revel in it when it's good and acceptable to my expectations. But I am wary of its long claws and great many teeth; I try to be respectful of how CC's purring could becoming growling at any time, depending on my perception of their madness.
Of course, there's the argument to be made that this post is a passive-aggressive attempt to garner CC's attention. Not so much. I would turn into a pig if I honestly thought CC ever actually read this. I know it's just not in their realm of plausability. It's also not an expectation I have of that relationship. I wish it were sometimes, but I know it's just not the branch CC hangs out on.
Mostly, I wish CC would stop appearing and vanishing so quickly, leaving me giddy with nothing more than a lingering grin.
In the original Lewis Carroll story, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter famously asks Alice, "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?" Alice thinks about it, but she never comes to an answer. The confusion and absurdity of the tea party goes on with and around her until the Mad Hatter questions her about the riddle again:
"Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
"No, I give up," Alice replied. "What's the answer?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter
"Nor I," said the March Hare.
Alice sighed wearily. "I think you might do something better with the time," she said, "than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers."
When Lewis Carroll was pressed about the answer to the riddle, he added his own answer to an 1896 edition of Alice:
Enquiries have been so often addressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatter's Riddle can be imagined, that I may as well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate answer, viz: "Because it can produce a few notes, tho they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in the front!" This, however, is merely an afterthought; the Riddle, as originally invented, had no answer at all.
Since the original publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, many possible answers to Carroll's riddle have been proffered. Some seem better than others.
Because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes. Because Poe wrote on both. Because there is a B in both and an N in neither. (suggested by Aldous Huxley) Because it slopes with a flap. Because without them both Brave New World could not have been written. Because one has flapping fits and the other fitting flaps. Because one is good for writing books and the other better for biting rooks. Because a writing-desk is a rest for pens and a raven is a pest for wrens. Because "raven" contains five letters, which you might equally expect to find in a writing desk. Because they are both used in cari-on decomposition. Because they both tend to present unkind bills. Because they both have a flap in oak. Because it bodes ill for owed bills. Because they each contain a river--Neva and Esk. Because they both come with inky quills. Because Poe wrote on both. Because you cannot ride either of them with a bicycle. Because neither is made from aluminum.
Really. Who cares? Carroll plainly admits he didn't intend there to be an answer. It was part of the ramblings of a madman. Granted, the Mad Hatter was more in touch with truths about human nature than initially seems, but his purpose is to confound both Alice and the reader until we find unexpected truths from within ourselves.
Do our own riddles always have to have answers? Can we have lingering questions about ourselves that we never seem to rectify? Maybe those questions are the ones that drive us forward, drive us on, as we search for our own unexpected truths.
Getting from point A to point ME often involves a great deal of soul-searching, of contemplating our own riddles. And then, just when you think you've gotten the answer, the riddle shifts and changes and morphs, just enough that you can't quite see it so clearly any more, like looking directly at a dim star. Sometimes you have to examine the Riddle of You out of the corner of your eye to get the best view.
Even then, there may not be an answer. Other people will certainly try to answer it for you, and you may even have to make something up to pacify the others, to make them stop asking. You may find an answer that pacifies you, at least for a while, until you discover another answer that's better suited to your moment.
It doesn't matter, so long as you're thinking and contemplating and looking. It's the beauty and the complication of the riddle itself that's important. It doesn't matter if you're not noted for being musical notes or if you come with inky quills; just keep thinking about why your raven is like a writing-desk, even if you haven't the slightest idea.
Near the end of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice is in the gallery for the trial of the Knave, who is accused of stealing tarts from the Queen of Hearts. It's a sham of a trial--even young Alice can see the ridiculousness of the process--where witnesses and the King, acting as judge, talk in circles and silly expressions. The Queen wants a sentence before there's even a verdict; she wants someone's, anyone's, head to be off, of course. Alice wants the trial to be over, so they can move on to refreshments.
The last piece of evidence to be presented is a note, a series of nonsensical verses found in the Knave's prison cell. The Knave claims he didn't write it, which he can prove because he didn't sign it. (If he didn't write it, of course, how did he know it was unsigned?) The King retorts that the Knave must be guilty because not having signed it means he was up to some mischief. The Queen and Alice argue over this supposed proof of guilt, and the King commands the White Rabbit to read the verses.
"Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
I've been reading a lot about the process and art of writing as of late. I bought new copies of Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet and Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. Recently I've read many, many great articles and blog posts from agents and editors and writers, about everything from finding an accurate voice for a period piece to finding the impetus to complete an unfinished piece. This idea of finishing what you've begun--of finding the inspiration to carry forward--is likely to be addressed at the onset of a new year, I suppose, but it's been especially poignant for me.
I've talked before about being stuck in my fiction project, of not being sure how to proceed in the story. I spent some time rereading and reevaluating the flow and structure of the story. I enlisted the help of a dear friend to read the draft and give me some honest feedback. She agreed, thankfully, that the story had to continue down the path that I'd started. Another dear friend suggested that I jump ahead in the story, write the end and work backwards. It seems counterintuitive to me, but I know of several writers who do just that, especially if writing an emotionally difficult section. One said she wrote the happy ending and worked backwards so she always knew her characters would be okay.
I can't do it that way. I need a working plan. I'm not so inflexible that I can't change the plan as I go along. For a project, I need an idea of where it's going and how I think I'll get there. When I started my fiction project, I had character sketches and story outlines, from a couple of different characters' perspectives. Interestingly (to me anyway) some of that changed. Characters took on attributes I hadn't intended or really imagined for them, and their stories were altered from what I had planned. Personally, I think the changes were for the better. Their paths diverged from the original map, and that's okay.
I had to start at the beginning, even though I knew what was coming (or thought I did), and work straight through to the end. I can't jump back and forth in the story's timeline and have it make sense to me. I have to visualize the unfolding process these characters go through, to see them walking their cobblestoned paths, to get them to their happy endings.
And then what? When they're happy and tucked safely away in their beds, what happens then? They have to stop. They have to come to their end and be finished. That's kind of a scary thought for me. That means the end of a lot of work and energy, hopefully with a new, diverging path of my own. Hopefully there will be a new flexible plan after this one comes to its own end.
And isn't that what it's really all about, the going? "Go on till you come to the end." It's not "Go to the end." It's the getting from the beginning to the end that matters, the process of getting to a time and place where you can stop is what matters. As the adorable (and incredibly talented) Adam Taylor said to me once, "My father always taught me it's never about the destination.... It's all about the journey."
I'm learning a lot about myself during this going, working on these projects. I've lost my breath when I saw myself in characters in ways I hadn't anticipated. I've been surprised by the baggage I have unpacked and finally been able to throw away. The destination, the finished stories, are the final stop for this project, but it doesn't mean anything if I don't get there. For me, it's one stepping stone at a time, from the beginning to the end.
In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice encounters the irascible Duchess in the house with the screaming baby. As she leaves to play croquet with the Queen, the Duchess flings the baby at Alice, who tries her best to calm the ugly, wailing child until the baby turns into a pig. (Rest assured, we'll come back to this bit at some future time!) Alice sees the Duchess again at the Queen's croquet ground when the Duchess is brought from prison to determine if the Cheshire-Cat can or should be beheaded.
Alice notes that the Duchess has a much-improved demeanor than what she's encountered in the house. The Duchess shows herself to be a compulsive moralizer, although she often dissolves into false syllogisms and absurdity. This happens during the chapter entitled "The Mock Turtle's Story", which is possibly Carroll's most-concentrated commentary on language. Carroll is truly genius with his twisting and bending of language to show how verbosity can submerge simple meaning in obtuse verbiage. (i.e., people can use big words and be asshats)
After turning her own logic upside down, confusing poor Alice about the ways in which flamingoes and mustard are alike, the Duchess starts a new moral tangent, related to neither flamingoes nor mustard:
" 'Be what you would seem to be'--or, if you'd like to put it more simply--'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might appear to have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.' "
"I think I should understand that better," Alice said very politely, "if I had written it down: but I ca'n't quite follow it as you say it."
The gist of this, of course, is to be yourself. The inside and outside should be true and honest reflections of each other, both to yourself and to others.
Someone, a nameless asshat who barely knows me, decided to call me out for dropping an f-bomb as part of a comment to a picture posted on Facebook. It was a personal picture posted to my own wall. She was upset that her teenage son would be unduly influenced by my choice of language, and she demanded that I stop using such language or remove her son as one of my Facebook friends.
First and foremost, as I explained to her, I am an adult. I can choose to exercise my staunchly-defended freedom of speech in any way I deem personally appropriate or necessary. Secondly, he's a teenage boy who attends a very large public high school. I can guarantee that I am the least worrisome influence in this kid's life. If she chooses to wage war on such an influence, I wish her the best of luck on her uphill journey. Personally, I think it's a waste of effort. Lastly, I haven't seen this kid in six months, he doesn't show up in my News Feed, and I have no reason to take him into consideration when doing anything I do.
I was happy to oblige her request, and I have unfriended and blocked the entire family.
This brings me back to the assertion that I will be who and what I am, regardless of the opinions of others. There are very, very few people whose opinions matter to me, and all of you know who you are. I may (or may not) consider their opinions and reactions when I choose to do or be anything. Chances are, they would already approve of my choices, because they are the people closest to me. I wouldn't have let them get that close if we were diametrically opposed to begin with.
As I publicly said today, if you don't like my choices of language, topic, hair color, or anything else, GO AWAY. Please, do us both a favor and don't even attempt to be my friend. I won't take kindly to your unsolicited judgments, and I won't pretend to be anything more, or less, than who and what I am. I'm all about the Truthiness of Me.
My only resolution this year is to keep doing the things that make me me. I've been doing it a long time, but I can always do it a little better.
In Lewis Carroll'sAlice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Victorian-era Alice is plunged into a metaphorical world of fantastical creatures and adventures, where she learns quickly to expect nothing more than the proverbial unexpected. Rather than being surprised in her encounters, she waffles between mild bewilderment and nostalgia for her life outside the rabbit hole. She is clearly a child, quoting nursery rhymes and fairy tales, but she implies she has moved on from such childish ways. Her true, child-like perception of her world is made apparent after she drinks from the bottle and grows to an unexpectedly enormous size.
"When I used to read fairy-tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I'll write one--but I'm grown up now," she added in a sorrowful tone; "at least there's no room to grow up any more HERE."
Alice has always viewed the world by looking up. Suddenly she is at the top and is able to see everything around her, but at what price?
"But then," thought Alice, "shall I NEVER get any older than I am now? That'll be a comfort, one way--never to be an old woman- -but then--always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn't like THAT!"
"Oh, you foolish Alice!" she answered herself. "How can you learn lessons in here? Why, there's hardly room for YOU, and no room at all for any lesson-books!"
I get where she's coming from. I'm a big, tall Amazonian girl who towered over most people, including my entire family, by the age of twelve. Like Alice, I was precocious and educated. But no matter how old my brain thought it was, how grown up it was, I was still a little girl.
The idea that Alice seems to latch onto is that there's nothing else to learn--no more room to grow--once you're grown. Is that the ultimate definition of an adult, a person who is fully grown to complete capacity and can learn no more? If so, I'll borrow a line from another fictional, petulant child: "I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Even at the age of 38, I have been accused of behaving childishly, usually like a teenager on a rebellious quest. So what? I throw an occasional tantrum. I regularly dye my hair purple (or pink or blue), just in time for parent-teacher conferences at my sons' school. I still hate to wear shoes, and I still get a thrill out of sneaking around the house at night when no one else is awake.
Again I say, so what?
The difference at 38 instead of 18 is that I have seen and experienced much, much more in the expanse of my lifetime. I have lived through true heartache and trauma, experienced life and death in the most profound ways, and I have seen the best and worst of myself through all of it. I may still be idealistic from time to time in what I believe the preferable course for my life may be, but my idealism is tempered with a bit of pragmatism and common sense.
I have paid my dues and done my time, and I am wizened enough now to make those choices for myself. I'm not rebelling against anything or anyone; I'm rebelling for myself. I am actively choosing to behave in whatever way I find suits my prerogative.
Honestly, getting old scares the hell out of me. I don't relish the thought of wrinkles and sagging and realizing my life is drawing to a close, but I accept that those things will eventually happen. While they may be inevitable, I will not accept that they are imminent. 38 seemed impossibly old when I was 18. Now it often seems as if life is really just beginning.
When I turned 30, I was bombarded with emails from people offering me sympathy. Surely I must be sad to be hitting that milestone! Guess what? I was happy! I didn't even have to pretend to give a shit what other people thought any more. I celebrated by dying my hair blue, then purple, then taking my toddler son to Gymboree class.
40 is coming soon enough. Prepare yourselves now.
I can remember thinking like Alice, thinking how wonderful it would be to be a grown-up, to have all that insipid growing behind you. As an adult, I would have the world at my fingertips; everything would be exactly as I wanted it to be.
Instead what I found was that being an adult is just damn hard. The responsibility is enormous at times, but the rewards can be just as staggering. I find I'm a little less overwhelmed by it all if I take the time to hang off the sofa upside down, eat Lucky Charms for dinner, or even throw a little tantrum when things aren't just right on my side of the rabbit hole.
Like Alice, sometimes I think maybe there ought to be a book written about me. Who knows? Maybe I'll write one... when I grow up.
