With Eyes That Watch the World and Can’t Forget

Posted on 09/21/2008 by Jane Devin

Dear Vincent,

I left off wanting to be the girl under the tree, with wild hair and apricots falling around my feet, the one who scrawls words dangerously, with no consideration of time or consequence. I also shared my fear of being forever, instead, the draftsgirl. Carefully engineered, a single life drafted, one side, straight lines, four squares per inch. . .

Lately, something has been changing in this landscape, Vincent. I can feel it. Something is twisting in or out, tectonic plates are shifting, and things are being arranged and rearranged in subtle, precarious ways. The tycoons, politicians, and bankers are everywhere, moving like specters through the fog.

I am scared, Vincent. The ground beneath my feet has become shaky. Things are falling and colliding and sliding away. Fires are being extinguished, leaving a chilling void. All around me are eyes, bereft and empty, accusing and congratulatory, desperate and frightening. There are hands in pockets, hands engaged in work, and so many fingers pointing. . . there’s a deficit of warmth and a surfeit of greed.

In this new landscape, draftsgirls like me count their pennies and desperately cling to faith. Our voices lilt upwards in apologies, begging forgiveness for the slightest mis-mark; the most inconsequential step out of line. We no longer see Arles or fields of flowers in our dreams, but debtor’s prisons, and ourselves as the potato eaters who must survive yet another harsh season.

Once, Vincent, I lost myself in your novel reader. I saw her, wrapped in a warm shawl, surrounded by amber light, left wide-eyed by some adventure, or captivated by some turn of phrase that her mind might repeat over and over again to spark her imagination or salve her heart. I imagine she might have followed Thoreau as he left the ship’s cabin to stand “before the mast and deck of the world” where he could “best see the moonlight amid the mountains”. Or Dante – “Consider your origins; you were not born to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.”

In a warm room, with other appetites sated, transcendence comes easily. Ragged men in ragged clothes become poetic symbols; weathered faces lined in pain become lyrical epithets. In a virtuous existence, where there is no desperate struggle to make what is essential matter less – where there is no forceful tamping down of hunger, or violent scramble for the last piece of this or bit of that – where there is warmth, and light, and plenty – it is easy to transcend the faraway, brute reality of cold bones and empty bellies.

I used to close my eyes against the grimness of your Potato Eaters. The hope-filled and dreamy child in me found it a particularly ugly piece. I hated that it was there, amidst the achingly beautiful starry nights, and the gardens of Arles. I shuddered against the humble faces in gray surroundings, with their slumped shoulders and distant eyes, and I believe I might have even said aloud, not me, not me, never. What arrogance I had then, Vincent, in my cast-off clothes, with my sun-burned face and impertinent temper. I believed that boldness, above all else would see me through – that courage was the great equalizer that would bring me out of the muddy fields and into the sunlit gardens. And at night, under bright yellow stars and the bluest of skies, I would sit under the awning of the café terrace, my heart filled with the grace of distance, writing the stories I promised to never forget.

I can’t say exactly when it was that I looked at the Potato Eaters and found myself there, or when the Café Terrace at Night became the more painful vision, but it was recent. One day, I simply emptied my pockets of impossible dreams, and found myself face to face with the woman pouring coffee. And she was no longer entirely un-beautiful to me, but worthy. I wanted to wrap her in a warm shawl and give her a feather bed in which to rest her weary head. I wanted to wake her with roses and music and fill her long, bent days in the fields with hope. I felt the languishing pain, too, of having none of these gifts to give.

Poverty and politics are maliciously entwined, Vincent. Those closest to the earth feel it first – the swelling winds and jagged cracks – the subtle, perilous changes in landscape. We feel it, and we fear the long drought ahead.

I hear them calling out to us, Vincent, like barkers in some nightmarish carnival – Get your hope here! Don’t panic! All is well, or will be well! – and I think of something else Dante said, about the darkest places in hell being reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of crisis. Certainly, there’s hell enough right here on earth to hold the corrupt, yet they are rarely the ones who suffer the darkest of days. It’s wealth and power, Vincent, and not courage that takes one deep into the sanctified gardens. There, behind the guarded gates, beyond the reach of justice, the violators transcend the broken bodies, empty wallets, and torn spirits they’ve left behind, writing their own histories or forgetting them altogether.

I have a sudden urge to go home, my friend, but where? There is no place I can truly call my own. I am living on borrowed time, in rented spaces. I cast a glance upward and see only the reflections of a bitterly divided earth. A silver thorn on a bloody rose, and an earth that’s trembling.

What I wouldn’t give now to be a shepherdess instead of a draftsgirl, on another landscape altogether.

I wish you were here to paint me something beautiful.

Love, Always,

Jane

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The Belladonna Women

Posted on 08/27/2008 by Jane Devin

In ancient Italy, extracts of belladonna were used by women in the form of cosmetic eye drops, which dilated their pupils and gave their eyes a bright, glistening appearance. Large pupils were thought to be a sign of feminine beauty, hence the name Belladonna for “beautiful woman.”

They are always beautiful, the Belladonna women, if not in the classical sense, then in some unusual and overstated way. Like an electric light show in a darkened theater, a Belladonna woman charges the atmosphere around her, flashing her eccentric style and rare form to the amazement of a populace unwittingly numbed by everyday plainness. Visually stimulating, the Belladonna woman is also magnetic, capable of drawing an individual of interest or even a large crowd around them with barely any effort at all.

Incapable of mediocrity in appearance or attitude, even on those rare occasions when they try to blend in, a Belladonna woman rarely escapes notice –- or the judgment of others. While most will find her colorful demeanor intriguing, some will feel a need to shut her down –- to gray wash her with some sort of damnation. They will decry the falseness of her palette, the way she pridefully carries her individuality, and they will reject her for her vanity.

In response, the Belladonna woman will brighten her colors, stand taller, and narrow her beautiful eyes. Unlike the male Narcissus, she will avoid the sword of judgment. She sees her own beauty not as a source of shame or folly, but of personal power, a feeling which she nurtures as a source of strength and confidence. Shunning didactic mythology, the Belladonna woman refuses to be the moral to anyone’s story, including her own. Morals are for the rugged, the religious, or the simple. Instead, the Belladonna woman will have her own set of scruples, which she may reorder from time to time according to her ethics at the moment, but they will always be strongly held and forcefully applied.

Yet, for all of her seeming strength and confidence, a Belladonna woman is easily hurt. Whether her vulnerability comes from a place of ego or heart is often debated, even by those who know her best. They wonder about the duality of her occasionally fragile spirit and her unbreakable pride. They may wonder for a lifetime, because the Belladonna woman always leaves mystery – and so many other things – in her wake.

All parts of the true belladonna are narcotic.

Like a siren’s call, the Belladonna woman is hard to resist. She has a lyrical quality about her, a deep vein of emotion and truthfulness that rises above the daily din. The emotions will be her own, as will the truths –- and either may be shaded by incongruent hues –- but the way she sings them will make true believers even out of jaded skeptics.

Many are content to sway to her song from a distance, whereas other will feel a need to serve her in some capacity. The Belladonna woman, however, will reject most people who seek her out. She is selective, and her choices are predicated upon her needs or desires at any given time.

The call of a Belladonna woman who accepts someone into her inner circle is not the call of a mere friend or lover, but of a female monarch. To enter her court, whether it’s a rundown apartment in the city, or a gleaming skyscraper, one must have something of value and worthy of royalty’s favor. Once they are in, she may not ask them for their biggest gifts, but she will expect them as her due. Putting the Belladonna woman in the position of having to ask for anything will set off a surge of distrust and unease in her, since she feels that those who love her should anticipate her needs and understand her desires. If they do not, and fail to learn quickly enough, the Belladonna’s song will turn into a metaphorical call of “off, off with their heads.” To fail her is to show incompetence, and she will not suffer the blunders of others for long. She is a woman whose sense of self is very much reflected in her environment. She cannot feel as confident and secure when those who serve her, her rooks and knights and pawns, are clumsy and inadequate.

It would be easy to call her a bitch, but it wouldn’t be wholly accurate. While the Belladonna is a queen among women, and an often unpredictable and demanding one at that, she has a glowing vibrancy about her that’s both fascinating and contagious. The Belladonna woman is drama, comedy, excitement, and adventure. To be with her is to look at life through many colored lenses. Every day, and sometimes several times a day, the spectrum changes, and it is always lively, and always animated.

Belladonna was an important ingredient in Witches brew during the Middle ages, often being equated with female sexuality.

The narcotic nature of the Belladonna woman’s appeal can offer solace as well as seduction –- a feeling of flying, or at least of being light years beyond a dull existence. She will take her lovers to places few others will ever experience, and teach them how to soar their spirits farther, higher, faster. Her sensitivities will move her lovers, as well as her friends, in a profound way. Both will feel instinctually protective of the Belladonna woman, even during her most steely phases, suspecting that her stubborn shows of strength are, at least in part, a cover for deeper wounds.

Lovers feel heightened just by being in the Belladonna woman’s presence. Sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and textures all seem sharper, richer, deeper, and somehow more real than they’ve ever felt before. While in her court, lovers feel compelled to stand taller and be more heroic than they ever have before –- to immerse themselves in a shared life that is fully thriving and saturated with desire.

It is the constant challenge of being in the Belladonna woman’s good graces that lends fire to the flames of her would-be heroes. Even small tokens of appreciation from her act as a catapult, launching lovers into a quest to find more, do more, love more, and be more. It is this never-ending quest of “more” that leaves one reeling with happiness over every success, and newly motivated by every failure. When love is present, and the Belladonna woman is in full bloom, the quest is more invigorating than exhausting.

It is when she wilts and turns away that the trip, once so beautiful and enlivening, turns bad.

Belladonna was used during the middle ages to gain confessions. This psychochemical torture would confuse and weaken victims, making them unsure of what was fantasy or reality, what they had done, or had merely imagined.

The sudden absence of her brightness leaves a void, and with a Belladonna woman, it is almost always sudden. It may be as simple as boredom for her, or a chill she suddenly developed when a particular lover’s gift, or even a friend’s, failed to please her. It may be that a quirk, a whim, or a new pair of eyes seen from across a crowded room piqued her interest, and curiosity in a Belladonna woman rarely goes unsated. She is a woman who acts upon her feelings, swiftly and confidently, and she is unlikely to consider any explanation necessary.

Left in the darkness, alone with a love that is not returned, those who have been up-ended by a Belladonna woman are wracked with grief and unanswered questions. Initially, they will torture themselves over what they might have done or failed to do, but soon they will question their own part in the Belladonna play, ruminating over the gifts they gave so freely, and the sacrifices they made without hesitation, so that they could stand in a ray of light that was not their own, and that never could be.

It can takes months or even years, but eventually the blackness turns to a familiar shade of gray. Numbness sets in, and its blank palette is felt as a relief. Life moves forward, at escalator pace, on some auto-pilot never noticed before. In time, feelings start to return, but they are guarded and framed in question marks. Still, even in the painful aftermath, the purples of African violets and the oranges and reds of sunsets stand out, as do the feathers, the bricks, the cracks in the sidewalks. . .the lilt of a piano, or the strum of a guitar. . . . the quickening of a pulse, the warmth of skin upon skin, the chill of morning, and the heat of fire.

Nothing after a Belladonna woman is the same as before. Even loneliness is more acute, and longing more intense.

And one day, you will see another Belladonna, beautiful and colorful, and charged with something rare and electric. Your eyes will meet hers as she is sizing you up. Instinctively, you will straighten your shoulders, stand a little taller, and the hero that resides in your heart will start pounding. . . .

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She Jumps, and Has Her Reasons

Posted on 06/29/2008 by Jane Devin

Every night for several years, you’ve hopped onto a trampoline. You’ve jumped and jumped until your heart raced, your body felt weak, and you were exhausted. It’s this ritual, you believe, that allows you to sleep, and you have slept so brilliantly during these years that closing your eyes has become, in itself, a thing of beauty. You feel healed by sleep, both released and energized by the time morning comes.

Now, though, you’ve developed small fractures in both feet. Your knees are unsteady. Your legs shake in waking hours, as overly strained muscles begin to separate from bone. Still you jump, only more slowly, and more aware of the damage being done. You begin to question your methods, and momentarily consider other alternatives, but nothing feels as perfect or reliable as the thing you are most familiar with. Ultimately, you jump so that you can get there – to the place you love – the place that makes you feel wholly alive and beautifully human.

One evening, your trampoline disappears. It is gone, and you cannot afford to replace it. Your body, despite its accumulation of damages, aches for nothing more than the nightly ritual of jump-bounce-twist-turn. Your legs feel as if they’ve taken on a restless, unhappy life of their own. They moan and twitch and rebel beneath you. Your heart, used to taking a nightly pounding, feels eerily still.

You do not sleep.
You begin to dream of horrible things while you are painfully awake.
Your body, you feel, has betrayed you.
You fear you will never sleep again.

You pace the floors, and so much comes to the surface in the dark of night. Bitterness, sadness, fear, anger, apathy. Your mind, overly-full and anxious, turns dark and despairing. In losing the trampoline, everything else you once loved also feels lost to you. You begin to associate your jumping with all the wonderful things you fear are lost forever, creating a black and white list of reasons you must, absolutely must, have your trampoline back. Without it;

you will never sleep again.
You will never again feel right, or whole, or rested.
Unrested, you will never be happy.
Unhappy, there is no reason to live.

The thought of getting back on your trampoline begins to consume you. It’s only the thought of jumping again that brings you close to feeling any sort of happiness. Small fractures and torn ligaments become, in your mind, a smaller and smaller price to pay, and even somewhat meaningless in your list of self-justified consequences.

You need the trampoline.
Your body demands it.
You, or some very important, alive, or sacred part of you, will die without it.
You’re are in more pain when you don’t jump than when you do.

The trampoline becomes everything, and until you have it again, little else seems to matter. You need to tie off the vein, light the pipe, snort the coke, take another pill, binge until you puke, starve yourself into a silhouette, gamble until it’s all gone, sleep with another stranger, drink yourself into oblivion — because nothing else, you are convinced — will ever make you feel as good or as much like your truest self.

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The Proposal

Posted on 06/27/2008 by Jane Devin

All that pent-up passion, where does it go? It travels in endless loops and spirals like a lost and wild thing that can’t find its natural environment. It cries out in unremembered dreams, and wakes in the morning to buttons and buzzers, fluorescent lights, and just enough sun to keep it thirsty and pulsing.

March on, soldier girl, march on. There are some mercies you will never know, and others you are probably better off not knowing. Carry your arsenal of words proudly, and spray paint the obstacles and alleyways in your path. Write your name boldly, and let your vivid colors splash against the graying admonishments and swells of whitewash.

Once, I wrote you a story by hand, in plum colored ink, in a beautiful leather notebook sent to me by some cigarette company. I did not hover over lines or pause between paragraphs, and I did not sleep for three days. It seemed urgent then, but somehow all those flowing words got lost. Stolen or lost – or maybe never found – does it really make a difference? There was no one there to protect anything, and it was easy, so easy, to pretend I didn’t care. I bought three piece suits from the secondhand store, read books that taught me how to aspire and conform, and forged my way into some musty tapestry held together by false needs and even falser promises.

I faltered then, I know. I was young, and bumbling, and out-and-outside of everything, scrambling desperately just to understand the essential facts, such as the chasm between how people acted, and how they really were in their own private and natural worlds, where no acting is required. I struggled to slow down the alternative other-scripts in my head, where I could create and arrange, rewrite and edit, until every new imprint and revelation made sense. It was not easy to evict myself from that sanctuary, but I did. I took a deep breath, and plowed my whole self into dangerous, unknown territory, as determined as any pioneer looking for a title and forty acres.

I did not have the means then to promise you what I am promising you now.

I want you to do whatever it is you really want to do, love, with any sort of abandon. Stay out and outside, if that is your wish, and I will protect whatever messages you leave in your path. I will let no one pour a whitewash over your words, and in this, I will not fail you. I will be the Theo to your Vincent – the unflagging patience to your spitfire impulsiveness, the protector of your interior art, and the keeper of your secrets. I will secure the essentials, keep the destroyers at bay, shore you up, and pick you up in ways that will be unintrusive and unnoticeable.

I will do it for your art, because it’s not always beautiful. Because it’s often curious, gritty, unrefined, full of question marks, and unmistakably yours.

I will do it for your hands. The ones that still plead when you talk, like a last vestige of childhood, a desire for your soul to be understood, even when your words are wrapped in the esoterica of language.

I will do it for your mind. The one that has been spent in fractions and unjustly divided in a world where half or less of a human being is thought to make a whole.

I have loved you from the day you recognized your separateness. When you gazed at your hands and feet and happily realized they belonged to you alone. When you lolled on the shag carpet of your pink bedroom, dreaming of horses, oceans, and Amazons. When you rebelled against the teachings of a monotonous life punctuated by fistfuls of anger.

I loved you when you were a hero, experimenting with the world, filled with unbridled energy and a desire to do and gather all that was good. I loved you when you were on your knees in the river, begging for your life, praying to whatever god watches over the set-apart and abandoned, and when you felt vindictive, angry, and bitter, knowing that no such god existed, and that you were truly on your own. When you numbered your scars, 1-17, and gave them names. Snake in the Grass. Saint Albert’s Fence. Five Minutes Late. Two Against One.

I know how love begins. It begins alone, in the sacred flesh of a new soul, as an intuitive desire or a biological imperative. It rises up to fill in the barren spaces, smooth the jagged edges of scar tissue, and nurture the mind, body, and spirit. It becomes intrinsic, outreaching, sacred – birthed over and over again in neophyte stages until it becomes agape and all-encompassing.

I do not know, and have never known, how love really ever ends.

All those years when passion was kept in tight coils and stored away for some future days of freedom, had this effect; my love is a renewing thing that knows no end. It is not fickle, or conditional, or wary. Once given, it is given forever, no matter how great the distance, how few the words, or how lost the original reason. For this love, and out of love for you, I will stand my ground, as close or as far away as desired, and guard the gates.

The world that made it impossible for us to be one, to be both artist and worker, dreamer and survivor, existing in the same physical being and outward expression, is no stronger than the shoulders that carry it as a necessary burden. I have grown strong enough to carry that burden for the both of us, and brave enough to face the consequences. So be, my love, that girl under the tree who paints poetry and writes abstracts. Be wild, and unrelenting, and undaunted. Burst your spindly roots out of the ragtag world, and leave the broken branches and dry leaves behind. Abandon the dogtag chains, the crumbling mortar, and the numbers that would subtract art from your every equation.

I will be here, holding steady the balance pole, guarding the gate, and gathering all the good that falls.

From me to you, for us, this is my promise.

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In Praise of the Elephant Girls

Posted on 03/16/2008 by Jane Devin

“When an elephant is in trouble, even a frog will kick her.” – Hindu Proverb

1. Strength

Among the first things noticed about an elephant girl is her incredible strength. She can shoulder the burdens and carry the weight of many human experiences, and do so with dignity, even when her threshold for pain is made to rise ever-higher.

The strength of an elephant girl is not just an accident of birth. What was innate was her desire to survive. To do that, she had to push beyond the limitations of her own considerable endurance many, many times. She had to develop new muscles and ways to rebirth her spirit after forging through man-made obstacles.

One by one, she had to face her fears and conquer them. When new tragedies brought new fears, she had to teach herself ways to calm her pounding heart and carry on, putting one foot in front of the other, until she had walked through the worst of circumstances and found herself on the other side.

“Strong,” they often called her. And when she was young, the elephant girl took pride in this accolade, perhaps even making it a mantra that assured her passage through a particularly trying time. I am strong, she would remind herself, I will get through this.

In those tender years, the elephant girl might have mistaken strength for invincibility. It is possible that, in the midst of her own turbulence, while filled with the all-encompassing sense of an indomitable spirit, she felt called upon, even obligated, to lift whatever weight she could from the backs of others who did not have her strength, or her strength of spirit, or her survival skills.

“So strong,” she would continue to hear in later years, but by now the elephant girl would recognize these words not as an inspiring accolade, but as a weary expectation. It was almost inevitable that those who would notice her strength were looking to use it in some measure. There was a cause, a want, or a need of some sort, which lacked only the strong back, keen intelligence, and steadfast determination of an elephant girl to carry it through.

2. Loyalty & Temperament

The elephant girls are fiercely loyal. They make friends for life, but they do not make them easily.

Given their intelligence, well-worn hearts, and long and precise memories, the elephant girls are not easily forgiving, particularly to those whose emotional and physical marks were imprinted upon them during their journeys. The scars of the ankus on the skin or the psyche are not resented as much as those who purposely inflicted them, without conscience, and without regard for consequences.

Particularly resented are those who brush away or justify the damage they caused by pointing out the elephant girl’s strength, as in “she’s strong, she can handle it,” or “look, whatever wrong I did only helped make her as strong as she is today.” To them, she will offer no loyalty and give no protection.

Those who have never had to rebirth a spirit many times over have no regard for the pain of that particular labor, or the dangers. A spirit may be broken beyond repair, or crushed beyond the possibility of rebirth. Not even the strongest and most determined of elephant girls are free from these dangers that, although rare, loom as possibilities — especially in later years when the ability to rebound is not as assured.

The elephant girl will use her considerable strength and intelligence to pull a friend up and out of whatever pit she has fallen into, and will expect nothing in return except the continuation of friendship. She finds thankful expressions among her friends unnecessary. What she has, she is often willing to lend or give away, and the only expressions of gratitude she ever requires are the ones she practices herself — loyalty, care, and consideration.

3. A Love of Peace

It is true that elephant girls often participate in or even lead a stampede, but they never do so for weak causes such as revenge or hatred. They do so for the love of peace.

They brook no respect for the fraudulent kind of peace some claim to receive by turning a blind eye to injustices. Ignorance of facts, intentions, and circumstances is not peace, and has no goodness at its core.

The peace of the elephant girls is born from the strength of their convictions, which holds truth, fairness, benevolence, and integrity as most-high. Refusing to fight for a just cause, or at least to stand strong in the face of adversity, are not the actions of peace-lovers — but the baneful responses of those who are weak, and apathetic to all but themselves.

The elephant girl has learned that the barricades to truth and healing are not removed solely upon a peaceful request. The swollen rivers of human malevolence and misdeeds are not parted by mere wishful thinking.

There are times when only the sheer force of strength and a survivalist’s determination will remove the barricades and dam the river, allowing passage to those who wish to reach the freeing fields that lie on the other side.

There are times when the precise and visceral memories of an elephant girl lead her to know more about a particular moment than the moment itself presents. It is not intuition but experience that informs the path of an elephant girl. She recognizes old obstacles even when they appear as new.

There are times when an elephant girl must retreat in order to heal or rebirth her spirit, but no matter how long she might wish to enjoy sanctuary — and even when she declares a desire to make it a permanent state — eventually she will hear a call that speaks to her heart and takes her back to the wilds. The nature of the elephant girl is as much about her love for humanity and justice as it is about the tranquility found when she has an opportunity to repose and reflect.

4. And Finally. . .

The elephant girl is capable of the deepest kind of love and nurturing, particularly when it comes to children, because even when she is very old the elephant girl cannot, and would not wish to, forget her own once-young spirit — which long past childhood and through many rebirths, retains all the radiant hopes, bright wishes, and idealistic dreams of youth.

As a mother, the elephant girl is fiercely protective, but also pushes her young to try new experiences. She lends them her strength while helping them grow strong on their own. She guides and counsels, and rarely dictates, except when necessary to save her children from imminent and avoidable danger.

As a life partner, the elephant girl will constantly surprise you, not only because her loyalty is unwavering and her heart is continuously growing, but because in-between and even in the midst of triumphs and tragedies, the elephant girl has a childlike love of play. Strength alone did not get her through the roughest of times. Intellect and reasoning did not, of their own accord, bring her a sense of happiness. It was the ability to laugh — out loud and with the full strength of her being — that kept her survival instinct strong and helped her soul eclipse even the most painful of journeys.

The freeing fields on the other side of human discord reverberate with her laughter. Her all-encompassing spirit is at its best when roaming freely and without limitation, as it does when she is surrounded by the consonant spirits of those she loves.

There, on the other side, scars are not forgotten, but reinvented as works of art. The pain and tribulation of days past are not buried, but pulled up and transformed into wisdom.

The frogs who would kick her stand not a chance when the elephant girl soars.

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