Anchors

Posted on 01/17/2009 by Jane Devin

I float relatively unencumbered in this life, steadily attached to only the two people I helped to create. I wonder sometimes if I should feel lonely, in the same way someone with an all-yellow garden might wonder if they should plant something wild and red.

I harbor sentiment for distant friends and strangers almost unwittingly, and don’t realize its depth until I open a letter, see a mother kiss her newborn child’s head, or stand in the boisterous crowd of someone else’s family. I’m always surprised at how ready the lump in my throat is, as well as the laughter. I am often inexplicably touched by someone else’s life stories, anecdotes, photographs, poems, music, or thoughts. The tears or the joy rise impulsively, out of some unmapped, visceral place.

Excited teenage girls out shopping for a prom dress can evoke the same tender feelings in me me as two outcast middle-schoolers in deep conversation at a coffee shop. An elderly couple holding hands can rouse my sentiment as much as a pair of five year-olds standing at a bus stop. I feel downright gleeful when I see any display of love, whether it’s a mother bending over a stroller, or a couple who can’t stop kissing in the back row of a theater.

Yet I am alone, and in so many ways I’m grateful for solitude, and for being able to embrace my nature, which needs the retreat of waves more often than it needs the solidity of an anchor. Then again, perhaps my anchor is something I’ve always carried with me rather than let sink, and one day I’ll find myself wanting to ease it down into peaceful waters.

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On Meanings, Tyrannies, Women & Monsters

Posted on 09/12/2008 by Jane Devin

Then, in my childhood in the dawn
Of a most stormy life was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still . . .
–Edgar Allan Poe, Alone

1. The Meaning of Things

I’ve never lost my childhood sense of mystification – my ability to be amazed by the intricate puzzles and foggy mazes surrounding the reality of a situation. And, over the years, my need to know the meaning of things, and to have those meanings make sense, has only grown stronger.

I suspect that if the world were as simple as wheat and chaff, the chaff would be far more plentiful. So many of us seem to be in a constant search for something outside our own realm. In reaching for that something, we superimpose the unnatural upon even the most common realities. A shadow becomes a ghost, a falling leaf becomes a message, and the human mind becomes a god, capable of performing miracles. . .if only one believes.

Platitudes and abstractionist philosophies abound, and many would argue that they are harmless. I strongly disagree. What becomes popular in our society becomes pervasive, affecting everything from our cultural mores to our social opinions.

2. The Tyranny of Positive Thinking

I remember when the gun of positive thinking was turned against cancer patients in the 80′s. Scores of books and literature were written that either laid sideways blame on victims for having the disease of “repressed emotions” or “negativity”, or that effusively promoted positive thinking as the cure. Those who died were not positive enough – they didn’t believe enough in the power of their own mind. Twenty years later, it’s what Dr. Jimmie C. Holland, in her book The Human Side of Cancer, refers to as “the tyranny of positive thinking.”

Unfortunately, despite major long-term studies showing that while having a positive attitude may help patients handle their disease better, it does not directly affect survival rates, the tyranny persists. The latest psuedo-science headline screams “A Positive Outlook on Life May Protect Against Breast Cancer”. Sadly, some breast cancer victims will read or remember only the explosive headline, and wonder if they brought the disease on themselves by not being cheerful or optimistic enough.

Outside of the realm of cancer, the tyranny of positive thinking has led to the massively held belief that unhappiness of any sort is some sort of disease – one caused by a mind that refuses to see the glass as half-full – that does not find beauty in pain, or redemption in tragedy.

And once again, platitudes abound.

Gratitude. . . turns what we have into enough, and more . . . -Melody Beattie
You can have everything you want in the world if you love yourself first!! -
Louise Hay
I am the perpetrator of my suffering – but only all of it. – Byron Katie

I had a revealing conversation once with a therapist who mindlessly repeated the oft-stated belief that “no one can make you feel hurt without your permission.” I asked her what would happen if at that moment a madman stormed into her office and shot her. Would she be hurt? Could she will the bullet to miss her? What if it wasn’t a bullet, but a fist or a flying stapler – would the weapon make a difference? Would she, bruised and bloodied afterwards, refuse to carry the affect of such an assault, maintaining the same unlocked doors and sense of security? What if it was not her, but her daughter?

Of course people can make you feel hurt without your permission. They can do so with a weapon, with words, with broken promises, bullying, or diminishment. Others can rob you of a livelihood, a sense of safety, or even a person you loved. They can steal the money you needed to retire or pay the rent. The bad actions of another can have a profound, and even lifelong affect.

Ah, but. . . “We can’t control the actions of other people, we can only control how we feel about it.” Enter the foggy maze, where a bullet becomes inspiration and an unwarranted fist becomes a lesson. Where those who die young were wanted in Heaven by God himself, and where pain, and struggle, and even the worst circumstances can be willed away . . . if only you believe.

3. Women, Unhappiness & the Chemical Solution

If only you believe in gratitude, says Beattie, whatever you have will be more than enough. And if it isn’t? Maybe it’s because you didn’t love yourself enough or think the right thoughts, according to Hay. In the end, Katie tells us, all suffering is self-inflicted. The robbery, the assault, the disease, the death. . .we must have wanted it on some level – or maybe God and the fates decided we needed it – or maybe it’s some karmic lesson left over from life #46 that we need to learn for life #47. After all, there are no accidents.

It doesn’t surprise me that women make up the majority of those who most strongly espouse this fantastical kind of thinking. We make up 50-51% of the population, yet hold only a scant percentage of the political and social power. Lacking equal affirmation, and standing outside the doors of power, we seek change where we can – within the boundless territory of self.

It’s also not surprising that much of this magical thinking is, at its core, overly forgiving and tolerant of outside sources, and heavy on self-blame. Women have been molded, domineered, and duped into ready forgiveness and self-blame for centuries.

We learned that we bring forth children in pain to pay for Eve’s want of knowledge. Our monthly cycle was not a sign of health, but a curse. We were taught that as long as the weapon used against us was no thicker than a man’s thumb, assaults against us were sanctioned by God. When even the most senseless wars of men killed our children, we were told it would be ignoble not to feel proud of our sacrifice. Our emotions have been, at various times, labeled as madness or hysteria. We have been romanticized as pleasing helpmates, cheerful housewives, and doting mothers. Scorned as ball breakers, brash women, hags, and bitches when we didn’t tow the patriarchal line. Even now we are often blamed for rape, the divorce rate, and the destruction of the nuclear family.

The unhappiness of women seems to be viewed through a different lens than the unhappiness of men. It’s likely that the same unbalanced social mores that rate assertiveness differently for the sexes does the same when it comes to emotion. In other words, when men express unhappiness, it may be considered reasonable given circumstances, whereas a woman’s unhappiness is suspect – caused solely by her own actions, raging hormones, or negative, complaining female mind. If we can’t find our happy place in imaginative mental revisionism, then there’s always a chemical solution. According to a 2003 study from the University of Michigan, the ratio of women to men on anti-depressants in 2:1-3:1. Even after accounting for gender-based differences, such as postpartum depression, the ratio is high.

While clinical depression is caused by a biological imbalance, I have to wonder if at least some of those prescriptions aren’t being written for women who feel guilty for not being the reality shifting revisionists and perfectly cheerful workers-daughters-wives and mothers society tells them they should be.

4. The Blinding Aftermath

Unhappiness is not a disease, and outside of true medical conditions, it is also not a symptom. It seems disingenuous to promote positive emotion as a natural, healthy response while blacklisting unhappiness as unnatural, unhealthy, and solely a matter of choice.

In a society where most circumstances, and the emotions surrounding those circumstances, are thought to be a matter of choice,

- social injustices are minimized or negated,
- complaints, no matter how valid, are derided,
- reality becomes “what you make it” rather than what it actually is,
- the pressure on changing external forces is lessened,
- and compassion and empathy are spared.

It is easier to wear blinders in a world where human unhappiness is considered a self-fulfilling prophecy or disease. Rather than going through the hard work of correcting injustices, we can blame the victims. We can refuse to see victims, and see instead only people who failed to make good choices. We can more easily turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, and turn a deaf ear towards their complaints, when we believe that whatever they are suffering is self-perpetrated.

We can harm each other in a myriad of ways, and then claim we are not responsible for the aftermath. We can be less compassionate, less generous, and less empathetic when we believe that the problem with other people is their attitude rather than their circumstance.

Certainly, happiness is preferable to the lack of it –- that is not the question. The question is one of genuineness, and realism, and rationality. In promoting positive, magical thinking not just as a self-help tool, but as the ultimate cure for nearly every human condition from cancer to social marginalization, what have we accomplished? What have we lost? What does the future hold for a society that makes bestsellers of books like The Secret, in which the author claims, “Everything that’s coming into your life you are attracting into your life.” Writer Tim Watkin, of the Washington Post, points out that “Hard work, talent, education, even luck go unmentioned. As The Secret puts it, all you have to do is ‘put in your order with the universe.’ Ask. Believe. Receive. That’s the mantra.”

It’s a mantra that has been played like a lulling serenade, particularly during the reign of Republican congressional then Presidential rule, in which big business and war took precedence over people, and invisible bootstraps were the only things offered to those reeling from high unemployment rates, skyrocketing inflation, and a record number of home foreclosures. The years from 1999-2004 (the last year studied) saw a nearly 20% increase in the suicide rate among 45-54 year-olds. For women, the rate leapt 31 percent. Coincidence? Or a matter of circumstance? Researchers believe that the prime suspect is a high rate of prescription drug use and abuse, particularly of anti-depressants.

5. The Monster in the Closet

On May 30, 2008 an elderly man in Hartford, Connecticut was run over by a car on a busy street. The driver did not stop, and no one, not even a single person, stopped to help him, or tried to divert traffic away from his body. Torres, 78, was left paralyzed from the neck down. “At the end of the day we’ve got to look at ourselves and understand that our moral values have now changed,” Police Chief Daryl Roberts was quoted as saying. “We have no regard for each other.”

What regard can we have for ourselves and others when magical, positive thinking is the order of the day? When we believe that someone, somewhere else, is in charge of helping those who need it – or worse, when we believe that almost every human need is a self-contained matter, and that experiences and tragedies, no matter how harsh or unjust, are somehow chosen?

To what end is the self-flagellation guised as positivity? If we cannot truly “think it and be it” – if the outside world does not turn on our most focused and heartfelt wishes – and the future we so studiously and lovingly envisioned does not pan out, is it because we did not Ask, Believe, and Receive correctly? Were our thoughts not happy enough, positive enough?

Realism in the age of magical thinking has become the monster in the closet. The scary thing that we avoid for fear of being swallowed or overtaken, or swept up in a battle when all we really want to do is relax –- let go and let God. Find inner peace. Fill up on a feast of gratitude, platitudes, and self-love when sustenance is short, believing that eventually we’ll discover the secret to life-long happiness and contentment.

If realism is viewed as a monster, it is not an imaginary one, nor will it go away if ignored or abandoned in favor of magical thoughts. It needs our action, awareness, involvement, and yes – our continued struggle for a world that is better in reality, and not just in hope. Our shared reality, in particular, needs us, front and center and standing at attention, willing to bravely face the unpleasant truths and do battle with harmful forces, if it is ever to arrive at a place of true social justice, lasting peace, and fully realized potential. We need bravery, not bromides, to create the changes we seek.

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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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While Awaiting the Rack & Condemnation of the Religious Wrong…

Posted on 07/30/2008 by Jane Devin

Subtitled: If my eye offends you, fuck you. It’s mine.

Tomorrow, the religious wrong, while pretending religion has nothing to do with it, will attempt to beat me over the head with their imagined moral authority and their too-real power. Chest-beating Christians will circle around me in a vulturous group, waiting to take the eye they feel they are owed. Not because it’s really owed, but because they feel a sense of entitlement, especially when it comes to black sheep who aren’t members of their flock. Stay tuned for that story.

For now, I want to tell another story about God, who’s often confused with Jesus, even though the two actually had little in common except a disputed paternity claim. The pre-Jesus God was pretty fierce. He razed whole cities in anger, and didn’t even spare the children. He turned a woman into a pillar of salt for merely glancing over her shoulder. He led a man to hold a knife to his toddler’s throat as an act of faith, and then said hey, just kidding, you passed. Not a nice guy, God. Not someone you’d want to invite to your weekend barbeque or cocktail party.

God’s image needed a little softening up, so along came Jesus, a wild story, a bestselling book, and all these years later, millions of crosses and Virgin Mary’s dangle from the walls, necks, and rearview mirrors of the righteous believers. Except many of them are not all that righteous, by definition of the word, tending to take after the almighty God far more than the gentle Jesus they melded him with. Meaning the badly religious are often some of the most wrathful, unforgiving, and punishing people here on Earth. Yet they demand for themselves a level of respect that far eclipses any good they created – if they attempted to create any good at all.

At least God is said to have created life and Earth. The Religious Wrong, on the other hand, have created only monstrously huge institutions to perpetuate the idea that using God as their shield makes them infallible by default. Sinful, but perpetually forgiven, no wrong is too wrong for absolution. Absolved, they are pure, and pure they sin again, and the cycle leaves them, at least in their eyes, exonerated from moral blame or judgment outside of Heaven’s.

The same people will cry “human nature is sinful” when confessing, yet once the Hail Mary’s are given and curtain is pulled back, they are quick to return to their state of imperviousness: Jesus forgives them, even if only through ancient words and stained glass windows, and this forgiveness is far more important than the forgiveness of other people, no matter how badly they’ve hurt them.

The funny thing is – and it becomes funny if you witness it often enough – is how quick the Religious Wrong are to disown each other when the proverbial shit hits the fan. The Christian who beats his wife and kids isn’t really a Christian (even though the bible allows for a little family beating, as long as the victims are women and children). The Muslim who murders isn’t really practicing Islam (despite that whole yarn about martyrdom and 40 virgins).

The first time I consciously processed how reactionary and frightening the Religious Wrong could be, I was in 7th grade, in Mrs. Hand’s class. I casually said “Oh, God” in response to something a classmate said to me when Mrs. Hand flew out of her chair, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me up to her desk. I had no idea what I had done to provoke the attack, although she kept insisting that I had cussed. My response of “God! No I didn’t!” threw her over the edge, and it was only then that I suspected. I was sent to the principal’s office, where I spent a fruitless half-hour with Mr. Campbell debating the issue of free speech and religion in a public school. Of course, Mr. Campbell won because he held the power. I left school the next year, when the choking, claustrophobic feeling of school became too much to bear.

I had really exited years before, as a third grader who was denied a skip in grades for “failure to conform to the rules of the classroom”. That year, I tested three to five grades above level in every subject, but couldn’t get through the torture of a school day without drifting off, or sneak-reading a book carefully hidden on my lap. Counselors were consulted, tests were taken, and everybody except my 3rd grade teacher thought I should be moved to fifth grade. Mrs. Herron’s reasoning was that such a move would be a “reward for bad behavior”. A cross-wearing Catholic, Mrs. Herron didn’t believe in spoiling a child, even with education, and her rod was to rack me into submission by way of mean-spirited boredom. And I, a child who loved books and learning, grew to hate school. I became a daydreamer and clock watcher, who learned through books on loan from the County library rather than through people.

People were scary to me then, and often still are. Irrationality frightens me, and more so when it’s ensconced in religious mysticism. The structure of an “organized” religion, complete with masses of brethren, allows religion a credibility and standing shared by no other fable or myth. I have to wonder if millions of people believed in Leprechauns, how many monuments would be built, how many laws written, and how many offenses would be taken at those who didn’t believe there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Tomorrow, the religious wrong will pretend that religion has nothing to do with their eye-plucking. They will talk, instead, about offensiveness, mine, of course, because God knows they are pure, blameless, and ultimately absolved – even as they talk crudely of tits and ass, dicks and balls, white trash, Mexicans, and bodily functions. Even as they scream profanity across the aisles, bite each other’s backs, and seek to do real harm to others – they are forgiven.

But let a black sheep make one sarcastic comment . . . and all hell breaks loose.

More to the story tomorrow.

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A Pauper’s Tale

Posted on 06/15/2008 by Jane Devin

I had a better Father’s Day post planned, but I can’t find The Picture. The one taken years before my birth, in which either my son or I appear to be about two years old. It’s hard to tell the gender of the child in the Hawaiian shorts and white t-shirt, but s/he is definitely one of us — one of the dark-eyed, olive skinned ones in a sea of green eyes and pale skin. A brother? A sister? I don’t know.

That picture has always been a curiosity. I like to imagine that one day, someone else will see it and be able to connect all the scattered dots and fill in all the blanks. If they couldn’t do that, maybe they’d just be kind enough to tell me his name. As long as it’s not Warren Beatty or Rod McKuen. My mother tried to pass those two off on me at the height of my pubescent naivete, the era of Shampoo, (my favorite movie at the time), and a poetry album I played until there were no more grooves. At ten years old, I filled my mind with lines like I will fly into your belly like a plane flying into Rome. I had no idea, really, what it meant, but I loved the visual of that line, the romance of it, and the way the words rolled off my tongue.

Later, MJ brushed off my who’s-my-father inquiries with stunted lines like “some guy in a bar”, “some sailor”, and my personal favorite, “what does it matter anyway?” Sometimes the chill of her mind was just stunning. MJ was full of high-drama and bittersweet illusions. Her magic was in the way she could sometimes make her wild and fluid self appear to be stable and solid. Her solid self appeared to be promising — it tantalized and teased a moment of reality — a sliver of truth that was just out of reach. I’d struggle across the brutal desert of my mother’s psyche only to discover mirages, like nightmarish funhouse mirrors that scoffed at my efforts, and sent me crawling back to the starting gate. It took me years to un-love her enough to abandon my perpetual place at that gate, and years more to quit torturing myself trying to make sense of her kind of crazy.

Anyway, I was sure I’d get the answer before she died, because that’s what she told me in 1996. “I’ll tell you before I die.” Except that she didn’t. The two months between the cancer diagnosis and her death in 1999 were full of opportunities for mother-daughter moments. Truthful moments. Ones that might have had led to some sort of redemption or understanding. Yet MJ chose, even while dying, to keep her illusions, particularly the grand ones in which she was superior, infallible, and invincible — and not the bulimic-anorexic, violent, narcissistic, and callous woman she really was.

So I have no idea who he was, that dark-eyed and olive skinned, long lost, and never known father of mine. The pauper who left me with an imperious Queen and her soulless stand-in husband. Maybe he, too, stood perpetually outside the gate and tried to pluck the thorns from the roses. Maybe he was just a bastard, a one-night stand, or a really bad poet. Maybe he just wasn’t that memorable.

Except that I live, part pauper, part Queen, and no small part a dark-eyed Alice who can’t stop wishing there was something of substance on the other side of this looking glass.

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Now that it’s legal, and I have grown up, I think…maybe. Someday.

Posted on 05/18/2008 by Jane Devin

They hang in my closet as a reminder, a small torment, and something of a life jacket. I wore them when I last fell in love, hard and with almost reckless abandon, several years ago.

There was something about this particular pair of jeans that made me feel less humanly flawed and more invincible. In the smoky lower level of the Metro, where the music played a little softer and the lights stayed dim, these jeans moved me to the dance floor, where Aretha sang “If you want my lovin’ if you really do, don’t bother askin’ baby you know I’m gonna give it to you. . .” . Sheila was particularly beautiful that night, and it was easy to forget everything else, like how I normally don’t dance in public, how chaotic my life was at the time, and how different Sheila and I were in so many ways. Love doesn’t see impediments, but possibilities. Love doesn’t plan for failure, but creates the circumstances for success. So we would dance, and I would inhale the sweet smell of her neck, and forget everything else that wasn’t in the circle of glowing possibilities.

I wore those jeans weeks later when I leaned against the door in her bathroom, conversing as I watched her shave one leg, than the other. She had the sexiest iliotibial tract I’d ever seen, and the strong legs of a dancer. When she laughed, she had a tendency to throw her head back and close her eyes, deepening the hollow between her collarbones. I loved to watch her laugh.

Neither Sheila’s body nor her psyche carried any obvious scar tissue. She was younger than I was, and not just in years. Her eyes were bright with untried ideals. She ran, she played tennis, she skied, she had never smoked, or flirted with drugs. She had never had or raised children. She had never chased after a professional career, or lived outside of Minnesota. She drank herbal tea, and wore vanilla-scented lip gloss. She preferred comedies to dramas, and upbeat pop music to old love-and-lost ballads. Her closets were full of purples, reds, greens and yellows. Her mind wasn’t filled with stories, but with expectations and hopes. She sprung up in the morning, happily ready to experience whatever the day held. There was no hesitancy, no dread, none of the panic and worry that is endemic to those who of us who have beat a path to hell and back so many times we’ve memorized the travel guide.

In the bliss of fresh infatuation, I looked at this bright-eyed, optimistic, and perpetually sensual woman and thought of change. Sheila, like everyone else I’ve ever been with, was not a “you do your thing, I’ll do mine” lover. She wanted a life partner. Someone to share her days, nights, and experiences with. And because she lightened my heart and made me laugh – because she was incredibly open – because she made me feel sexy and loved and protective and generous – because she was full of pleasant surprises and kept me guessing – because she didn’t nag at me (much) for my bad habits – I thought of change and possibilities. Maybe, I thought, I don’t need to be so much of a hermit. Maybe I don’t have to write every night of my life. Maybe I can learn to like Saturday evening club-hopping and Sunday afternoons at Home Depot. Maybe it wouldn’t kill me to go jogging after dinner. These things, in exchange for a loving relationship – for all the sparks and fires and afterglows – could not be that bad.

I never considered asking Sheila to bend to my style of life. I’ve never thought of asking someone to be a hermit with me, or to eschew the social scene or ski hill for evenings spent at a desk or weekends spent with books. Somehow I suspect that the answer would be no. I even hope it would be, because I really enjoy the time I spend alone. I am very much a “you do your thing, I’ll do mine, let’s meet after” kind of lover. It seems, though, that not many people share this philosophy, and those who do aren’t generally monogamous. (I would make a lousy polyamorist, not because I have any great moral convictions, but because I really don’t like to share the people or things I love with people I don’t love – and because I have the kind of terrible curiosity that would have to know every single detail – and because, really, although I may not hold onto someone tightly, I do have a possessive streak).

I knew, given the divide between Sheila’s expectations and my life as it existed in reality, that I would have to be the one who changed. For her part, Sheila was naive, but nonetheless brave to take me on. I am, if I haven’t made it clear, not the easiest person to love. I am restless and jaded in so many ways. At turns, I am easygoing or moody. I am overly sensitive to noise, other people’s moods, and environment. My head is often in the clouds. I can talk a mile a minute or be silent for hours. I’m domestic only to the extent of doing what’s required for comfort. I never run out of coffee, but I don’t care if my checkbook is ever balanced. Trucking in practicalities doesn’t come naturally to me, since I so much prefer nearly every other alternative.

Still, there she was. Beautiful, glowing, and willing to love. All I had to do was bend. Expand. Set aside some things, and move forward with others. All I had to do was change.

Incredible months passed before my restless spirit began to bleat and scream steadily. I wanted to write more often. Sheila suggested that I write for one hour everyday, in the morning before I went to work. I wanted time to myself. She didn’t understand why my commute didn’t count. I wanted to skip a concert by her favorite band and suggested she go with a friend instead. Why couldn’t I just go and enjoy doing something she wanted to do? What would her friends think? Didn’t I love her anymore?

As the minor arguments stepped up, it wasn’t hard to pull the cynical piece of self I’d hidden out of reserve. Sheila had known only the smallest slice of a huge world. I would be her “best lover ever” for the time, but I knew that in the future there would be another best ever, and likely (hopefully) it wouldn’t be someone who was as skittish and cynical about commitment as I was.

I began to feel, more and more, like the big bad wolf to Sheila’s innocent Red Riding Hood, and because I loved her, I began to rewrite the story, imagining Sheila at her happiest not with me, but with a nice woman. One who taught grade school and volunteered her holidays at the women’s shelter. Someone who was supremely stable – who saved for yearly vacations to Mexico and used her Costco card to buy sensible things in bulk, like batteries and paper towels. Someone who had a collection of sweat suits for the right reason, and who enjoyed having 50 friends over for a barbeque. Not someone like me, with a penchant for rainy days, musty books, and a reclusive spirit.

We dated for a little under two years, which was just long enough for us to know that we were opposites in too many ways to be compatible, except that I realized it first and most insistently. It was painful in the way that any significant loss is, and more so because I was acutely aware of everything that I was losing. Not just the arguments (which I lost even when I won), but the love of someone who would never consciously seek to hurt me. The love of someone who let me love her, and who never doubted that either of us were deserving of whatever good things came our way. In losing Sheila, I was losing my innocent side – the bright-eyed and better part of me that didn’t see impediments, but possibilities, and that creates the circumstances for success – no matter how hard, how difficult, or how impossible.

We sat together under the trees at Calhoun Lake, my jean covered leg next to her bare one. She wore my favorite pair of sandals, and her nails were painted a pale shade of pink. Her wavy hair fell into curls with the humidity, and a lone ringlet fell over her left cheek. She looked so beautiful that night, lit by the reddish tones of sunset, that I almost stopped the inevitable.

Inside, the spirit continued to scream. Freedom, free, alone, write, be, think, dream. A split occurred, and another part of me screamed back in rebellion. Love, passion, her, companionship, sex, laughter.

Freedom won. And I have had my alone time, a surfeit of dreams, and there are reams of words – millions of words– that I have spent in the last ten years.

I have taken the jeans out of the closet, and with them, me.

The revolution continues.

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