The Problem With You Is. . .

Posted on 11/23/2008 by Jane Devin

You know what the problem with you is? You think too much, you’ve got your head in the clouds, you need to come down to earth. You’re too literal, too much a dreamer, you make poor choices, you’re not as smart as you think you are. You never learn, when will you ever learn? You over-analyze things, you don’t think things through, you want everything to be easy, you don’t try hard enough, quit trying so hard, you make everything too hard, life just isn’t that hard.

Do you know that Wim Delvoye has a farm in China where tattoo artists cover pigs in elaborate tattoos? They put the pigs on high tables where there is no chance of escape, and spend hours puncturing them with needles. Afterwards, they show the pigs in art galleries and exhibitions. People show up – they pay to see this. The pigs then get slaughtered, and their skins are sold to the highest bidder. Delvoye, whose other art includes birdhouses dressed in leather, and x-rays of people taken in the act of coitus, has been wildly successful.

There are no accidents, everything happens for a reason, life is a folly, a fool’s game, there is no rhyme or reason. Accidents happen, buck up, be strong, find your bootstraps. You’re on this earth for a reason, better days are coming, look ahead, don’t look back, learn from your mistakes, learn from history. You’ve got to stand up, stand tall, back down, back off, be gentler, take some pride, you’re too proud, don’t be so arrogant. Look out for #1, remember there’s only one you, don’t be so self-serving, remember you’re not that special.

The other week, a 13 year-old Somali girl was raped. When her family filed a complaint, they sentenced the girl to death by stoning. They buried her in dirt up to her neck, and let a group of men and boys throw rocks at her until she was dead. I know, it’s the culture, right?

You’re too strong, it’s not all about you, no woman is an island, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, stay strong, be stronger, tomorrow’s a new day, things will look different in the morning, get real, face problems head-on, think of something else, think positive, luck will come, think it and be it, the world is your oyster, the world doesn’t revolve around what you want, give yourself a break, put your nose to the grindstone.

Right here, in America, a woman didn’t want to be with her husband anymore, so he threw acid in her face. She lost her eyes, her nose, her ears, her mouth. That’s not our problem, right? I know. The thing is, see, it really is. . .the same human impulse to injure someone, to leave a punishing mark, exists on a smaller scale all around us, and we cover it up in self-blame and platitudes, and create this false paradise where our minds and emotions – that thing called spirit – is so disconnected from our physical bodies that it supposedly can’t be affected by any actions except our own. It’s this lie, ingrained and long-told, that is killing our compassion and ability to empathize.

You need to love yourself more, you don’t love yourself enough, be humble, you’re too confident, you come off as a bitch, you’re intimidating, look people in the eye, don’t stare, don’t be so intense, laugh more, smile more, if you smile too much people won’t take you seriously. There are no problems, only solutions, no obstacles only challenges. Try, try again, keep trying, if you had any talent at all you would have made it by now, why don’t you find something else to do. Rise above it all, take a breather, be realistic, pay attention, heal yourself. See, the problem with you is. . .

Yes, I know. I have no tattooed pigs. It would never have occurred to me to tattoo a pig. I am closer to the pig, and feel more for her, than for the artist.

You can’t afford that kind of thinking. No one wants to hear the pig’s side of the story. They want bright and colorful amusement. Something they can laugh at, make a calendar of, display on their coffee table, or frame on their wall. A conversation piece, a knick-knack, a little something to gab about at the water cooler.

I would rather rescue the pigs and damn those who collect tortured skins as art.

Don’t be an idiot. Pigs cannot buy their own farms; artists can and do. Stop making excuses. All any of us can do is find our own version of the painted pig, parade it around, and hope it’s successful enough to buy us the freedom to do what we really want to do.

You’re really fucked up. Wim Delvoye is fucked up.

It’s a fucked up world we live in, and see, that’s your problem. . .

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

I Breathe. I Write. I Deliver Mail.

Posted on 02/13/2008 by Jane Devin

“Jane,what do you do for a living?” This question comes up often in letters received from readers of this blog, and while my favorite answer is “breathe”, most people don’t find that satisfactory. They want to know what company I work for, what college I teach at, or how I became so independently wealthy that I don’t have to work at all.

Sometimes, they’re surprised, even disappointed, to find out that I’m just a member of the working class. “Real writers” aren’t supposed to haul garbage or bag groceries. It’s okay if we live romanticized lives of poverty, struggling for our art, but having an actual job is perceived not only as unromantic, but as a sign of failure. Surely, real writers don’t serve up hash or work in post offices, right?

William Faulkner’s most notorious stint as a working man was his role of postmaster at the University of Mississippi post office, which incredibly he held for nearly three years. By all accounts, he was a terrible postmaster — he would ignore patrons calling at the window, he delayed taking outgoing mail to the train station, and on occasion he even threw away mail. He spent much of his time in the post office writing, and other times he would play bridge and mah-jongg with friends whom he’d appointed as part-time clerks. When a postal inspector came to investigate, Faulkner agreed to resign. Later, Faulkner said about his experience: “I reckon I’ll be at the beck and call of folks with money all my life, but thank God I won’t ever again have to be at the beck and call of every son of a bitch who’s got two cents to buy a stamp.”

My own job at the post office doesn’t allow time for card-playing, and I’m usually polite to customers when I see them, but it’s not a romantic job. Mail is dirty. My hands are weathered and chapped. Sometimes the bureaucracy is frustrating. Still, I’m basically alone several hours a day, which is why I chose, after years of pink collar/white collar suffering, to descend the ladder of corporate success. Climbing the ladder was important to me when I was raising my kids — once they left home, it wasn’t important anymore. I wanted to write again, and not just on those rare quiet evenings.

In the eyes of many people, this makes me a failure. At 45, if I had any talent or showed any promise, I would not be living in a tiny, rented apartment, delivering mail part-time. I would be knighted by the publishing industry, teaching literature at some prestigious university, ensconced in some beautiful cottage, and a Google search of my name would yield more than a blog and a couple of old newspaper articles.

The romantics may like a tragic beginning and a neat, happy end, but they tend to leave out the middle, which conflicts with their convenient theory — that all talent is instantly recognized and rewarded, and all good works are sanctioned by a knowing society. They don’t link those posthumously famous authors and artists, who died in obscurity and poverty, to any present day possibility. They see no Van Gogh’s or Zora Neale Hurtson’s in their midst, and no possibility that one of them may be sweeping up hair at their favorite salon, or steaming the milk for their Starbucks lattes.

The half-true but much heralded story of a penniless and welfare-dependent J.K. Rowling writing her first Harry Potter book in a coffee shop may appeal to the romantics, and even be considered a tad heroic — but only after the fact of millions in book sales and global popularity. Prior to that, I’d wager that some saw her as the crazy woman scribbling for hours on end in the cafe, a person of negligible worth, a dreamer, a “wannabe”, someone whom — if they had any talent at all — would have “made it” prior to the age of 32, when her first book was published. If Harry Potter had never been published at all, would Rowland be a worse writer? Of course not.

Then there’s Michael Blake, who had just been fired from his job washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant when his book “Dances with Wolves” was optioned for a screenplay. Blake, who spent twenty years writing scripts that never got produced, and whose now-famous book was never even reviewed prior to becoming a film, was not less of a writer when he was elbow-deep in greasy dish water and making minimum wage — but I’m sure many people he knew in his pre-glory days questioned his talent.

These are not my pre-glory days, just my days, period. I’m quite sure nothing I write will ever reach Harry Potter fame or the silver screen, not only because I rarely submit my work, but because I’m content with obscurity. I’m content to write stories that mean something to me, even if the subjects are unpopular and the endings are messy or tragic.

I breathe. I deliver mail. I write the stories of lives lived on the periphery. And I am content.