Festival of the Light-headed

I have to say a few words about our Chanukah party last night, because it was a treat for me. I never found time to do yesterday's #reverb10 prompt because we were so busy cleaning and decorating, and I never did finish my cup of coffee. I'll pause and say a big thank you to Trader Joe's, who supplied the latkes. I made latkes by hand once. That's why I opted to buy them this time.

Our neighbors came over, and the family of one of DramaQueen's friends, my friend The Baking Queen, and my old high school friend JPq, who I've decided is an honorary uncle because he makes the girls giggle so much, which is a particularly uncle-ish thing to do. 

Dear Husband, who can't help being a teacher, provided instruction in the history of Chanukah, how to light the menorah, and the tradition behind the dreidel. I was eying my hot-out-of-the oven latkes. But all went well. We have two menorahs, one for the kids, so DramaQueen lit that one while I did the grown-up one. My latkes were still nice and warm. The Chanukah miracle this year was that Firecracker liked the latkes. I think she ate two. Dear Husband played dreidel with the kids, and I heard lots of squealing.

But what particular captured my imagination was JPq's description of themed trees. He has one for each room (I would love to see this), and he has a group of friends who have an informal contest for the best themed tree. I heard about a sea-themed tree made from real coral, and a Poseidon Adventure tree (suspended upside down from the ceiling). But best of all, he told me that one of his friends had created a Brideshead Revisited tree! Doesn't that sound awesome? He hung model vintage cars and frames with photos of the characters (from the original miniseries, mind you). I want a Brideshead Revisited Tree. Besides those ornaments, there would be teddy bears, champaigne bottles, a gondola, a wheelchair, a hunting horn, a horse (if possible with someone riding to hounds), something Oxonion, a fountain, a ship and an eternal flame.

What JPq suggested for me is a Sherlock Holmes Tree. Oh, I think that would be splendid! I would have to include both the traditional and modern Sherlock. A magnifying glass (of course), a violin, a pipe, a Persian slipper, a cell phone (pink, if possible), a Ferris wheel (from the current London skyline, which features in the Sherlock opening credits), a microscope, a gun, framed photos of the absolutely adorable contemporary Sherlock and Watson, and what else? Could I find a deer-stalker ornament? Or perhaps a real one as a tree-topper? A syringe, for the famous 7% solution of cocaine the traditional Holmes indulged in? I would have to create a 221B door. A gas street lamp. A cab and a bottle of pills (both from a Study in Pink). What else do you think?

Needless to say, the rest of the family were decidedly unenthusiastic about a Brideshead or Sherlock Christmas tree. In fact, I think there were audible groans. DramaQueen liked one of JPq's other ideas, though, to build a fireplace mantle around a plasma TV tuned to the Yule channel. I think I saw Dear Husband giving JPq the beady eye by that point in the evening.

Torched

I love Torchwood. I have all the annoying enthusiasm of someone who has just discovered a show/music/event/issue that everyone else has known about for years. I’m just jumping with eagerness to bore someone to tears, so thanks for stopping by. Sit down for a bit. Want some coffee?

As I was saying, so many people were tweeting about Torchwood and referring to it in blogs that I felt like I was missing out on the biggest event in popular culture. I mean, if it’s a trending topic on twitter, surely I need to investigate. Now that I’ve seen a few episodes, I feel so much more au currant.

Now, what do I like about Torchwood? Well, I was really impressed by the snappy writing and stellar acting.

Ha ha ha. Yeah, right.

First, the cast all look as if they could be served up with whipped cream, strawberries and a glass of chardonnay. I mean, just look at them:



Aren’t they as tender and delightful as a spring morning? Don't you just want to take them home and have a rumpus? No? Well, whatever. Are you sure you're breathing?

But really, I only had to hear one word: “gay.” That pretty much sealed it for me, 'cause if there’s a gay angle, I am so there. Just call me a voyeuristic deviant. In fact, if you do I’ll say “thanks” because I’ve really been neglecting that side of my personality.

Anyway, I don’t just casually think, “Hey, I’ll check out that show when it comes on next.” No, I’m an obsessive researcher. I scour the Internet for interviews, bios of the actors, episode guides, clips. I’ve now watched wobbly film snippets of the actors speaking at conventions, fan-made videos of favorite scenes overlaid with popular music, and interviews from British talk shows.

So of course I found out that Torchwood pretty much goes to town - girls with aliens, boys with aliens, girls with girls, boys with boys. Or, as one article put it, the sexuality of the characters is “fluid.” And I think we can all agree that fluid sexuality makes for some really good TV. Or maybe you think it's morally corrupt entertainment that plays to our basest instincts. We should check you for a pulse.

One thing I discovered in my research is that the actors are completely adorable off screen. They remind me of the theater kids from high school and college – loud, extroverted, mischievous, always performing, frequently outrageous, and so full of boisterous energy that your life begins to look colorless in comparison. And you wonder if perhaps you missed a turn somewhere, because everyone seems to be having heaps of fun, and wouldn't it be lovely to have an invite?

And you would not believe how these fictional gay romances obsess fans. Well, maybe you do. Here I am, obviously. But the fangirls pursue the topic with a tenacity that boggles the mind. I guess since men have been fantasizing about girl on girl action (not neglected on Torchwood, either) for years, the ladies have jumped at the chance to even the score. Surely those who play straight lovers on TV are not constantly plied with requests that they kiss off screen the way John Barrowman and Gareth David Lloyd are. Not that they aren’t happy to oblige. Not that they seem to mind delivering as much raucus innuendo as any squealing fangirl could possible desire. They aren’t very shy. They flirt and joke and insinuate and generally egg each other on. It’s grand to watch.

My explanation for this somewhat odd, delirious attention is that the media prohibition against depicting gayness fell like the Berlin Wall and now everyone is giddily walking streets that were formerly off limits.

I know I’ve mentioned this before (but don't think that will stop me from saying it again - you might as well have another cup of coffee), but it still floors me that shows like this exist. In my childhood – 30 plus years ago – two men kissing on screen was more unlikely than the end of the Cold War. And then, suddenly, it seemed that film after film was romping around in forbidden territory– Brideshead Revisited, Another Country, Parting Glances, Maurice, My Beautiful Laundrette. At my college students flipped their orientations like coins, and pretty much without embarrassment, brandishing pink triangles and rainbow banners. I have witnessed, in my lifetime, an amazing transformation. Would any actor from my childhood have been as unabashedly open about his sexuality as John Barrowman? Would a straight actor like Gareth David Lloyd have been so blithely unconcerned about his reputation or so completely comfortable with his role? I know it’s an incomplete transformation. People are still victimized because of sexual orientation. There’s still enormous resistance (which I cannot and never will understand) to gay marriage. Some are utterly disgusted (which I also cannot fathom). Others think it's unbiblical (oh give me a break and stop picking out the same damn verses from Leviticus and Paul's letters). But, I can’t help but survey the scene and say, “Wow.”

I’m making it sound as if Torchwood is devoted solely to the sexual shenanigans of its characters, which it isn’t. It’s just the part that most interests me! I never claimed to be deep, or particularly refined. I mean, look again at that photo. Strawberries and whipped cream, and maybe not chardonnay but champagne. So, the storylines may be a bit lame at times, and the special effects not always effective. John Barrowman may let his theatrical background leak through a bit too much and hog the attention. But, you know what, I’m happy to be walking around Berlin.

Meander

(flawnt suggested I write something about obsession, so I gave it a try)

Things are a little out of hand. Information fills room after room after room. I have no bloody idea where I am. I have your photo, but the navigational coordinates are difficult to interpret. Where the hell are you, anyway? I don’t like mazes – too much like that Greek myth. Gee, you have remarkable eyes. I’m always struck by them. I’ve been known to hold my breath – it seems wrong to exhale. And you smile as if the world makes you happy. I’ve always liked that about you, how approachable you are, how unassuming. It’s adorable. Everyone says so. You don’t answer emails, though, and that’s a bit disappointing, a tiny imperfection. Did you know that every Persian carpet includes a flaw so as not to offend God? Did you know that you can track an IP address from an email? Of course, what do you do with an IP address? You have to be the CIA to take it farther. Do you think that artists have a divine calling? Do you think you have a divine calling? What would you call it, then? I think you are too modest, but it’s a charming quality. No wonder you’re so popular. Did you know that your entire life opens and unfolds like a map on the World Wide Web? Information fills room after room after room. Did I say that before? Your hair looks much better short, by the way. Long doesn’t suit you. You should always keep that in mind. I’ve been meaning to ask – how do you decide where to break a line of poetry? By syntax? Logic? Breath? Rhythm? Or is it purely by the way the text looks on the page? That always puzzles me, where to break. The lines just want to keep going and going and turn the corner and keep going... Sometimes the words get loose altogether and it’s a nightmare trying to impose order. It’s brutal, what that does to me. I’m not like everyone else, you see. I’m complicated. Whimsy has its place, but can’t you ever be serious? You really should be serious. This is a serious matter.

I know where you live.

When Poets Dream of Angels

“When the poets dreamed of angels, what did they see?
History lined up in a flash at their back.”
~ David Sylvian

I do not have the kind of bipolar that you see in movies. I don’t run around like a mad person, talking a mile a minute and then become catatonic. I have brief highs and then slide into depression and ennui. The depression is more persistent and severe than the high.

My manic probably looks much like someone else’s normal, at least to the outside observer.

Internally, it’s a firestorm.

I become entirely focused on something, usually to the point of obsession, perhaps for a couple of weeks. Then I falter. The obsession starts to evaporate, and I keep trying to hold onto it, because once it’s gone, the landscape is gray and uninteresting pointless. I drag myself around the drab landscape for a while until something new and shiny attracts my attention. For a while it was learning to knit. Then I dropped that. When we moved it was decorating – I spent a lot of time poring over books and paint colors – and then I lost interest. Recently it was summer camp.

Last weekend I could think of little else but poetry. I ransacked the house until I found my old papers and journals and dragged them out. I reread and shuffled and sorted. I began transcribing my old poems onto my computer. I drove Dear Husband nuts because I barely moved. Poems I didn’t remember writing. The dissertation reviews. Wow, I thought, my 22 year old self is just a fascinating mess. I can’t believe I stopped writing, blah blah blah. I’ll type it all up. I’ll put it all out there. Why not? This is kinda exciting. This is great!

At the same time, I’ve developed a strange and rather embarrassing obsession with Misha Collins and the composite of faith, doubt, rebellion, and wordspinner that he’s come to represent. I know far more about him than I will give a crap about in a month. I follow him on Twitter, which is itself the perfect haven for the frantically distracted and obsessed. There is always something new, always a reason to check. Misha happens to be very clever and amusing, spinning whimsical stories, which you wouldn’t think possible in Twitter. He's charming and at ease (of course, he's an actor) and everyone thinks he's just adorable. He is gifted and I am jealous. He writes poetry, and it's good poetry. Damn. He's bright and cheerful and good natured. He has thousands of followers. He doesn’t interact, but Twitter creates the illusion of giving you access to someone’s thoughts in real time, access to their daily life, or in this case, access to their creative life.

I’ve begun to falter.

The utter ridiculousness of being enthralled by some actor is a daily affront to my common sense. I feel ridiculous. I feel idiotic. I feel every one of my 43 years admonishing me to get a grip and pay attention to real life, my children, my husband, my job. It's not as if I can sit down with Misha Collins and pick his brain about poetry and the creative process. He plays an angel, but he's not carrying a message from God to me.

And the poetry. It seems so long ago and in another country. Far away. An island. I think I wrote to get high. It’s like being high. It must release endorphins. Each poem was an obsession. Nothing else was real until the poem was real. The world didn’t make sense without it. When I wrote the world was a bit sharper and I was a bit more buoyant, a bit more purposeful.

And I lost it.

I mentioned in a previous post that I have some ideas about why I crashed into a major writer’s block. But I’m not really so sure. I can’t untangle all the factors. The collapse of a relationship, the start of a new one, changing my persona for the world of jobs and careers, the desire for normality and stability, a dominant boyfriend/husband, antidepressants.

And, a not uncommon experience for me, feeling like a fraud.

I wrote confessional poetry. Much of it was filled with bitterness about my childhood, which sounds so passé and clichéd. I’m sure it bores the hell out of a lot of people. When you write confessional poetry you can’t really hide behind a persona. You’ve dumped your life out for all to see. Your demons are prancing on the pages. Everyone’s walking around in your psyche.

Near the end of my time in the writing program, I was sitting in workshop one day going through the hell of having one of my poems critiqued, when it dawned on me that my fellow poets and my instructors were talking about my poem as if I had been physically and sexually abused. I was dumbfounded, taken aback. I didn’t say a thing. I wasn’t sure whether to protest or pretend. Good God, I thought, how did I manage to screw this up? I went back through my poems and squirmed with discomfort. So many violent images, so many with sexual undertones. Taken alone, not so much, but together, bewildering. I was baffled and kind of horrified.

I didn’t experience some sort of aha moment, a revelation of a long buried trauma. I was never sexually or physically abused. I have to assume that the combination of verbal assaults, mental illness, extreme repression and shame engendered my sometimes over-the-top images. I felt that I had miscommunicated my entire life, that I should take out an ad or make a speech to set the record straight. It didn’t help that later one of my brothers told me a female cousin had accused my father of inappropriate behavior. I don’t believe that accusation. It doesn’t seem to fit. My father has many infuriating and undesirable traits, but I can’t think that is one of them.

But, you start to think, don’t you, that if it quacks like a duck, and so forth. There’s just that little bit of uncertainty. No, not possible. I would know. I wasn’t that good at disappearing.

Did that stop me in my tracks? Or am I just grasping for an explanation? I stopped trying to think about my past. When I went on antidepressants, I felt great. I felt so great that I eventually dropped both the antidepressants and the psychiatrist. That should have been a warning sign. I now know you don’t give a bipolar person Prozac – it triggers erratic behavior. I married an extremely ambitious man and hid in his shadow for years. I was thoroughly sick of hashing over my poor sad childhood. What did it matter? It didn’t help. It was getting boring. It was self-indulgent. Lots of people had it worse. I filled journals but I couldn’t write poetry. I struggled and flailed, mourned and grieved and finally stopped trying. Divorce, pregnancy, another marriage. I didn’t seem to be angry at my parents anymore. They were so remote, so harmless. I had children. I had things to do.

So here I am. I realize that I am still furious. Or rather I don’t realize it – it just comes out when I write. It’s obvious to everyone else. I mean, I know I have a temper and that I’m irritable, that I’m often moody and depressed, but I guess when I get going I fairly reek of brimstone. I’m still dogged by anger and self-loathing, and it can’t be medicated away. I haven’t a damn idea what to do about it. My therapist says I have to find some way, but she has no idea how, or maybe she just won’t tell me. Maybe she thinks it’s therapeutic for me to find out myself.

Meanwhile the world is starting to get that blunt look. Poetry, a clever actor who also happens to be a poet, hunger for that sort of creativity (Why can’t I be like you? Tell me how to be like you.) – what does it all matter? What do I think will change? My thoughts are shifting and settling like dust after a building collapses.