katnyss's blog: "The Way Back"

I saw our life splayed out

like a grainy silient film,

Garbo spoke with somber lips

mouthing words of adoration

My darling, could you not hear

the cacophony foreign to your ears

taste the bittersweetness of our tongues

entwined in Valentino's sililoquies

Fallen soldier you held my heart

you shielded me with your flesh

armored my weaknesses with your strength

Now bent and naked without form 

without defintion of spirit

The night does not take pity

it steals my rest, invades my dreams

The relentless whirring of reels

replaying rewinding reverberating

that sound again and again and again

I don't want this film to end

I have long been a watcher of people, analyzing them and their curious habits. Most of us are creatures born of habit, destined to be a subjective being and a slave of those habits, whether from nature or nurture, they are usually formed fairly early in life. I often wondered, am I the only one out there with this strange little quirk of viewing others and their comings and goings?  I was surprised to discover that books and websites have been dedicated to this illustrious pastime. Also that a disclosure may be added, that this is not to be confused with voyeurism, which is observing people to get your jollies on or off or however it goes. O. Henry one of the wittiest writers who may or may not have been an embezzler, spent many hours hanging around hotel lobbies, observing the masses and using his findings of their little peccadillos in his writings. Art imitating life at is most poignant.

Fubar is an interesting site for this little activity of mine; sometimes the pickings are banal, sometimes witty and most often engaging in its undetermined meaning. Take the statuses for one, some use clever quotes to give an update of their day or week, others  leave more intimate pieces of themselves, although they may seem trivial, they actually tell more about what is really happen in their real world that day than the wittier sayings. I especially enjoy reading some of the more intriguing profiles. Some are really funny, some sad and some very ambiguous. All in all, is this who we really are? Of course we can say we are married, single, have 10 children or none at all, live here or there, love music hate art, love fish hate meat, smoke, drink, curse or swear by the gods. Are we living plural lives? Presenting a facsimile of our true selves or how we want others to see us? Checking to see if I can find my blueprints on how to live my life, for I would tear them into small bits and burn them. I dislike road maps and prefer to amble alongside, not amid the mob, but as a casual observer and then going on my merry way.

I love the writers who delve into irony, especially the tragic and dramatic irony bordering on the romantic, think Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Some of it is a bit more blatant and known first hand to the reader, others a bit more obscure and not known until the very climatic ending, the big twist to the story. Often we the reader know exactly how it will all end and are powerless to stop the downward spiral other times we are titillated by the happens and are gripped with the delicious knowledge that soon the antagonist will know it too. Irony, a bit witty, a bit sarcastic, but always entertaining. Whilst talking to a friend the other day we were discussing the use of irony in some of our favorite books. I really love that old fashioned word whilst. It should be used whilst sitting around on a sunny afternoon with a group of British friends at the croquet club and drinking a cuppa with scones and clotted cream, saying "Oh Bumpy, do my mind holding my umbrella whilst I slug a shot of Mumzy's gin? No, no not like that, in front of me!" Was that irony or deceit or a bit of both. In order for irony to play out there has to be a jigger of deceit laced with a bit cunning thrown in, however innocent or not.

O. Henry, one of my favorite authors who enjoyed wit and bringing a clever twist to his short stories. In "The Gift of the Magi", young lovers sell their most prized possessions to buy a Christmas gift for the other. He sells his pocket watch to buy his wife combs for her hair and she has her luxuriant tresses cut off and sold to buy him a chain for his watch. The story is twofold in its meaning and a bit ambiguous as well. The story of the three wise men that brought gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Christ child is the basis of the title. Although I am not sure what they did with them, Mary and Joseph packed them onto their small donkey along with the child and carried them to the West Bank to reside for a time, no not London. Those gifts were given freely as well, in adoration. While the wife’s locks will grow back and she can use her combs, her husband’s pocket watch is gone, but their love was selfless and true.

Now, Guy de Maupassant gives irony at its finest in "The Necklace", a short story about a foolish and unhappy woman stuck in her state of lower middle class. Who moans each day of her plight and lowly circumstances in life and longs for the wealth and riches of those few fortunate she see around her.  Having been invited along with her husband to a grand dinner and ball, she pines that she has nothing to wear. Oh where is fairy godmother when you need her? She borrows an elegant diamond necklace from an old school friend who is luckier in life than she is.  Once at the event she preens and struts like a proud peacock and flirts until late into the evening, upon arriving back at the slums, she is horrified to discover that the necklace is no longer around her silly throat. The couple then pull of the big bamboozle by begging, borrowing and going into hock to purchase a replica of the necklace and return it to her unsuspecting friend. Over the course of the next ten years they work their fingers to the bone, age twice as many years as she becomes even more bitter while her life falls into the poverty level. At a chance meeting one day with her wealthy friend, the fact was revealed that the so called opulent necklace that she had borrowed all those years ago was a fake and worthless. The deception was not just in the wasted years covering up the lost necklace but in her desire to be someone she was not. Oh, irony how you do spin your wondrous tales. "There is nothing more deceptive than the obvious fact." ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Most of us are aware of the Biblical account of Adam and Eve, cloistered in their paradise of bliss, a story that is older than dirt, since if you remember from your early Sunday school lessons was clearly already there. Eve, while walking through the garden on fine day encounters the slick serpent who has the power of speech.  After a bit of useless debating and without too much urging he tell her to eat of the forbidden fruit. Obviously being hungry and feelig a bit naughty she obliges. Feeling thus empowered she takes it to her sappy husband, "where did you get that Harry Winston?" he ask in astonishment. She smiles sweetly and offers him a sip of the Kool Aid, which having been bewitched by her boldness, he takes.

When God in his omniscience knows what his two wayward kids have been up to, comes to them and demands an explantion. Adam, ever so chivalrously throws his wife under the bus and declares, "She did, that deceitful vixen you made for me. The woman then points towards the serpent and declares, "It is his fault, I believed his slitherly tongue". To which the serpent pleads, nolo contendre, he was not going to let this come back and bite him in his scaly ass.

Which of course leads to the immediate destruction of their Platinum cards, membership in Club Eden is revoked and they will forever dwell in the land of the Walmart shoppers. Which also gave Milton some juicy material for his interpretation of poetic justice.

So is the beginning of the first femme fatale, to be followed in history by more fledglings of sexpotdom which segues into the enumerable odes to their charms. There have been more stories of their escapades, plays that paid them homage, sonnets written and sung, wars have been fought and history has been changed, put on pedestals of desire than no man can resist. Artists have tried to capture and immortalize their essences.

Those who have walked those hallowed halls of the femme fatale, Helen of Troy, who helped us learn so much about the ancient Trojans and perhaps that we should look a gift horse in the mouth. Scheherazade, whose stories of adventure and intrique captivated a king for 1,000 nights of climatic bliss. Cleopatra, cunning and shrewd and highly exotic, loved what she did with that kohl. Ah yes and the little Lolita, the consummate vamp in training.

One thing of note about all of these women, they had a rebel's heart. A desire to break free from the norms and conventions of their time. From the late great doyen herself, Mae West, "Goodness has nothing to do with it, dearie".

"She was the temptress who had ensared the first man and who still will continue her work at damnation; she was the being who is feeble, dangerous, mysteriously troubling. And even more than her body of perdition, he hated her soul." ~  Guy de Maupassant  (did he now?)

What makes a great writer, is it a great reader? Really it's often left open to the interpretations of the later. According to Anais Nin, " the role of the writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say" or was that Hallmark. When you're truly  a bona fide, topping the charts of the NY Times best sellers list, and extra kudos to when you hang onto that spot for weeeks and even more Brownie points when you can spew out works faster than the masses can whip out their Mastercards. Getting your works made into a blockbuster movie, priceless.

Would you consider  the Twilight series to be good writing? It is afterall good storytelling and isn't that what it's all about...excuse the belch. A vapid young girl, insert emo here, whose only desire in life is to become a bloodsucker and die forever in the cold arms of Edward the shimmery one. Written on a primary school level and written by a grade schooler who each night begins her entries with "dear diary, today..." Now I love a good lip biting, heart palpitating romance but receive more flush faced desires from reading the mating habits of the whooping cranes. Take Lady Chatt, who finally ends up with her Mellors and lives forever in orgasmic bliss. What Lawrence did for my libido is beyond mere words. Oh, so sorry I should have said, "spoiler alert" first.

Let's take Joyce, or not. That's James Joyce, the great delivery of the "stream of consciousness" a mind numbing trek down the rabbit hole while mumbling "Beware the Jabberwocky!" Truly an enlightened trek into the Odyssey of the mind, take the blue pill! He is is unquestionable the master of the English language. I spent on summer, pre boyfriend era, plowing through Finnegans Wake, while pulling out my hair, chewing my mother's lithium and seeking answers from Cliff, who had no clearer understanding of Joyce than I did. I unfriend you Cliff.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the poets. With their words of passion and longing, written in fractured meters by fractured minds that distrub my thoughts and make me rethink my own certitude. My first love WB Yeats, the true poet laureate and often a writer of the mystical. "Come away, Oh human child! To the waters and the wild with a faery hand in hand, for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand".  Then pehaps it's ee cummings, who said to hell with conventions even grammatical ones. Or Bob Kaufman, "a terror is more certain than all the desirable popular songs". Well said Bob. For me they do speak the words that I am unable to say and long to.

I have a clear vision of us sitting around an intimate cafe table on the left bank in Paris, in a time long passed yet it transcends cleary into our lives today. We have chats and meaningful conversations with Ms. Stein, the grand dame of the expats, at her home on 27 rue de fleurus. In comany are several of her mentors, the lost boys of a generation of bohemian and intellectual thinkers of the day. She freshly off the QED and her companions, Hemingway, Elliot, DosPassos and Fitzgerald, yes I am far reaching, are engaged in lively and often times heated discussions of the day. The impending war, the political climate and the exploits of the new arrivals. You know of my feelings towards the city of lights, perhaps it is because of my mother and only that. Yet it all seems so carefree, especially to be surrounded by those who understand you and you can also relate to them in this one area of your life, the area that desires you the most. To be yourself and the rest of the world be damned.

You know I get these random thoughts at incovenient times of the day or night, mostly in the middle of the night a brilliant idea, far reaching again, comes into my head and it's so fleeting that I fumble quickly with my bedside lamp, finding pen and paper and before my doppleganger can snatch it away I scrawl through blurry eyes my ideas. Hoping that by the light of the morning I can decipher my scratchings. This is my ritual and if I don't do this I will be cursing myself later for I will never remember it exactly the same way, ever!

I found this note stashed away in a book from the other day, the telly was on but  I was not really watching it, and My Fair Lady was playing. Now I am not much for musicals, I like them okay except for the part where they start to sing, then I go into a coma or pray for fast forwarding. This was the one version with Audrey Hepburn, whom I fell in love with watching her movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. She is charming in it and the perfect mix of gamine and a subtle hint of flirtatiousness. Of course you know the play is from Shaw's Pygmalia, where Pyg falls in love with his ivory statue, the perfect woman, beautiful and pure in heart. Kissing her once stoney lips one evening he finds them warm and yielding under his, which he then continued to feel her up and found the rest of her too had become flesh and blood and they lived happily every after. Galatea! I yell! I know that she will always be just a girl made from ivory.

I mentioned to you the other day that my latest guilty obsession is watching "The Vikings". It has all the essential elements of so called good television to lure the viewers in, well perhaps not those Snooki and Kardashian aficionados, but maybe a few who do enjoy the basic requisites for their viewing pleasure, eg wicked sex scenes, well chiseled beefcakes who seem to always be shirtless, sprinked over with some awesome tatts that would make even the ink masters envious and of course the obligatory bloody battle scenes with lots of gore. Oh yes, there is history offered as well, however askewed it  may be. It is the History Channel after all. In one paticular titillating scene, Lagertha, who is the wife of Ragnar, who is by the ways played by Travis Fimmel the Australian and former young hottie  who brought the art of modeling Calvin's underroos to new heights. Sidetracked...In a moment of heated passion she growls to her husband, "I want to ride you like a wild boar" or was it, "I want to ride you like a wild whore"? Why dice up our words, we know what she meant as I bit my lip. The women do not take crap from their men either. "You go one with your bad ass self Lagertha!"

The first season theme song was "If I Had a Heart", from the Swedish duo, Fever Ray. It's a fitting song, haunting and spirtual, "If I had a heart I could love you, if I had a voice I could sing." I feel devoid of both at times, maybe it's the song and not the show, nah I like the history...because I now feel fully educated on the adventures and exploits of the Vikings, thank you televsion land and thank you Odin. I can only hope to end my days in Valhalla in the hall of Asgard. Oh wait, I think I would have to be slain with a battle axe for this honorable achievement, I guess I will have to settle for Nirvana. What I mostly like about this show is the courage of the Viking women and their fierceness, for I am Katnyss the reincarnation of Boudicca the warrior queen! Now season two is upon us, I can barely stand it, bated breath!

No not the fish, but the unsettling spewing ribbons off multicolored rivulets of dripping wet paint more abstract than a Kandinsky, more surreal than a Dali. It seems that no matter which way I turn the canvas my life takes on a new twist that is played over and over like a seedy underground movie. Perhaps I could go all Christo here and wrap my random thoughts into a cohesive package of brightly colored neon orange and for good measure add a large pink bow, there all neat and tidy. Oh well, all's well that ends well. Ooh lots of name dropping today my friend. Let's climb back up before we fall too far down the hare's pit.

Back to my unjust harangue of Plath. Now, that I am taking the time again to read "The Bell Jar", with new and older eyes (notice I did not say wiser) I am liking her more and more. I mentioned to you that she reminded me of someone who is sitting at the back of a dimly lit pub with a small group of friends sipping Spanish sherry while spinning her tales of angst. Yet really she is a confessional writer. I felt as though I snuck into her bedroom while she was out and secretly read through her private thoughts before she published them. You know how it is, when you have created something made with bits and pieces of your own flesh and you hold heated debates with yourseelf on whether or not to share it with others? My take on confessions is, I do not fully trust them.

Take your average weakly sinner who goes for is overly unnecessary weekly confessional with his parish priest. After asking for absolution from having sex with his neighbors's wife, "forgive me Father for I have sinned", and saying three hail Mary's while mulling over the acrid taste of "go and sin no more", he leaves feeling momentarily cleansed. Absolved, check, shit eating grin, check. What he failed to divulge to the old pious one was the way he had ravished her and that next week right on schedule, he'll return again with a different take on the same aformentioned sin of adultry. After all what his priest didn't need to know was all the explicit details and if he doesn't know then surely God doesn't know. So the hell with it all, he swallows his papal pill, smooths back his hair ad drives back home to his wife and kids. "Midget, midget how he struts and winks, for he knows that a man is a big as he hope and thinks". Vonnegut, but of course you know this, just referencing for the critics. So love, the point of this rambling is this, are all confessions true, partly true or not true at all?