What a bitch

"Symbols and narratives of feminine power are secrets kept hidden not only from men but from women as well.  The literary critic rarely encounters feminine archetypes in their purely feminist form in women's texts,  because gender norms are often unconsciously internalized by women authors.  Many feminist critics would agree with Jung that patterns found in myths and fables reflect the psychological development of an individual.  In the quest, the male hero journeys from the familiar to the unfamiliar. First he encounters his shadow, then digs deeper and confronts his anima [the dragon, the monster, Moby Dick] wrestles it, contains it and returns reborn. In the female quest, however, women who venture outside the norm become social outcasts.  Strong autonomous women are often under suspicion of being witches."

--- Annis Pratt, Feminist Archetypal Theory

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The Good Dream

In that small two room apartment we could smell every inch of each other's bodies; Stella's unborn child, Stanley's breathing, the things they whispered to each other at night. I thought they were both gone for the day. I thought I had the apartment to myself. I poured a whiskey and opened the windows, musicians played on the street below. I ran myself a bath. I lit a cigarette. I took off my clothes.


It was a Saturday afternoon. I might've been dancing. I might've been touching myself. I am a woman after all, and it was hard to get him out of my head. Even though he hated me. Once when we were alone, he said, “You'd be attractive if you washed your face.” So I was naked when he walked through the door.

“You're supposed to be out,” I said, but I didn't make a move to cover myself. I might've been wearing mama's pearls, I might've been wearing white kid boots, lace gloves, diamond earrings. I might've been wearing stockings. I knew I looked good in that light, late afternoon, almost golden. I avoided the morning light, most unforgiving.

"You're supposed to be out," I repeated, the ice melting in my drink, a fly buzzing against the screen window.

I suddenly remembered the moth that followed me up the stairs my first night here, three months ago. It was a sign, an omen. I didn't see it then, but it became very clear to me as I stood naked in the kitchen, Stanley barely three feet from me. I saw the dark hair that covered his arms and his hands, a pelt.

“If you were a gentleman,” I finally said, “you'd walk back out the door and give me five minutes to get decent.”

“Blanche,” he replied, “you couldn't do that in five years, never mind five minutes.”

“You want a whiskey,” I asked.

“Sure baby.”

“Come and sit down,” I said, pulling out a chair, “you're making me nervous, standing in the doorway like that.”

“No,” he replied, “I like it here.”

“Aren't you going to tell me to get dressed?”

“You are dressed, Blanche, you're dressed as I always pictured you.”

My heart twisted, ripped right in half. But I didn't stop. I don't remember trying. I brought him the whiskey, and he put his fingers up inside of me, said,

“Is this what happens in the stories you teach, weren't you a teacher, Blanche? Didn't you instruct young minds, high school, was it? I was never much good in school myself, got into fights, pissed on the bathroom walls, chased girls, but you--- you taught literature, isn't that right,” his voice was gentle, teasing, “is this what happens in those stories, Blanche,” now he was whispering, tickling my ear, “a crazy woman dances naked around her sister's kitchen, drinking whiskey at three in the afternoon," he pulled me closer, I opened my legs wider, "looking for love," he continued, "but only finding heartbreak. Isn't that who you are Blanche, isn't that your character? Is that what you teach, or is that what you are? Tell the truth, Blanche, teach me something, do you like being fucked in your sister's kitchen?”

Then he brought his hand, the one that had been inside me, up to his mouth, and sucked on his fingers one by one. He took the whiskey from me, drank it down, walked into the bedroom, and closed the door. I stripped off my jewelry, unhooked my stockings, and went into the bathroom. I lowered myself into the cool water, closed my eyes, and dreamt I was back at Belle Reve.

Belle Reve

Deconstructing Stella

I don't know how this woman could be my sister. I tell her, I'm to going to run your bath, but it's an excuse to get away from her. Dear God in heaven it's like she's still a debutante. She's fanning a big white moth from her face, and drinking Stanley's whiskey. She's wearing a white silk dress, matching gloves and hat, still holding tight to mama's embroidered satchel. When I close the door, and turn on the faucet, it occurs to me to just drown myself before this goes any further. I run the water a little hot out of spite. I see the look she gave him. But I'm having a baby so I have to be careful. She's not the woman she used to be, but even so, still dangerous. I splash cold water on my face.

She walks unsteadily into the bathroom, and the moth follows her. Baby, she whimpers, why do you have bugs in your house? I reach out my hand, crush it in my palm, now we don't, I say. She's close to me now and she smells like a whorehouse; beyond cheap perfume and sweat, beyond desperation. It's sour and clings to her like dust. Help unzip me, she says. I take hold of the zipper but the dress tears at the shoulder, the lace practically dissolving. Careful, she says, unfazed, it's my last good dress. Steam rises up from the water, and I turn off the tap. I leave without saying another word.

Stanley is gone, the whiskey bottle is empty. I'm alone in the kitchen. I'm so glad I got away. I'm so glad I escaped the ghosts of that house, and the nightmare of those summer nights underneath the magnolias. Mama was always up in her room, sequestered and protected by the servants, doing God knows what. And on Saturdays, young men in linen trousers lined up to drink papa's bourbon, and get close to Blanche; flowers in her hair, eyes unfocused, why yes I'd like another drink you silly goose.

Later, I'd watch her slink off towards the barn with Philip or James or the captain's son. She'd return just as the sun was coming up. I'd ask, do you know what you're doing. It's not as if she was stupid. When I got older, I just wanted to get as far away as possible. I knew it was a dying world. By then Blanche was married to a man who would soon die of mysterious complications. Mama couldn't see me off because she had a sick headache. After all, I was just Stella, not brilliant, not beautiful, not even interesting enough to be missed. I got a a job as a waitress in the French Quarter, met Stanley one night in July. I don't need the past or the future.

She is shocked by New Orleans because it is dirty, chaotic, but it is also alive. Belle Reve is dead. I don't know if she'll be able to tell the difference. I can't bring myself to care anymore. The bathroom door opens and she makes her entrance wearing only a thin ivory chemise. Her breasts seem weighted. Careful Blanche, I say, Stanley will be back at any minute. She ignores this. Sits down at the kitchen table, says, there's no point in having servants in a two room apartment. I put my hand over hers, I know Blanche.

I still would like to kill her. When you are so thoroughly engaged in destruction, you shouldn't fall apart when your work is done. I could respect her if she brought her own whiskey and said, I'm a dumb stupid whore, and I've lost everything that ever belonged to us, and now I have nothing. Instead, she walks around as if she is hallucinating. As if she is still the mythical beauty of Belle Reve, instead of a moth trapped in the bright light of a single light bulb. She puts her head down on the table. I run my fingers through her hair. I can't help it, I still love her. Just then, Stanley opens the door, puts the bottle down on the table, asks, do we have any ice?

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A ghost story

Resurrection Mary, so the legend goes, was out dancing with her boyfriend. He told her she was pretty but she wasn't beautiful, he told her Mary Ellen had better breasts and Emily Rose had silkier hair.  She begged him to stop, that he was hurting her feelings, but he wouldn't. She said, if you loved me, you wouldn't say such terrible things.  But he laughed and told her to relax, baby, I'm just kidding around.  They continued dancing; a lindy, a waltz.  She loved the smell of his cologne, his dark hair and dark eyes.  She liked the way he stole a kiss when no one was looking.  He was her first lover, and she thought they would be together forever.

She almost forgave him until Emily Rose danced by them.  He whispered something in Emily's ear, and she laughed.  Mary decided that she would rather walk home alone, in the dark cold night, than spend another minute with him.  While crossing the street, she was hit by a car and killed.  It was the 1930's.  Heartbroken, her parents buried her in a white dress and white kid shoes. But she didn't stay dead.  People still see her on the same highway where she died.  She's a beautiful girl, pleasant and polite.  She just needs a ride.  She's formally dressed and appears educated and prepossessed. Sometimes its the middle of the night, and sometimes its bright afternoon.  She always asks the driver to stop at the cemetery on the same stretch of road, the same place where she refuses to stay buried.  She always goes home.  She's a good girl who knows what's best for her.

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So bad, so very, very bad

Hedy Lamarr as Deliah
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Some harlot saints

"A number of Egyptian or Levantine harlot saints figure in the Church's calendar alongside Mary Magdalene.  Mary the Egyptian is depicted next to her as black in a window of the church of St. Merri in Paris and their iconography is sometimes very similar.  Mary came to Alexandria in the hope of earning her fare in Jerusalem, where she wished to venerate the true Cross.  With this end in view, she prostituted herself to sailors for seventeen years before retiring to the desert to live a life of penitence as hermit, clad in nothing but her hair and progressively blackened by the sun."

--- Ean Begg, The Cult of the Black Virgin.

632 Elysian Fields

I'm standing at the corner of 632 Elysian Fields. Its hot, almost tropical, and a small breeze plays at the hem of my white silk dress. A moth flutters against my face. A woman tells me, your sister is at the bowling alley, but all I need right now is a drink. I got on the bus in Virginia ten days ago, but I feel like I've been traveling for months, years. I feel like New Orleans is a dream and I'm just a ghost.

The woman nudges me and says, like I said your sister's at the bowling alley, and I say, fine, she's at the bowling alley. She says, its just around the corner, and I say thank you, but I don't move. I'm remembering the last night in his arms. I'm remembering how good he felt against my skin. I try not to remember that he took a pistol, put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger, how people whispered, he was a married man. It's impossible I could be standing here right now.

I left home on July 10th at 8:00 a.m. in the morning. I didn't go to his funeral. The bus pulled up, and I got on. The sky was overcast, the morning air was cool. I didn't sleep the night before. I kept reading his letters. Searching for clues. It wasn't my first scandal, but it was the last. I knew it even before he pulled the trigger. Blanche, you can't stay here now. But he wasn't crazy about me. He was just crazy.

I see Stella walking up the street arm in arm with Stanley. She rushes up to me, screams my name so that it echoes in the dark streets. I wrap my arms around her, my little sister, my beloved, but I see him out of the corner of my eye. He's smiling and I can already taste his mouth on mine. If I could have a drink and a bath, I might be able to survive. He grabs my suitcase and together we walk up to the tiny apartment at the back of the building. The hallways are close, and I'm sweating by the time we reach the fifth floor.

A single light bulb dangles from the ceiling. Stanley drops my suitcase and gets a beer, leans against the sink like a wrestler. I see the same craziness in his eyes. Stella makes up a cot next to the kitchen table, apparently this is where I will be sleeping. A white moth flutters against my face. I wonder if it is the same one from the street, if it has possibly followed me up the stairs, into this kitchen. As Stella runs my bath, Stanley offers me a drink. I say, yes, thank you.

Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois
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the plight of the romantic heroine

Francie walked down the aisle, now strewn with rose petals, the small church now ablaze with candles, the priest in his white chasuble with gold trim.  As she walked, she noticed that friends and family looked like well dressed strangers. She peered out through the netting of her veil, and swore she saw clouds drifting high up in the rafters and small angels, the size of hummingbirds, darting in and out of them. But she wasn't afraid.  The music got louder, her groom turned to face her, but then he too was a stranger.  Surely this was too much? Surely this was not right. She stopped, pulled back her veil, and feeling very exposed, asked, who's writing this story?

"...unlike those fantasy patterns that appeal primarily to men, female protagonists [in romance novels] do not usually recur, like James Bond, from book to book.  Once a women's love story has been told, repetition would in fact undermine the entire premise of her story--- and her life, for dramatic purposes, over."

Kay Mussell, Fantasy and Reconciliation: Contemporary Formula's of Women's Romance Fiction, Greenwood Press, Connecticut and London.

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Am I Blanche DuBois?

Blanche

The frothy Southern Belle doesn't get laid either. Not with Stanley. That brute. And while she's not suicidal, like Anna K, she does engage in a pas de deux with a couple of white coats. Never a good thing in mythical antebellum New Orleans. She doesn't live happily ever after. If I may be so bold, I would start by giving this character a brain. Because when Stanley starts pawing through her suitcase, looking for the paperwork for Belle Reve, the family estate--- if she had a brain, she would say instead;

Asshole. I'm going to put my cards on the table. You're hot as hell. You're like a slab of meat in a butcher's shop on a hot July afternoon. I'd like to cut you and dissect you and serve you on a platter.

Speaker Two

I'm sorry who are you?

Blanche

But I can't and I won't because you're married to my sister. So put on a t-shirt for christsakes, but make it tight. I'm older now, men don't fall at my feet except when they're drunk. I don't keep as many mirrors in the house. I know this, Stanley, I'm not stupid. I may be fatuous, but it's required by the canon. Anyway. You needn't worry your pretty little head about my family estate, because I got it covered. I will never lose Belle Reve because I traveled 60 years into the future and invested in software. Don't ask me the details about time traveling because I'm sick of telling it, but it basically involves a “man” who visits from the future. We had our quiet moments together, our intimacies. I'm not the girl you marry, everyone knows that. Not even an alien. That makes me a bitch or a witch, take your pick, also covered in the canon. I would argue that both words belong there, except their iterations are fundamentally incorrect, anyway---

---let's get back to Stanley, that brute, that monster, that beast. He's sitting on the yellow linoleum chair in the kitchen listening to everything I have to say. The sun is going down, and he's covered in a thin film of sweat. My sister is pregnant with his baby, and I'm not jealous exactly, but I never have that experience. It's a bittersweet moment when I find out. But him? Stanley? He's not going to get a penny of that money. If I had a brain, if you, esteemed members of the academy, would allow me a brain, and perhaps some imagination, I could save Belle Reve.

Speaker Two

You're not on our list of scheduled speakers.

Blanche

If you let me subvert the canon, just a tiny bit, by the time I run up against Stanley in New Orleans, I'll have a stock portfolio worth millions. I'll be like,

Stanley, if I don't get some respect from you, you won't see a dime of this money. And don't even think of throwing me down on the kitchen table, or pressing up against me when the moon is full. Or any other of your sexual shenanigans. I freely acknowledge our attraction, but put it back in your pants honey, and treat me like a lady. Because if you do, you might enjoy a prosperous retirement.

And now he gets up from the kitchen chair, clearly seeing a new woman. Maybe a little afraid of her. He goes to the fridge because its hot, because he needs a beer. I pick up a paper fan and flirt with him. He sits down again but farther away. I laugh inside because now I know I got the little boy on the run. I say, Stanley, do we have an understanding. And he looks up at me with those dark brooding eyes, weak with desire, for me, Blanche, former Queen of the South, now reduced to such ruin, and he looks up at me, and asks, Can I kiss you?

Speaker Two:

But we still don't know who you are.

Jessica Tandy as Blanche DuBois in Streetcar Named Desire


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A note on post modern fairy tales

"Archetypes of the genre--- the innocent heroine, the charming prince, the terrorizing witch--- offer clearly drawn gender roles.  But Christina Bacchilega considers the ideological dimension of this clarity fundamental to the genre's facade and a trap for the complacent reader, 'What distinguishes the tale of magic or fairy tales as a genre [...] is its effort to conceal its work systematically---to naturalize its artifice, to make everything so clear that it works magic, no questions asked.'  By relentlessly questioning, deconstructing and posing alternatives to this 'naturalized artifice', post-modern fairy tales rigorously hold these transparent stories up to the light."

---Soman Chainani, The Politics of Content Revision in Angela Carter's "Snow Child"
Marvel & Tales  17.2 (2003) 212-235
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A coda to Anna Karenina

"Self conscious fiction (Atwood, Drabble, Lessing) destabilizes [screws up, turns on its head, turns it upside down] the conventions of realism because fiction that includes within itself commentary on its own narrative conventions is subversive [scary], it begins to expose the edges of the female narrative [also scary]."

---Gayle Green, Changing the Story.

"Members of the academy---- as a romantic character, a woman, I am the embodiment of all your theories and desires. I particularly enjoyed my incarnation as a late 21st century hacker Anna Karenina, Tanya X. And Vronsky as the spy she falls in love with--- nice touch. But she kills herself before they can do it. I’m willing to go along with all these little literary experiments, but I’m still not getting laid with any regularity."

----Am I Still Anna Karenina

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A season in hell

"Goddesses don't come down to us in their pure ambiguous form but in static dualistic fashion.  They don't serve as models for us to imitate."

--- Thelma Shinn, Worlds Within Women

If asked to deconstruct Blanche DuBois, I'd begin first with a brain.  The pallid, over-sexed, over-the-hill matron is a dizzying delight to be sure, but with a brain she might end up happy, or at the very least, not dancing a pas de deux with the white coats who come and take her away at the end of the play.  What trope did Tennessee Williams pluck out of the air?  What myth?  She's a damaged girl to be sure, affairs are alluded to, "fallen woman" hangs about her head like a halo.  Was it Eurydice?  Is this all she's good for after spending a season in hell?

Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois in Streetcar Named Desire

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Am I still Anna Karenina?

Speaker One

Members of the academy---- as a romantic character, a woman, I am the embodiment of all your theories and desires. I particularly enjoyed my incarnation as a late 21st century hacker Anna Karenina, Tanya X. And Vronsky as the spy she falls in love with--- nice touch. But she kills herself before they can do it. I’m willing to go along with all these little literary experiments, but I’m still not getting laid with any regularity. I’m not getting any S-E-X. And this is definitely getting to be a problem. It’s been five years now. I’d like to jump someone’s bones. Put me in a bodice ripper, let a half-wolf, half-man ravage me. Or something.

And so I’m honored this evening to have Professor Lucy Witter-Avedon, from a very prominent university in Bologna, as my first speaker this morning, and without any further ado I’d like to welcome her to the panel. As she takes her place here on the podium, once again I’d like to remind you, esteemed members of the academy, that you need to find me a narrative so I can get some action in the sack. I don’t know how I can be any clearer. Professor Avedon?

Speaker Two

You’re wearing a Balmain dress, your honey blond hair is wound in an elegant chignon revealing heavy silver earrings. You’re often photographed at Martha’s Vineyard at sunrise, Key West on New Year’s Day, Coney Island on Christmas, and variously at dive bars in Montauk. You’re a woman of a certain age and you are also a woman of the world. You’re a 21st century woman. You’re 40 years old, the 1st wave of feminism is ancient history. So if you’re going to commit adultery, it’s going to be an informed decision. Which means you have enough agency to do it on your own. This is my view. And for this, you don’t need a writer. Let me repeat. This story writes itself. It always has. Authors have always been incidental. You should know that by now.

You could be Anna Karenina again, but not a trashy mash-up. Instead of throwing yourself on the tracks and dying, Benito, a maintenance worker, rescues you at the last minute. As he pulls you to safety, his dark eyes blaze a trail through your heart. You find yourself in a supply closet off the main gate. He’s about to fuck you blind, but you don’t mind. He’s stupid, but that doesn’t bother you either. As he roughly unbuttons your silk blouse and rips off your expensive jewelry, you muse that fucking is better than dying. That would be a revelation for Anna Karenina. So you don’t fall in love, not at all. But at least you are not pulverized. Three days later, you are accidentally shot and killed.  It's tragic but at least your desire is fulfilled

Speaker Three

The story has to maintain its purity. I’ve said this many times before.  Otherwise what is the point? She is tragic, has always been tragic and must remain tragic, this is why she is so beautiful. So hear me out--- Anna K can finally have her orgasm just as the train is crushing her body. It can be a manual orgasm or a mechanical one. Perhaps the vibrating tracks quiver and shake as the iron beast approaches. And in this way, the story retains the same architecture. The same power.

Speaker One

The point is to get laid and stay alive.  But I could be that girl who is photographed at sunrise on Martha’s Vineyard. Why not? The image is beautiful, yet it hides my inner turmoil. I’m on the beach by a bit of driftwood, the sky is barely pink. Why am I alone at such an early hour? Or am I alone? It’s the moment that everything is crashing down around me. The night before, my husband  found out about my affair. We’d just finished dinner at a small but exclusive club in Montauk. I had a bowl of lobster bisque and monk fish with juniper berries, and a white rioja. The stars were out. It was the end of summer. I was wearing that Balmain dress, but my hair was loose, I liked the way it felt in the wind.

 I know that when we get home there will be message for him on his Blackberry. I know it will be the end of our marriage. I know that this will also disgrace his family. But I do nothing to stop this from happening. I’m supposed to want to kill myself, but I don’t. This where my desire differs from the canon. And maybe I’m on the beach at dawn because I getting my wits about me. Heads will roll. Shit will hit the fan. I know this. But all I want to do is call up my lover, the DA who is prosecuting my prominent husband for bank fraud. I want to fuck him for hours on the deserted moonlight beach. Because after that revivifying fuck, I want to steal my soon-to-be-ex-husband’s Porsche, sell it for parts in the city, and disappear. I’d like the story to start right here. When she disappears.
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She grabs him, and kisses him

"She adorns herself with many ornaments like a despicable harlot, and takes up her position at the crossroads to seduce the sons of man.  When a fool approaches her, she grabs him, kisses him, and pours him wine of dregs of viper's gall.  As soon as he drinks it, he goes astray after her.  When she sees that he has gone astray after her from the paths of truth, she divests herself of all ornaments which she put on for the fool. Her ornaments for the seduction of the sons of man are: that her hair is long and red, and from her ears hang six ornaments, Egpytian chords and all the ornaments in the Land of the East hang from her nape...her tongue is sharp like a sword, her words are smooth like oil, her lips are red like a rose and sweetened by all the sweetness in the world...yon fool goes astray after her and drinks from the cup of wine and commits fornications with her...that fool awakens...[and] she stands before him clothed in garments of flaming fire, inspiring terror and making body and soul tremble...and she kills that fool and casts him into Gehenna."
---Zohar I 148a-b Sitre Torah
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I like when she "grabs him and kisses him."  This is Lilith of course.  The only Biblical woman who has any agency at all. 
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St. Catherine of Alexandria

"St. Catherine, another frequent companion of the Black Virgin, was for centuries one of the most popular saints in the calendar, whose fame was brought to the west by returning crusaders.  A native of Alexandria in its third century apogee, royal beautiful, rich and learned, she was, according to Everyman's Book of Saints, courted by Emperor Maximian.  She refused his advances and confounded a multitude of scholars assembled by him to overcome her scruples.  Enraged he had her broken on the wheel, scourged and beheaded, at which milk flowed from her breasts. But while she was in prison, she was fed by a dove, and received a vision of Christ...which some say culminated in a mystical marriage."

Ean Begg, The Cult of the Black Virgin

I'd like to see a modern version of this story.  A god descends down from heaven and consorts with a mortal woman.  Of course there are variations on this trope in Greek and Roman mythology, but none in the Judeo-Christian tradition, at least none with any panache or style.

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Salome danced

"Prepare the kingdom for my dance."
---Salome

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After we'd been on the highway about an hour, it started to snow. Sammy leaned down to pick up the roach he'd dropped, and we skidded off the highway. His black Cadillac landed gently in a smooth gully, the snow drifting around us. We finished smoking the joint, then he put the car in gear, and we took off. We got to the after hours club, all five of us, around 2:00 in the morning. I was out on the dance floor in my silk flamenco skirt and pink feather boa. Two guys shimmied up to me, two strangers, who got a little aggressive, a little too close.

Alarmed, I backed away, and fell into the arms of Artie, a rock star, who invited me out to his car to snort coke. I couldn't believe he had less than a half a gram. We must've been out there a while because when I went back in, I couldn't find any of my crew. I checked the bathrooms, the parking lot, back inside, everywhere. I looked in my bag and found ten cents. The sun was starting to come up. I was 90 miles from home.

The two men from the dance floor, one short and one tall, approached me in the almost empty parking lot, sodium lights glaring and said, What's up girlie? I said, Like my whole crew forgot about me. I need a ride home. The taller one said, Which way you headed? I said, North. He pointed to a tiny car, a Carmen Ghia. Powder blue. He opened the door, Get in. So I did.

I had to sit on the short guy's lap. We hit the highway going way too fast. I was annoyed it was almost dawn, and I felt like strangling myself with my pink boa. Beneath me, the short guy was moving his hips up and down. I could feel his erection. The driver said, So you didn't want to dance with us? Is that right? No, its not right, I lied, I was with my boyfriend. The other man replied, What kind of boyfriend abandons his woman in a parking lot. I answered, Not a good one, I guess. Damn sure straight, the driver laughed, pounding the steering wheel.

He turned on the radio, Do you like this song? I was like yeah I love this song. He swerved into the far right lane and parked on the shoulder of the highway. Then he turned to me and announced, Well I'm going to ask you to prove it. Prove what, I asked. Yeah, prove it, prove that you love it, the short one laughed. I laughed, too, like I was cool, in control. The driver leaned over, his breath smelling of bourbon and maraschino cherries, whispered, You don't have a boyfriend.

I don't, I asked. Naw, he replied. And I think you just didn't want to dance with us. Yeah, the other one said, Like you were too good. The sun was out now, and hurt my eyes. I was coming down off the coke. The occasional car streaked by. I just wanted to get home. The driver continued, And if you wanna get home you're gonna have to dance in the middle of the highway, and we get to watch. I said, I could hit by a car, dude. He replied, Not if you move fast enough.

I reached over, opened the car door, and fell out into a snow bank. I ripped off my fake fur coat, and threw it at the short guy. I adjusted the straps on my silver platforms, and strode out into the middle of I-94. I screamed at the driver, Turn up the music motherfucker so I have something to dance to. He did. It was a new song, one I'd never heard before, but I loved it. I knew I wasn't dancing in the middle of a highway for two strangers. Who now looked afraid of me. I was dancing for myself. It started to snow again, and I thought that was beautiful.

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Morrigan

Morrigan, the dark mother or the great queen of Celtic mythology.  Appearing on the field of battle as a black crow. A shape-shifter, now a beautiful woman.  Now, dark and sinister. No one would call her a virgin.  No one would dress her in a gown and take her to a ball.  She wouldn't wait by the fireplace for the prince.  No.  She would rather cut your head off in a moment of ecstasy.  She plucks soldiers from the field of battle and tells them, now is your time to die.  Or she is a gentle escort as you exit this world. 

Image: Picasso
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Revisions in the Garden of Eden

"Unlike many of his contemporaries among deities of the ancient Near East, the God of Israel shared his power with no female divinity, nor was he the divine Husband or Lover of any.  He can scarcely be characterized in any but masculine epithets; king, lord, master, judge, and father.  Indeed, the absence of feminine symbolism for God marks Judaism, Christianity and Islam in striking contrast to the world's other religious traditions, whether in Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, and Rome, or in Africa, India and North America which abound in feminine symbolism."

--- Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels.
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I am particularly intrigued with the idea of "the God of Israel" as divine husband or lover who is subordinate to a female goddess.  Or at least equal. Maybe it's Lilith, Eve or even Mary.  Maybe she doesn't want to rest on the 7th Day.  She wants to keep going.  Keep creating.  They argue, they fight.  She wins.  In the Garden of Eden she continues to make the rules.  He bows before her wisdom.  I like it.
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The abyss

"The concept of the archetype [in myth and fairy tale] shields us from chaos.  Yet a confrontation of nothingness, an abyss, is necessary, according to Mary Daly, if we are to become truly authentic.  This confrontation is the first step in creating not only an authentic self but new social order."

---Demaris Wehr, Feminst Archetypal Theory: Interdisciplinary Re-Revisions of Jungian Thought, ed., Estella Lauter and Carol Schreirer Rupprecht.
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Who would we be without the protective power of archetypes?  If we are not secretaries, mothers, whores, virgins, gorgons, prostitutes, giggly, wiggly and otherwise adorable--- who are we?  The definition begins in our narratives--- in the stories we tell ourselves, and the stories people tell about us.

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Anima, animus

"Our understanding of archetypes can illuminate the way women's and men's psyche both reflect and conflict with images of women and men given to us by a patriarchal society.  In Jung's theory, the anima is internalized female in man, and the animus is the internalized male in women.  But Jung did not take into account that this theory is lopsided because of the differing cultural positions.  Emma Jung has said that the animus can emerge [in women] as harsh criticism in a male voice, and had she gone one step further in her analysis, the author contends, it is also an accurate reflection of culture's derogatory view of women."

---Demaris S. Wehr. Feminist Archetypal Theory: Interdisciplinary Re-Revisions of Jungian Thought. ed., Estella Lauter and Carol Schreirer Rupprecht.

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