Synchronicity Times - Using Caution with Synchronicity

Synchronicity Times - Using Caution with Synchronicity

Supernatural Love

I recently read an interesting poem.  It's called Supernatural Love and it was written by Gjertrud Schnakenberg. Isn't that a cool name?  I doubt that everyone has the sort of experiences that Gjertrud Schnakenberg describes in her poetry.   However, mystical experiences that occur through coincidences are very common amongst psychics and spiritual people. They are called signs.  Nowadays, most psychologists will send you to a psychiatrist for meds if you start talking about signs. These experiences are called synchronicities. After you read this poem, imagine Gjertrud's father trying to explain this experience to a shrink  Then imagine her father trying to rationalize it scientifically.  

Supernatural Love

My father at the dictionary stand Touches the page to fully understand The lamplit answer, tilting in his hand His slowly scanning magnifying lens, A blurry, glistening circle he suspends Above the word 'Carnation'. Then he bends So near his eyes are magnified and blurred, One finger on the miniature word, As if he touched a single key and heard A distant, plucked, infinitesimal string, "The obligation due to every thing That' s smaller than the universe." I bring My sewing needle close enough that I Can watch my father through the needle's eye, As through a lens ground for a butterfly Who peers down flower-hallways toward a room Shadowed and fathomed as this study's gloom Where, as a scholar bends above a tomb To read what's buried there, he bends to pore Over the Latin blossom. I am four, I spill my pins and needles on the floor Trying to stitch "Beloved" X by X. My dangerous, bright needle's point connects Myself illiterate to this perfect text I cannot read. My father puzzles why It is my habit to identify Carnations as "Christ's flowers," knowing I Can give no explanation but "Because." Word-roots blossom in speechless messages The way the thread behind my sampler does Where following each X, I awkward move My needle through the word whose root is love. He reads, "A pink variety of Clove, Carnatio, the Latin, meaning flesh." As if the bud's essential oils brush Christ's fragrance through the room, the iron-fresh Odor carnations have floats up to me, A drifted, secret, bitter ecstasy, The stems squeak in my scissors, Child, it's me, He turns the page to "Clove" and reads aloud: "The clove, a spice, dried from a flower-bud." Then twice, as if he hasn't understood, He reads, "From French, for clou, meaning a nail." He gazes, motionless,"Meaning a nail." The incarnation blossoms, flesh and nail, I twist my threads like stems into a knot And smooth "Beloved", but my needle caught Within the threads, Thy blood so dearly bought, The needle strikes my finger to the bone. I lift my hand, it is myself I've sewn, The flesh laid bare, the threads of blood my own, I lift my hand in startled agony And call upon his name, "Daddy Daddy" - My father's hand touches the injury As lightly as he touched the page before, Where incarnation bloomed from roots that bore The flowers I called Christ's when I was four.

T

he poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg, whom William Logan once called "the most talented American poet under the age of forty," published her first book of poems in 1982. She has since become one of our most respected authors of verse.

Schnackenberg's first three books, collected in Supernatural Love, show the thrilling evolution of a unique voice in today's letters. From an early mastery in which precision and heartbreak are inseparable, her poetry accelerates book by book through the searching, dense, and metaphysical imagery--as well as the cascading syntax--which have become her signature. Whether we are witnessing her classic portrait of Darwin in his last year or discovering the vertiginous brillance of her elegy for the Byzantine monuments of Ravenna, we find in Schnackenberg gemlike poems offered as visionary documents, unmistakable in their glittering range and passion--and never the same twice.

The Gnostic Bible

For the past few years I have been reading “The Gnostic Bible”.   It has taken me nearly three years to finish reading this dictionary-sized book because the information in the Gnostic Bible is loaded with such esoteric writings. Gnosticism is more of a philosophy than a religion. 

The word “Gnostic” comes from the word “knowledge”.  Biblical Scholars do not clearly define what a Gnostic is because opinions vary.  The Greek word “gnosis” was widely used in the Mediterranean during the time of Christ.  The Pharisees did not want people to believe that they could have a direct relationship with God, so they deemed them to be heretics and persecuted them.  In fact, Christianity was an illegal religion all the way up until the 4th century when the Roman emperor, Constantine, converted to the religion.  The first thing he did after his conversion was send troops out to Greece to kill the last remaining Christian Gnostics.  They were not such bad people though.  It was common for Gnostics to practice ascetic life styles.  They did not wage wars, but rather they were meek and humble people.

The Gnostic creed was, “Know Thyself”.  Plato, Socrates, and Pythagoras were considered to be Gnostics and their teachings are discussed throughout many of the texts.   Some of the texts were retrieved from the Dead Sea Scrolls which were discovered in caves along the Dead Sea.   A Gnostic sect called the Essenes wrote these scrolls. Many scholars believe that Jesus was an Essene because his cousin, John the Baptist was from this sect.

 After John the Baptist was beheaded and Jesus was crucified, the Essenes decided that it would be a good idea to hide their sacred teachings before they too were destroyed.  They placed their sacred texts in airtight containers over 1900 years ago and hid them in the Qumran caves near the Dead Sea.  The scrolls were not to be found until the 1940’s when a little boy stumbled upon them while playing in the cave. Interestingly, this boy claimed to have had a vision that an angel told him that he would find treasures in this cave.  The boy searched for what he thought would be gold or jewels, but instead he found these buried texts.   What is written in these texts totally contradicts what is taught by the Roman Catholic Church. 

The Gnostics believed that material things (matter) are believed to come from “evil forces” while “good forces” come from an energetic realm of light.  Gnostic creation myths tell a story of a fallen angel who sent his demons (demiurge) out into the world in order to manifest into matter, not a benevolent God who created the world.  The Gnostic creation stories say that the world was created by a demonic realm of spirits.  They also believe that the spirit of God resides within every living thing and that the demiurge tries to eradicate this spirit so that they can have full control. “If your leaders tell you, ‘Look the kingdom is in heaven,’ then the birds of heaven will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It’s in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you.  When you know yourselves, then you will be known…The Kingdom of Heaven is Within” (Meyer, 2003, p. 45).   This contrasts with the Catholic teachings which state that a person needs to confess to a priest because they are unable to have direct contact with God.  Traditional Christian religions teach that heaven is in the sky and you will go there only when you die.

In the “Gospel of Thomas” Jesus says, “Shame on the Pharisees.  They are like a dog sleeping in the cattle manger.  It does not eat or let the cattle eat.” (Meyer & Barnstone, 2006, p. 67)  Jesus was referring to an Aesop fable about a dog in the manger.   Aesop wrote allegories with animals in it to conceal the political messages within his stories. In this fable the moral of the story is that we should not deprive others of blessings just because we are unable to enjoy them ourselves. Gnostics were highly educated people so they were probably familiar with this popular tale.  This is just one example of how Gnostic literature may be difficult to read at times.  Unless one is familiar with such allegories, Jesus’ statement about the dog in the manger may seem obtuse. Aesop was also sentenced to death for being a political rebel.  He was born in Greece around 620 BCE.  Some of his fables were borrowed from ancient Buddhist fables from India.

Crazy Writers

Did you ever wonder why so many famous writers are a bit crazy?  Theodore Roethke went through a psychosis. Nietzsche also battled a psychosis several times.  Emily Dickenson is suspected to have had temporal lobe epilepsy..  Sylvia Plath spent some time in a mental institution before she committed suicide.  Jack Kerouac was diagnosed with schizophrenia but he didn’t acknowledge it.  “As far as I’m concerned”, he told a reporter, “I get nervous in an emotional way”. Those are just some of the well-known creative geniuses who displayed signs of mental illness.  Many people who work with writers on a daily basis agree that writers tend to be a bit eccentric.  A creative imagination may be tied to madness. 

The word “crisis” in Greek means “moment of judgment”.  One of the questions that I was asked by a psychiatrist when I was going through a psychosis is, “Do you feel like you are being judged by God?”  Yes!  “That’s exactly it”, I told him. I felt like I was on trial.  All the psychiatrists and psychologists asked the same questions.  “Do you talk to spirits or see them?” Check.  “Do you ever have thoughts of suicide?”  Check.  If they could have known how much emotional pain a person could endure and still live, they would give me a medal instead of a label which says I have a disorder which ultimately says, “I’m broken”.  Back then I met with seven different psychiatrists and psychologists but none of them could agree what was wrong with me. One said I have hypergraphia (obsessive writing) so he suspected I had temporal lobe epilepsy because they usually go hand in hand.  Commonly called TLE, it is similar to schizophrenia but the symptoms are more focused on spiritual obsessions and supernatural beliefs.  Van Gogh is suspected to have had this disorder.  I learned that after a neurosurgeon told me that he went through a psychosis too.  It offered me some hope at the time. That particular doctor suspected that I was on the autism spectrum.  None of the other psychologists agreed with that.  I was almost diagnosed with schizophrenia but my psychiatrist stopped the diagnosis after I debated with him about a concept called “spiritual emergence”.  Shamans, indigenous healers, believe that the ego can be destroyed many times throughout a person’s life.  Luckily, I made it out alive.  Like Jack Kerouac I believe that I am emotionally intense, but not “crazy” in the clinical sense.  This realization came after several years of therapy.  Crazy people are discarded and they are medicated for the rest of their lives.  They don’t have a voice.  They are the outsiders. Perhaps that is why many of them turn to writing.  When no one else can hear or understand you, and when you feel so disconnected from society, writing is a tool that offers some hope of redemption.

One common trait that all creative writers have (crazy or sane) is an active imagination.  Kazmierez Dobrowski, a psychiatrist who studied gifted people, claimed that intellectual over-excitabilities (often labeled as ADHD) is presented in those who have such a creative imagination.  He also noticed a common pattern of psychotic symptoms with these people.  In his theory of “positive disintegration”, he explains how the ego is transcended.  Shamans refer to it as an “ego-death” but he uses the term “transcended” instead.  I prefer that term because it reminds me of the Romantic Transcendentalists.  He describes the psychological process very logically.  However, his research is not acknowledged in the diagnostic handbook for psychologists.  His studies included many gifted children as well as gifted adults.  Today, if those same children were brought into a typical psychiatrist’s office, they would most likely be diagnosed with having, “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” or ODD for short.   

While most psychiatrists are not aware of Dobrowski’s work; I will summarize it briefly to show the correlation between “crazy writers” and “emotionally excitable gifted people”. There are five stages to the psychological process of ego transcendence.  A person in the first stage is described as being integrated with society and adhering to cultural expectations.  People in this stage are considered to be normal.

In the second stage, a person encounters a crisis which makes him reevaluate his identity and beliefs.  The symptoms at level II often produce anxiety and depression as one ponders the meaning of life and questions former beliefs.  It is common for people to have suicidal thoughts at this stage, and a period of psychosis is not uncommon.  Sylvia Plath went back and forth between the first two stages…until she finally gave up and committed suicide.

If the person makes it through level II and does not revert back to level one, the individual is impelled to follow his ideals.  These new beliefs often differ from traditional beliefs.  During level III the status quo is challenged, so the individual may become paranoid after experiencing social persecutions which make him feel like an outcast.  The person in this phase often gets entangled in conspiracy-thinking.  Reality is questioned.

Level IV is described as a “re-balancing of consciousness” which means that their thinking becomes less black and white and/or delusional.  Those at level IV make conscious choices, based on their conscience. They take responsibility for their actions and the choices they have made. Level V is marked by creative expression and self-actualization.  The person at this level becomes the Creator, or the Oversoul as Nietzsche described it.

Can a mental breakdown lead to heightened creativity?   There is some research in the field of neuropsychiatry which suggests that this may be true. David Hawkins, a psychiatric pioneer in the field, discovered a new evolution in brain physiology.  He refers to this as the “Etheric Brain”.  He estimates that at least 15 percent of the world’s populations have access to it.  “The etheric brain is purely energetic and it picks up high frequencies aligned with high levels of consciousness” (Hawkins & Jeffrey, 2008, p. 139).  Anyone who is committed to integrity and truth can have access to it. 

Emotionally intensive people may be more prone to self-reflection which causes this sort of evolution of consciousness. Highly sensitive people tend to be self-reflective. According to psychologist Dr. Elaine Aron, “highly sensitive people, or HSPs, could contribute much more to society if they received the right kind of attention. In cultures where it is not valued, HSPs tend to have low self-esteem.  They feel abnormal because they are criticized for being too emotional. Aron estimates that HSPs comprise at least 15 percent of the population. She also agrees with Dobrowski that highly sensitive people are often unusually creative and intellectually gifted individuals.  Seen in this perspective, it is no wonder why so many sensitive and emotionally intense people turn to writing as a creative outlet to express their inner world. Creativity is heightened after we transcend our ego.

References

Aron, Elaine. (2010). The Highly Sensitive Person.  Retrieved from

http://www.hsperson.com/index.html

Borden, J. (2005). Chron National. Before he was on the road, Kerouac was in the Navy. 

Retrieved from: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3219198.html

Cramer, K. (1990). Staying on top when your world turns upside down: Turn your stress

into strength. Penguin Books. New York, NY. ISBN: 01401.27720

Daniels, S. Piechowski, M. (2008). Living with Intensity. Understanding the Sensibility,

Excitability, and Creativity, and Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Adults.  Great Potential Press. Scottsdale, AZ.  Retrieved from: http://books.google.com/books?id=gDk0l_tcvTQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Dobrowski, Kazmierez. Mendaglio, Sal. (2008). Dobrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration.    Great   

            Potential Press, Scottsdale AZ. ISBN-0910707-84-7

Hawkins, David. Jeffrey, Scott. (2008) Creativity Revealed. Discovering the Source of Creative

Inspiration.  Creative Crayon Publishers.  Kingston New York. ISBN- 0-971481-5-5.Retrievedfrom: http://books.google.com/books?id=4x7TPRYX9QC&pg=PA139&lpg=PA139&dq=etheric+brain+hawkins&source=bl&ots=YaQQVPFkA_&sig=CyOm3y4o1XvpPD8urlMBQgpOvl8&hl=en&ei=lBwETsOcB67WiAKSoITFDQ&sa=X&oi=book

Gordon, L. (2010). National Public Radio. Lives like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickenson and her

Family Feuds.  Biography Speculates that Emily Dickenson had Epilepsy. Retrieved

from: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127906938

 

Moses, K.  (2000). Salon News.  The real Sylvia Plath.  Her newly published, unexpurgated

journals reveal the poet's true demons and support a little-known theory about what drove

her to suicide. First of two parts. Retrieved from:

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/05/30/plath1

 

Seager, A. (2005). The Glass House: the life of Theodore Roethke.  University of Michigan

Press. Reprint (1968) McGraw-Hill. New York, NY.  Retrieved from:

http://books.google.com/books?id=OdrIchCSEAYC&pg=PA289&lpg=PA289&dq=theodore+roethke+the+glass+house+dobrowski&source=bl&ots=GKZf3LCHUG&sig=cbNn7gvpZyqn6IoDRc8GghIb5M&hl=en&ei=49sTTrCLNKjSiAKj47z3DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Wilkes, J. (2000). National Institute of Mental Health.  Pub med. Friedrich Nietzsche: history of

his illness. On the 100th anniversary of the death of the poet-philosopher. Retrieved

from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10812640

The Bell Jar

     I read Sylvia Plath's, "The Bell Jar" recently.  It's a story about 
her descent into madness.  It's a good book, but it's depressing.  She 
was stuck in a bell jar, a stage in her early twenties.  Today I also 
looked at a book by Anais Nin called, "Under a Glass Bell".  It's the 
same kind of metaphor.  I'd like to read that someday.
     Plath describes an ego-death in the book.  It seems like she was 
stripping out of the 1950's American woman's role.  Who can blame 
her?  It's too bad she didn't have a sense of humor during this ordeal.   
     She says in the book that her condition is the worst kind of 
psychological disorder.  I'm guessing it was schizophrenia, but she 
never reveals any diagnosis.
     Well, I posted that song because it reminds me of the schizoid 
state of dual personalities where one is locked inside and the other is 
the observer.

The Ballerina and the Psychopath

The writings of Anais Nin and Zelda Fitzgerald portrayed the disenchantment that they experienced in their relationships with men.  During the early 20^th century, gender roles were changing.  Ideal gender roles were transforming or decaying.  Women were being called into active duty by the state while men were being sent overseas to fight in World War I.  The American economy became vulnerable as did the ideals which were held in place by tradition.  Women took jobs in order to support their families as well as their country.  As a result, the feminine role was transformed from the traditional one of wife and mother to that of bread winner and head of household.  Competition between men and women manifested itself into romantic relationships where egoism became most demonstrative.  

Zelda Fitzgerald was born in 1900.  She witnessed Southern traditions crumble and was an active participant in its destruction.  Prior to 1920, women wore long skirts and corsets.  They were expected to be virtuous housewives or coquettish princesses.  Zelda popularized the flapper; Rebellious and Independent. The flapper was a dancer who cut her hair into a bob, adopted a more masculine style of dress, was sexually free, spoke her mind, laughed out loud, drank alcohol and smoked cigarettes.  She mocked traditional values and had fun doing so. 

The women and men that admired this icon did so because she brought excitement to the world.  She expressed what everyone was thinking but was too inhibited to say themselves.  The flapper brought about anarchy to the old culture of sexual repression and gender expectations.  Zelda’s diaries reveal these social changes and probe into the psychology of egoism.  At that time Sigmund Freud’s new theories on the nature of human beings was becoming popularized in the media.  Human weaknesses and hidden agendas were exposed for all to bear witness. Freud’s psychological revelations into the hidden intentions of the modern western psyche made the traditional beliefs of societal expectations of gender roles appear absurd and hypocritical.  He claimed that most people do not want freedom because freedom requires responsibility. In order to understand Zelda Fitzgerald’s literature, it is necessary to have some background information of her life. The context in which she wrote,  the social climate in which she lived, and her psychological state of mind must be discussed in order to analyze her writings accurately.

Zelda Fitzgerald was the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald.  She was rebellious, beautiful, and considered to a very brilliant conversationalist. Her husband used her as a muse in his writings.  He popularized the flapper in his literature and characterized her as a charming but egotistical flapper.  He used many of her ideas in his stories and sometimes copied direct words from her diaries and letters to him.  How this must have affected her must have been profound because throughout her life she struggled to create her own identity and failed in her attempts at achieving her own success as a writer.  Scott told Zelda that he wanted her to stop writing fiction.  “I told you if I came in and found you writing, I would crumble it up” (Milford, 1970, p. 272).  She refused to stop writing so they came to a compromise which was dictated by Dr. Rennie her psychiatrist, “If you write a play, it cannot be a play about psychiatry, and it cannot be a play laid on the Riviera, and it cannot be a play laid in Switzerland, and whatever the idea is, it will have to be submitted to me first” (Milford, 1970, p. 273).  Since she was forbidden to write about things which she knew about from first-hand experience, she was greatly handicapped as a writer.  While she saw this as unfair, there was little she could do about it since he was a very powerful man and she was took on the role of being the weaker sex who was dependent upon him.   Her sense of identity was created by her husband through his interpretation of her in his works.

While some may argue that Zelda was driven to madness by her husband, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 30 by Dr. Joseph Breurer who was Freud’s mentor.    Schizophrenics do not exhibit a sense of self, but are demonstrative of the human psyche which resides next to them.  They take on aspects of other people and portray imaginative displays of their family and/or culture.  In indigenous cultures, schizophrenics are revered as shamans who reflect the tribal group to the spiritual world and vice versa. Zelda frequently stated that she felt like she had no identity.  In her journal she wrote, “I am losing my identity here without men” (Milford, p. 206. 1970) Scott loved her deeply, but he was also an egoist like so many other modern American men.  Their relationship portrays a new sort of mythological union of opposing energies which come together in a creative force, and demonstrates their competition with each other.

Zelda was an artist whose main medium was dance.  She was a living work of art more so than she was a talented writer or painter.  In her letters and journals, her writing is superb.  However, her fictional work is not nearly as captivating or revealing.  This may be due to the fact that she was stifled.  She was most lucid when she was able to be free and honest. 

 After suffering from a mental breakdown for the first time in 1930, she wrote “Save Me the Waltz” in two months while in a mental institution.  At the same time Scott was struggling with his writers block. It was her first attempt at writing fiction.  Prior to this she had been practicing ballet for a few years.  Her book is titled, “Save Me the Waltz”.  It is challenging to read because the setting frequently changes abruptly and there are many misspelled words.  The first draft no longer exists but we do know from her letters that there were many revisions of it.  During the two months that she was writing letters to Scott and writing the book, Scott  was not aware that she was writing “Save Me the Waltz”.  Two years later he would write “Tender is the Night” which closely parallels her work.  They quarreled competitively over their writings.

He encouraged her to revise the book because he wanted to write the story of their experiences in Paris. For her to publish the same story he wanted to write before him was a severe blow to his ego. Zelda wanted it to read like a true-confessions story but in the end she edited it.  It probably would have been much more appealing if it had been written in the same way she wrote her letters.  It is perplexing to see how such depth and insight which is vividly expressed in her letters and diaries is almost nonexistent in “Save Me the Waltz”.  The writing is poetically descriptive at best and awkwardly obtuse at worst.  She wrote many profound letters during the same time she was at the hospital writing the novel.  Here is one of the letters which she wrote to her doctor:

“I am forced to bear the hopeless months of the past and God knows what in the future. Why do I have to go backwards when everybody goes on...If you do cure me what’s going to happen to all the bitterness and unhappiness in my heart. It seems to me a

sort of castrations, but since I am powerless I suppose I will have to submit, though I am neither young enough nor credulous enough to think that you can manufacture out of nothing something to replace the song I had” (Milford, p.185. 1970).

“Save Me the Waltz” did not express such clear perception.  Scott wrote to the publisher after he proof read the work, “Zelda’s novel is now good, improved in every way.  She has largely eliminated the speak-easy-nights-and-our-trip-to-Paris atmosphere” (Milford, p. 170. 1970).  On the first page of the book it reads, “…his towers and chapels were builded of intellectual conceptions” (Fitzgerald, 1932).  This is just one example of the many misspelled words and incongruent contexts that were never edited.  To see it on the first page set off an immediate negative impression. On page 42 there is the most absurd error, “David David Knight Knight Knight for instance couldn’t possibly make her put out her light till she got good and ready” (Fitzgerald, 1932).  This oversight is almost comical in hind-sight for it is so contrary, like a mythological joke which makes one turn inward to reflect.

The main character is named Alabama.  She is a ballerina/flapper.  The story is autobiographical in many ways.  She used one of Scott’s letters in which he repeatedly told her that he wished he could keep her locked up in a tower like a princess.  In the book he is portrayed as Alabama’s husband. His name is David Knight which is symbolic of the ‘knight in shining armor’ role.   Alabama revolts against the conventional men and women through her marriage with her husband.  They make a mockery of themselves on a cruise ship.  Alabama sits in the dining room with her legs propped wide open on the table.  They are joined by another married couple in which both parties make it apparent that they openly defy proper etiquette and traditional loveless marriages.  David Knight asks Alabama if she would like for Lady Parsnips to join them for a drink.  She replies sarcastically, “All right-but they say she sleeps with her husband” (Fitzgerald, 1932, p. 60).  Later on in the conversation, Lady Sylvia Priestly-Parsnips invites Alabama to her party in an equally satirical manner, “I am quite altruistic…I’ve got to have somebody for the party, though I hear you two are quite mad about each other. Here’s my husband” (Fitzgerald, 1932. p. 61).  Lady Sylvia Priestly-Parsnip’s husband is not named.  He says sarcastically, “I’ve been wanting to meet you. Sylvia here- that’s my wife- tells me that you are an old fashioned couple” (Fitzgerald, 1932. p. 61).  It is interesting to see that the man is not identified with a name and he is whimsically introduced.  Zelda appears to be turning the tables on gender roles in marriage.  Alabama mockingly tells them that she and her husband are, “A Typhoid Mary of time-worn ideals”.  The women continue to banter about their messy houses and parties.  They laugh and shower affection on the husbands.  The husbands engage in the jovial conversation with good humor.  It is apparent that they are friends as well as marriage partners.   The honesty of the characters is the most lucid and candid part of the book.  They are sarcastic the whole time but their contrary statements reveal that proper etiquette is often veiled in deceit. 

The writing reverts back into obscurity when later in the story the couple begins to drift apart. David Knight becomes a successful painter and has an affair with another woman.  Alabama says that her dance is “perpetually broken by the wound of love”.  She goes on to become a successful ballerina despite her broken marriage.  Her father also dies which shatters her view of herself. She tries to find meaning in these losses, but fails to reconcile her relationship with men.  Instead she says that her life was like an old ashtray that just discards the old waste to make way for something new.  This imagery reveals a schizophrenic type of personality in which the schizoid is more of a vessel than an individual. 

Anais Nin also shows similar signs of schizophrenia.  Many critics suspect that she was bi-polar so that could be a reason why she slips into schizoid views of herself from time to time.  Anais Nin was born in 1903 and lived through the same social upheavals which transformed gender roles in America.  She was only 3 years younger than Zelda.  Like Zelda Fitzgerald, she was extraordinarily beautiful and a brilliant conversationalist.  She had many friends who were mostly artists and writers.  Anais Nin wrote many diaries.  She also kept what she called a “lie box” because she told so many lies about herself that she could not always remember who she lied to.  Because she identified herself according to her friendships, that is suspiciously characteristic of a schizoid type personality.  In her diary she asks herself, “To what extent do people have an individual life or represent another’s warmth?” (Nin, 1969, p.182).  It is not uncommon for women to merge with men; to adopt an identity from them but it is also a schizoid tendency.  Perhaps a lack of individuality causes this split, or perhaps we are in reality just a reflection of what others think of us. 

It could be argued that females have more of a tendency to absorb their identities and see themselves in reflections.  This question can be explored in Anais Nin’s “Stella” which is a short story in the novella “Winter of Artifice”.  Stella questions reality, “There was no more Stella, but a fluid component participating at the birth of the world” (Nin, 1945, P.17). Like Alabama, Stella is a ballerina. “There is a lightness which belongs to other races, the race of the ballet dancer" (Nin, 1945, p. 15). Her lover is a married man who is an egoist, much like David Knight.  He resembles her father in that they both display narcissistic behavior.  They are emotionless.  Instead of love they feel sexual desire, or they just feel power they feel they get from being needed.  This is expressed in the knight-in-shining-armor archetype.  The negative aspect of the Knight is that of a soldier.  The Soldier/Knight kills and/or rescues.  Women who have relationships with these men are Princesses/Ballerinas. They are perpetually held away from their own identity.  They are not free and happy unless they are rescued by the knight.  When the princess does no longer need the knight, she becomes a potential rival and the soldier comes out of the shadow.  The ballerina is the dancer upon the stage.  She is the shadow of the princess. The ballerina is also an egoist.  She craves the spotlight.  She is a narcissist at times.  She absorbs the emotional content of the rhythmic interactions displayed by others, and she projects it on the stage.  She is a drama queen who is the star.  She does not need to be rescued.  If the soldier does not adore her, she cannot find any sense in the dance.  She goes back to the helpless princess role and he either switches to save her, or they end the relationship.  If the role is quitted, a psychic death occurs in the ego.  This Soldier/Knight-Ballerina/Princess archetypal relationship is demonstrated in “Winter of Artifice”.  Stella is an actress who loves to dance.  She describes her inability to have a proper identity because she is portrayed on the screen to be someone who she is not.  She is having an affair with a married man. She is mad at him over some trivial thing which she cannot even make sense of.  She ascends up to her bedroom where there is one window up toward the ceiling and mopes.  The bedroom contains mirrors which “throw aureoles of false moonlight, the rows of perfume bottles creating false suspended gardens…They were all made of the invisible material which had once been pawned off on a gullible king” (Nin, 1945, p.15). Her lover is calling her on the phone.  She ignores it.  He calls again and she enjoys the feeling but does not understand why.  She puts a musical sort of instrument on the phone and goes up one more stair to her bedroom. The phone rings again and she begins to lose interest.  She was reveling in the moment when the knight loves the princess the most and she absorbed all that love from him, but now that she had it, the sound of the phone ‘rang with a dead mechanical persistence. “The music alone was capable of climbing those stairways of detachment…” (Nin, 1945, p. 15).  She recognizes the illusion and in doing so the spell is broken.

Stella also breaks the illusion she has of  her father when she sees how he treats his mistress. “The greater her love, the greater had grown his irresponsibility and devaluation of this love” (Nin, 1945, p. 25).  She describes her father as a ballerina, “He was walking now with famous grace that the stage had so much enhanced, a grace which made it appear that when he bowed, or kissed a hand, or spoke a compliment, he was doing it with his whole soul” (Nin, 1945, p. 26).  She is integrating the roles by acting them out.  Through this performance she finds reconciliation.

Anais Nin was a psychotherapist who was familiar with mythology.  She often speaks of mythological tales in her diaries and compares them to relationships.  She demonstrated the individuation process through her unveilings of the roles that people play.  Zelda Fitzgerald and Anais Nin emphasize the word “exigencies” in their works.  Stella laughs when her father complains about “his Don Juan fatigues, the exigencies of the role women impose on him” (Nin, 1945, p. 31).   Alabama: “Damp and unconvincingly tenaciously gripped the exigencies of her role” (Fitzgerald, 1932).  Exigency is an urgent call for action.  It sounds like a call for help. 

Princesses in towers need to be rescued in order to have a happy ending, but as times change, women became more independent. Both authors expressed the changing of ideal gender roles in Modern America.  Zelda’s ballerina died while Anais Nin transcended the gender roles.  Both women were extraordinarily talented and offered much insight into the psychological realm of male/female relationships. 

 

References

Fitzgerald, Zelda. (1932). Save Me the Waltz.  Scribners. 1974. New York, NY. 

Milford, Nancy.  (1970). Zelda: A Biography.  Scribners. New York, NY.

Nin, Anais. (1945). Winter of Artifice. Swallow Press. 1948. Ohio University Press.

Jacob the Fish

Deep within the ocean, far from land and sky;

There lived a fish named Jacob, who saw a sea gull fly.

It began one day in a swimming maze, from days of exploring states.

Jacob wanted to see a place that stretched beyond the gates.

He learned of the enormous sea, so curiously vast.

Wanting to explore it all, he swam away and fast.

His determination to learn all he could wouldn’t let him wait.

When he reached the surface, there he found his fate.

White light flickers under wings of shimmer.

Mirrors from the sky; infinite glimmers.

Plundering waves obscure his sight.

He swims away in fear, but never does forget the light.

Jacob tells the others about the phantoms from above.

In disbelief they mock and jeer him.

His claims are not believed at all.

Like a firewall, he shuts them all out.

"If you want us to believe you" The fish all do insist,

"You'll have to prove your phantom does indeed exist"

"I cannot bring it back to you, you'll have to come and see."

Nobody would join him though, in his journey through the sea

Alone he travels at all costs in search for the bright light.

He soon becomes confused and los, no phantoms are in sight.

Scorning himself a fool, he swims alone in fear.

Missing the comfort of the school, his days are drawing near.

Then one day out of nowhere, a shimmer flicks his eye.

He swims up to the surface, and glorifies the sky.

“This other world does exist! Now everyone will care!”

He leaps to catch the light, instead he chokes on air.

The phantom returns to clutch the fish.

At last he learns while being maimed.

That things which can’t be proven could kill us.

And knowing too much; the same.

Red Dawn

A voice announces over a loud speaker, “Make a right at the first hallway.  Turn left.  Shut the door behind you.”  Now I can see her face through the window.  This is the same voice that directed me all the way from the other annex. As I step into the two-man cell, the metal bars clank shut behind me. 

The blond-headed prison guard in the disk-shaped bubble tells me to shut the heavy glass door of the cell. They call her the “bubble-bitch”.  She sees and hears everything.  The bubble has windows for walls so she can have a 360 degree view of all the cells.  There are speakers all around the prison.  There are cameras everywhere too; that is how they direct us prisoners through the maze-like hallways.   The prisoners and prison guards have a symbiotic sort of relationship that is built on power, and a lack of trust

 There are five common areas in unit 9.  Each area houses 60 prisoners who dwell in two-man cells.  The cell is a 10X10 room.  There is one metal toilet with one little metal sink next to a little metal table which sits next to a little metal bunk bed.  There is one small rectangular window up high in the far corner next to the upper bunk.  That is where I’ll be sleeping, above the red-headed woman who is now sitting upright, politely waiting to greet me.  The heavy door echoes as it slams shut.  It’s stuffy in here and smells like urine.  I feel the stale air surround me and long for the wind once more.  My cell-mate adjusts her glasses to get a better look at me.  I figure I better speak up first so as not to appear self-righteous or rude.

“Hi, I’m Michelle.  I’ll be your new roommate for a while.” I hold my hand out to shake the outstretched hand before me.

“Welcome to hell.  You can call me Red Dawn,” replies the middle-aged woman in a matching orange uniform.  Her face is hardened with wrinkles from what appears to have been formed from a hard life and too much sun.  She gets up and pulls open a drawer from beneath her bed and tells me to put my jail-things in it.  “You don’t mind taking the top bunk, do you?  I would, but I’m afraid I might fall out and break my head open,” she says apologetically.

I prefer the top bunk since it’s by the window so I thank her.  “How long have you been in here?” I ask.  She sighs and walks over to the table which is covered with newspapers.  “I’ve been here for so long I’ve lost track.”  After we make a little small talk, she tells me that she has work to do and proceeds to read the paper, underlining and marking up the pages like she is trying to figure out some sort of code.  I make my bed and try to go to sleep.  After a moment of silence she starts talking again:

“My birthday is on the third, and today is the third.  I was born on Pirate’s day.  Have you ever heard  of that?”  Before I can answer she tells me about how she was born to be an angel and that her reason for being here is to make the world a better place.  She tells me that angels speak to her all the time, and how devoted she is to God.  I smile and think she is sweet and schizophrenic.  But, I too am a devoted Christian so we connect on that level.

“Let’s call in the angels and I’ll say a prayer before I go to sleep.” I say dreamily.  She tells me how she talks to them all the time so there is no need to call them in, for they are always here.  Then she starts to tell me about demons and how they mess with her life.  She shows me the metal plate in her head and says she got it from being in the military after aliens abducted her right before she got into a car accident.  Her voice sounds like frightened little girl’s as she retells the story. I tell her that it’s all going to be all right.   Red Dawn turns and eyes me suspiciously:

“You look like that bitch my husband ran off with.  She had long blond hair just like you…looked like a little Barbie doll.” Her nostrils flare as she speaks.

I tell her that I am married and encourage her to not confuse me with her husband’s mistress, explaining in lay terms how we project our prejudices onto other people.  She switches back to the innocent little girl demeanor and tells me that she likes me.  I tell her that I like her too.  She offers to give me her dog and some money when she gets out.   

Psychology is a special interest of mine so I’m pretty tolerant toward the mentally ill.  I think she is not used to people being so nice to her. She tells me that she wants me to write a story about her someday.  I find this request no less odd than the rest of the conversation so I entertain the idea.  I’m actually quite fascinated with the alien story that she described so vividly.  I’m tired though so I tell her that I need some sleep.  After a few moments of silence she speaks in a different voice, one that doesn’t sound like the former voice of a sweet, little girl.

“I’m a good fighter.  It feels good to hit.” I open my eyes and turn my head cautiously.  She is standing right next to me now, her head is level with mine, and I see her face contort to different dimensions.  “I killed a few people before and I never got caught because I work for the military.” She boasts, “I am way beyond mind-control.” Thumping her fist to her heart she proclaims triumphantly, “I let them come into me.” 

 “No Red Dawn.” I say in disbelief.  
“Oh please God!  No, Red Dawn, no, what are you doing?” 

 She smirks and says mischievously, 

 “You think men are mean? 

 She shakes her head and huffs, 
 “Women can be way more vicious than men.”  
I start shaking from the flight-or-fight adrenaline.  There is no way out of here so I try to appeal to her former self, 
“Red Dawn, this is not you.  You were born to be an angel!” 

She switches again into the baby doll mode.  She tells me that she was molested and how they tried to make her evil.  I call her sweetie and talk to her like she is a little girl.  She is rocking on the bed with her knees to her chest and crying softly, “I don’t want to hurt you Michelle.  I’m sorry.” 

I tell her it’s going to be all right and press the intercom button.  Not wanting to upset her, I tell the guard that I’m having a panic attack and I need to get out.  She refuses.  Red Dawn is shaking her head and telling me that they won’t let me out.  I press the button again but the guard doesn’t respond.  After pleading and sobbing for help I change my story and tell her that my cell-mate is having a seizure, which is partially true.  Red Dawn told me at one point that she couldn’t see and that she was having a headache right before her voice changed.  She said her seizures occur because she is diabetic.  I think she has multiple personalities and was showing typical signs of disassociation prior to a split.  My only hope is to keep talking to her, asking her to forgive me and not to hurt me so she doesn’t change again. 

Red Dawn tells me that it’s not the guard’s fault: “They’re just doing what they’re trained to do.  They don’t mean no harm.” She tells me how guards are all connected and some of the prisoners work with them as well.  She warns me of how they hear and see everything. I bang on the glass door as hard as I can with my foot.  The whole wall shakes and the other prisoners are shouting to the guard to let me out.  “Call in the Angels!” I cry out faithfully.

Red Dawn tells me calmly, 
“Tell her that you are going to commit suicide.  That is a code word.”  I go back to the intercom and shout that I’m going to hurt myself.  The guard asks me to repeat that.  I say, “I am going to commit suicide if you do not open this door.”  The guard snaps back, “Okay, just hold tight and we’re going to take you to the nurse.”

Two guards show up a minute later and take me to the nurse.  I try to explain what happened but they don’t listen.  They are mad that I faked a suicide threat.  They threaten to put me in with the lesbians or black women if I refuse to go back into the cell with Red Dawn.  I tell them to do it and warn them of the repercussions if I get hurt.  They don’t believe that Red Dawn would ever hurt anyone.

“Well, she might hurt you accidentally if she has a seizure, but she would never hurt anyone on purpose.” The male guard with her agrees with the female guards absurd logic. I feel like I am in the twilight zone.  Careful not to be too assertive, I try to reason with tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum.  After several minutes of one of the most inane conversations of my entire life, they finally threaten me with a tazor gun.  I point out all the witnesses around us and tell them that if I do get hurt, they will be held responsible because they could have prevented it. They finally agree to put me in a suicide unit.  

Two female guards strip-search me.  They laugh while they tell me to get into positions.  I play along and smile, bend down low like a stripper to shut them up.   Angry that they lost some sense of power, they throw me roughly into solitary confinement where I am naked and harassed by mocking guards every so often. It's been over 24 hours and I still haven't been able to make my phone call.  The lines were down they said.  A supervising, male, guard walks by and asks why I lied about being suicidal.  He taunts me from the other side of the window and tells me that I am worse off in here.  I tell him that I’m just operating on survival mode and I’ll do anything I have to in order to stay alive.  He laughs like a cowboy. As he walks away I here him mimic me, “Survival Mode she says...We’re all operating on survival mode.”