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The Woman in the Dirt
Jul. 1st, 2004 07:28 amAre we at that point where I can reference an Anne Rice book without the obligatory, "yeah she's a bad writer who needs an editor" discussion? Please?
Okay. As I've no doubt mentioned before, The Vampire Lestat was one of these formative books for me. I was twelve when I read it, and you know at twelve, just about anything is going to be formative. But truly, it touched on things that were issues in my world at that age, and made me realize that the way I was experiencing the world (which is to say, emotionally) wasn't wrong, desipte the massive amount of "all emotions are dishonest"/"we cannot reward your accomplishments if you aren't placid all the time" messages I got at home and at school.
At any rate, I loved Lestat because he wanted to be famous and Armand because he craved order and beauty and deception, and Marius because he knew stuff, Louis because he _hurt_ and Nicholas because he felt above all else. They were my friends.
But Gabrielle, I never understood, never understood her leaving Lestat's side, never understood her seeking out the wild places in the world and sleeping in the dirt. I may not be very girly, but I hate dirt. I saw her as a throw away character whose only purpose was to make the book something other than ridiculous slashy crap. I mean, these men had to come from somewhere.
I've always been a woman with a strange relationship towards freedom. Certainly, I often felt disenfranchised enough from the things "other people" in the world had, to want less freedom, just to have whatever that undefinied stuff was -- friends and grace mostly. Better to belong, better to have my choices limited, better to not be so damn lonely. I mean, I was so young -- young in high school, young in college, and naive as hell, and I knew uttlery no one who could tell me anything. Not my parents, not peers, I mean, I had all these much older friends making their way in the world by the strangest means and philosophy, and I just wanted someone to tell me how to make small talk over dinner and actually care about the things I was conversing about. Less freedom seemed a good answer.
It seemed a good answer to other things too. To the fact that for a long time I wasn't a swimmer, that I never liked heights, never climbed on things. If I didn't have the freedom to do those things, I'd never have to tell anyone I was afraid, or simply didn't know how. I mean, isn't the universal test of ultimate nerdhood not knowing how to swim, ride a bike or blow up a balloon?
In college my life was all sorts of fucked up for all sorts of reasons. Mainly because I was in college and things can't help but grow crooked in that chunk of your life. I remember I told someone that I cleved so tightly to things, because I knew I could walk out my front door with just my keys and some cash and a shitload of will and never come back. Big talk for a little girl, but I had thought like that my whole life, hoarding money as a seven-year-old in case I had to run away, even when I really had nothing to run away from -- I just wanted more, which is more than a bit insane coming from a girl who grew up in Manhattan.
It was a persistant worldview that I didn't often think about, although it came up in one particularly bizarre drawn out situation with Michael. Since I couldn't be a goddess of many arms, I could at least be a woman of many lives, all out there and waiting for me.
Mostly, when I have travelled, it has been accidentally alone. When I went to Italy as a young teen my parents got food poisoning, and I went about my business strangely independently, especially in the dank winter humidty of Florence. I traveled a lot on business in my early twenties, going to strange cities, spending a few days, and giving a speech here or there, but mostly exploring and then sitting in my hotel room writing letters about it.
I came to like travelling alone, and to empty places. I liked the idea that by getting on the right plane, the right bus, I was making the choice over and over to be living my current life. It seemed like a good reminder, for a woman utterly convinced she could choose to dissappear anywhere at any time.
I spend a lot of time thinking about my Australia trip. As like most of my awfully big adventures, it popped into my head for one weird reason, and wound up being about something else entirely and more fundamentally important in the end. A lot of people have said to me about the trip that I'm brave, and I can't figure out why. I'm going to Sydney for heaven's sake. No camping in the outback for me. I mean there are bugs and wild dogs and all that stuff that I'm not so good at.
But yes, in the end I'm going alone, and in the end investing quite a chunk of change in any number of my weird convictions, among them being the idea that the earth and dirt there will make more sense to me than the earth and dirt here. I look at the way Amanda writes about Texas, and that's how I feel about some of the places I've travelled to, and some of the places I haven't even been yet. And that is a strange thing, my kooky little internal narrative or knowledge that somehow has given me to feel that my bones know places I don't.
To get back to Gabrielle -- my most vividly recalled image of the book is always her, even as I didn't really ever get her character then, rising out of her sleeping place in the earth in the cold blue early evenings, dirt and leaves tangled in her long braided hair, and dressed in men's clothing, lonely and alone and prideful and adventurous, and always so grateful to see those she loves even as after a few weeks or months or years she always hurries away again, back into the dirt.
There are things I ache for, and that I want, and if they choose to come along on my journey, I'll be a hell of a lot luckier than most, but there are also all sorts of desires I don't understand and because I don't understand them, probably won't ever have (e.g., while I understand the general awesomeness, logistical importance and security of owning a house, I've never covetted it, never dreamed of it, can barely understand its relevance to me). It makes me sad sometimes, and uncertain, but my nature is that I bend poorly, and dissapear better, both in the right ways and the wrong ways. I've been working on the right ways.
More and more, I see myself, not as Gabrielle so much, but of whatever archtype she represents in the private language inside my skull. The woman in the dirt. Alone, scary, simple and reborn. Hunting and desiring constantly not for any end, but simply because it was what she was designed to do, and she's content there, in that moving place, like sharks and the planets we falsely presume to be so cold and lonely in their orbits.
Okay. As I've no doubt mentioned before, The Vampire Lestat was one of these formative books for me. I was twelve when I read it, and you know at twelve, just about anything is going to be formative. But truly, it touched on things that were issues in my world at that age, and made me realize that the way I was experiencing the world (which is to say, emotionally) wasn't wrong, desipte the massive amount of "all emotions are dishonest"/"we cannot reward your accomplishments if you aren't placid all the time" messages I got at home and at school.
At any rate, I loved Lestat because he wanted to be famous and Armand because he craved order and beauty and deception, and Marius because he knew stuff, Louis because he _hurt_ and Nicholas because he felt above all else. They were my friends.
But Gabrielle, I never understood, never understood her leaving Lestat's side, never understood her seeking out the wild places in the world and sleeping in the dirt. I may not be very girly, but I hate dirt. I saw her as a throw away character whose only purpose was to make the book something other than ridiculous slashy crap. I mean, these men had to come from somewhere.
I've always been a woman with a strange relationship towards freedom. Certainly, I often felt disenfranchised enough from the things "other people" in the world had, to want less freedom, just to have whatever that undefinied stuff was -- friends and grace mostly. Better to belong, better to have my choices limited, better to not be so damn lonely. I mean, I was so young -- young in high school, young in college, and naive as hell, and I knew uttlery no one who could tell me anything. Not my parents, not peers, I mean, I had all these much older friends making their way in the world by the strangest means and philosophy, and I just wanted someone to tell me how to make small talk over dinner and actually care about the things I was conversing about. Less freedom seemed a good answer.
It seemed a good answer to other things too. To the fact that for a long time I wasn't a swimmer, that I never liked heights, never climbed on things. If I didn't have the freedom to do those things, I'd never have to tell anyone I was afraid, or simply didn't know how. I mean, isn't the universal test of ultimate nerdhood not knowing how to swim, ride a bike or blow up a balloon?
In college my life was all sorts of fucked up for all sorts of reasons. Mainly because I was in college and things can't help but grow crooked in that chunk of your life. I remember I told someone that I cleved so tightly to things, because I knew I could walk out my front door with just my keys and some cash and a shitload of will and never come back. Big talk for a little girl, but I had thought like that my whole life, hoarding money as a seven-year-old in case I had to run away, even when I really had nothing to run away from -- I just wanted more, which is more than a bit insane coming from a girl who grew up in Manhattan.
It was a persistant worldview that I didn't often think about, although it came up in one particularly bizarre drawn out situation with Michael. Since I couldn't be a goddess of many arms, I could at least be a woman of many lives, all out there and waiting for me.
Mostly, when I have travelled, it has been accidentally alone. When I went to Italy as a young teen my parents got food poisoning, and I went about my business strangely independently, especially in the dank winter humidty of Florence. I traveled a lot on business in my early twenties, going to strange cities, spending a few days, and giving a speech here or there, but mostly exploring and then sitting in my hotel room writing letters about it.
I came to like travelling alone, and to empty places. I liked the idea that by getting on the right plane, the right bus, I was making the choice over and over to be living my current life. It seemed like a good reminder, for a woman utterly convinced she could choose to dissappear anywhere at any time.
I spend a lot of time thinking about my Australia trip. As like most of my awfully big adventures, it popped into my head for one weird reason, and wound up being about something else entirely and more fundamentally important in the end. A lot of people have said to me about the trip that I'm brave, and I can't figure out why. I'm going to Sydney for heaven's sake. No camping in the outback for me. I mean there are bugs and wild dogs and all that stuff that I'm not so good at.
But yes, in the end I'm going alone, and in the end investing quite a chunk of change in any number of my weird convictions, among them being the idea that the earth and dirt there will make more sense to me than the earth and dirt here. I look at the way Amanda writes about Texas, and that's how I feel about some of the places I've travelled to, and some of the places I haven't even been yet. And that is a strange thing, my kooky little internal narrative or knowledge that somehow has given me to feel that my bones know places I don't.
To get back to Gabrielle -- my most vividly recalled image of the book is always her, even as I didn't really ever get her character then, rising out of her sleeping place in the earth in the cold blue early evenings, dirt and leaves tangled in her long braided hair, and dressed in men's clothing, lonely and alone and prideful and adventurous, and always so grateful to see those she loves even as after a few weeks or months or years she always hurries away again, back into the dirt.
There are things I ache for, and that I want, and if they choose to come along on my journey, I'll be a hell of a lot luckier than most, but there are also all sorts of desires I don't understand and because I don't understand them, probably won't ever have (e.g., while I understand the general awesomeness, logistical importance and security of owning a house, I've never covetted it, never dreamed of it, can barely understand its relevance to me). It makes me sad sometimes, and uncertain, but my nature is that I bend poorly, and dissapear better, both in the right ways and the wrong ways. I've been working on the right ways.
More and more, I see myself, not as Gabrielle so much, but of whatever archtype she represents in the private language inside my skull. The woman in the dirt. Alone, scary, simple and reborn. Hunting and desiring constantly not for any end, but simply because it was what she was designed to do, and she's content there, in that moving place, like sharks and the planets we falsely presume to be so cold and lonely in their orbits.
