Archive for the ‘Exposition’ Category
Owning Up to My Bride Gene
As Valentine’s Day looms and we’re bombarded from every possible media source with references to flowers and romantic dinners and diamond rings, for all the snarky derision we might exhibit on Facebook single women everywhere are wishing that some of that was happening to us. And with a few rare exceptions, whether or not they’ll admit it, most single women hope that some day they’ll get the ultimate Valentine – a marriage proposal. I’ll admit it; I do. Yes, I would like to be a woman in a wedding dress. Without any unintended Diane Arbus subtext.
The Sex and the City movie was on cable the other day (the first one, not that abominable waste of celluloid that was 2) and I watched it for the eleventy zillionth time. The whole wedding element struck a nerve. Why do I watch this movie over and over and over again? To quote Carrie from the film, “I’m an emotional cutter.”
It’s difficult to be a woman at this point in our popular culture and not frame discussions about men, love and relationships in the context of something we saw on Sex and the City. For years we watched the show, and then the movies, as if these four women were our friends and there was always a seat for us at the brunch table. Part of the reason for the show’s popularity – besides the beautiful clothes, shoes and handbags – was that women could relate uncannily well to the experiences the characters had on the show.
Carrie was known for insisting that she didn’t have the bride gene. It turns out, of course, that she did after all, but not before many hours of brunch and cocktail conversation was devoted to marriage, whether or not anyone wanted it, how to make it happen, and to whom. There was Charlotte’s famous line: “I’ve been dating since I was fifteen. I’m exhausted. Where is he?” And of course there was the episode when the girls discover news of Big and Natasha’s marriage in the “single women’s sport section” – The New York Times wedding announcements. All, being single at the time, had their own particular feelings on the subject.
I was engaged once. For the nanosecond it lasted, I was one of those women who poured through bridal magazines and clipped photos of dresses and bouquets and table settings, just like Charlotte. Afterward, I avoided anything remotely related to weddings in nearly manic self-preservation and to this day I have to cast aside the style section once I reach those dreaded pages full of happily engaged and married couples. At least I don’t have to worry about seeing any pictures of myself wearing bridal gowns in Vogue!
As for Mr. Big, he represents every man who has been loved and longed for and forgiven by any woman we know. Yes, he was the man who left Carrie at the altar, but he is also the man who came to her rescue in Paris, who despite all his flaws was her one true love. He gave her the fairy tale ending we all want. In the end, it’s the big white dress, or at least what it represents, that we yearn for: to find true love and to live happily ever after. That’s what the Sex and the City movie – and in some ways even the series – was really all about. Carrie writes about it and ultimately all of the characters found it. With luck we won’t be forced to endure the wait and the torture that Big put Carrie through to end up with our true love. Or throw ourselves in front of a taxi Charlotte style.
Until love does come along, however it does, to paraphrase Carrie Bradshaw: if you are single there is always one thing you should have with you on Valentine’s Day – your friends. In the face of all the romance run amuck and the knowledge that the likelihood of finding Mr. Right in the next five days would be miraculous if not impossible, we singletons are running for cover and clinging to our friends for dear life. And stocking up the liquor cabinet.
If only we could all endure our relationship crises clad and bejeweled like characters in Sex and the City.
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Cutting It
In a recent post I mentioned that I’ve been toying with the idea of short hair. After growing my hair out for a long time, I finally had long hair admired by all. Guys prefer long hair, it’s sexy, who doesn’t want to be sexy? Except that it got in my way all the time and all I ever did was put it up anyway. I had an impulse to go short a few months or so ago but chickened out at the last minute. The itch to shake things up and stir some new energy didn’t go away though, and finally I decided, damn it, I’m just a short hair person. Who cares what anyone else thinks or prefers?
With one last thought toward checking impulses I might regret later, I decided to pull some cards to help me decide. I used a Storyteller’s Spread to see what fate had in store for long-haired Angela and for her short-haired doppelganger. Let’s just say that short-haired Angela has a much happier ever after!
As with most impulses, once I had made up my mind I wanted to have instant gratification. Lucky for me, the whiz of short haircuts in Boston, the lovely George Amaral at Salon Mario Russo, was able to squeeze me in. So I went to see George with a few photos I’d found for inspiration and gave myself up to his talented hands. It was amazing how quickly after seeing my photos he just knew in his head what he was going to do. I sat in his chair and he started cutting. After only a few snips I could see both the new do and the new me emerging. And it was thrilling.
At that moment it occurred to me that in the act of having one’s hair cut there is the potential for deeper meaning (practices of widows cutting their hair and burying it aside).
Consider what the physical act of cutting hair may be doing for you. Imagine that, just like drugs or food or illness or pretty much any chemical thing that goes on in your body is stored in your hair, so too is the energy of whatever you have been doing, thinking, feeling, living during any given period of your life. As my haircut progressed, I started to think of all the things I have been worrying about, working hard to leave behind and move forward from, falling away from me with each piece of hair that hit the floor. Every bit of harmful energy that I’ve experienced over the past couple of years, lodged in my hair like molecules of some toxin, gone with each snip of the scissors.
And who was doing that for me? My hairdresser.
There is a particular connection that comes from the experience of entrusting another person with something deeply personal. What could be more personal than one’s appearance. Especially hair style, since most women feel their entire identity and sense of beauty lies in their hair (references to Samson and Delilah aside as well). A hairdresser, with his hands, creates artwork, the medium being his client’s hair. And the artistry is not just in the finished product that is the “do” but in the feeling that both the experience and the result evokes in the recipient. At minimum, it’s an exchange of energy, his and mine. But there’s also something about a haircut that takes on an aspect of the laying on of hands. Hands are such a powerful vehicle through which we connect to others, even in the simplest of gestures. Much has been made of the human touch and its power to heal. A hairdresser, with his hands and through his touch, definitely has this power too.
In many ways, getting a new haircut is more than just a change of scenery. There’s a healing, releasing component that can have a sort of spiritual significance if we stop to take in all of the possibilities. I’m convinced there is something to this. Especially now. In this past week alone, I know of several friends and acquaintances who have had their hair cut or changed in some way. There seems to be something afoot in the Universe that is calling out to many more than I.
I’ve noticed other intriguing correlations within this experience of hair cutting. The last time I cut my hair short after a torturous bout of hair growing out I also consulted the tarot for advice, and it also happened to be right before a New Moon. The day following my haircut there was a New Moon in the intelligent, practical & precise Earth sign of Virgo, symbol of the pure virgin healer. Symbolic? Perhaps. Certainly interesting. Or possibly an indication that every once in a while I get a bit of help from the Universe to do what I know was the right thing for me all along.
Living Large
Reduction. As women we tend to concentrate on it, obsess over it. Reducing weight, reducing carbs, reducing exposure to BPA. Yes, it feels good to fit into our skinny jeans, but at what point does all of this attention paid to reduction begin to have a detrimental effect?
A long time ago, when I was in the process of losing weight, a friend of mine who is a considerable scholar of Chinese medicine warned me not to lose too much because, she said, it would weaken my chi. Chi, or qi, is the circulating life energy that in Chinese philosophy is thought to be inherent in all things; in traditional Chinese medicine the balance of negative and positive forms in the body is believed to be essential for good health. And to follow my learned friend’s line of reasoning, to reduce oneself too much physically would put one in danger of reducing oneself energetically and spiritually as well.
Unfortunately, the reality of our world today means that I am seeing people around me experiencing reduction in more ways than a simple inattention to the balance of chi. People lose jobs, relationships end, reputations are tarnished. It’s easy in the face of sometimes profoundly life altering change to feel not just a sense of reduction, but of being personally reduced, less of a person than you were before. How do you combat that?
I’ve heard people paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous quote “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” to mean that only you can make yourself feel bad in the face of something that is happening to you. Well I think that anyone who believes that in every situation only you can make yourself feel small is being unrealistic and callous. There’s a big difference between letting yourself feel inferior when you are not and having quite legitimate feelings of loss and dismay when something has been taken from you. It’s not your fault if any of that makes you feel bad, if you feel a sense of reduction in value, status or happiness. You shouldn’t let yourself feel guilty or weak for an inability to stop those feelings from happening.
The trick is to remind yourself to concentrate on enlargement not reduction. I don’t mean break out a box of donuts. What are the things that make you feel big?
Whenever I’m feeling insecure about my professional life, I redo my resume. The simple act of reviewing my job experience and skills reminds me how accomplished and capable I am.
In the face of a lost relationship, I think it’s helpful not to lose sight of the fact that it’s actually a good thing to possess the capacity to feel and to give love to another person. This means that you will be able to do it again and the next time could be even better. I’m a hopeless romantic deep down; I believe you have to risk a broken heart in order to experience a full one.
It’s amazing to me how even a big city can feel like the world’s smallest town. People tend to circulate in their own little cliques and occasionally revert to sophomoric behavior, often finding it entertaining to gossip about others, especially those who dare to be different, to take their own unique approach to living life. This might be nothing more than thoughtless gum flapping but it can be intentional malice. At the receiving end of this slanderous talk is a real person, with real feelings, and a real life to live. You would think that people would have better things to do than bother themselves with what someone else is doing. Unfortunately, there is nothing anyone can do about people who chose to behave that way. It is they who are small, not the object of their belittling gossip. Rise above it. Be the bigger person. And remember, being yourself can be controversial – do it anyway!
Everyone has heard the expression “live large.” This is generally accepted to mean living in an overtly ostentatious manner. But what about subverting the phrase to mean living spiritually large, full of chi? If you want to get your chi flowing, there are lots of established ways to do that. However, embracing the idea of living large could be as simple as taking a minute every day to remind yourself of the ways that you are big and concentrating for a bit on enlargement, not reduction.
The confidence I feel when I’m wearing my skinny jeans makes me feel big. But having a good heart and mind makes me feel even bigger.
Making Art
Some time ago, marketing guru Seth Godin posted on his blog an article about making art. He said:
My definition of art contains three elements:
Art is made by a human being.
Art is created to have an impact, to change someone else.
Art is a gift. You can sell the souvenir, the canvas, the recording… but the idea itself is free, and the generosity is a critical part of making art.
This reminded me of something. Continue Reading
Nine of Pentacles: Feminist Icon
When you’ve been studying and reading the tarot for a while, certain cards begin to resonate in a more personal way and for you, as a reader, forever after have deeper, more powerfully nuanced meanings. It’s something akin to what Rachel Pollack refers to as “the Gates,” certain minor arcana cards that open to hidden experiences in everyday things. For her, these cards “open a path from the ordinary world to the inner level of archetypal experiences” and they take on a “myth-like Strangeness which no allegorical interpretation can completely penetrate.” For Pollack, the Gates contain layers of meaning that reveal greater significance upon further study and meditative contemplation. I believe that it is possible for all of us to develop our own Gate-like cards when the synchronicity between an experience in our lives and the appearance of a card within the context of a particular reading or spread suddenly clicks.
For me, one of those cards is the Nine of Pentacles.
Nine of Pentacles, Waite-Ryder Tarot
I learned to read tarot on the Waite-Ryder deck and anyone who is familiar with tarot has seen the image depicted on this card: a woman in a lovely dress, standing in a lavish garden with one hand on a pentacle and holding a falcon on the other. The simple interpretation of this card in a reading would be abundance, good management of material affairs, and success in the accumulation of wealth and comfort. On the surface, it’s easy to see that in this card, and it does carry that meaning. However, if you consider what the card could represent on a deeper level, there is so much more to it than that.
In her book Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel Pollack begins to explore some of what I mean:
As material cards Pentacles deal with success and what it means in a person’s life. The woman depicted in the Nine of Pentacles is sharply aware of the good things in her life – her hand rests on the Pentacles, her thumb hooks on a grapevine. Awareness is one of the card’s basic meanings, especially self-awareness and the ability to distinguish what matters in life, what goals truly demand our best efforts. The card signifies success – but not simply the material benefits; it means as well the sense of certainty that comes with knowing one has made the right choices and followed them with the necessary actions. The pentacles growing on the the bushes symbolize a life that is productive and alive.
Success here means not so much worldly achievement as success in “creating” ourselves out of the material given to us by the circumstances and conditions of our life. And certainty, in its strongest sense, means more than looking back and seeing that we have done the right thing. It also means the ability to know where others can only guess. The Nine of Pentacles stands as the emblem of this quality, the true mark of the evolved person.
For women, personal and professional success is often hard-won. While our feminist sisters and mothers who came before us paved the way for women of my generation to experience less of the sexual discrimination and inequality present in the workplace and in the world, for all of their hard work there are still cultural influences and institutionalized systems for keeping women not quite as equal as we should be. All one needs to do is to pay attention to the continual attacks on freedom of reproductive choice and to realize that women, on average, still only make seventy-seven cents to every dollar earned by men (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2005 Annual Social and Economic Supplement.) to know that our society still considers women as less deserving.
Achieving success, however we choose to define that for ourselves, often comes at great personal expense. While it was largely accepted for a long time that women could “have it all” – a well-paying, powerful job as well as a family and a fulfilling home life – more recently women are coming to accept how difficult, stressful and often impossible that life is to achieve. On the other hand, women who choose to stay home to raise their children risk losing the respect of peers who define success as holding a powerful job and accumulation of wealth, and in the worst case scenario, their own self-respect and sense of self worth when they compare themselves to others, even to other mothers whom they view as being better than they are.
Trust me, as an alumna of a prestigious all-women’s college, I understand the pressure exerted upon us to live up to the examples of those who have achieved great success in their chosen fields. There is no allowance for “small” successes. Just today, I received an email from my college recognizing a woman in my graduating class for being elected to the “Forty Under 40 class of 2006,” a list of women and men who have demonstrated their ability to make a difference in their community. This woman was recently named president of a high-tech software company that serves Fortune 100 firms nationwide and she has had a leadership role in a project to develop improved mental health services for children in her city and to eliminate the stigma of mental illness. I applaud her efforts and celebrate the recognition she is receiving for them. But a tiny place inside me twists and it gives me pause to look at what I’m doing with my life. It’s difficult not to find my life small and inconsequential in comparison.
Continue Reading
Welcome to my Cloud of Chaos
Cloud of Chaos was born from a visit to the Tremont Tea Room. I went there to consult a psychic about questions existential with hopes he could help me find some sort of clue. Yes, I saw a psychic, get over it. Among other things, the psychic told me that from a center of relative calm I create a cloud of chaos around myself, like Pigpen’s cloud of dirt. Well, just as Pigpen was mighty proud of his filth, I decided to embrace my cloud of chaos as a good thing. To paraphrase a certain fruit salesman: it’s a feature, not a bug.
You see, most creative thinkers rarely get from point A to point E via B, C and D. It’s more likely they’ll get there via point K with a stopover at point X after a tangential run to the third moon of Jupiter. My point being that sitting with a chaotic cloud of cerebral detritus swirling around me is the perfect vantage point from which to view all manner of intriguing things, pull them out of the cloud for examination, and use them in combination or on their own to create new things various, magnificent, trivial, frightening or glorious.
It is my intention with this blog to share with you the products of my cloud of chaos, my crucible of creativity if you will. It is my hope that you will find some of it interesting at least, and perhaps even a little bit beautiful.
My name is Angela Eloise and I am a freelance writer. That sounds as if I am copping to an addiction. I am. In addition to writing this blog, I also write a column about social media and I am at work on a series of essays that I hope to see in print some day. Cloud of Chaos was born from my desire to dance with the absurdity of life, to create a space where I could write and share all of the gorgeous, fun, snarky deliciousness I find spinning around me every day. What does a spinning cloud of chaos have to do with writing? Everything, as it turns out.
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