Bluebeard
I have very helpful daimones.
I know I'm not the only writer who gets advice from her characters. I always have a few who can be relied upon to provide timely, astute commentary and much-needed moral support.
This probably speaks ill of my ability to socialize, that I get my best advice from nonexistent people, and also probably speaks ill of my sanity in some way. Yet I'm sure that without them, I would by now be quite mad.
Personal issues have arisen this week that are going to challenge me a lot, and Sargon, too. I had a really crappy day in particular today, and it doesn't look like tomorrow will be better. I would be more specific, but frankly I don't know even the best of you that well, and this is stuff more serious than a string of emoticons and e-hugs. Right now, my daimones are all that is keeping me sane.
I had a revelatory dream about two weeks ago, and I've been mulling it over ever since, turning it over and over in my mind, worrying at it. It was a very simple dream, for all its import.
I dreamed it from one of my daimones' points of view; one of the newer primaries in the Bar of Lost Souls where my characters congregate. Nick is an intensely practical, intelligent older man, a retired troublemaker, and a bona-fide alpha-male sadist if ever there was one. A real sexual deviant, for all his urbanity. He is, in short, the essence of the civilized beast. The Devil himself.
He was telling a story.
He had a girl hanging in chains - I know because I heard the rattling - as he lay out the instruments of torture on a brushed metal table covered with clean black velvet. Crops, straps, lashes, needles, rings, studs, clamps . . . all the accoutrements of his barbaric trade. Last, the calfskin case full of delicate blades with handles of sweeping gold, like surgeons' tools rendered by Alphonse Mucha.
Whatever girl he had captive was hanging behind him. He never even turned to look at her. Just told the story right through to the end as he lay the tools out and selected which he meant to use. This alone would have been menacing, but what made it worse was the particular story he told.
Bluebeard.
I've recently come to appreciate the story of Bluebeard a great deal. A properly-told version can raise the hairs on your neck more surely than the touch of a cold wind, and to those who have never heard it told properly, that's a shame. I remand you to Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, and her wonderful book Women Who Run With The Wolves, which is good medicine for people, not just women.
Anyway, there Nick was, with his silky British accent and his neatly manicured fingers, telling the frightful story of a frightened girl, a locked room, a terrible secret. And, yeah, you could've cut the sexual tension with a knife, his unspoken subtext being that Bluebeard's wife wanted to be there, that his awful secret was what drew her to him in the first place, even as her innocence is what drew him to her. Kind of like Nick's own relationship, in fact.
After I woke, I thought about the dream, and I believe I know exactly what it means (beyond my usual "I had a kind of kinky dream."). Nick was telling me ever so subtly that it's time to go down into that dark hall, take out the little gold key, and go into that dark room. He was telling me that it's time to check out that gory little secret, to shed some light on the terrible dead things I've kept shut away for so very long.
Shit. I think he was offering to be my guide, which suits me fine. Of all my primaries, he's the best suited for the hard work, he has the best balance between practical and emotional.
We all have those rooms, you see. Things we don't think about. Don't talk about. Places we don't allow other people to go. Maybe you try not to think about how empty yoru life has become, or how it's maybe become too full, and you made some choices that aren't holding up under the strain of living. Maybe it's some guilt you can't talk about, or your relationship with food or sex or drugs. Maybe you won't let anyone talk to you about your fear, or your anger, or your confusion.
Relationships have those rooms, too. You can't go into the room of body issues without confronting all those bodies, or without forcing your partner to confront their own set of mutilated dead. You can't go into the room of mutual trust without running into the corpses of old betrayals and infidelity. You can't go into the room of your partner's history of sexual abuse, or your own abusiveness, without Bluebeard dragging you off by the hair. It's awful.
And there's something about that room, its floors awash with blood, that the story doesn't tell you. That room grows.
The minute Bluebeard gets priviliged sanctuary in your psyche, he starts expanding his operation. Once he has a foothold, then doubt and fear and mistrust have all been sown, and will only grow.
Most of the time he is walled up in one or two rooms, and you can keep him there. But once in a while, you go into a room you don't use very often - your room for dealing with relatives, say, or your room that contains all your school memories, or your past pets - and you find that it's not just full of cobwebs. Bluebeard's moved in. This floor is bloody, too.
Bluebeard protects. He's the part of us that shouts "No!" whenever change happens. He's the part that pushes people away. He's the part that doesn't allow deep questioning or introspection. He's the part that buries and hides old trauma, walling it away from the rest of the psyche.
All of this is important, necessary work -- walling up the dead junk of the psyche. But sometimes what's in there isn't really dead. Dead things just get mulched over, after all, and new things grow. No. Sometimes what's left in there is still alive, just a little, and we feel its presence, haunting us, seeping like blood into stone, calling to us. All those bodies, crying for vengeance, all those souls screaming to be heard.
So that's our work, when we start finding that closed door, hearing that "No." We have to find our little key and go inside that room, and see the corpses there. The bodies that are, after all, only what we piled there ourselves so we wouldn't have to look at it.
Bluebeard is part of us, you see. And he wouldn't give us the key if he didn't mean, on some level, for us to look in that room. And the innocent girl, who has no choice but to look, she's part of us, too.
So we look. This just drives Bluebeard crazy. He rants and raves, and threatens to kill us, but if we are strong, if we hold out, we will survive. And the room gets cleaned out. We live to do it all over again.
That's what I've been doing: going into those rooms. Sometimes I only get a little way before the sight of the bodies, the way they smell, becomes too much. Sometimes I can shine a light around and see every corner. And it's scary what I'm finding in there. Anger, fear, loathing . . . the list wouldn't surprise you. We all have those feelings. But it's hard and lonely work, cleaning them out, and I hate it.
And here I have part of my psyche offering itself as a guide, telling me gently what work needs to be done. The very part most like Bluebeard is when he's not being a crazed wife-killer. He's dangerous, sure, but when you're going through dangerous country, do you want a trusty guide, or what?
I'm lucky to have my characters, my multiple personalities, my daimones, to help me along when I can't see the way through my own eyes. I don't know how people without them ever manage to do it.
It's three in the morning. I'm not sure what the point of all this dorky rambling is, really, except that I've been thinking about it quite intensely. I suppose I'm just pointing out that it's perfectly cool to listen to the voices in your head when they decide to talk to you , and that, man, sometimes, the human mind is really neat.
Shit. We can create characters smarter than us. How cool is that?
I'm going to try to sleep again, now, and hope tomorrow is an improvement over the enormous plate of "WTF?" with a side of "Huh?" that was today.
link
I know I'm not the only writer who gets advice from her characters. I always have a few who can be relied upon to provide timely, astute commentary and much-needed moral support.
This probably speaks ill of my ability to socialize, that I get my best advice from nonexistent people, and also probably speaks ill of my sanity in some way. Yet I'm sure that without them, I would by now be quite mad.
Personal issues have arisen this week that are going to challenge me a lot, and Sargon, too. I had a really crappy day in particular today, and it doesn't look like tomorrow will be better. I would be more specific, but frankly I don't know even the best of you that well, and this is stuff more serious than a string of emoticons and e-hugs. Right now, my daimones are all that is keeping me sane.
I had a revelatory dream about two weeks ago, and I've been mulling it over ever since, turning it over and over in my mind, worrying at it. It was a very simple dream, for all its import.
I dreamed it from one of my daimones' points of view; one of the newer primaries in the Bar of Lost Souls where my characters congregate. Nick is an intensely practical, intelligent older man, a retired troublemaker, and a bona-fide alpha-male sadist if ever there was one. A real sexual deviant, for all his urbanity. He is, in short, the essence of the civilized beast. The Devil himself.
He was telling a story.
He had a girl hanging in chains - I know because I heard the rattling - as he lay out the instruments of torture on a brushed metal table covered with clean black velvet. Crops, straps, lashes, needles, rings, studs, clamps . . . all the accoutrements of his barbaric trade. Last, the calfskin case full of delicate blades with handles of sweeping gold, like surgeons' tools rendered by Alphonse Mucha.
Whatever girl he had captive was hanging behind him. He never even turned to look at her. Just told the story right through to the end as he lay the tools out and selected which he meant to use. This alone would have been menacing, but what made it worse was the particular story he told.
Bluebeard.
I've recently come to appreciate the story of Bluebeard a great deal. A properly-told version can raise the hairs on your neck more surely than the touch of a cold wind, and to those who have never heard it told properly, that's a shame. I remand you to Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, and her wonderful book Women Who Run With The Wolves, which is good medicine for people, not just women.
Anyway, there Nick was, with his silky British accent and his neatly manicured fingers, telling the frightful story of a frightened girl, a locked room, a terrible secret. And, yeah, you could've cut the sexual tension with a knife, his unspoken subtext being that Bluebeard's wife wanted to be there, that his awful secret was what drew her to him in the first place, even as her innocence is what drew him to her. Kind of like Nick's own relationship, in fact.
After I woke, I thought about the dream, and I believe I know exactly what it means (beyond my usual "I had a kind of kinky dream."). Nick was telling me ever so subtly that it's time to go down into that dark hall, take out the little gold key, and go into that dark room. He was telling me that it's time to check out that gory little secret, to shed some light on the terrible dead things I've kept shut away for so very long.
Shit. I think he was offering to be my guide, which suits me fine. Of all my primaries, he's the best suited for the hard work, he has the best balance between practical and emotional.
We all have those rooms, you see. Things we don't think about. Don't talk about. Places we don't allow other people to go. Maybe you try not to think about how empty yoru life has become, or how it's maybe become too full, and you made some choices that aren't holding up under the strain of living. Maybe it's some guilt you can't talk about, or your relationship with food or sex or drugs. Maybe you won't let anyone talk to you about your fear, or your anger, or your confusion.
Relationships have those rooms, too. You can't go into the room of body issues without confronting all those bodies, or without forcing your partner to confront their own set of mutilated dead. You can't go into the room of mutual trust without running into the corpses of old betrayals and infidelity. You can't go into the room of your partner's history of sexual abuse, or your own abusiveness, without Bluebeard dragging you off by the hair. It's awful.
And there's something about that room, its floors awash with blood, that the story doesn't tell you. That room grows.
The minute Bluebeard gets priviliged sanctuary in your psyche, he starts expanding his operation. Once he has a foothold, then doubt and fear and mistrust have all been sown, and will only grow.
Most of the time he is walled up in one or two rooms, and you can keep him there. But once in a while, you go into a room you don't use very often - your room for dealing with relatives, say, or your room that contains all your school memories, or your past pets - and you find that it's not just full of cobwebs. Bluebeard's moved in. This floor is bloody, too.
Bluebeard protects. He's the part of us that shouts "No!" whenever change happens. He's the part that pushes people away. He's the part that doesn't allow deep questioning or introspection. He's the part that buries and hides old trauma, walling it away from the rest of the psyche.
All of this is important, necessary work -- walling up the dead junk of the psyche. But sometimes what's in there isn't really dead. Dead things just get mulched over, after all, and new things grow. No. Sometimes what's left in there is still alive, just a little, and we feel its presence, haunting us, seeping like blood into stone, calling to us. All those bodies, crying for vengeance, all those souls screaming to be heard.
So that's our work, when we start finding that closed door, hearing that "No." We have to find our little key and go inside that room, and see the corpses there. The bodies that are, after all, only what we piled there ourselves so we wouldn't have to look at it.
Bluebeard is part of us, you see. And he wouldn't give us the key if he didn't mean, on some level, for us to look in that room. And the innocent girl, who has no choice but to look, she's part of us, too.
So we look. This just drives Bluebeard crazy. He rants and raves, and threatens to kill us, but if we are strong, if we hold out, we will survive. And the room gets cleaned out. We live to do it all over again.
That's what I've been doing: going into those rooms. Sometimes I only get a little way before the sight of the bodies, the way they smell, becomes too much. Sometimes I can shine a light around and see every corner. And it's scary what I'm finding in there. Anger, fear, loathing . . . the list wouldn't surprise you. We all have those feelings. But it's hard and lonely work, cleaning them out, and I hate it.
And here I have part of my psyche offering itself as a guide, telling me gently what work needs to be done. The very part most like Bluebeard is when he's not being a crazed wife-killer. He's dangerous, sure, but when you're going through dangerous country, do you want a trusty guide, or what?
I'm lucky to have my characters, my multiple personalities, my daimones, to help me along when I can't see the way through my own eyes. I don't know how people without them ever manage to do it.
It's three in the morning. I'm not sure what the point of all this dorky rambling is, really, except that I've been thinking about it quite intensely. I suppose I'm just pointing out that it's perfectly cool to listen to the voices in your head when they decide to talk to you , and that, man, sometimes, the human mind is really neat.
Shit. We can create characters smarter than us. How cool is that?
I'm going to try to sleep again, now, and hope tomorrow is an improvement over the enormous plate of "WTF?" with a side of "Huh?" that was today.
link