CONTEXT

Context: circumstances or events that form the environment within which something exists or takes place. There you have it - a tidy little definition of a word frequently used - and abused - in communication - verbal and non - as well as writing and informal discourse. I hate to be pesky (OK, I lied.  As you know, friends and readers, fatigue, illness, temperament, certain people and most content that seems to stream into my consciousness directly from the television, elicit peskiness of unwarranted and lofty proportions.  And you know this because I am also insensitive enough to ‘share’ my unattractive emotions at the drop of a hackneyed expression)

      Now before you lower that boom of a pointer on your upper right corner “x”, deserting this tab as though you’d seen a warning prompt: “Continue reading at the risk of erasing your hard drive”, know that I’ve not embarked on an instructive stroll down “Composition I” lane - and we all know there’s no strolling ‘up’ that rocky road - but simply wanted to orient everyone to this evening’s pithy, playful ruminations.  Lord knows, I stand first in the ‘orientation line’.  The past five or six days have been inordinately disorienting causing a fit of seeking-in-extremis for peace, order, direction and pleasant experience. Lest I fall prey to a full-blown case of pesky.

      Fortunately for all, persistence conquered pesky and I found my treasure trove – which, per Virginia law, I may keep if a ‘rightful owner’ has not left a claim.  Last-minute changes had us dining at b-day grandpeep’s fave watering hole to commemorate her eighth year among the VERY quick.  Molly is currently taking tennis lessons - and showing signs of greatness - but along with a tennis bracelet, we gave her a small, crystal catcher’s mitt and baseball which she literally ‘visits’ to admire every time she’s at our home.  It’s a paper weight, actually, and I’d always found her tender fascination endearing.  Especially in that the child shows no interest in the sport - save her Mets ball cap.  Thus we presented Molly with the coveted trinket cum framed poem.

      (Framing seems rampant in those heinous TV emissions of late.  Watching the evening news brings a spate of commercial interruptions clearly aimed at robbing the unsuspecting, average watcher of his old friends – peace-order-direction-pleasant experience – with whom news is normally endured.  They (we know of whom we speak) have some beastly attention-grabbers out there.  Who’s NOT going to listen up when the subject concerns health – in the context of its continuity.

        In that as a genre there seems to be no discernible distinction, we’ll have a gander at a common bladder issue, unpleasant but not life-threatening.  At least the lure is cast in that manner.  The captive audience takes the bait – and the Vesicare.  The scene begins in our mythical land of “Context” with bronze-hued PVC-pipe figures marching this way and that, singing with hearty voices reminiscent of the era of protesting. (Which will re-enter in present tense context when the nightly news resumes.)

        The message our marchers are conveying is that they’ve worked hard to get where they are (presumably ‘success-land’) and will not tolerate interruptions by ‘leaky-pipe-induced’ frequent trips to the ladies room.  Enter Vesicare.  By now you’ve gathered this is a pharmaceutical frame-up. The abject ‘bete-noire’ of over-active bladder syndrome, Vesicare renders this unsuspecting malady a thing of the past, a has been in the long line of similar would-be impede-rs of “so-if-you-go-to-Somewhere-on-your-way-from- Nowhere,-and-you-meet-anyone-you’ll-know-it’s-Me” bronzed marchers.)

        Molly sat rapt, caressing her crystal treasure while proudly reading her poem:

INSTRUCTIONS for safe use of Molly’s enclosed:

Catch a falling star

and put it in your pocket.

Never let it fade away.                                               

                                                             

                                                      Catch a falling star

                                                       

            and put it in your pocket   

save it for a rany day.

For love might come and tap you on the shoulder

some starless night.

And just to show you’ve grown a little bolder,

you’ll have a pocketful of starlight.

Pocketful of starlight.. . ..

Catch a falling star.

You’ve got your glove, just DO it.

(Others think that it’s ‘Their’ day.)                      

                                                     Catch a falling star,

 you’re faster getting to it.

No one gets in Molly’s Way.

Your glove and ball –

the day that you got older -

came for catching  light. Starlight’s best,

wants Molly’s glove to hold her.

Star-matching-Star made MAGIC all night,

Magic starlight all night.

Molly’s ball and glove

came when she reached her eighth year,

lighting up her sky with stars.

Molly’s ball and glove told all who came,

Now see here:

Stars’re hers now, they’re not ours.

Stars will never fade away. . .

Won’t be any rainy days. . .

Molly’s starlight’s here to stay. . .

Glove and ball are Molly’s way.

Love and Stars mark Eighth Birthday.

Candles out, but Starlight stays.

Pockets full, colorful

light from Stars all Molly’s days.

Light from stars that’s hers not ours.

But sharing, loving, bright Birthdays!

Balls in gloves

Showered loves. On her way -

EIGHT today.

Never, ever fade away. . .

All her starlit bright Birthdays

Always Starlit, bright Birthdays.

And a star she shall be, wherever her talents take her.

      (Would that the same could be said of our marchers.  Seconds after their song of determination and praise loses its volume, Mr. Friendly Voiceover, totally aberrant contextually, booms in to remind us in tutorial tones that, as with all modern miracle drugs, there MAY be side effects – of which he is all too eager to warn us.  The litany – ranging from inconvenient to lethal – is prefaced by the what-has-become-typical advice, “Therefore, consult your doctor if you have any known conditions like heart arrhythmias, psychiatric disorders, respiratory ailments, glaucoma, G-I Tract Disorders or a significant history of allergies.)

        We had plans to see “The Swingtime Salute” Saturday evening.  This engaging musical production was rendered even more spectacular Saturday as it was “Op Sail” weekend, when those magnificent historic “Tall Ships” from eras long gone by sail majestically into Norfolk’s harbor and drop anchor adjacent to the retired USS Wisconsin – a resident attractiion of the city on which the musical was staged.

      A tribue to the generous and talented performers who entertained our troops in 1945 when the Wisconsin was commissioned, “Salute” was energetically put on with the backdrop of the setting sun on a glorious harbor evening - topped off with a pyrotechnical display to memorialize all things nautical and beautiful.  The entire evening gave new meaning to “gala” in its particularly festive context.

      (One would think, in the doctor-patient context, that had ANY of those successful marchers suffered from ANY of the aforementioned conditions, the ‘doctor’ would soon become ‘successive’ had he not been aware of them when he prescribed the Vesicare.  Really, folks, is ‘average patient’ now responsible for diagnostics and test result interpretation such that findings are to be shared with ‘average patient’s’ treating doctor so he doesn’t screw up and prescribe Vesicare to the hapless hyper-allergenic marcher whose dumb luck it was to now develop an overactive bladder which, as yet, she hadn’t had time to work up?)

        Sunday - warm and sunny - was just perfect for grandpeep Charlie’s second b-day.  He was just a bubble of dimples, giggles, and hugs and kisses all around.  The kids seemed to fly all over the swing set and jungle gym; tumble in the grass waiting a turn at driving the Jeep and beeping the horn; laugh and peak through their blindfolds when pinning the butterfly on Curious George’s tree. And after gallons of cold juice, Charlie’s Curious George cake was the perfect pause before tearing open presents with renewed life!

      (I watch and listen to this potentially lethal scenario, gleaned from this potentially award-winning sixty second ‘spot’:  successful bronze pipe’s march becomes a walk, then a fall, groping forward in a desperate, last lurch toward an unreachable phone that will never follow a “911-order”.  Marcher had ignored the heartburn, fiber-blasted the constipation, artificially teared her dry eyes, watered her dry mouth, squinted through her blurry vision.  The wheezing – well successful pipes can’t just STOP for a cold.  Of course she never forgot to take her anti-depressant but the confusion caused her to take two Vesicare that day.  And when her lips and face and throat started to swell – what was it she was supposed to do?

        She stopped marching and walked to think this through.  Tired, she sat, groped for her cell phone to call her buddy, Pattipipe, but decided to nap first.  But then she thought the grass must be getting to her because she was wheezing, call doc. . . ‘Reach out and touch some bo dy. . .’  Reaching, her crooning stopped, as did she.  At the service, doctor, in the context of both sympathy and helpfulness, explained to her grieving, successful friends, that “Nothing should ever get in the way of taking care of yourself.”  He left an ample pile of his cards next to the Guest Registry.  Ambling down the carpeted marble steps, he was heard singing softly, “I’ve worked very hard to get where I am; I’ll never allow a leaky pipe to get in my way. . .”

        In the context of ruminations, I think I’ll run with ‘playful’ tonight.  There’s something about TV commercials – in the context of ‘pith’ - that makes me feel pesky.  And we certainly don’t want to go THERE.

Later, Lorane. . . .

CODA:OOOPS!

      Gal walks into a story.  Sees a good friend.  "Emcee!", she shouts.
"Got no rose 't pin on YOUR nose.", spits the reply.
"Well, what up?"
(Emcee and gal go back some.  And go back deep.  Fact is, Gal knew Emcee, a pet name for 'Main Character', known to only a few (thousand) buds, when Gal was just a literary parvenu named, 'Hey, You!'.) 
"What up's been ME.  All night.  Waitin'."
"What?  Somebody didn't show?"
"Yeah. Somebody-didn't-show, y' ole fool."
"Emcee.  It's me.  And it's early.  My missin' somethin'?'
Emcee perches pertly on a handy stool, crosses her still-quite-shapely-gams, like she does when things have her in a 'way'.  Then, hand on hip, chin up and off to the side (her bad side), she mimics accusingly,
" . . . what WAS that thing in that bay window?  Hmmm?"
      (Lordy, time flies and if you don't catch up with it, it'll run circles around your sorry arse and wind up biting you - JUST when you were thinking you had a 'grip', as they say.  Truth be told, "they" chuckled all night, watching Emcee pace around muttering denouement, crap-for-brains.  Denouement!"
      But did 'they' say anything to Gal?  That's clearly rhetorical and sooo like 'them'.  You see, back in the day - that would be "yes-ter-day", Gal was all lathered up, doin' Charlestons, hootin' out "you're a grand old flag. . .", and stopping just long enough to swig some Geritol from her garter-secured, silver flask - ALWAYS at the ready in her silk stockings - that she forgot THE most important and beautiful thing that Emcee treasures in her home-for-the-lovely-and-longed-for.
      Emcee's had the most prized period bird cage that a master craftsman's hand has ever tenderly assembled.  Mahogany - with some copper wire, shaping the domes - it rests regally on a matching table, ever vigilant, lest the world forget from whence she came.  This highly-polished, intricately-carved, wood skeleton of a magnificent cathedral was once home to the softest, trembling, feathered creatures who sang with an unforgettable lilt of joy.  Feathered, kaleidoscopically-colored angels, crooning of a time when people were high on creativity, low on the blues and telling about it - with strokes and faces and shapes.
      It is Emcee's paean to 'her' time, representing, reassuring, all who pass that she holds fast to abstract thinking; she believes in human freedom.  And when she's moved to 'treat' a passerby with herself and her art, she sings out, "Long live painting!"  And the 'treated' one comes marchin' in.  Think Satchmo.  And don't forget.)
Later, Lorane. . . .

Benediction Two: Bobbie, Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin

  There is a magic time of day, for me, when the angle of the setting sun creates an ‘otherly’ aura to the early evening.  It’s as though a highly gifted union of lighting elves have been retained to ‘do their thing’ with glebes, scrims, back-lighting, follow spots – all to enhance the setting of whatever fabulation you are thinking, saying, doing.  “They” call it ‘dusk’.  And reputations DO precede.  But not another word.  Well, one, ‘apocryphal’, comes to mind. Thus was the night I was treated to Bobbie. 

      Returning from our walk, Bridie and I met her at the curb and fell quite naturally into an embrace and the start of a cherished relationship.  As we strolled around the bend toward our new, fair grounds, I know I heard strains of a calliope – faintly – but nevertheless.  It was apparent that we shared a savior faire attitude as regarded our neighborhood.  Why dwell on nothing.  But dwell we did, first in rhythmic, outdoor amblings, then on to perching on her bench in front of “the” window.  We shared stories of our dogs’ antics.  Bobbie’s white toy poodle  was a true con and Bridie wanted sooo to run, untethered, playing the huntress.

      On the evening the portals were to open, she’d brought ice water out for the pooches, who settled down under the bench, and simply said “Come.”  The dogs didn’t say a word.  Turning left – and walking past the famous bay window attraction – we were in the grande parlor.  Scented and crowded with objects d’art, I feasted sensually.  Pausing by an ancient baby piano, I took in the length of the room.  First the walls.  Hardly the “Ladies Who Lunch”.  Rather, under the glow of carefully placed mini-lights, the legion of flappers – seated, standing erect and aloof, lounging, one foot adorned – never clad – in a dangling blue satin shoe, staring in bobbed profile to the left and her next prey or just ‘in repose’. 

      Fringed, satin shawls draped divans and tables upon which tortoise shell curios adjacent to ivory safari animals lazed.  The mantle was home to arrangements of miniature groupings of china people, some exotically Asian, others Hoover ville USA.  Persians carpeted one’s footfalls as eventual forward movement began “The Tour”.  The 1920’s engulfed us. Not providing asylum and a fitting showcase for the art and artifacts of this exhilarating, raucous time in our country would render Bobbie an opprobrium to the cult and culture with which she had so fiercely identified herself in her personal life.

            I found myself walking slowly, reverently through rooms, cloaked with the very same sense of shame.  Certainly I had no basis with which to compare her heated involvement with our environs.  Yet there it was -  a found attachment and dedication to her life’s work. Mine was more of an ersatz passion but nonetheless moving.  Indeed, though very little was spoken on this is sojourn, the engine driving the silence was a shared sense of urgency.  It seemed imperative that we move along, our senses honed to the hilt, encompassing this cornucopia of gently preserved re-creation.  The re-creation itself, so impressively prolific had to have been accomplished with a  like intensity.

       The Art was a paean to the pioneers of that ’last hurrah’ mentality.  We were at the casting call for ‘Flappers and Philosophers’.  Certainly, Bobbie had appropriated the memories of others.  But, as Coco Chanel once said, “The dead are not dead as long as you think about them.”  Thus the sense of assertive immediacy. This clubhouse of artists created images with an eye toward perfect form and order - strange bedfellows indeed for the membership of the notorious decade best remembered for its flappers and Fords.

      And they were all there.  The only other such experience I recalled in this geographical locale was at the old Cavalier Hotel on Holly Road in Virginia Beach. The events planner had selected a quiet, empty time on a summer afternoon to show the ballroom that opened out through white french doors to a perimeter lanai– all tile, wicker and palm trees.  I was transfixed and gushed to my daughter, “Scott and Zelda danced here!”  The blue ice in her ‘who-are-Scott-and-Zelda’ blank tape look tore at my heart tissue.  MIND: red blood drops in the snow.

      Bobbie-the-event-planner, paid the same reverent attention to detail in her soiree-ready home.  Standing in for the Gerald Murphys – Jazz Age Dilettantes - she included all of the ‘usual’ luminaries.  You could hear and feel them – extraordinary talents, gifted with preternatural acuity. Georgia O’Keefe, Pablo Picasso, Clara Bow, Ansel Adams, Scott, Zelda – swimming, sunning, meditating, dancing, unique and reveling in their difference with ghostly toasts to their ‘home sweet heaven’.  If the world had only apprehended at the time that these were not creatures of instinct.

      Rodin had taught but a decade earlier that, being a naturalist, he believed one’s character is revealed by one’s emotions and concreteness of flesh.  What moment, I wondered, of Bobbie’s physical artistic awakening also marked the birth of her fruitful, fecund imagination?  It has been said that we are formed by what we desire. If seeing is the true language of perception, had she been exposed – consciously or subconsciously – to the art of the 20’s such that the memory of its perfect representation, ideal form and ordered clarity ignited her with desire?

      Like her demigods, she had responded to her dizzying world of modernity with works that seemed to evoke and embrace an idealized realism.  Having reluctantly turned right to embark on a gawking, halting march down a hallway, I saw to my immediate right yet another ‘false’ hallway.  False because its natural termination was now blocked with an enormous, mounted stained glass apse, scarfed, no doubt from a basilica whilst the archbish nodded off.  Bobbie excitedly explained that – miraculously – hubby Steve, an engineer, was able to find JUST the right alcove for its new residence.  Let’s give it up for Steve (before somebody gives Steve up).

      That brief break in the action permitted some spacial orientation and I realized we were ‘processing ‘ along a wall of brilliant stills of flora and fruit in oils on the wall to our left.  My distraction – ‘miracle apse’ – had been dramatic enough (and my mind now on overload of decades of visual stimulation) to actually FORGET to clue my eyes to the ‘open and obvious’ centerpiece of Bobbie’s kitchen.  Edible stills notwithstanding, I’d missed the fact that we were in the range ‘home’.  Possibly, the ISLAND center stage had blind-sided me (no pun intended and if perceived, so be it.)  This island – and I do not recall whether it was functional – was a large chunk of rectangular tile block, ?36” H, ?48”L and ?24” Deep. Standing where we were, rooting among the walled, still, oil garden, the 2’ by 4’ tile ‘side’ portrayed – in very bright cerise/gold/brown/black hues – the faces of a young man and young woman, smiling. 

      Bobbie’s blithe accompanying commentary, “It tells a story!”, had not yet achieved comprehension in MY cerebration area so I inched along, getting a glimpse of the ‘broadside’ action, a 4’ by 3’ tile imbued pictorially, in the same vivid-but-slightly-subdued hues, the young woman – flying solo without a net – crying.  Bobbie: “We found it in Italy!” (‘apsi-dentally, I’m sure).  Without further ado, I whipped around to the ‘end of the story’ – a 4’ by 3’ tile picturing the first young man, this time accompanied by a second young man – both smiling.  It was truly a stunner – artistically and thematically.  And, given the liberating Freudian juxtaposition revelations of the twenties, conceptually as well.

      The most extraordinary thing about Bobbie’s kitchen island, however – again, functionality withstanding or not – is it is very pretty, a fact, when shared, pleased Bobbie no end.  Think of Sally Bowles in “Cabaret”: “If someone were to ask me why I paint my fingernails green (and it just so happens I do paint them green), I’d say, ‘Because I think they’re pretty.’’’  Well, more’s the pity Bobbie can’t trot out her kitchen island as easily as her fingernails; because it’s PRETTY.

      Moving along, we came to Bobbie’s room, her special place, her personal place.  Here we are greeted by family and friends, photographed and framed, activity-oriented or in repose, as well as shelves of period dolls and never-to-be-forgotten doll house furniture – all lovingly positioned, grouped, displayed.  They are joined by Bobbie’s sketches and some portraiture – some personal, some universal, all 20’s.

      Even characters in motion – gentle motion – are sharing their feelings with the observer, who at times feels the bombastic interloper.  This because one’s gaze is fixed on a delicate, angular figure, bobbed curls dampened and drooping, one hand caressing the equally tear-moistened missive, his last from the front.  Her other hand rests lifelessly, a vessel for the lace, hand-crochet-edged pastel linen square, constant companion, tender comforter, atop the hiked hemline of her home-made velvet ‘welcome home’ dress.  Her long lashes closed on pale, sagging cheeks rob the viewer of likeness or expression on this ‘porcelain doll’s’ visage.  Her facial architecture, like her life, fading in increments such that the viewer recognizes less of her upon departure than upon discovery. It is meant to be.  Expressions of visual intimacy, like ‘flapper mentality’, were alluded to rather than delineated during this contradictory era.

      These were the ideas that dared: Faith in the potentiality of youth and the sustaining value of beauty.  This is why she moved on to Picasso and the impressionistic genre that used color for its own sake.  Her collection of his re-creations, prolific and profound, also introduces the ‘Ford’ to the ‘Flapper’.  The era was conflicted.  How to maintain individuality when mass production and mechanization is no longer a futuristic ideal.  Coincidentally, hubby Steve worked for Ford and after retirement, continued to travel, doing consignment work for them. They are still a strong and happy union.

      In fact, I was privileged to see a beautifully mounted collage, “The Many Faces Of Helen” – a wedding present to Steve and Bobbie.  The presenters, old friends of hers, always called her Helen.  They remain close, the two couples.  The collage was lovingly made by the gay couple p- two men who are surgeons but create framed art as a hobby.  The collage treats the world to thirty or so ‘Bobbies’ – in costumes, festooned with feathers, beads, sparkles, a rainbow of different wigs and scarves.  Each picture – most taken at fund-raisers – is injected with her vigorous humor and riotous life style which some might have viewed as stemming from the disreputable behavior of that ‘roaring’ era.  But Bobbie is thus adorned for reasons which define her and her art: it’s pretty.

       In the style of most of her mentors, she lived rather than just recreated her own art.  In that unusual, spontaneous display of her many faces, it was apparent that hers was a love of life lived with youth. She was photographed in costume many times as a very young and fetching performer. On a personal level, her belief that that beauty had a sustaining value was evidenced by the fact that she always wore a solid the gold choker, pending a stunning opal.  Globally, that same belief was evidenced by photographs of Betty Grable and other stars who’s beauty sustained our soldiers as they faced potential death protecting our - her country.

      For Bobbie’s sake: O’ art critics and philosophers: Like the Flappers -Lois Long, Dorothy Parker, Clare booth Luce, please deconstruct that formal language of collectors and museums.

      Lois Long, reviewed all your sisters and in the depth of your passion created the new woman journalist. Ms. Parker, your small talk alone revealed your taste for the element of surprise buffeted by the element of intelligence in commentary such as, “If all those sweet young things present at the Yale prom were laid end to end, I should not be surprised”. And Clare Booth Luce, taking advantage of the fortuitous fact of being Henry’s wife, executed her journalistic career brilliantly, and then before going on to represent her country abroad and in the House of Representatives, managed to find the time to leave a tableau of the new women, and write in the early thirties “The Women”.

      Bobbie knew/knows that Flappers were a cover for the launch of the new woman.  She asks: O’shapes, faces and material forms: Hold on to abstract thinking.  Believe in human freedom. Long live painting!  Long live Bobbie!

"Girl Jumping Rope" Janeen Koconis

Later, Lorane. . . .

Benediction for Bobbie

      It was Spring - that 'new' time.  Languid walks were not so.  They were exciting.  This because we were 'new' - to the neighborhood.  We had been in the Hampton Roads area for forty-some years and lived in Norfolk - near the Trauma Center.  And lest anyone mistake this selection as familial autobiographical commentary, location WAS everything and doctor Daddy specialized in Emergency Medicine and Trauma - at work.  Around the house, he was your typical MIA father.  Time came, though, when - just like that, as they say - the kids were off to or finished with college and we were ready to downsize and smell some salt air. And we will, I promise, get to the bottom of who "they" are as well as their qualifications to speak to an issue - or at all - but not this evening.
      (The home we selected was the first one we'd seen in Virginia Beach.  I loved it and he said it was "out of the question" so we went through the motions of looking for a few years until misfortune blasted the owners' marriage apart and us back into the 'running' and the rest is history.  The same can be said of the 'hood.  There seems to be enough 'history' in this little beach-y mini-town to have it declared a 'wildlife preserve', thus obviating the need for property tax collection.  I'm just sayin'.  It's all pure conjecture. Of course "they" know but we don't speak.)
      It was such a cluttered period in our lives - marriages of children, grand peeps coming along, working - he medicine, me, the law - that evening, nay, ANY walk time was a respite, an adventure, sometimes a mystery even.  So it was with Bobbie's house.  Walking with our Beagle, Bridie, presented many an opportunity to pause, gaze disinterestedly and try to figure out what that 'thing' occupying the entire bay window on one side of their front door WAS.  If pressed, I would have said, "very large, dark wood, ornate skeleton of a 'period' cathedral."  And, in return for my effort, the inquirer would have blessed me with that 'look', you know, the one a family member would bestow on the doctor who, gazing at their loved one's x-ray, just said those words in response to, "Whaddya think it is, doc?"
      (Unfortunately for me, the treasure trove of history in this area did not include any on MY part in the arena of furnishings - fine or 'in-WAY-over-our-heads-here-so-making-do' in nature.  Furthermore, one can see - quite clearly - from the road that there is a sofa flanked by end tables plunked in front of our bay window.  You will come to see why this very fact placed Bobbie and me in the 'secret sisterhood' category.  Actually, I'm sure you already know.  Nary an object - save 'window treatment'  - don't know WHY that phrase must be used.  I mean, was the window ill? - can be ascertained viewing the main entrance side of ANY other address.   Bobbie, justifiably, was treating the world to but an iota of the assemblage of beautiful things contained within her home for magically attractive - in the magnetic sense - things.  We were not well enough ourselves to go the distance and 'treat' our windows.  To anything.)
      Ere long, I was treated to Bobbie.  And trust me, friends, there is no other way to tell you about the experience.  When a lovely, lemon-haired lady, seated and reading, on a tastefully ornate yet comfy bench in front of "the" window, clad in denim/crisp white/screaming sandals and a gold choker pending a stunning opal, leaps up and bounds across her front lawn, all a-chirp with smiles of greeting to you AND your beagle, color you 'treated', touched by an angel.  And that I was.  Because - as you really WILL come to see - that she is.  Later, Lorane. . . .
     

The Archetype of the Child or Lorane, Future Tense

THE ARCHETYPE OF THE CHILD: LORANE, FUTURE TENSE

           Today, as part of our promotion of “Youth Tube”, the Plum Tree’s newest and most exciting page, I give you, as well as I can recall, my thoughts, feelings and hopes for the future, as I knew them through the eyes and ears of the five year old named Lorraine.  (Her name change would present in adolescence, turbulent years, to L-O-R-A-N-E.)

           One of the arrows in the quiver used by Dr. Carl Jung in the early parts of the 20^th century - while he was hard at work healing the mentally ill – was the “archetype”.  (His work was hard because, unlike his contemporaries who believed in repressing unpleasant  thoughts, Jung’s philosophy was expressed, “if you want to understand the jungle, you can’t be content just to sail back and forth near the shore.  You’ve got to get into it, no matter how strange and frightening it may seem.” Thus the ARCHETYPE was in essence part of the arsenal he used in his ongoing battle with the ghosts that haunted his patients.)

           An ‘archetype’ has no form of its own, but acts as an “organizing principle” on the things we see or do.  It’s like a black hole in space: you only know its there by how it draws matter in life to itself.  In deference to YouthTube, I selected the archetype of the Child as the engine that will drive this recollected olio of childhood experience.  Additionally, as the Child ARCHETYPE usually works in concert with other archetypes, blending with them to form a ‘child-god’, I shall include my relevant partner archetypes.  The cohorts that seemed best to ‘hang with’ my childhood as archetypal ‘pals’ were the Persona and the Hero. 

CAST OF CHARACTERS

       Persona represents public image.  The word is related to the words ‘person’ and ‘personality’, coming from the Latin word for mask.  (Worked deliciously well for this kid - schooled in ‘Latin-esque Catholicism’ and branded “masque-and-bauble” from the first read-through of‘This is Your Life’.) My persona was the mask I donned before showing myself to the world.

Although it began as an archetype, by the time I’d finished ‘realizing’ it, it was the part of me most distant from the spiritual level of consciousness.

            At its best, it was just the ‘public impression’ I wished to present as I filled the roles society required of me.  At its worst, as it can be mistaken even by its owner for our true nature: at times, I believed I really was what I pretended to be!  What price ‘mistakes’?

           Many archetypes are story characters.  The hero is a main one.  He is the larger-than-life character, defeater of evil dragons.  Basically, he represents the ego - we do tend to identify with the hero of the story - and is often engaged in fighting the shadow, in the form of beasts and monsters.  Hero is, however, often dumb as a post, ignorant of the ways of the spiritual level of consciousness which Jung called the ‘collective unconscious’.  It’s tough enough being on ‘rescue call’.  Asking ‘Hero’ to be sensitive to the spiritual would surely put a dent in his armor. 

           And now, the archetypal star in my show – the Child.  In mythology and art the child is represented as children, infants most especially, as well as other small creatures.  The Christ child celebrated at Christmas is a manifestation of the Child Archetype, and represents the future, becoming, rebirth, and salvation.  Curiously, Christmas falls during the winter solstice, which in northern primitive cultures also represents the future and rebirth.  People used to light bonfires and perform ceremonies to encourage the sun’s return to them.  My childhood in Brooklyn seemed one long winter solstice.  I daresay, although we annually burned Casey Stengel in effigy, bonfires were discouraged in the city.  Ceremonies, on the other hand, were part and parcel of my fantasy life.  This is not to say I was a ritualistic child.  Rather, I embraced any occasion that I could bless or celebrate with dramatic, ceremonial flair.

SETTING

           Jung placed ‘the child (including the child hero)’ in a list of archetypes incorporating the ‘chief among them . . .’.  (Color me like Sara Bernhard, squandering preciously-tossed/blown kisses to the now-standing masses in the dark, regally executing a third curtain call.)  Jungians exploring the hero myth have repeatedly noted that ‘over and over again one hears a tale describing hero’s miraculous but humble birth’.  What need, you may ask, masks the ‘stage-struck’?  What compelling force of nature marks special humans, setting them apart for life? 

THEMATIC SUB-PLOT  BY LORANE

           I concluded very early on, that it was an inevitable refuge of the unhappy child.  I could not have been more than five when, on a random day I placed all of my favorite dolls in the ‘Grampa-made’ wicker baby-doll carriage and planted myself  astride our apartment’s exit door.  Eventually – she was a busy lady – my mother noticed and graced me with that ‘and this is?’ look to which I brashly announced, “Surely we are moving.”  She went on with cooking dinner and I to pieces.  (Actually, it was more a ‘dramatic pause’.)  For I was all a- scheming, entrenched in the (show) business of contriving a world of my own.  Thence my tip-toe entrance onto the boards – inchoate, halting but definitely ‘prologue’ to my inevitable ‘trot’.

           I’d always had imaginary companions – Gene Autry a strange bedfellow among them – and even imaginary parents.  This last was in no way a transparent rejection of my God-given set.  Rather, I was ever intrigued by the Gypsies that, as a matter of course, inhabited sundry storefronts on our neighborhood’s main avenues.  Whereas, friends I was to make later in life spoke of ‘window shopping’ on Main Street or Fifth Ave, admiring/lusting after the latest season’s offerings in fashion and toys, I would regale them with enactments of ‘window-peering’, that is, straining, nose pressed against windows last washed during “the Big One”, to get a better gander at the even darker, shadowy outlines of the women and children of this or that ‘Gypsy Family’. 

           Their eyes had a piercing/arrogant yet enticing glow – with festively-‘painted’ sloe-shaped scrims and exaggerated black, elongated lashes sending ‘Morse-messages’ with their languidly open/shut activity.  Mysteriously back-lit vivid colors would break the lighting barrier, enhanced/aided by the glittering, reflective metallics of large hoop earrings and chain belting – sporting an occasional bell or a menacing talisman – now draping, now cinching the exotic materials that, sans under-trappings, swayed and spun, Salome-eat-your-heart-out.  And I recalled, during one of these ‘peerings’, posing a question to myself.  I was moved to wonder, “What if I’m not me?”

           Who might I have been yesterday?  Will I be a family member in France, during the Renaissance, tomorrow?  How long might this have been going on?  Will it always be thus?  To label these thoughts ‘odd’ is to trivialize what came to be my ‘way of being in the world’.  It was therefore a natural transition to amble from these musings into The Great Cattle Call – sung loudly by The Seasoned Sirens that changed courses of lives from time immortal. I would become of ‘the people of the theater’, that race of fanatics, the lost/dedicated tribe known as ‘actors’.  I would assume heroic or villainous guises, loving the love of a formerly bland, if not hostile world. 

           I innately KNEW my goal was attainable: TO BE MYSELF AND YET BE SOMEBODY ELSE – all the while loved for living this duality.  Relieved of any sense of guilt or confusion, I launched my thespian life.  If the essence of acting was the Art of being somebody else, I could/would be the consummate artist.  In keeping with the other attributes of the Archetype of the Child – my humble birth, fierce survival instincts, child-like longing for the innocent (regardless of age) – Jungians exploring this archetype have considered that ‘it represents our efforts to deal with the problem of growing up, aided by the illusion of an eternal fiction. 

           Thus, for Jung, “the child is potential future”, with the archetype symbolizing the whole personality in its development from primordial unconsciousness to ego consciousness to self.  Moreover, the child Archetype has a central part to play in assuaging the fear of the loss of connection with the past.  Jung taught that, in its retrospective aspect, ‘one of the functions of the child archetype is to recall the experiences and emotions of childhood to the adult mind.

           And it can get better.  Jung also allows as how in its prospective role, ‘for Jung the child archetype was a living symbol of future potentialities that bring balance, unity, and vitality to the conscious personality’ – such that the ‘mythic’ child symbolizes the lifelong process of psychological maturation.  I’ll take it.  Indeed, to even have ‘process’, there must be some tension – in the form of energy.  From a negative purview, tension – as in anxiety – leads to discomfiture, impedes progress.  Thus far, most of my negative tension has been contained in my personal unconscious, in dreams.  It’s always a version of the same dream:  Curtain going up, “Places!” and I either do not have a script or have forgotten ALL of my lines.

           I’ll take that, too.  My interpretation yields not failure but the need for further development/growth.  I’m simply not yet ready.  We’ll call that: “Lorane, Present Tense”.  You’ve just heard – from Child Lorane – “Lorane, Past Tense”.  Don’t know about you, but I wait in exhilarating anticipation for two VERY important ‘Child’ debuts – YouthTube on May 31, 2012 and Lorane, Future Tense”, TBA.

PS:

           There is always more to share.  Rather like the opportunity kids will have on YouTube:  http://www.wix.com/niamhclune/youth-tube1#!home/mainPage/

         I hope you enjoy my sharing of this anonymous find as much as I did.

Later, Lorane. . . .