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In the late 1800’s, there was as short story published by Charlotte Perkins Gilman titled The Yellow Wallpaper.
I alluded to this in a previous blog. The super-duper abbreviated synopsis of this story is about a woman who is confined to bedrest and banned from thinking or, god forbid, writing. She lays there in forced bedrest and begins to lose her mind, and the story takes you through what she sees, and the horrors that begin to be seen within the patterns of that yellow wallpaper.
Here is the wikipedia slightly more informative cliff note summary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Wallpaper
Certainly there is much there I can relate to. If one was to confine me indoors and deny me my writing utensils, It would only take a brief confinement to have me go postal. You wouldn’t even need just 1 room nor the awful wallpaper to erode away the civilities of my frontal lobes, boy. In desperation to write out the burning thoughts in my head I have written on labels torn from canned food, my skin, other people’s skin, mirrors (with make up of course), tables, asphalt, sand, my food (don’t ask), and of course ever-handy napkins from various dining establishments.
I’ve never really liked the expression that "artists must create", for while I believe it, I don’t like how it sort of categorizes us all into "artists" or "not". I think we ALL must stay creative and dynamic to thrive, evolve or die, hey.
What’s truly ironic is how I came to know Gillman’s story. Back in the day when Jerry Garcia was still rockin’ and I was buyin’ Purple passion at the local liquor store- I was 16 years old, newly at started community college.
Within 2 weeks I met a man with long dark hair, tall black boots, and an intense gaze focused squarely on me. We shared a perverse over-enthusiasm for Star Trek (no exaggeration-his car was painted with a "starfleet academy" logo & the man bought me an Uhura red dress), writing, reading, and drawing excessive attention to ourselves in manner and dress ( if I recall correctly, his self described preferred look was "cyber-punk").
I’ll spare you the melodrama of delving into the detials of that "learning experience" but the fiasco flailed along for about 2 educational years before I outgrew this man who had once seemed so worldly, bold, and sophisticated.
I couldn’t know it then, but he would be first in a series of many, many men who claimed to love & admire indepedence and brains in their women- but who would morph into controlling, neurotic, narcissitically wounded maniacs when I became a little too successful or uppity. Take note. Gentlemen, be veeeery careful what you ask for. Ladies, just ‘coz he claims to lofty ideals doesn’t mean he means it.
So that is one very positive thing that came out of the disillusionments which punctured the relationship: The Yellow Wallpaper (And he did also enlighten me to Flannery O’Connor. So gracias for that). Little did he know, that in that story published in 1892, there would be powerful advice for a girl in 1992, to get the hell outta dodge, leave the man, the parents, the suburbs, the addictions, for good.
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/whyyw.html
Thank you Charlotte, for writing about madness and power (or the lack theroef), as a means for guiding legions of others out of the wallpapered rooms of those well meanings types who would destroy us with their cures. Art needs no real "point" and yet, it does serve a function, to reveal truths and realities, perspectives both fleeting and permanent. The captured moments of an imagination in 1892, sounds like the Stepford Wife realities of many a woman in 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Wallpaper
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