The following is my response to the visual prompt of Magpie Tales #58. Go to the site for links to the responses of other writers.
Turnaround Fantasy
In my dreams I saw a warrior,
caped in scarlet velvet,
with eyes as green as spring mischief
and legs as strong as the golden mare they rode.
The warrior ranged the ragged cliffs
above a raging sea,
rescuing damsels in distress
and returning ancient thrones
to rightful heirs.
And when the moon was full,
the warrior would ride to the village
and make music, and laughter, and
even, love.
And, one one of those moonfull nights
I asked the warrior:
‘What do you seek?”
And the warrior answered:
“I seek a knight in shining armor,
with eyes as daring as the autumn seas
and hands as gentle
as the brush of his stallion’s silver mane —
A knight who rides the wooded hillsides
and rain-washed valleys
rescuing damsels in distress
and returning ancient thrones
to rightful heirs.”
Then,
in the startling shadows,
I saw a dark longing
drown the mischief in her eyes,
as the warrior turned
to face the moon.
If you’re not a member of the fandom community, you probably don’t know about the growing criticism of NBC for choosing David E. Kelley to write the script for a new series about Wonder Woman. (Just Google “Wonder Woman David E. Kelley” and you’ll find out more than you really want to know).
As a more than half-century fan of Wonder Woman, and as a shorter term fan of Kelley’s previous tv scripts, there’s something I want to say.
It’s a matter of “awe.”
Kelley’s female characters, such as Allie McBeal, have been criticized for being anti-feminist. I maintain that those characters are not meant to be “archetypes” or “heroes.” Neither inspiration nor role models, rather they emerge from some small portion of female idiosyncrasies with which many of us identify and also recognize as not necessarily the best of what we are. Actually, his male characters develop the same way, portrayed as flawed and human in ways that make us smile with poignant understanding.
But that’s not what Wonder Woman was ever meant to be. Wonder Woman was never meant to be fully human. As I blogged once before and quoted from here:
From her inception, Wonder Woman was not out to just stop criminals, but to reform them. On a small island off Paradise Island was Transformation Island, a rehabilitation complex created by the Amazons to house and reform criminals.
Armed with her bulletproof bracelets, magic lasso, and her amazonian training, Princess Diana was the archetype of the perfect woman from the mind of her creator, William Moulton Marston. She was beautiful, intelligent, strong, but still possessed a soft side. At that time, her powers came from ‘Amazon Concentration,’ not as a gift from the gods.
Wonder Woman’s magic lasso was supposedly forged from the Magic Girdle of Aphrodite, which Queen Hippolyta (Wonder Woman’s) mother was bequeathed by the Goddess. Hephastateus borrowed the belt, removed links from it, and that is where the magic lasso came from. It was unbreakable, infinitely stretchable, and could make all who are encircled in it tell the truth.
That was the Wonder Woman who inspired me as a 7-year old who felt that she never did fit into her family of origin, the pre-teener and teenager who yearned for a role as an adult that didn’t fit into the 50s mentality.
While Allie McBeal made us smile because we see part of ourselves in her antics, Wonder Woman makes us dream about what we might still become. Male or female, we need awesome and inspiring mythologies to propel us out of the ordinary and problematic parts of ourselves that characters like Allie so touchingly reflect.
Kelley’s “Harry’s Law” starring Kathy Bates is my new favorite show (even though the part was originally written for a male.) But Harriet is not an archetype either. She’s a very specific kind of individual with very human personality traits. We might find her inspiring, but not really “awesome.”
We females need Wonder Woman as the awesome myth she originally was intended to be — connected to other mythic females on Paradise Island more than she is to the mundane human world in which she has to find a place. Her struggle is to fulfill her destiny while still finding a way to make and enjoy her place in the everyday world.
Because isn’t that what so many of us still feel is our psychological destiny — to feel the power of our mythic history and to use that power to make the world a better place for others and for ourselves?
Maybe David E. Kelley can write Wonder Woman the way she deserves to be written. Maybe. But I can’t help feeling that Joss Whedon (who understood why we were awed by his Buffy) would have been a much better choice.
Please, Mr. Kelley, don’t dilute the awesomeness of Wonder Woman. She doesn’t deserve it. And neither do we.
We are each a combination of nature and nurture, but it does seems as though how we look and feel as we get older is a lot more dependent on “nature” — on the genes we inherited that keep our bones strong, our brains sharp, and our skin not too badly wrinkled.
How we take care of ourselves, of course, can make a difference. How we view ourselves or want others to view us also can make a difference.
A link in a comment left on Ronni Bennett’s post on The Appearance of Age got me thinking about how I have chosen to appear as I age.
The link takes you to this photo of a group of women over 50 who aspire to be models.
They all have enhanced their natural looks to give themselves a uniquely attractive aesthetic. My way of dealing with my aging face and body is to make a similar (although not as successful) effort. I still love clothes and shoes, I still get my hair cut by a professional, and I still wear makeup and style my hair if I’m going to be out in public. The way I look has always been important to me, and apparently I’m not changing in that way even as I approach the age of 70.
Ronni, on the other hand, has taken a more relaxed and less expensive approach. Her identity and self-image require less vanity than mine, and I envy her for that.
A cousin of mine sent me a link to the video, below, which gives a hearty glimpse of 88 year old Hazel McCallion, mayor of Mississauga, Ontario (a city without debt) for the past 31 years. Watching this video sure made me wish that I had had the brains and heart and courage to age as she has.
“Hurricane Hazel,” as she is affectionately known, still gets on the ice and pushes a hockey puck around. In the video, she gets to fulfill one of her dreams — to make a music video.
The morning glories are up first, pushing both ways out of the little peat pots sheltered in the tiny green house. I think I see glimpses of other struggling seeds, including something called “Dream Herb” — seeds I must have acquired a while ago, forgetting why or when. I just want to see what the plant will looks like when fully grown.
I’m growing other oddities as well, like the mini tomato pod plant. I cant even find the site where I bought it now, but, from what I remember, there are little sweet tomatoes that grow inside pods. Ah, it will be very cool to see what the plant actually becomes.
There is something so very satisfying watching the daily emergence of the seeds — more satisfying even then noticing that the hostas and lilies that were dug up last fall and thrown against the back cement wall of the house (where nothing ever grew) have rooted and are thriving. Some things refuse to die. Others struggle and survive.
I sit in the dappled shade and mull over these mundane yet satisfying processes. Perhaps I, too, am sprouting roots.
Last night, as I sifted through some of my earlier poetry, I remembered just how therapeutic writing it was at the time. I was so young, unprepared for the realities of husband and child/children. And I married someone as unprepared as I. He dealt with it all through multi-media productions of his original scripts. I would sit in the audience and watch the characters he created speak to our relationship more poignantly than his face-to-face words ever did.
I’m not sure I ever showed him the poems I wrote as I slowly felt my own self lost in the wake of his magnificent obsession. I’m sure there were many young women like me. Some went mad. Some got mad.
I am no Sylvia Plath. These are not great poems. But they were, and are, an essential part of my story.
Patterns (1967)
I await the unexpected,
the unsought.
My life is a contradiction.
When the goal is set,
when conscious action
strips away the dream,
I turn off.
Because I am
(why?)
a patterned person,
I am surrounded, bound, bonded.
I don’t need any more directions to go
or any more goals to touch.
I wish I were the wind.
***
Nonessence (1973)
Change is what I
wear at the edge
(where I have the best perspective)
waiting for familiar whims
to coax me into shape
and coast me down
the deepening dayslide.
Essentially, I am
not.
Medusa, I
am stoned on my own reflection.
Words curl straight
from the hurt in my head
forming questions,
marked and mumbled
under a heavy heartless hum.
Pan (Peter), I
cling to the rings
of endless adolescence,
hanging tight
as the merry goes round
Zelda, I
run screaming
toward the dark and gathered things
that claw at the threshold
of darkest dreams
and dive naked and dancing
into the fountained pool
behind my eyes.
I tell myself that it’s a dream and I can wake up. But I don’t wake up.
I have gone back to my apartment building, but I can’t find my apartment. It’s no longer there. Everything I own is gone — my clothes, my cell phone, my car keys. I have to call my daughter, I think. I can’t remember the last two digits of her phone number. But I don’t have a phone anyway.
I run down to the lobby. I don’t know anyone. I ask various people for help, but no one will help me.
It’s dark out now, and raining. I run out into the street, go into a store and ask for help. I ask them to call my daughter at ….. I can’t remember the phone number.
I am crying now, running down the dark wet city streets. I find a police station and run in, asking for their help. They ignore me. I go to reach for the phone on a desk, but I can’t remember the phone number anyway.
I run back out into the street, lose one shoe, keep running and crying,
Part of me says it’s a dream. You can wake up.
But I don’t wake up.
I run farther, shivering in the cold rain, without a coat, with only one shoe, and with no way to find a safe place. I run and cry.
I can wake up. I can wake up. This seems so real, but it can’t be real. I can wake up.
Eventually I do wake up. It’s just about dawn, and I am in my bed with my cat sitting on my head.
While I was in the dream, it was so amazingly real — the fear, the abandonment, the isolation, the cold rain. At the same time, I was watching myself in the dream, telling myself to wake up.
My dreaming life has always been more exciting than my real life. At night, I dream in color, with sounds and complicated plots. Lately, I have been dreaming of people I haven’t seen in ages.
Last night I dreamed of a woman friend who falls into that category, and a male friend of hers, whom I met only once decades ago and whose name I would never remember if I tried. But my dreaming brain remembered his name. In my dream, he was driving a very green van and pulled up to rescue us from some situation (that I now can’t recall).
My dreams are always situational and frustrating. Two nights ago, I dreamed I was in a large hotel (a building I dream about often; sometimes it’s a college or school, sometimes a hotel, and it’s always filled with Escher-like passageways, so after you leave a room, you can’t find it again). This time I dreamed about an aunt and uncle (now in their 80s), whom I haven’t seen or talked with in years. My mother was there, too, (wearing a colorful gypsy scarf on her head) and a 6-year old that was some sort of combination of my grandson and my son (who was wearing some kind of peach overalls). I left them all in a room, and when I tried to get back, I couldn’t find the room, or my room key, or the information desk. No one I stopped to ask was any help. When I went outside to try to get perspective, I couldn’t find the door to get back in. Of course, I woke up without any of it being resolved.
My most memorable dream (from more than 30 years ago) was one in which the planet was being invaded by large pastel colored creatures who looked like a combination of rats and kangaroos. If one bit you, you turned into one of them until they, or someone else, killed you. And then, when you died, you turned back into the human person you were. One of them chased me into kitchen, and I climbed up into the sink and reached into the cutlery drawer and took out a long fork (the kind you use to hold a roast while you carve it). Just as it lunged to bite me, I shoved the fork into the creature’s mouth.
And It started to turn into my brother. If I pulled the fork out and it lived, it would bite me and I would become one of them. If I shoved the fork in further, so it would die, it would turn back into my brother and my brother would die.
That’s when I woke up.
No wonder I grind my teeth.
