Angel Hollywood

“Now you understand

just why my head’s not bowed.

I don’t shout or jump about

or have to talk real loud.

When you see me passing

it ought to make you proud.”

A Phenomenal Woman, Maya Angelou

Some young women are naturally esteemed. Their aura commanding attention, even while expressing insecurities, playfully to reassure again that they are admired. For what it is worth, to be regarded so, is a breathable life sentence. Unless she forgets again that we all age, and fail to understand the remarkable attraction of matured beauty too. She’ll compare to what was yesterday and not to factor in her progression: a beautiful girl to young woman and now this, a matured lady. Beauty is as it is seen by her admirers, especially one so naturally gifted, but importantly as seen of herself. And so it seems most women may lose that sense of their self.

Other women attempt to achieve this sense, too, though unsuccessful with their pride diminished upon each word, look, or gesture that causes hurt. About other women, every possible chance to crush the glimpse of pride in her eyes most likely by an acquaintance. She is so often taunted and told otherwise of what she may state so boldly. My smile, is the best part of me. Your smile, as gaped as can be seen, why do you smile so often and about everything? She fades away to the eye. Her stance, then it is critiqued and criticized. You could be yourself, but not with the others, especially those that hold attention with high regard. You could be this way but you are always that way and now so easily pushed. Last, a comment made with a side eye and a sneer, any one made surely to break away attention; a gaze in her direction. A trick so often played by the acquaintance. Here I witness so many women held back by their own awakening – a sense of her own beauty.

To Angelou, we share our fascination of her. Her words and her wisdom, may I say her views of herself. How she could turn the heads of influential, remarkable, brilliant men to listen to her as equal. What was that sense about her? Angelou wrote of it, of herself, a phenomenal woman. You are one among many, a phenomenal woman. As you sing and dance, yet too shy to do before company . I still envision the same confidence within you. A phenomenal woman, despite what they say that may bring you down some.

To you I write, I see where you may be flawed. Whenever I see your head bowed with a voice whispered so low about being not pretty, I’m lost. Your eyes smile along with you as you express any thought of joy. Then without embarrassment you may sing to yourself and dance along to an image of yourself, but to stop if someone may take an interest. Why? In embarrassment, for so long you are told you cannot do what someone so naturally gifted may do. To be put down and criticized for every thought you may have of your own beauty. This is why I am lost, you are convinced of what others taunt while misunderstanding or timid. What they may refuse to acknowledge is not for you to expect in validation. As a young woman you must see, over time, that you are made as you may feel. You appear as you may have yourself. And that you can be renewed again, of confidence, if you so choose to see it.

Alias Grace

Imagine, if you will, that you are a woman and your position in life is already compromised. Your body indicated for servitude both for vocation and male sexual desire. Your voice is silent before you speak. If you dare speak you are hysterical, or worse a whore not worth given credence. Your mind is easily susceptible to bad spirits and incomprehensible thoughts simply because you are born of a sex religiously deemed devious.

That is Grace Marks, a woman determined so by natural devices, at the age of 15 or 16 years old. An Irish immigrant already expected poverty. Already, so early she is to be told by society what her body is good and useful for and that is servitude.

Every order given to her is expected of utmost obedience. Every action by her own is acted as innocence.

If she ever denies any order she is suddenly ‘filthy’, a ‘whore’, or ‘untrustworthy’.

What stood out to me in this miniseries is the ‘doctor of the mind’. A psychiatrist named Simon, given permission to have sessions with Grace in order to stir her memory of the events again. Then again, what memories are there to stir if the events of murder were never seen or properly recollected? Regardless he was curious, always on the edge, sleepless even to know more about Grace and her story. Simon had supposed that Grace was either somewhere along the lines of insanity or a woman who had found a means to break away from the suppression of her body.

She had become clever, he thought even. To express what one may think is rage against what was done to her and any other woman; or to express her anger of suppression. Suppression- that is to clean and to care at so young of an age. Suppression- that also means to give her body to any man’s will with a command for her consent. She had then created an audience with her hysterics. An audience composed of wealthy gossipers and then potential romantic partners, including Simon. He then supposed that that was her intention, even one that cost nearly her life.

It’s definitely a curious subject here. If you were a woman of that time period-and had to witness what that meant exactly, would you become a fiend to speak on it?

Mud Bound

Movie story lines usually leave the story that I find more interesting. Here in MudBound (2017) the story about the woman leaves me interested for more.

The story begins with a woman describing the mud surrounding the home, really a shack-like place on a farm. The year is near the end of World War II. Men are being sent back home to where they no longer belong; one other sent to their grave. It’s another story about familiarity and the effects of a changing environment. You know where you have gone out to experience that there is more than the world you first knew at any age. So you’ll find any means to escape, or to find someone else to relate. In the end you may or may not find that place where you belong, but in this film the men will do.

The woman.

She is already nearing her middle ages and not yet married. A woman from a family middle class meets a man assumed to be similar in social status. By no means is she a farmer, nor does he mention his background to her. But as women are expected to be told at a later time, whenever it’ll suite him to reveal that there is a farm he wants to plow and a nice farmhouse he wants his family to reside in. ‘You’ll like, you’ll see’. She must hush her initial fuss about this news of moving on from what and where she is familiar.

Through some scheme and false transaction, the dream home for his family is just that-imagined. Instead he moves them to the shack, among the ‘blacks’ but we know in this time another word was stated. At this point, she looks about a house with a leaking roof, mud all around ruining one of her best dress heels. She can only tolerate so much, and so she tells him she can only tolerate so much up to this point.

Outside of her element she did learn a few things. She knows her way around a shotgun. She’s not too squeamish about the initial acts of providing protein for her children. She even became accustomed to not bathing for most days of the week. However, once the children became sick her ability to care for both her children and home became too overwhelming. In fact, help turned into ‘I can’t do this (alone)’. In the slightest, the black tenant farmer on down the road somewhere must lend his wife for paid assistance.

At first the woman is strong, allowing her new environment to teach her a lesson about survival. However, in an instance does she give away her power ‘to know’ to someone who knows more by traditional upbringing.  I want to know more about her story, as it turns to love instead. I want to know how did she manage to cope once the black tenants packed and moved away.

How did she come to find where she belongs?

Well some people are fortunate to find where they belong, soon as the men do. However, not the woman. In any indication where her story ends her life is that of a farmer’s (sharecropper) wife, still outside of her element. Inside her home is a piano and books, fine China and whatever else the white tenants down the road somewhere are not familiar. In any other case she proves to be unfaithful, once again to marry the first man that saw her. But now no longer sheltered she knows her desires, still she assumes a voice whenever in objection to her husband. Where does she go or does she simply comply in slight misery til death?

In those times, back then I’ll assume she remains in slight misery.

‘Where Is Everybody?’

The first episode of the 1950’s series The Twilight Zone answered my own fears and anticipation about loneliness.

Human beings, as animals, are social creatures that thrive in a group and just as well as a pair. We see this fact played out in most films and television shows about the ‘last man standing’ or some devastation that left a few or two alone in the world. The common expectation of quarreling; selfish behavior and aggression matched to detain the selfish individual played out. The individual cannot undermine the whole and the group requires all like minded individuals to survive. It’s a survival instinct.

 

No one else to escape with in talking about nothing in particular.

 

And as well, if he is found to be alone, his sanity is lost as he finds no purpose for his voice. With most films, if he is alone and now silent, he’ll find some way to seek civilization.

Isolation. A sudden removal from all others and all subjects familiar. This is what defines loneliness. At times I dream of my own experience of it.

A plane trip gone wrong but I’ve lost my memory of what had happened. A small boat slightly moved by the waters. It’s abandoned and I do not remember my trip to this muddy, wooded lake side. But I take it, push it along, to jump in and to forget where I last left my life. I play these two scenarios over again in my mind when I find myself wrecked by emotions so overwhelmed. I do not imagine the trip to where I find the definition of loneliness. I think in that instance it’ll become a fear of death that’ll force me to survive. A sudden sense of grief as I leave those that do care for me wondering, abandoned. Other than that I never play out what is to be expected.

Somewhere I land on a beach side. I’m too frightened still to venture into the woods behind me, so I have just landed or its been a few months. About the only thing I know how to do is to fish, but to build a fire proves to be more difficult than what it seems. I suppose this is why fire, greatest success our human ancestors made left them too tired to venture into other technical success. Seriously thousands of years past by before the next latest invention.

Of course I’m suffering through the will of nature, finding discomfort. I’m uncomfortable in my surroundings, though I convince myself I could build something in the future. I’m inspired as that is all it takes for me to feel motivated in conquering my surroundings. I must convince myself that I could do something. Somehow take pride in my accomplishments as I learn through several trial and error scenarios to simply build means of conveniences (shelter, tools,  warmth). Still I find my discomfort met with frustration.

At some point, a replay of this sense of longing and wanting remains with me. This is where I end my dream. I was longing for the memories of places built by people. I wanted to witness again people going about their daily life. The news, the disagreements, the bitterness of people unable to properly vent their frustrations accordingly-I day dreamed about it all. A certain smell from home town. It’s the smell of factory farming, so not at all pleasant but nostalgia will have you missing the worst part of something.

The quiet of country living, something I miss that is reality not a dream. As a child and then a teenager I thought that I was alone there. Trapped in four walls I sent myself off to bed as I laid down to provide my own source of entertainment-that being my imagination. I would dream of someone like myself going off on a day dream that I am dreaming of now. A young girl outcaste, so she runs away. Though she finds herself moving back home again for what is familiar, really to seek a familiar face. She learns that she wants someone, a companion. I would lay for hours dreaming of another person’s anxiety about their society. The story dreams would keep me with comfort, but still depressing as I thought this was worse. Trapped in my own mind in the quiet of the country.

What is worse then, to fear loneliness. To fear being apart from all others, or to live so far and remote that you have no one to even share this dream with. That is the worst fear of mine. Perhaps the worst fear of everyone else, as it seems.

I witness middle aged women filling a void in their life by living superficial. Women addicted to materialism all to fill in the gaps of being alone, really. People forming relationships so quickly out of habit and out of fear. Then with the age of the internet and social media we have trolls that turn out to be just as much as a loser as they are bullying while seemingly anonymous. There is a void, a lack of happiness, a sense of loneliness. We fill it the best way we can, as I had done with the story dreams while living quietly. However, still, the worst feeling is to have no one and no sense that others where here with us.

Rough Draft: A Reflection

Lisa S.

She claimed to have loved you. A simple statement covering all the mischaracterization and lies she wrote, to you, while in admiration. She claimed to love you for you. It was your smile that brightened her day. Your thoughts on the latest news, and all other topics concerning politics to religion. It was your beauty she grabbed, and mastered to then coerce your passions for her body and mind. All the physical and mental affirmation of love claimed to be faithful. ‘I love you’, Elia said straining to hold back. “And if anything happened to you I won’t be able to go further”. She only liked you when you were funny, not like this moping about. She only wanted to be around you because you’re different. And there is nothing more exhilarating than to add color to one’s life.

A young woman experiencing that new phase called love, yet she is already burnt out. What did Elia’s love mean to her in translation? “I love you because your mind is tormented and your life is not altogether”. PAUSE. “I love you because right now, you need to hear it”. A waste of breath. A waste of time and energy put forth to make the best of a toxic situation. Elia cares, but she’s heartless and self-centered. Lisa feels emotionally depleted, now. A love seeming to be the end of everything the future could promise in true love and affection. How to take her mind from Elia’s lies? She tried cursing her name. She tried a new love, yet that proved a pointless effort. Every new love a pointless effort.

Ear buds in, cell phone in hand, Lisa subdues the noise within her mind. Scrolling through her playlist to search for passionate anger and frustration about love. Searching for that song, and those lyrics about the troubles of love on a young heart. The song about that girl so trifling and dishonest about her character; deceptive about the cause of her love. She finds it, plays it. From the low taps of the drums to the shriek of the heartfelt singer she closes her eyes- Elia never loved me.

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Elia M.

Elia lays with Dylan. Their love will be celebrated within a few months, so something right and special for him is being decided. Something right… Elia knows she will not find another guy like Dylan, as sweet and with patience so rare to find. He deserves someone better, certainly more attentive and sure of who she is and what exactly does she want. A woman that will treat him as the only person that matters most, adoringly and as a best friend. Elia has a best friend, the one isolate and always troubled and in need of comfort.
You love her dearly but not in the way that it is meant. You please her in every aspect, sexually too. Though in your complicated affair you cannot part from Dylan. To spare his feelings is never a contemplated thought as you love him. You cannot part from your friend as to do so would leave her so devastated, bouncing on and off her habit again. You’re not responsible but you feel obligated-to both. I mean Dylan is for your image, for your parents to accept you. For society to see that you too have conformed to what is right. All that fake exchange of pleasantries and then that dreaded presentation of a ring. What would you say if he asked? A sense of hesitation sits on your mind. To erase everything, shake your head, stand up and walk out. Making your way to the dining room you take your phone. Tell Lisa that you miss her.