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daughterofanarcissistwoman · 3 years

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A trauma involving the mother or father is sometimes referred to as a "wound" because it damages the body-mind, needs proper healing, and often leaves a scar or weakness in your body or emotional makeup. No wound is more charged for both men and women than the mother wound. Your relationship with your mother or whoever provided your "mothering" is the primary relationship in your development, and it inevitably conditions much of your life.

By repeatedly staying with difficult feelings and body sensations, your perspective of the past shifts. You become far less reactive and more flexible in your emotional responses. It is not that your history is rewritten, but rather that the self experiencing that history is transformed.

You may also secretly believe that your wound is ugly, something to be ashamed of. But ask, do the wounds of your friends make them any less attractive? Are you not inspired when they handle them in a courageous manner? Why would it not be the same for you? If there is some part of you that you find unacceptable, make it the object of your loving-kindness practice.

The Four Functions of Mothering

You can bring more clarity to your mother wound by reflecting specifically on what mothering means to you. There are four basic functions of mothering- nurturing, protecting, empowering, and initiating-and a trauma can occur in any of them. Although they are interconnected, it helps to examine them separately in order to clarify the trauma.

Through practicing mindfulness, compassion, and loving-kindness, you develop the four mothering capacities within yourself. The practice of developing these inner capacities is slow, but the effect is strong and easily felt. Keep in mind that "fathering" also involves these same four functions, with some differences. Ideally these functions are shared by both parents, with each compensating for the other's weaknesses. If you struggle with a trauma around the father, you can reflect on these same functions.

Reflecting on these functions will also help you understand that no woman is only a mother and no man only a father; "mothering" and "fathering" are done by women and men who by their very humanness are less than perfect in what they can give. For many people, this understanding alone is liberating.

Mother As Nurturer

The first of the four functions of the mother is nurturing, the giving of care that allows for life (symbolized by the mother's milk), which encompasses meeting the wide range of physical and emotional needs a child has in order to grow and develop. You know about a child's needs for food, shelter, medicine, comfort, and relatedness; a child who is not held enough develops into an adult with a range of physical and emotional difficulties, just as an inadequate diet manifests as health problems later in life. But there is a more subtle aspect of nurturing I call "nurturing with joy," which celebrates the existence of the child as a source of delight for the one who is mothering and which manifests in the child and continues into adulthood as a sense of innate worth and spontaneous joy.

If you did not receive sufficient nurturing in childhood, as an adult you may feel an insatiable need, an inability to take joy in others, or a lack of self-worth despite your competency and confidence.

As you develop mindfulness, you find your capacity to be in the moment includes the ability to nurture yourself and others. The practices of loving-kindness, empathetic joy, and compassion can feed your nourishing capacity. Finding teachers who nourish without creating the codependency of excessive mothering can furnish further inspiration and role modeling. Being mindful of the fear is in itself transforming. Observing the thousands of ways in which you are nurtured and nurture others in the greater community also break up the solidity and credibility of your wound's story. Nurturing, as with all the functions, begins with the mindful intention that this is a value, a particular energetic quality, or manner of relating to yourself and others that you wish to cultivate. By giving up clinging to your agenda that nurturing should be a certain way and instead simply staying with your intention, you slowly develop an inner nurturer. In so doing, you will change both your inadequate feelings and your story.

Mother As Protector

The second of the four functions of mothering is protecting. This is the instinctive and cultivated impulse to see that no physical or emotional harm comes to one who is vulnerable. It is symbolized by the warrior or guardian spirit. A child needs to be protected from physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and from the threat of all three. Ironically, the first persons a child has to be protected from are the mother and father and their destructive impulses. These destructive impulses might take the form of excessive anger or emotional instability, for instance.

There is a subtle aspect of protecting energy that gives the child the incredible gift of feeling intrinsically safe, a feeling of trust in life. Unfortunately, quite frequently a child must try to flourish in a home environment that does not feel safe, even though no overt harm is done. As an adult the individual will often be at a loss to explain the unsafe feelings that plague them.

If you did not receive sufficient protection as a child, as an adult you may feel that there is "no one in your corner." You may have a memory of some traumatic event or environment that recurs during meditation. You may have developed an elaborate compensatory behavior pattern for your anxieties. You may be confused about the discrepancy between your family's "factual history" of your childhood versus the feelings you remember having as a child. For these reasons, in making the mother wound your practice, you focus on the feelings arising at present. They can be worked with, released, and transformed. The past is not so easy to work with. It is comprised of outer and inner events that are now immutable, hazy in recollection, or maybe even inaccurate.

There is no "magic bullet" that will dissipate all your past trauma or create instant feelings of safety. But if you continually bring attention to feelings of fear, loss, and confusion as they are arising and receive those feelings with compassion, they will begin to lose their grip. Gradually you will discover that they come less often, with less intensity, and stay for shorter periods of time.

Mother As Empoweror

The third of the four functions of the mother is empowering the child, encouraging and teaching independence and self-confidence. It is symbolized by the queen, who elevates her subjects and facilitates the beginning of their coming into their own power. The mother uses her royal power over the child with fairness, patience, generosity, and a commitment to preparing her child to become her equal or even to surpass her. The ability to perform this function comes from the mother's own self-confidence and love and from embracing the view that it is her sacred duty to empower her young. Empowering is achieved by encouraging self-reliance and providing education, discipline, and learning opportunities for the child. You are empowered to try, therefore to make mistakes and still be fully accepted. Your interests are met with enthusiasm; the importance and joy of hard work are recognized and encouraged. Failure is treated lightly, while curiosity and integrity are held in high regard.

In fairy tales, when the queen neglects or is afraid to allow the young their power, the kingdom becomes ill and languishes. In real life, this is seen in the mother who neglects or is even afraid of her child becoming powerful, so that a host of problems develop through neglect, constant criticism, or creating dependency.

Sometimes because of over-identification, the mother is willing to empower but insists that her child be like her or succeed in ways that satisfy her own ego. This is a false form of empowerment, a subtle form of enslavement. You may not realize that there is a difference between the functions of nurturing and protecting and that of empowering, but the difference is crucial. With nurturing and protecting the mother is doing for you, whereas the empowering function allows you to find your own power through doing for yourself. With your mother's blessing, you become independent and self-confident.

If you struggle with empowerment, then you may lament your anxiety and ineptitude, your perfectionism, or your unwillingness to try new things. Struggles with self-confidence will be visible in your meditation. It is as though a blessing was withheld, and it is debilitating. Slowly, through your yoga of being fully mindful of the wound, you learn how to give yourself the blessing of unconditional acceptance.

Mother As Initiator

The fourth function of the mother is initiating, and it is the most difficult to understand. It is through acts of initiation that you come to feel as though you are a valuable and welcome member of your family. As you develop, it is this function that provides the inner feeling that your life has meaning, and by the teenage years you understand that you have the right to become the full expression of your own unique life. It is also the initiation function that permits, accepts, and celebrates your leaving home to start your own life.

A girl achieves the inner experience of womanhood by way of initiation by the mother, who does this through how she treats her own womanhood and that of her daughter. The father plays a key role in initiation as well by recognizing the girl's power and her natural right to become a woman. For a boy, it is the father who is the primary initiator into manhood, but it is the mother who recognizes that the boy is leaving her side to enter the company of men. She signals that this is appropriate, not a reason for guilt, and she supports his bringing "mother replacements" in the way of female friends and girlfriends into her house. In welcoming them she acknowledges his independence.

When initiation occurs in a timely and clear manner, it is a beautiful process, though often painful for the parent. Most initiation takes place through symbols, rituals, and unspoken behavior. When it does not occur, there is a sense of guilt, of staying a youth, of not knowing or not feeling entitled to one's place in life. For a mother to be effective in providing initiation, she must have somehow received or found her own. It is the most selfless of all the aspects, for she is encouraging a separation that leaves her without. This initiating power is associated with the shaman, the goddess, the magus, and the medicine woman.

In seeking initiation you may be attracted to teachers who claim superior understanding, who create an impression of having vast authority, thus signaling what is often a false claim that they can initiate. You may frantically want answers in your life, not understanding that initiatory power will come to you if you treat your questions as sacred. It is tempting to surrender your power to a teacher rather than seek a teacher who will initiate you so that you gain self-empowerment.

You may simply want something to happen in your life that signals your aliveness, meaning, and place. It is a call for initiation.

Your experience of the first three functions may have been less than "good enough," therefore you may never have had the momentum to seek initiation.

Likewise, your mother and your father may have suffered from their own lack of initiation such that providing initiation was simply far beyond them.

Throughout human history, the tasks of mothering were shared by members of the extended family, tribal elders, and family friends. The community had rituals that helped in the process, including those that taught you to take comfort in the earth or nature as the Great Mother. Unfortunately, nowadays there is often only a mother and father to do all that needs to be done.

The wounds do not disappear, but they lose much of their charge. They fail to hook your mind and imprison your heart.

https://dharmawisdom.org/teachings/articles/healing-your-mother-or-father-wound

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ticktockstuck · 4 years

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Little late on posting these BUT quick full-body references for June’s new design and Jane! More detailed design notes under the cut:

BOTH OF THEM:

June’s hat having orange symbols and Jane having purple stitches are references to their respective aspects in the Verse; Wrath (red/orange) and Pride (grey/violet). The other revamps are going to have similar ornaments with the same purpose.

June’s new stripes and Jane’s arms are also tangentially related to their aspects; June’s striped like a coral snake and Jane like a milk snake. Coral snakes are the ones to look out for and milk snakes are just mimics, so aside from just being a milk/baking joke it’s to visually demonstrate that Jane only looks dangerous while June actually is dangerous if you cross her.

That so many features are shared yet contrasted between the two of them is meant to keep their designs distinct but still show they’re related in-universe. A lot of the other revamped designs are going to keep that trend up.

JUNE-SPECIFIC:

Her skin color changed from pure black to brown, and her hair from pure white to vanilla off-white, half because it helps tie into the brown of her snake legs and also helps give her a palette a brown-vanilla-strawberry red set that’s very “dessert”-ey, which helps visually show she’s a sweet-eater.

Changed her shirt from white/blue checkers to black/blue mostly just for color balancing.

Vriska lent June one of her old coats, but in her hands it’s been modded out to be uniquely hers (thanks partly to Kanaya at Rose’s request). The sleeves have been tricked out to be able to hold cards and other small objects, the white/blue checkered hem at the bottom is for style, and the back of the coat actually has June’s ghost emblem stitched into it.

June only has stripes on her legs, and her arms are pure brown except for slightly lighter palms. The backs of her hands have three indents like the crosses on her face.

Her leg stripes start and end on brown segments; starting on brown because the rest of her body’s brown and ending on brown for the same reason.

Her hat’s enchanted to show the emblems of her friends (again, thank Rose). I would’ve included Karkat and Terezi in her animation but I wanted to keep the GIF from getting too large so I cut it down to the five most important people.

Her cross-eyes don’t “emote”; the horizontal line isn’t like an eye and the whole cross is usually pretty static. It only really bends in reaction to her mouth or brow moving. She still sees out of them, though.

JANE-SPECIFIC:

Her head-tentacles are mobile since they use to just be regular-skinned tendrils.

Aside from just being a reference to her aspect, the purple/brown of her head stitching is a callback to a certain rabbit she used to own.

The barnacles are a feature that’s been around for a while, and were included as a way of referencing her former aspect; a Hero of Life having literal “living things” on them. Ironically in this iteration the barnacles are actually made of calcified skin and are only as alive as like, a facial mole.

She also has crosses in her face like June but has actual ocular orbs on top of them. The top half of the cross forms some flaps like a split eyelid that gives her a perpetually sour expression whether she’s actually angry or not. Her eyebrows work like normal, surprisingly, but she actually has a second set of reptilian eyelids to actually “blink” since the cross doesn’t let her do that.

Fun Fact™: She wears one of those sleeping masks to bed to keep dirt and dust out of her eyes while she’s alseep.

On her butcher’s smock, the patches form a crescent-like shape around her demon symbol so that it looks like the patches are “eating” it. She also has another copy of her symbol on her shirt, but it’s just covered up by the smock.

The joints in her arm are all tan like the rest of her body, but in-between the joints it’s red stripes bordered by black. Same goes to her hand where the colors alternate on finger segments.

The teeth on her dress are fake, and they stay in a full circle around her legs thanks to a wire in the hem. She also wears bicycle shorts-style shorts under the dress.

The legs are tan like the rest of her body. Briefly considered having them be pink or red so her lower half looked like a giant mouth but ultimately I thought it would be visually jarring to have her be tan on one side of her body and a different color on another with no gradient visible between them.

That should about cover it! As always we accept reader questions and answer them, eventually, for any additional information you may need!

#ticktockstuck #june egbert #jane crocker #jane egbert #horrorstuck #body horror #character notes

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lazulimaya · 5 years

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French Canadian Witchcraft: Symbols, Guardians and Divination

(forgive the long post, but this is information I’ve been collecting through personal experience and Beltane Lowen’s book, along with lectures and other scholarly articles I’ve read.)

Symbols

Le fleur-de-lys: Can be used as a symbol for the Trinity, the triple worlds. The flower, the lily, is a symbol of purity and was often placed with the Virgin Mary (hence, a Goddess symbol). It of course also displays the sacred number 3.

(Oh, this is my favourite painting done of Madeleine by Georges de la Tour, she just looks so pensive and looks like she’s learning lots of things, and the skull is just such a nice touch, a very witchy painting for me. ooh and fun fact: this painting was the one Ariel had in the Little Mermaid!)

Deities and Spirits

Saint Anne: The mother of the Virgin Mary, this saint was very popular among the French Canadians and Acadians living near the sea. Her feast day is July 26. She is matron saint of carpenters, single women, orphans, children, equestrians, grand-parents, housewives, lace workers, lost things, seamstresses, miners, clothes sellers, poverty, pregnancy, birthing, people who work in stables, teachers, sterility, and sailors (she protected against sea storms). I look up to her when I sew and keep my home clean and fresh. Her symbols are the threshold or a door, and books. She’s the matron saint of Brittany, and therefore, has Celtic connections. Her colours are green and red.

Saint Marie Magdeleine: She is the matron saint of the Magdalen Islands (where my great-grandma came from). She was one of the female disciples of Jesus. She’s matron saint of women, spiritual revelations, of those that love to ponder and study, and discoverers of sacred mysteries, visions, apothecaries, jewellers, perfume makers, and pharmacists. I look up to her for vision quests and when I study witchcraft. She’s also someone I associate with sex, love, and the true meaning of loving someone for who they are. She’s been in religious debates among scholars if she was Jesus’s wife or not, but the mere implications that she could be are very appealing to me Pagan-wise, so there). I know, she’s been written as a repentent prostitute, but that was an addition made to the Bible long ago by a Pope so she’s not that for me. She’s witnessed Jesus’s crucifixion, burial and ressurection, so for me, she is a figure with which to work with spirits and death and rebirth. So I call on her for scrying and divination.

Virgin Mary: One of the prominent mother goddess figures, her symbols are cerulean blue, white and the lily, She protects women and children. I look up to her for learning love and compassion.

The Devil: while the Church has painted a horrid image of the Devil in their structures, the Devil appears a lot in French Canadian folklore. He’s often there as a figure of temptation and getting seduced to act out of socially accepted norms (Church, right?), but, one could argue that there’s a primal wildness to this figure, as the French Canadian habitants were often very fearful of the forests when they came here. Some stories have heroes meet him in the forest, sometimes accompanied by little spirits and elves. He can transform into different beings, and sometimes, he appears as a fellow Voyageur (hence the liminal and sometimes dangerous aspects of the wilderness). He brings young women to dance wildly (something the Church frowned upon heavily, so let’s dance!!) In some stories, he helps build churches (I know, what the heck?) but the structure never ends up finished or it gets destroyed repeatedly. He’s basically a figure of mischief and wildness, of total chaos in the natural landscape, much like the Horned God.

The Fée (from the Lecture: Erik Lacharity and Morrigane Feu “Les Dames Fées: Ladies Fae in French-Canadian Traditional Witchcraft”, Raven’s Knoll Workshop, 2018.) There were rules of engagement with dealing with the Fée. Stories of the Fée were roadmaps for people. When someone meets them, it’s because they’re embarking on a life-changing journey. Stories with “Ti-Jean” are like this. Crossing a road, stream, forest, or taking a right turn at the crossroads, they meet a Fée. In French Canadian tradition, Fée doesn’t mean belle fée. Fée meant something that is enchanted with the means of affecting fate. This is no ordinary stick, it can do something. The Fée would give them something to help them, usually in sets of three. The exchange that took place, the hero had a quest but usually, there’s something in it for the Fée. An example of this is a talking horse previously being a stable boy, and at the completion of the journey, they turn back to their forms. Depending on the setting of the storyteller, ex: Acadia, there were lots of stories with the ocean, boats, nets etc. In the interior, there’d be forests and valleys, barley and cakes. The geographical context matters. The Raconteur makes it so that you yourself are in the myth because of your geographical location. Trou des Fées: a little cave or a little crack in a rock and leave an offering of cream or milk. Normandy, Gasgogne, Picardie, Belgians, they came here, and they had fairies called les lutins. Little red-bonneted fairies, really good blacksmiths, more dwarf-like. They’d sharpen tools too. When Ti-Jean is on his quest, the Fée can give him a knife to defend himself or to deliver someone from imprisonment. Three main classes and areas of affinity for the Fée: those that take on aspects of the woodlands (the Queen of all the Animals/Birds etc) they were very straight-to-the-point peoples. The Fée as protectors, about 30-40 stories of those. Others were sorcerers or magicians. Some Fée would give advice and help the hero. Stories where lost loved ones were some of those. Many of these stories featured Princes and Princesses, kingdoms, etc. because the settlers came here before the Revolution, so it was still important to them. French Canadians, almost all their divination and magic was centred around their love, sex and family life. These are reflected in the stories. For magical objects that the hero would have, sometimes it’s a stick, sometimes a napkin (when you set it on the table a whole feast would show up), little pieces of iron, and if you set it down it becomes a cookstove. Animals of the Fée would help you: Eagles and Horses, they were the big deal. Eagles and Horses were passenger animals in and out of the Fée land. Hero is coming out of subterranean kingdom and there’s this giant Eagle there and offers him passage out of the Fée lands, but he needs sustenance. Use your magical knife and cut off a chunk of your thigh and feed it to me. Ok… but he got a passage. It’s about sacrifice. Little lessons are all hidden in there. Formulas came with using these implements. Ex: This stick can beat people up. If robbers come and take my stuff, I’d take my stick and say “Joue mon gourdin!” and the stick would beat everybody up. “Napkin, give me food!” and poof, food. It’s not about the big magical words, you already have a tool that you know is Fée and it’s a simple command. Every animal that is white is Fée. “Adieu Aigle” and you’d turn into the Eagle. Whoops. The French Canadians were super practical people, just do the thing. They had no time for frilly stuff. Archetypes are super fluid in this tradition. Never pigeon-hole the Fée. Ladies Fée is a type of Fée. Dames Amorphosées: shape shifters, ex: The White Cat, usually very very beautiful, the cat hops into the pail with four toads and she turns into a Princess. Another form of transformation is the whole aspect of going from the pauper to the Prince/Princess. Sometimes it was a curse, but other times it was to disguise themselves. Woodland Ladies Fée: you’d encounter them in the forest, and they had dominion over something, like Birds (super connected to the Fée). With the male aspect, there were beings like the Eagle King or the Ant King (they’d be more specific with their animal dominions). Elemental Ladies: personifying fire and water. Both those elements were big deals. Blue Bonnet Lady: she’s frustrating for the hero, sometimes blowing out his match when he’s cooking pea soup. The Lady comes in on a cloud in the fog. Fog is a big deal. There are Courtly Ladies, like Fée Princesses, and lots of items she offers are scissors, twine, thread, things that are tied to female weaving magic. Sometimes the pauper and the princess switch roles, sometimes they’re the same person. The Witch is another figure. They can have Fée Witches. These were not the type of witches you want to meet. Some stories have the hero stumbling over this thatched hut, and you can stay for lodging, just feed the good oats to the black horse, and beat the white horse to a pulp. The white horse is actually a Prince that she transformed. So he takes the white horse away. The Three Sisters, they come up often in French Canadian folklore and healing traditions. In stories with giants that want to eat humans, replace them with pork and barley bouillon, make a type of beer with raw dough makes the water boil without it boiling. When superintendents of New France were coming here, wine became less available, so French Canadians often made spruce beer, given the lack of hops. There’s a reason why in France they go “We love our wine!” and we go like “we love our beer”. A year and a day and forgetfulness is a big motif in stories. Gifts: magic weapons, animals, objects, transportation, social status (pauper to princess), riches, love (gets a bit non-consent, but in those days there was not a whole lot of consent in marriage, that’s why they were so preoccupied about who they’re going to marry, so they can psychologically prepare).Go to the threshold of the woods, where the Fée usually are, sit down, and offer your offerings. Clearings are good too, the beings you encounter can surprise you. White animals, characters from stories, etc. Following the steps of the story can allow you to write your own story with that formulaic narrative of the old tales. If you read the tales and use them as guides and embark on the hero’s journey, lots of wisdom can be attained. Stories became mixed with Irish folklore, because when the Catholic Irish came over, we bonded with them and created new stories.

Historical Archetypes and Associations

The Voyageur: The liminal figure in its own right, voyageurs were known to shift and adapt endlessly to their environment and cultures they found themselves in, whether in French Canada or among Indigenous peoples. Can be linked to the Wild Man. They combined their Catholic rituals with the mythologies and cosmologies of Indigenous cultures. They’re temperamental figures, but knowledgeable off the beaten path to keep you alive.

The Raconteur: The storyteller had an important place in French Canada, telling stories as old as the first settlers in North America and sometimes from the old country. Some of them were itinerant, asking for food and lodging in exchange for a story. They were known to stretch stories for multiple nights, ending on cliff-hangers. They weaved tales together, and had vast repertoires. They’re learned figures, with silver tongues and enchanting qualities.

The Violoneux: The violinist or fiddler, a key figure in French Canadian culture. They had an innate sense of rhythm and song, and could bring a whole room to dance. The jigs and reels are also inspired from traditional Irish and Scottish music, as the two cultures mingled.

The Bewitched Canoe: It’s a popular story of French Canada. It’s a variant of the Wild Hunt. One version, written by Honoré Beaugrand in 1892, tells it like this: some loggers get lonely in their winter camp on New Year’s Eve, and wish to go home to visit their families. The Devil appears to them to offer them an easy and fast way to go back to their homes through a flying canoe, as long as they get back before dawn, otherwise, their souls would belong to him and they’d go to Hell. The embark, and they arrive home, partying the night away. They almost arrive to the camp by the skin of their teeth, but the Devil lets them go, mysteriously. This legend comes from the Poitou region of France, where an english nobleman named Gallery loved hunting. He loved it so much, he skipped mass. As punishment, he was cursed to ride in the skies for eternity, chased by horses and wolves, like a Wild Hunt. When the French arrived in North America, they combined this Wild Hunt variation with the Indigenous realities of using canoes as modes of transportation. Some stories have the voyageurs or loggers ride the skies every New Year’s Eve for all eternity, and in some versions they escape Hell. Consequently, New Year’s Eve is an important day for French Canadians, and is very liminal in its aspects.

Divination

Most French Canadian divination traditions revolve around the family, love, and sex. Back in the day, they were very concerned with whom they’d end up marrying, if their child would carry through an illness, or how their family and love life was fairing.

Lowen described some divination methods that can be applicable to a French Canadian practice, namely: playing cards, dice, reading tea leaves, mirrors and crystal balls, dream interpretation.

#spirits #deities #french canada #traditions

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libertasforte · 5 years

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Sarazanmai is the magical boy anime we didn’t need, but deserve anyway

I binged Sarazanmai because I was told that it’s mindblowingly weird. What I wasn’t told was that it’s a magical boy anime - and a rather straightforward one, at that.

Simply put: it’s a story where the Capitalist Empire that harvests Desire is depicted as the force of evil, to be vanquished by the Power of Love of the magical boy protagonists.

Sarazanmai is also, insofar as I can understand the word, camp - “a form both of performance and of perception celebrating theatricality and excess, improvising reality as a stage for outrageously ironic self-display and reinvention”. What Sarazanmai isn’t, is that it isn’t subtle. Its tight structure distills the bare bones minimum needed to deliver its message. In this post, I will lay out the message of Sarazanmai so far, up to the 7th episode.

To this end, I will examine in order the 4-point progression of the main characters: Red Boy, Green Boy, Blue Boy, Cop.

(Okay, they have names: Kazuki, Enta, Tooi, and Reo and Mabu. I won’t be using their names, since I don’t remember them.)

It’s given to us in the OP animation that each of these four characters has an object of Fixation, someone they want to “connect” to.

The Red Boy, on his little brother. The Green Boy, on the Red Boy. The Blue Boy, on his older brother. The Exotic Cop, on the Robot Cop. (I refer to him as Exotic based on the way he is coded: “colored” skin, grinning with sharp teeth. Perhaps a less palatable, but more precise way of describing his coding would be “Predatory.” Similarly, the other Cop is Robot coded, and is an actual artificial being besides. It synergizes with their coding as Seme Cop and Uke Cop, but let’s leave that aside for now)

Red Boy: Establish structure What’s in the box: crossdressing

The first episode introduces the format. In each episode, a Zombie is defeated. There is a transformation sequence in which the three protagonists transform into three Kappas, and they make a pilgrimage to the Zombie to retrieve what was taken. The Zombie is used to tie together the conflict in each episode: the action of defeating the Zombie is serves to accentuate the psychological and emotional narrative being told about the main characters. This technique is prevalent in a lot of action animes, not just Magical Girl ones.

The Box is the thing in which shameful things are kept. Each of the three protagonists has boxed something up. Shame is the disowned part of the self, hidden away because the self believes that it will make them unworthy of connection.

In this episode, the Zombie is of a man who has a fetish for running around naked with a box on his head. Okay, weird as far as fetishes go, what does it mean? Shameful things are hidden in the Box, and he’s ashamed of what’s in his head. Seems like the metavillain, or a portrait of the writer. Let’s get back to this.

For Red, Crossdressing = Shame. Nothing is explicitly delved into about this shame at its introduction, but it is obvious to us the audience that he finds this shameful because we live in a society.

Green Boy: Demonstrate established structure What’s in the box: a symbol of “wrong” love

It’s simple and cliche, and “I had a gay crush on my best friend” is straightforward as far as queer narratives go. It’s nice how “Golden Duo” could be a homage to the Golden Lovers of professional wrestling fame.

Blue Boy: Use structure to connect to larger ideas What’s in the box: gun

Blue’s story dives off the deep end into the forsaken, disowned bastion of masculinity: organized crime. It’s straightforward as far as manpain goes: “Mama, I killed a man, pulled my trigger, now he's dead.”

Some messages are stated: “The bad people survive,” and those who don't survive are plastered over by the logic of capitalism. The logic of competition that demands strength before what is right and good; strength before sentiment, strength before justice.

Cops: Raise the spectre of the villain and connect to an ending What’s in the box: humans

The Empire extracts Desire.

Sakushu(搾取), the Japanese word used here for extract, also means to milk, squeeze out, or wring out. Sakushu is also the Japanese translation of the Marxist idea of exploitation, in the sense that labor is exploited under capitalism. The imagery is that of a brutal logic of an assembly line of boxed products. It depicts humans packaged as commodities to be consumed, labor to be mined, like batteries in The Matrix.

Desire has a pivotal role in the capitalist logic, as it pertains to things that are not explicitly needs. If you don’t need it, you want it, and that is desire, and its fulfillment is utility. Desire also plays a role in aspiration. The desire for achievement and status encourages labor and greed - the sense that one can never have enough. The mass consumer-laborer is lead to chase the dopamine hit of achievement and acquisition.

With each Zombie, the Cops judge the nature of the Fixation as Love or Desire. The simple, functional difference is that Desire is useful: Love is not. Desire is burned as energy, Love is shredded as waste. The energy given by Desire that these beings - including the Kappa - digest and feed on, is mass-extracted and mass-produced by the Empire, and contributes into the Empire’s power. The extraction of Desire produces a Zombie which moves goods, which brings to mind the logistical feat of the selling of a product, produced for mass consumption.

At the end of episode 7, it’s revealed that the Cops once Loved each other. Tragically, the Robot Cop was turned into a robot. The object of Exotic Cop’s fixation is now artifice. Perhaps this is the evil of corrupt adulthood, capitalist society: the perversion of Love into a Desire for Product. If the evil Empire extracts Desire, in contrast, the magical boys stand for the Love that cannot have Desire extracted out of it.

Who is the naked Man with a Box on his Head?

What to make of the man who’s ashamed of what’s in his head? With the Box as Product, it could symbolize the forsaking of connection and the retreat into porn, virtual reality. It also seems like the predicament of the writer of this story, and any author: the boxing and selling of the human experience into media, to produce content for consumption. Can this writer tell his family about what he’s written?

What is Red Boy’s narrative?

Symbolically: The Boxing of the Girl.

Suppose that everyone originally inherently regards themselves without gender, and there is some part of them that aspires to be a boy, and some part of them that aspires to be a girl. Societally, there is a shaming of the part of a cisboy that aspires to be a girl. It’s the male cisheteronormative narrative, or male compulsory heterosexuality: shut down the self-feminine in shame, and find it in a woman outside of yourself. On the pain of shame: the threat of being expelled from the circle of humanity.

What next?

With the resolution of Red’s arc vis-a-vis his little brother and reaffirmation of his connection and belonging within his family and among his friends, the three protagonists play soccer together in the spirit of communal Love. But their commons are trashed, their hope is stolen - by Green, himself, out of envy for Red and Blue. I can read into this, but I’ll let the anime speak for itself first.

The writer, of Utena fame, is infamous for his tragic stories, but I’m holding out my hopes for a happy resolution. It seems like a return to form for someone whose breakout work was in Sailor Moon.

Genuine Connection: You can’t fake it, you can’t steal it, you can’t consummate it. You can’t soak in it, you can’t forgive it, you can’t give it up, and you want to betray it. How to resolve it?

Unfortunately, sexualization

I have to touch on the fact that the anime is, very, very, unfortunately, pedo, with its sexualization of middle schoolers. (The innuendos are more blatant before translation.) What partly salvages it is that it’s camp. I mean, shit’s wrecked, but that does not mean someone cannot attempt to salvage it. It’s not porn, and a part of me wants to go dumpster diving to explore to what effect the sexual metaphor is used, and what the anime has to say about sexuality. Rough thoughts: the exposé of shame, and the corresponding destruction of the self that accompanies it - a catharsis - jouissance?

#sarazanmai #sarazanmai meta #meta

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writerspink · 5 years

Text

K-12 Words

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1.1

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install reticent corroborate regretfully strength murder concise cunning intention holy satire query confused progression disillusion background mundane abrupt multiple enormously introduce emulate harmful pragmatic pity rebut liberate enthusiastic elucidate camaraderie disparage nature creep profitability impression racist sobriety occupy autonomy currently amiable reiterate reproduce cripple modest offer atom provincial augment ungratefully expansion yield rashly allude immigration silence epitome exacerbate somber avid dispute vindicate collaborate manufacturer embellish superficial propaganda incompetent objective diminish statistics endure ambivalent perpetuate illuminate phenomenon exasperate originality restrict anxiety anthropology circumstances aesthetic manufacturing conventional dubious vulnerable reality precedent entity success term critical repair underscore stepmother republican hesitantly classic wary contents prediction immediate invoke notorious implicit excluding input skeptical foster element punish frank humanity profound dessert orthodox substance disappear encourage neighborhood elder superfluous naive ascertain complacent resilient deafening military tend prudent glare acceptance skillfully induce monster beam gullible conciliate vessel petty cantankerous disclose archaeology anecdote disdain electronics substantiate subjective tourism advisable joyful incredible provocative psychological ruins discipline condone indifferent misfortune judgmental industrialize tasty assume astute mission mar protective definitely escape oppress shocked virtual zealous endorse qualification hostile eccentric abstract disparate geographical scrutinize generalization tolerate activity claim dogmatic influential obsolete extol implausible subsequent resource chronic benevolent improve confidential ambiguous seriously dearth perplex hatred throughout dine contemporary evoke essentially economic flagrant obscure alleviate eloquent dreaadful clumsy sympathy victim condemn vigor condescend spontaneous quell reprehensible substantially sleeve equivocal ironic decry errand articulate progressive eradicate refreshments elicit aspiration recently exemplary bribery theoretical disingenuous partisan revere particle nostalgia self-aggrandizement debunk tyranny rhetoric hierarchy warning whimsical venerate commend assert miserable awful vibe constrain undermine explicit differentiate compliment scrupulous contempt erroneous ideal refute imply cynical rash presume insight revival vary delay renounce indignant offensive temperate circumstantial export peep logo advertise suppress distort chunk convoluted denounce overwhelming fertility rigorous acquire arrogant university antagonize profitable indulgent strategic breathing idiosyncrasy profession frugal discern accommodation adversary incredulous disturbance digress social belie roam smug continual pertinent voluntarily elite subtle blame sincerity lick horror censure involvement candid infer futile impetuous exploit bewilder sustain diligent sincere protect sealed musical empathy callous parenthetical insure acorn sarcasm seize sacrificially allege emphatic irrelevant progress diplomatic stunned improvise deride reconcile meticulous deject scientifically incontrovertible pressure justify gloomy depict supplant endurance analogous diary bolster slip contemplate pesticide glow religious advocate negligent creator lament fundamental embrace throne inherent inferior valuable thrive trivial pretense reserved capricious refresh refusal flight boost explanation coherent prevalent tenacious official royalty assassin rub poach delete

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warrant circumscribed somewhat explosive optimistic mandate previously detract opinion intuitive feasible intimate persistent humble simplicity tempt deliberate painful unethical fundamentals discrepancy remorse pessimistic possibility conclusion acknowledge impregnate soberly creation paralyze suitability oblige tranquil medal arbitrate pacify illusory susceptible vibrate vengeance infection democratic stressful grave speculative sample identification stifle obligation revenge organization namely mediocre practical scream weaken consensus affectionate deficient treacherous console isolation ingenious memory melodrama despair awestruck composition regret recommendation celebrity decision devoid opaque ornamentation longevity participate dread restore interrogate aid accordingly mislead embarrassment optimism domestic apt funds virtue geography fundamentally thoroughly press despite horrible chilling rental esteemed disappointment innovative contemplation assign popularize haunt deafen serene percent estrangement suffer extravagant throng estimate comment priesthood mass dreadfully promote periphery animated saying relate clarity triple derivative succeed distortion register suicide improvement discreet inquisition probable curative incident praise convenience baffle covet dreadful genuinely weary undisturbed disgruntled humility renown nonchalant monopoly comedy vague decisive inconsequential announcement fabricated nevertheless vigilant scarce neglectful hushed attainment tedious explode snatch pslm agency sentimental tension adhere meanwhile sacred avert conformity likewise challenger accessible responsibility peril contact event roast fallible catastrophic competitor violate resolute deceive exaggeration discredit intolerable approve paste dimly novelist demeanor norm politician satisfaction obvious vehicle reservation defer involve restoration crush audible assistant backpack attain inanimate commemorate confrontation emigration parasite disperse quantitative laughter policy vulgar occasionally repay effective eulogy starvation empty therapeutic overall immortal encompass inappropriate opportune engagement illustrate turmoil observatory classification expression reminiscence comedian invention depress remedy protagonist gesture texture diplomatic election prolong conducive emotional invigorate curiosity expressive %

K-12 Words was originally published on PinkWrite

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doubletsandprose · 7 years

Photo

John Donne c.1595 (oil on canvas) -Unknown, National Portrait Gallery NPG6790

-Wikimedia Commons

“For love...makes one little room an everywhere”

John Donne is possibly most famous for his unconventional and complex metaphors, called “conceits” in the Renaissance. His style of poetry departs from conventional tastes of courtly love and romance, which by the late 1590′s were heavily indebted to sonnets of the fourteenth century Italian poet, Petrarch. Donne rejects Petrarchan blazons--ornate comparisons between the poet’s beloved and aspects of nature--in favor of dense metaphors that compress lovers within a dramatic space of their own. Donne’s poetry walks us through ever-contracting scenes where maps of the globe and cosmos shrink down to the microcosms of lovers’ embrace and where the distinction between subject and object becomes blurred, in fact peripheral.

One poem that noticeably does this is “The Good Morrow,” in which the speaker, lying in bed with his beloved, ponders on what little significance the world had held before they began to love one another maturely. The world before their love is reduced to a time of infancy and frivolities, a mere preamble. And as the two awake from their souls’ slumber, Donne both expands and contracts their world. Despite the exploration of newfound lands across oceans, or the discovery of new planets, the lovers’ “everywhere” is suspended in time and space between their locked gaze--it is a self-sufficient, self-sustaining microcosm.

Take a look at the progression of these ideas. I’d like to unpack each stanza to get a better understanding of these overarching metaphors.

As I mentioned before, the poem opens with a contemplation. The speaker reflects on just how trivial life had been before this moment. Before they loved, they had not been weaned off the milk of “country pleasures.” The image here is of being nursed by the immature notions of pastoral romance. Pastoral love is often seen as primarily sensual and libidinous. Christopher Marlowe’s poem “the Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (1599) and Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella (1591) are good examples of this genre. Here, sensuality alone, a kind of “silly” breastfeeding, is a state of infancy, where the two lovers are only in their first stage of life. Donne is instead steering away from pastoral and towards a more mature form of love.

In the middle of the stanza, the speaker suggests they might have slept in “the Seven Sleeper’s den.” The seven sleepers were a group of Christian youths who took refuge in a cave to escape persecution in the third century. They slept for nearly two hundred years to emerge in a new world where Christianity was an accepted religion. Again, the speaker acknowledges their state of adolescence and infancy, both in the allusion to the frightened youths and to the action of slumbering in a protective cave, retreating back into the womb’s comfort. The lover admits that “’Twas so,” and in this acknowledgment marks sensuality by itself as a preexistence to a symbolic awakening. In the last lines, the speaker hints at the difference between their sensual/physical love and their new love.

The Seven Sleepers (illuminated manuscript from Menologion of Basil II)

The same line reads “but this, all pleasures fancies be.” He means that aside from this moment, their “pleasures” have been transient and lacking substance. Until this time, the two lovers did not truly know one another or connect on a spiritual level, a connection that elevates their simply carnal “pleasures” to a higher form of love. Traditionally, this is a Christian concept of Agape, “the highest form of love, charity” that elevates man to a divine experience, but Donne is known for blending religious and secular imagery. Here he blends Agape with Eros (sensual desire). Without the spiritual connection between the lovers, the speaker knows “if ever any beauty I did see / Which I desired, and got, twas but a dream of thee.” His beloved was merely a shadow of the substance he sees and connects with now. Donne is not rejecting sensuality, however. Sexuality is a necessary component of the lovers’ awakening in this conceit, but only when it is mixed with an elevating spirituality.

Fittingly, the next stanza observes the awakening and rebirth of their souls. What had been awake before this time--their purely physical forms--are now accompanied by their recognition of one another through their gaze. Their souls “watch not one another out of fear,” which doesn’t mean to say they don’t dare look at each other’s souls out of some foreboding fear, but quite the opposite. In the seventeenth century, to “watch” was a term that meant keeping watch of an estate or castle all night as guards do. Watching “out of fear” further evokes images of invading armies or spies and thieves who threaten to penetrate a castle and its chambers. But the lovers do not fear, and they do keep watch. Rather, their souls do. That is a pivotal detail of these first lines, for if their souls have kept watch all night, they have not actually slept, but the very act of sex has been a recognition of each other’s souls throughout the night. This recognition is also free from fears and replaced with spiritual connection--the souls being the point of contact.

As Donne tends to do, at the point where lovers recognize each other’s souls, he expands their world and then contracts it within this expansion. First, the lovers have awoken. They are out of their primordial infancy and have emerged from their cave of pastoral love to bid the good morrow. The sunrise shining through the window is a sign of illumination/knowledge and a new kind of understanding of one another. They have found in their eyes a whole new world that was ironically already there. Then, Donne sharply elides the rest of the physical world from their gaze: “For love all love of other sights controls.” Donne’s concept of mature love compels the two to keep watch out of sheer love, rejecting the sights of other views. Indeed, it also makes their “little room” where they lie in bed locked in each other’s souls, “an everywhere.”

Man the Microcosm according to Robert Fludd, Utriusque Cosmi Historia (1617-21)

Donne doesn’t stop there, but has his lovers argue that sea explorers and cartographers, even cosmologists may go off and search for new lands and planets “worlds on worlds have shown,” but they have contracted their version of all into their little “room.” The importance of spiritual recognition doesn’t drop, though, and it is the key to the lovers blending and unifying their world. The speaker says “Let us posses one world: each hath one, and is one.” This complex line is riddled with fluttering paradoxes. The two possess one world, meaning that they simultaneously have individual worlds to their own and at the same time share a unified world together. these words brilliantly align the two lovers like an asymptote, nearing each other infinitely but retaining their individuality. “Each hath one” reiterates this and expands the two, and then “is one” unifies, contracting the two once more. The line, read this way, mimics a heartbeat-like pattern, reminding the reader of the spiritual substance of each “world” they share--a melding of hearts/souls.

If the two lovers had not already shrunk the globe and cosmos itself into their world, the final stanza pushes this conceit to its metaphysical limits. The two gaze into each other’s eyes and in this line Donne effectively illustrates an erasure of limits. “My face in thine eye...appears” can mean the beloved sees the speaker with her vision (her eye), but at the same time, the speaker sees the reflection of his own face in her pupil. “Thine in mine appears” evokes the same double meaning. The two even share the same verb, “appears.” Thus, the two see their own reflection in their eyes gazing at each other in an infinite loop that creates a boundless depth to their world.

Then the significance of hearts is explicated in the next line. “True plain hearts” to be exact. “Plain” in the period meant open and honest, straightforward. The clear and honest recognition of each other’s souls rests once more in “the faces.” And then the speaker claims that the world has no better halves (hemispheres) to join in perfect balance than them. Balance of the two souls is free from “sharp north” and “declining west,” lopsided coordinates. And finally, the speaker alludes to the mixing of the bodily humours, which when unbalanced, resulted in sickness and death. When perfectly equal, they bestowed immortality. The lover suggests that if their loves fuse together, they could even cheat death. But he acknowledges this would erase their individuality. Therefore, he gives the alternative for “thou and I” to “love so alike,” an attempt to balance and meld hearts in recognition and reflection of one another without submitting their individuality, a paradoxical feat and a difficult metaphor to unpack. Donne makes it difficult, however, because the strenuous exercise of unraveling this line of metaphors is like unraveling love--difficult. So difficult that when love has matured to such spiritual height, the hearts “rest,” as in arrest--they embrace one another in a sensual grip while simultaneously resting, calm and assured that none, including they, “do slacken” and ”none can die.”

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