Fairies Wear Boots

Painted fall of 1999 in the science room at the Bridger Alternative Program.
Picture taken several years later after some light vandalism.

"The improbable, desiring, erotic, and violent world of romance reminds us that we are not awake when we have abolished the dream world:  we are awake only when we have absorbed it again (Frye, 61)."
We (my sister and I) were not allowed to be children. It wasn't really our parents fault, they weren't allowed to be children either so they lacked the skills to provide a healthy childhood to their offspring. The only time we were ever even referred to as children was when we were being reminded that 'children are seen and not heard'. My parents did not read us stories. When I was growing up all the great gatherings happened at our house.  Holidays, reunions, family and friends passing through town; our house was the center of all the goings on.  There was music, so much music from the radio, the tape deck, and even Mom's old 8track; country, soul, funk, and rock.  We had a pinball machine, billiard table, dart board, and even an arcade game.  Ah visitors would arrive and there would be food and games, but the most important part for me was the stories.  Even though my parents did not read us stories; they along with family and friends told stories all night, sometimes for days on end.  While the music played telling its stories, the adults told their stories and often a song would play and it would remind someone of another story.  The stories and the music flowed in and out of one another, which is probable why the two are forever linked in my head. Songs of naivety include the Supremes "Can't Hurry Love" and "Come See About Me", The Beach Boys "Little Deuce Coupe", and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band "Fishin' in the Dark".  Many of the stories were true, some were the lies of drunk bikers.  Where are you going? Where have you been? Do you remember the time? What ever happened to? Great, wonderful, alive stories of travel, nature, growing up, partying--the stories of life (lives).  I listened with whatever naivety I possessed, I believed the lies and they fed my imagination.  I learned how to tell stories and what the elements of a good story are in both content and delivery.
At school I rarely had friends and those I did make always moved away. I was fat and everyone hated me. In the late 80's childhood obesity was a rarity and not the norm we see today. I was picked on relentlessly and learned rather young to not to trust people and how cruel the world can be when you just don't fit in.  My teachers and librarians introduced my to the wonderful world of books (have you hugged a librarian today or thanked a teacher?). Books were not an escape but they, much like the oral tradition I experienced at home, fed my imagination and created the off kilter world in which I still reside.  I also found that the other kids did't bother me when I was reading quietly by myself, it was as if it wasn't really my existence that bothered them so much as my trying to become a part of their existence that did. I loved the story of the ugly duckling and could not wait to be revealed as the swan.
My mother read silly modern Romance novels with Fabio on the cover and would always buy me books (Judy Blume, Roald Dahl, R.L. Stein, Garfield comics) when we went to Hastings. It was through these books that my imagination grew as my intellect developed.  I loved all stories true and false, light-hearted and frightening. I watched cartoons to the point of obsession and the only thing I remember truly despising was children's movies with real actors (this is still true today, what they did to the Smurfs is unforgivable). They were too real even when they dealt with the fantastic. Cartoons fed my imagination and love for happy endings (even though I do not require a happy ending, I love them), I remember all cartoons having a happy ending.  I mean, even though the Wile E. Coyote did not catch the Road Runner this was still a happy ending because the story continued.  You always knew who the evil characters were like Dick Dastardly and who the innocents were like the Smurfs. I loved and still do love the simplicity of it all. I remember playing by myself and talking to myself out loud, "and then" I would say during my fanciful monologues, (oh the friends of my imagination I must remember write them someday) my sister would yell at me to stop talking to myself.  She said I was weird and crazy, that I should grow up (I was 8).  Although I was never far from the harshness of reality, I kept my imagination, my romantic vision of being a hero or an undercover princess even closer than I kept Reality.
 When I was about 12 my rebel pride swelled to the point that it oozed out of my pores. Even though I was intellectually mature (and physically), I was tired of all the pressure to mature into what society said was proper. I had had enough. I didn't dress in the fashion I was supposed to and embrace the feminine roles I was being taught, I knew how the world really worked and the nature of humans. Why was it so important to cover up  blemishes and wear uncomfortable shoes? This had nothing to do with stories where beauty is natural and the foot wear fits the journey. All of the sudden everything was supposed to have a deeper meaning and it was immature to enjoy stories and to explore their influences, instead X+Y=Z.  I became angry that people were trying to shove their version of reality and maturity down my throat.  By this point I had discovered the beauty and in your face honesty of the darker aspects of life, literature, music, and art.  I wore pigtails and black make up, I dyed my hair blue,  I wore jeans that I wrote on and drew cartoons on rolled up to the knee to reveal my super awesome brightly colored striped socks of doom, it was 1994 and I swear I was the first person in Bozeman to have a Marilyn Manson t-shirt. Another dimension had been added to my imagination and I went back to explore it and ultimately live there.  Many people were afraid of me which I did not fully understand because I was merely an over grown child playing dress up and painting cartoon characters on the walls.
As an adult, despite my cynicism towards reality and love of the dark side, I am still very naive in my approach to literature, art, and sometimes life.  I am heavily tattooed and only 2 of them mean anything, the rest are just stories.  The only reason any of them mean anything at all is I knew those two in particular would be asked about quite often and that is what people want to know; what does it mean?  As if one can only illustrate their own personal story if it has profound depth or that body art is a way of wearing your soul on your skin. I hate this approach to the visual arts and to literature, I get pissed off on a deeper level when profundity is expected or exhaustively searched for.  I despise professors and intellectuals who again think that X+Y=Z, that stories are only great if they are revealing great truths, that a poem or a song has one fixed meaning, that feel it is silly and stupid to love or expect happy endings, or people who think that anything is truly 'new' (its all been done).
I loved An Ephesian Tale.  It is one of the most beautiful and deeply moving stories I have read in a long time.  I greatly appreciated the lovers vows of chastity and the great struggles they endured to keep their promises to one another, even when they feared the other might be dead.  This story of great adventure and unconditional love is a testament to the romantic nature of the human soul and the struggle that is love.  In our contemporary society we may scoff at these notions but I believe in this kind of love.  Real love, true love. The kind of love that world makes difficult and ultimately tries to destroy.  This story, with all its naivety, must have influenced many great tales of love. "He reflected that he would be perpetrating an infamous crime in killing a girl who was guilty of no wrong, and one so fair. Though he laid hold of the girl he could not kill her (Xenophon, 23)."  I saw Snow White forming from this tale, the jealousy over a young girl's great beauty and the girl being taken to the forest to be murdered as well as the would be murderer taking pity on the girl because of her great beauty.  Anthia herself is an amazing and pure character, even though her ego is being fed with advances and at times her heart believes her beloved to be dead she will not betray her vows.  It is this mixture of beauty and chastity; this purity of mind, heart, body, and soul that defines fairy tales. I think we all strive for a great love, a pure love like that of Habrocomes and Anthia.  I think in many ways this story speaks to us on a primal level, Habrocomes searching for his beloved thinking of her and no other, traveling far and wide take possession of his great treasure that has been taken from him.  Two lovers believing in nothing other than each other and love and death. If it is naive to love this story than I am guilty of being exceedingly naive.  If loving this story gets me kicked out of the intellectuals club and  brands me as silly or even stupid then so be it.  This story is my story, my ideal story of love.  I don't want  a love that comes easy, I never have, and maybe that is because of fairy tales. I want adventure and trials, for that is what all the great love stories are about and in the end I hope my life is a great story and that whatever love I am blessed with is real and has been proven real because it has been tested like the love of Habrocomes and Anthia.
"I am consecrated to two deities, Love and Death:  leave me free for my devotion to them (Xenophon, 31)."  These are two inevitable things in life and in stories.  You will always find Love and Death or is it Love and Death that always find you?  Although this story may seem to some highly sophisticated readers like a silly story that is trying to fit all the elements of a romantic tale (even the cheesey  and convenient elements) into one story.  I see it as a blue print for many great stories.  It takes me back to the oral tradition of my youth. It is similar to my dreams and fantasies not only as a child but as an adult. I guess you could say that instead of having and inner child, I am still very much a child.  Dreaming and remembering.  Having wild fantasies and seizing opportunities both in life and creativity to live them out.  I'm almost 30 now and 85% of my t.v. viewing is still cartoons.  I love stories, I love how stories flow in and out of all the humanities, how stories flow in and out of culture, and ourselves. At times in my life the magic of romance may have hid itself from my sight, but i have never lost it. Would you believe Ozzy if he told you that fairies wear boots?  Well I did and I still do.
"Yeah, fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
Yeah I saw it, I saw it, I tell you no lies
Yeah Fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
I saw it, I saw it with my own two eyes"
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A NOTE TO MY FELLOW SWIMMERS IN THE SEA OF STORIES:
Please stop apologizing for yourselves. Your thoughts, feelings, dreams, memories and stories are valid.  I don't think anyone here is judging you and if they are then they can fuck right off.  Bleed me an ocean 438 I want to read about it all.