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My Body is a Cage

Fritz Zorn meets Arcade Fire meets The Intellectual Chaos.

I’ve scribbled and drawn this during a time I felt really bad. The Jüngling had just dumped me (via text message while he was on a faculty party less than 10min away from me), I was heartbroken, I ate nothing but dark chocolate (Schwarze Herrenschokolade) and drank red wine, cycled myself to exhaustion (>5 hours per day), cried myself to sleep every night, slept maybe 3-4 hours per night, listened to nothing but Mahler and Arcade Fire, and read nothing but destructive literature. Full-on Werther-style. Minus the suicide. So yeah, not the best of times. I tried to keep myself busy to stop my intestines from writhing and my heart from hurting. It was also the time I applied for a job at the theatre, so it wasn’t the worst of times, after all. Anyway, one of the ways to deal with how I felt and the fact I loathed to be me and that I tried to punish my body for what was going on in my heart was this drawing. It is a symbiosis of Arcade Fire’s My Body is a Cage from the Album Neon Bible (2007) – one of the best songs out there –

and the cover of Fritz Zorn’s Mars, a scandalous book with huge success in Germany during the late 70s and 80s; a ruthless account with the well-off bourgeois Swiss society on which he blames his lethal cancer. Fun stuff, yay! No, but seriously: that is one of the most intense things I’ve ever read. Every sentence is so strong, so violent, so powerful.

Whatever exists is inevitably flawed.

And so I channelled my black dog via two different media into a third one. It’s still up on my wall and reminds me whenever I struggle, that things can indeed get better even if it might not feel like they possibly can.

The bird symbol continued to play an important part in my life for various reasons, Fritz Zorn and his influence being just one of them. But that is a different story to tell. Until then, take care out there!

Yours The Intellectual Chaos.

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Genetics, Gender, and the Greeks. On Jeffrey Eugenide’s Middlesex.

Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar.

Middlesex is Jeffrey Eugenide’s second novel. After the much promising The Virgin Suicides, it was not surprising that his 2002 novel of epic proportions would win the Pulitzer Price for Fiction in 2003. In 4 books, 28 chapters, and 529 pages, a monumental Bildungsroman tells the family saga of hermaphrodite Cal. It is a story about the American Dream, about love and obsession, rebirth and puberty, about migration and Greek/American culture. It explores questions of gender and cultural identity, incest (not the icky kind but the one you actually somewhat sympathize with) and other family secrets.

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

With a vigorous opening line like this, Eugenides clearly does not beat around the bush. What follows this promising beginning is the story of Cal Stephanides, former known as Calliope, and how they became a ‘he’, how they discovered, and learnt to accept and adopt their hermaphroditic nature. Together with Cal, we’re (literary hehe) travelling back in time to explore their teenage years respectively but also the story of how Cal’s ancestors immigrated to the US and their struggle to assimilate to the American way while also obtaining their cultural inheritance.

The first chapter: Yia-Yia Desdemona swings her spoon to reveal Cal’s gender antenatal and fails at the first attempt. A strong symbolic scene of how the Greek inheritance and superstition cannot stand up against genetically caused inter-sexism. Tradition VS DNA. Halfway through the book, you are so captivated by the Stephanides’ family saga, you almost forget about the eponymous hermaphrodite from the opening. The tale of Lefty and Des, who flee their hometown in Greece to escape the war, are siblings madly in love with each other. In Detroit, USA, they start a new life as immigrants – and as a married couple. Their incest remains a secret for many many years, until Des eventually comes clean to her grandchild. To cut a long family tree short: Lefty and Des have a son, Milton. Milton marries Tessie. Milton and Tessie have two kids, Chapter Eleven (whose proper name is never revealed to the reader) and Calliope. The three-generation family lives in a house called Middlesex. “Did anybody ever live in a house as strange? As sci-fi? A house that was more like communism, better in theory than reality?”

From here, Cal sets our on their teenage adventures. It is not so much a tale of a hermaphrodite as more of a personal account of the genreal confusions and struggles that come with pubertyy. This makes Middlesex – beside other factors – so brilliant: Eugenides never pushes the subject of inter-sexuality and gender identity too hard, there’s no in your face. Instead, it is neatly woven into the saga, never omitted but always acknowledged while basically telling a coming-of-age story. Our internally focalized narrator Cal occasionally slips into ironic, sarcastic, sometimes even stern comments to remind us of their genetic predisposition. However, there’s never a moment where you feel lectured.

Jeffrey Eugenides is a literary genius. Period. How he describes emotions in such striking imagery yet at the same time remains so pure, prosaic and pragmatic in his style is pure genius. I orgasmed at this specific sentence:

When he spoke to himself, it was in complete paragraphs. If you listened closely, it was possible to hear the dashes and commas in his speech, even the colons and semicolons.

Cal, the omniscient overseer beyond time, mind and existence, who dares to comment on his own conception, is an excellent and very unusual choice for the narrative voice. Cal is an extremely audacious, wondrous, pointy and eloquent narrator, who never ceases to draw our attention and empathy, may it be towards themself or their ancestors.

Middlesex is a collection of individual and very personal stories, all quite touching, skilfully woven together under grander themes.

Eugenides has a somewhat weird take on sex scenes though. Not that there’s a lack of very explicit sexual episodes. However, they all are a bit off in the way they are told: one is incestuous, one uses the clarinet (of all instruments!!!!) as an erotic metaphor for hormonally motivated lust, one is experienced by Cal twice simultaneously – by herself, with Jerome “sliding and climbing on top of me like a crushing weight. So do boy and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.” (yeah, that sarcophargus reference makes sex totally appealing) and at the same time impersonating Rex Reese, who is ‘busy’ with Cal’s real love interest, the obscure object. Cal lives his feelings, sexual fulfilment and satisfaction empathetically through someone else.

The whole 529 pages are amazing from beginning to end. Most intriguing is probably The Obscure Object. I re-read the whole chapter twice. But then there are also so many neat one-liners, you kinda wanna quote them all.

Historical fact: people stopped being human in 1913.

I did what any loving, loyal daughter would have done who had been raised on a diet of Hercules movies.

“It’s like the paintings in the museum,” she said, “Just an excuse to show people with no clothes.”

What else is there to say? Much more. So much more. I warmly welcome you to read it and go into an in-depth analysis with me. It’s literary dimensions are of such significance, it should become a modern classics. Maybe already is. Furthermore, it matters. What a truly compelling, transatlantic and outstanding epos.

Go and read it. Please.

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Facing your fears: The Snail-Watcher

Confession: I suffer from slugophobia. Not sure that word exists (yet), but I use it anyway to describe my very unnatural abhorrence of those slimy little bastards. Shell or no shell, slug or snail – doesn’t matter. I see one, I freeze, I panic. Molluscophobia is the proper name for it. I was scared of them since I was a little kid. And I get mocked a lot: “But they are so slow!” Yes, they are, but they are also slimy, weird and just ew ew ew. I can’t even write about them without making a grimace of disgust. Ew.

One summer, I left my plants at my Mum’s place and she left them outside. When I came back from my holiday, I moved into a new apartment and one random evening decided to repot my plants. After two or three perfectly boring plants, the next one surprised me with a tiny little snail creeping (me) out, unwillingly, like a whining schoolboy with his satchel and shining morning face [yay, Shakespeare reference] approximately the size of a beer cap. Tiny. Any other person would have picked it up by its shell and gotten rid of it. Easy.

And what did I do?

I sat down on a chair on the other end of the room and looked at a pile of soil spread on the floor and stared at one this terrifying moving shell with mollusk under it. For about half an hour I just sat there and cried and couldn’t move. Then I texted DJ, who was luckily still in the theatre and I literally begged him to come by and help me out. He came, he laughed, he laughed some more, he basically never stopped laughing; yet I made him go through every single plant, pot and soil and check for further snails. “There aren’t any”, he said, clearly enjoying himself watching my torture and clearly annoyed about having to dig through pots of soil. Well, turned out he was wrong, CAUSE THERE WERE ANY because a couple of days later I found another one ON THE OUTSIDE OF MY BEDSIDE TABLE PLANT!!!! Ew. Massive Ew. And fuck you, DJ. That night, I changed the bedsheets and put all plants outside, despite the almost freezing temperatures. I was willing to kill off all my plants because there was a slight chance of snails living inside their pots.

If I go camping, I a) have to sleep in the middle. Imagine touching the walls of the tent where slugs crawl up on the outside! We’d basically have skin contact, only separated by a thin layer of nylon. I b) need someone to get out first thing in the morning and pluck all slugs from the tent and then c) check my shoes to make sure there’s no snail hiding somewhere. As a kid, there once was one in my welly and I freaked out. I’d also walk over meadows in a stork-like manner, carefully scanning the ground for a slug-free spot to put my foot down. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Another time, I thought I’m gonna try and defeat the enemy. I was at an annual wine festival in Baden and they served a very traditional local dish: “Schnecken im Weißbrot”, i.e. escargots in garlic bread. I thought: “Well, if I eat those, I sure show that little bastards who’s the boss now.” Long story short: it was the most expensive garlic bread I ever had, and I couldn’t bring myself to eat those weirdly looking things in the middle.

Also, you know that pasta type Conchiglie? I had and still have troubles eating it, once it’s *sluuuurp* sucked to the plate by the sauce like a suction cup – resembling a slug pressing itself firmly and slimily to the ground. Ew.

I am not sure why or when I developed my phobia. One incident in my early childhood, however, contributed very much to it. I must have been 6 or 7, when I read anything I could get my hands on (as if I ever stopped doing that, lol). Diogenes publishing company had these little pocket books, and since I was little and they were little, they looked so cute and compelling to be read. Note: just because a book is little, it is not necessarily aimed to the little ones. The short story that fell into my hands was by the mistress of psychological thrillers and self-declared snail-lover herself, Patricia Highsmith, and it was called “Der Schneckenforscher”, original title: “The Snail-Watcher”. It gave me the creeps. I had nightmares. And I still partly blame it for my overreaction to slugs and snails.

Since I’m all about adulting now, I bravely decided to face my fear. I googled it, I found it, and I read it (in English, this time). I actually read the story that traumatised me. Probably wouldn’t give me nightmares these days (I’ll let you know after tonight, haha) but it is still very disturbing. Like definitely very ew. You can easily find it online. I’m really insecure about all those copyright laws so I’m not gonna copy and paste the whole text, since I’m not sure it’s legal or not. But here or here, you can find it and [disclaimer coming up] I’m not responsible for the contents bla bla bla. Okay, click on either of these and read. And then come back.

It’s both horrifying and fascinating and disgusting (and yes, I’m aware that’s three adjectives I introduced with ‘both’, sue me). It’s so vivid, too. Patricia Highsmith has a talent of narrating in a way you picture it perfectly no matter how much you’re trying not to. Kopfkino, as we Germans say. And mine is in HD.

I mentioned earlier, Patricia Highsmith was obsessed with snails, even had some herself. Again, and I’m aware I repeat myself: Ew. There’s a rumour that she used to bring them along to dinner parties, hiding them under her boobs (super ew!) and even the possibility someone would do that is so cringeworthy, I am cringing right now and experience strong phantom sluggishness under my boobs. Ew.

What makes the story so repellent is with what intensity and almost erotic fascination the protagonist watches his snails mate and reproduce. I mean, the first mating scene is basically sexy snail porn but also really repugnant to the reader (me). Interspecies voyeurism par excellence.

So yeah, that’s that. Did rereading my childhood trauma tale help my slugophobia (#stillabetternamethanmolluscophobia)? Not really. But I dared to reread this traumatizing piece of art. It still sends shivers down my spine, and not the good ones, but I still went through with it. Despite feeling more and more uncomfortable with every line I went further down the snail shell.

To make a long story short: I (s)nailed it.

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Ian McEwan: Black Dogs

In 1946, a young couple sets off on their honeymoon. Fired by their ideals and passion for one another, they plan an idyllic holiday, only to encounter an experience of darkness so terrifiying, it alters their lives forever.

Quoth the blurb.

It’s my fourth Ian McEwan after Atonement, Solar and The Children Act. When I read Atonement, I wasn’t much into it and condemned it as kitsch (especially with the movie adaption in mind). Looking back, I was way too young to be ready for it and for McEwan’s overlaying topics and dense prose in general and therefore it’s overdue to be reread, now that I feel more mature as a reader, and do the novel justice. Solar, my second encounter with one of England’s leading novellists, came years later. I hated the protagonist. I loathed him. What a digusting, pig-like unsympathetic person, the kind you wish to spend as little time with as possible. And yet I wanted to continue reading even though it meant hanging out even more with despicable Michael Beard. That was the moment upon which I briefly stopped reading, looked up and nodded approvingly to acknowledg Ian McEwan’s talent before I continued with my literary frenemy. The Children Act, which I read on holiday just a couple of weeks ago, was a dense and tense novel I devoured within hours and I am very excited to see Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci in the 2017 film adaption because a) book and b) Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci! So much to my short literary journey so far with Ian. And now over to Black Dogs.

Black Dogs is one of McEwans earlier novels, first published in 1992. It is set in the aftermath of World War II and tells the story of June and Bernard. It’s presented as a mock memoir written and conducted by their son-in-law Jeremy. It is a story of two very different people in love but not able to overcome neither their differences nor their feelings for each other, which means they are doomed to be apart yet never be truly separated from each other. Or the other way round? I guess toxic is what we’d call it nowadays. It is also the story about one particular event that would change everything for them. “But the next day, and the day after, and on all the succeeding days, they never set foot in the metaphorical landscape of their future. The next day they turned back.”

On one side we have Bernard, a communist who’s firmly settled in the rational world and defending his political believes no matter what: “He’s got facts and figures, he’s always rushing off to give a speech, be on a panel or whatever. But he never reflects. He’s never known a single moment’s awe for the beauty of creation. He hates silence, so he knows nothing.” June, on the contrary, starts off as a communist, too, but is far more attached to the spiritual world, to ideas of karma and whatnot: “She’s got her own ideas and they’re strong and strange.” Pretty sure she’d believe in homeopathy.

With these two characters, the novel explores various topics of opposing nature: religion versus politics, spiritual versus rational believes, fantasy versus reality. It’s never about which of those supersedes the other or has more of a right to be. It’s about the fact that contraries exist, about the struggle to overcome them and the devastating realization that there’s no guarantee you can. Both June and Bernard fail at some point and yet both are too hung up on their side of the aisle that even their strong mutual affection can’t bridge that fundamental gap.

To lighten things up a little, Jeremy and Jenny (the narrator’s wife) seem to be the author’s assurance to the reader that even relations with such contradicting values from each party can work. They are a couple far from over-the-top romanticism and kitsch. On the contrary – their marriage is based on a very profound and solid trust in each other.

“We rolled into a sleepy embrace. Minor reunions like this are one of the more exquisite domestic pleasures. She felt both familiar and novel – how easily one gets used to sleeping alone. […] Her eyes were closed and she half-smiled as she fitted her cheek into the space below my collar bone that seemed to have formed itself over the years to her shape.” So sweet, so simple and so comforting.

The fake preface written by the first-person narrator to account for Jeremy’s motivation of writing his step-mum’s memoirs seems oddly out of place. Jeremy’s obsession with other people’s parents (resulting from losing his own parents back when he was a kid) gives somewhat a reason but I felt it was a bit over the top. The story of June and Bernard is enough, and I for my part didn’t need full accountability for why it was being told.

The first three quarters are basically a very long built-up to the scene we’ve been intrigued with since the title: the encounter with the black dogs.

The Black Dog, synonym of depression, coined by Winston Churchill and associated with all the side effects whilst suffering depression. Choosing that as an eponymic antagonist sets a very distinctive and dark tone. Selected scenes at historically relevant locations add to this atmosphere of the decay of human morality and doom. “What possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

The novel is a commentary on different systems of believe, he captures the political moods that defined life in the decades after WW II and he throws in some major and minor wisdoms of humanity, love and life. It’s a recipe for a dense, absorbing and very vexing novel. It leaves so many things unsaid after it went long ways pretending to lead up to some revelation. That is frustrating, sometimes. But if you accept it for what it is, Black Dogs will give you a lot to take in and to think about.

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Funny, Clever, And Meaningful: Watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Ah, Netflix and me. What an intense relationship. Netflix, always checking up on me. “Are You Still Watching You?” when I binged the first season of You must have been the freakiest question I ever read on a screen and almost as meta as Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch episode. “Yes, Netflix, I do. I still watch out for myself, thank you very much.” Or rather, “I’m binging several seasons of one show in one night. Obviously, I am NOT alright. Thank you for asking, though.”

Anyway, if I started posting about ANY show I watch on Netflix, I wouldn’t have time to watch Netflix or do anything else. So TV shows will almost never come up here unless there’s something really interesting to say about them. Otherwise there might be quotes or little references or side note recommendations but an elaborated post like this one is a rare exception.

So, why Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a title that suggest a clichéd Hollywood Romcom with really cheap jokes?

Well, because it is a CW TV show that is surprisingly smart, witty, intelligent and clever, at the same time funny, daring, dark and bold and yet it manages to address social stigmata and taboos; a refreshing show that keeps you entertained, on edge and is one of the best things TV (i.e. online streaming devices) has to offer these days. Plus, there’s tons of songs.

But let’s start from the beginning. Rebecca Bunch, played by the amazing Rachel Bloom, is working hard at a New York job, making dough (the kind of dough that pays your rent) and is offered a promotion. Which makes her not happy, but sad. A margarine ad asks her “When was the last time you were truly happy?” and while that question is rummaging through her mind, she runs into Josh Chan. Perfect Josh, her teenage summer camp crush/love. And suddenly, everything becomes clear. Rebecca decides to start anew and move to West Covina – which happens to be where Josh is but that’s not why she’s here. Well, at least that’s what she tells herself and others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yjVUP_zryk

Rebecca meets new colleagues, some become her friends (despite her explicitly displayed reluctance), some become nuisances, some fall in both categories. She meets Josh and – oh no! – Josh’s perfect girlfriend. The goal is clear: get rid of the latter, get Josh and be happy.

I have an I.Q. of 164. On the entire S.A.T., I got two questions wrong and in subsequent years those questions were strickened for being misleading. But I know nothing about life! Yeah, no. Truly, nothing! Like, I make awful decisions! Like really, you know, really, really awful decisions. [Rebecca about herself, S01, E05]

And believe me, she really does. And hilarity ensues. To see how Rebecca lies to everyone around her, especially herself, and how her fake reality puts her in the most embarassing (Stichwort Fremdschämen, as the Germans say) and impossible situations is hilarious! And yet gives the audience the chance to reflect upon the strains of modern society, especially for those who don’t fit in 100%. Rebecca is straight-up adorable and you totally sympathise with her despite (or because of?) all her wrong-doing and self-delusioning. She’s quick-witted, overdramatic, strong but insecure and just so incredibly likeable. And so are the others. Once Rebecca has settled in (or rather, once we’ve settled in with our protagonist), every character gets their story arch and becomes more than just a plot device to tell Rebecca’s story.

The genre, I believe, is called Dramedy (although I totally dig Wikipedia’s classification as “Cringe Comedy”) mixed with musical elements, i.e. songs.

Speaking of songs: Each episode has two or three songs neatly woven into its storyline and they either present a specific topic or display some character’s feelings in a more accessible way. Taboos don’t exist: Ass waxing, period sex, you name it – it’s all covered. Outstanding in one of the first episodes is definitely “The Sexy Getting Ready Song“, to name but one example of brilliant song writing. They are not only outstanding by themselves, though, they also convey important messages, drive the plot, and a more than just a gimmick.

What I love about this show is that it’s not afraid to point out inconvenient, unmentionable or intimate truths that are usually omitted. It dares to make mental illness one of it’s main topics. Anxiety and depression, insecurity and inadequacy, to name but a few, are recurring motives for character motivation and – despite the show’s seemingly overall comedic tone – are treated with all due respect and earnestness. Feminism and a liberal sexuality and sexual orientation are just happening, with no need to punch it in our faces.

Creators Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna did a hell of a job. Even the worse episodes are still pretty good. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a show full of diversity in topics and people, a compassionate take on mental illness, balancing between brilliance and banter. Cynical, serious, satirical, affecting and very entertaining. And has the biggest pretzels we’ve ever seen.