Little Red Riding Hood Revisited

Photo retrieved @
fineartamerica.com

We seem to be constantly haunted by fairy tales. They’re old, dusty, witty but not at all rusty. We all had an encounter with them at some point, we passed them by and thought they would be just another literary memory. But they are back. Red Riding Hood and others resurged in modern suits. If it suits them well or not, it’s not for me to judge, I just acknowledge their subtle arrival. Wanda Gag’s take on the red-capped girl takes the reader into the crude whirling reality of an urban nightmare. The home is no longer a safe haven for the child, but the center of her utmost unhappiness. Emotional and sexual abuse is what Gag pictures in her “Wolf”. Additionally, she deconstructs a couple of myths associated with fairy tales. She depolarizes characters, and in doing so, we have a sense that human complexity is being honored at a higher extent than the rather simplistic view that fairy tales usually adopt when filtering characters through the tight good/evil dichotomy. However, we do have a clear sense of the pure evil figure, the abusing “wolf”. The urban Red Riding Hood is now at a watershed: she needs to decide her own faith. Unlike Perrault's passive feminine figure, the renewed Riding Hood asserts herself through reason, processing and the ability to make a decision that will result into escape from the “evil”. Grimm’s hunter is not there to rescue her, let alone the prince whose charm doesn't suffice to make him appear. Whatever happened to both of them, the reader is left adrift. An entire mythology of the golden age fairy tale is left behind, and rightfully so. 

Wanda Gag abandons a long held tradition of the fairy tale narrative only to follow the same path that Perrault first took when he collected the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Gag may not be addressing the French aristocrats of the 19^th century, but she is essentially faithful to the function of the text, that is appealing to the audience through an honest reflection of the contemporary social background. She doesn't punish Red Hood like Perrault did, but she offers her redemption. Not only is Red Hood rescued, but she comes to a safe shore through her own doing, which to the patriarchal ear of Perrault would have been a pretty jarring idea. Gag celebrates the female hero and in doing so, a feminist undertone floats around the text, leading the audience to both a nightmare tale, but also a redemption tale that empowers the woman. 

Language on the Flipside

         The process is dainty, painful and sprinkled with joys and sorrows. It sounds awfully a lot like a marriage, doesn't it? You seek compatibility, equality, but you’re stricken at times when you realize that the ideal of direct equivalence quickly vanishes under the sword of relatively irreconcilable differences. But it’s not differences that bring two languages together, but the sense that in the process of trying to make head or tail of something, the other language will provide a similar echo. Not a faithful reproduction, but a similar one. You’re content when that almost miraculous metamorphosis takes place, as if under the spell of some cunning magician. I’m not sure if everybody found the right inner magician, but the search doesn't offer a stop sign to the seeker. I've learned that the need for that natural equivalence is perhaps a never ending quest, just like you’ll have to keep on walking if you chose to be a walker. 

          I've also learned that the most strenuous process is the bringing together of two lines that just don’t make the cut even though common sense says that they would. But to the acquainted eye, that fine discrepancy emerges and separates. And when the eye conquers the discrepancy and light shines onto the harmonious match, you find again that the journey starts all over again. Sisyphus wakes up to another day only to find out that the stone will need to find its roll again up the hill. And the more you roll it on one side, the flipside is deemed to abandonment and a micro-desert of knowledge slowly crawls onto it. It slowly grows until the memory of the road slips into oblivion. Oblivion sneaks upon the other side of the stone while bringing to an unpolished state what once knew every winding of the road, every fine piece of gravel in the road. But what could the stone say? Its language is silence and the squeaking sound produced when the stone pays its respects to the ground it calls home.      

A Thing Called Writing

Photo retrieved
@ http://www1.aucegypt.edu/academic/writers/idea.jpg

There’s a strange quality about solitude that makes is appealing to writing. It’s finding yourself stripped off that coat of utter self –losses in social energy. When that energy remains unwasted, its tension translates into strands of thoughts that come together to reconcile the being. There, in the silence of social solitude, a mind churns, tosses and turns. Big crowds have that great feel of loneliness most prodigious for writing. It’s as if you’re watching a live performance in the comfort of your seat. Possibilities of quality interaction are be rare opportunities, and when they do happen, their light shines through the grim landscape of carelessness. Yeah, carelessness to everything speaking in lack of words or sounds. Deaf, mute, and blind, the city keeps on going. Dazzled, I break in a sort of dance to a music limited to my ears only. I try to freeze the little miracles sparkling in the city mud, to make sure they don’t die under the hard pace of forgetting. And when I do freeze them, I think of this delicate preservation could happily marry words. I’m hoping I can’t turn that union into a traditional marriage, because when you come to think of it, those are the ones that stand the test of time. If there’s something I despise about modern times is the mere flimsiness that makes oblivious to the human kind’s tiny treasures.

    And when the time is ripe, perhaps harvesting thoughts will occurs. It’s just a projection based on the common sense assumption that there’s some sort of universal design responsible for the development of cycles. I couldn’t think of a different turn of events, as I’m confined to patterns and cyclities that I’m still grasping while fumbling through clay words.  What will actually bring in the end, I couldn't say, for foresight hasn’t struck me yet. But there’s a chance that thoughts macerating isn’t wishful thinking and that through some unconscious process, something will surface. Anything. 

Fragments of Thought

Endlessness lurked in the eyes of a word. 

***

It had been a long time since she last felt the grim caress of am autumn rain. There was something organic about it that transcended nonbeing, and the sense that the slow constant flow of humid lines was the writing of a story, and that we, as humans, are constantly disrupting the writing of it with our careless walk. More like standing in the way of a miracle; with our gregarious gestures, careless talks, petty talk.

***

Under his heavy pace, snow gnawed, and  turned; and winter dawned upon us once again.


***

I use others' words to resurrect the stagnant waters of the self, and as they are cast the ripples they produce are my own, a faint echo of a distant state of mind, one that failed to meet words at the right time. A tardy arrival, but still an arrival.


***


She stayed away from the world so that she could write about it.


***


She remembered those instances of the past as if they were a historic record, no emotional echo. Like one recalls a historic battle. The sight of the much expected blood shedding, a sword held out high in the air and somewhere lower in the picture frightened defensive faces.


***


There's room for time. And then there's room for silence. There's room for silence that heals, there's room for silence that regenerates.

An Itch

Everything has a departing point. Everything has its one in a blue moonness. I guess you just to choose to ignore it until one day it just hits again. And you prefer to ignore the source of the blow and continue with the flow of your life until something inside catches up with you. I hate to say it, but it does. And then you’re done: that comfortable numbness is completely done with and you wonder what is there be done with yourself? Because you'd start to sound like a character in Beckett, and to be honest with you, not much credit is being paid to a speech of the sort, outside a literary context. They sound great on paper, and then on stage too, right? But in real life, things don’t reel the same. And it’s painful to see that the same things that a constant of what should have been a cozy memory of the past is actually a feeling of the present. It’s sickening that there’s so much emotional anesthesia out there, that such offhanded “coolness” needs to be paid homage to in the cruelest of ways. But then comes the edge, if edge is what it takes. And in the throes of some edgy scene, maybe some room for suppressed emotion is made. We’re immune to the classical fairy tale scenario in so many ways, that only some earthly sad reality is emotion-awakening. Oh, when it the means reach their scope, beware of the excessive use of Kleenexes around you! The emotion is cheap, but the moment has some sort of sacredness left: if beauty doesn’t move us, then at least decay does it.

Everything has an end. And if the beginning was paid such little importance, why would the end be given a different treatment? How I came about this train of thought is of little importance to you, dear reader. It’s just a temporary itch you need to get rid of. Sometimes. 

How I Painted You

Illustration by Sophie Blackall
@http://www.brainpickings.org/ 

On my inner walls, I painted you. I put my palms around your frail cheeks and I painted you. When sad eyes looked down, I rewrote the script and planted a smile instead. When your weary eyes bowed in disbelief, I planted faith and a drop of my smile. When your face twitched in fear, I sowed the seeds of courage and hoped that something inside would water them and help them grow. When you looked sideways longing for a forgotten yesterday I was there to remind that there’s still today left. A twitching eye, a fugitive look, a fidgeting body helped to build space. And then, words started flowing between us; in their conventional flow, your eyes would look down  as if building a protective film around the windows of your soul. It’s alright. I knew it all the way. And when words had no meaning their secret tempo spoke instead. The trembling voice, the nervous “aaaahs”, and the awkward lines filled a gap that reason never could, otherwise. In the midst of a nonsensical conversation, the mystery of the self would surge from the depths of the being. In its genuine nature, that surging self spoke uncensored truths that words could never reveal without leaving on the residue of purposefulness. There, in that humbling awkwardness, truth decided to nestle. Yes, in that poor attempt to put together a couple humble words, some sort of mystery was being transmitted. They were born under the sweat of temples and the calling of the heart, whose impulse is to infuse order through word in that whirly medley it oddly produces. While the mind is churning those unspoken signals, some sort of fellowship between the heart and the mind occurs that blesses the being with an inner harmony. Or maybe it’s the sense of accomplishment the creator feels upon building a new world. In the silent toil that makes that new world alive, raw beauty blossoms.     

“Dude”- The Curious Case of a Fairytale of Words

So, after having a conversation with one of my classmates on fairy tales, I discovered we are both enthusiasts of the mentioned genre. We both agreed on the intrinsic value fairy tales carry with them and that’s practically how this blog post was born. It occurred to me that “fairy tale” is a pretty flexible category and under the “right” molding, it can be used to suit the purpose of the writer/speaker. Thus, I think each word is a fairy tale in itself, and I've probably written a couple encrypted fairy tales up to now. Some call it etymology, cultural background, etc. or other technicalities, but to me each word is a fairy tale. Why? Well, just as simple as that. Because I like words and I believe in their whimsicality. I like to mold them, bend them, make them cry, make them shout out loud, or just make them be. Because each word renders a universe, a frozen instant of thought and it carries an invisible story that gets to be uttered in one breath. That’s all it takes to let it out.

But does anyone ever think of the birth of that word, of how people carved it moment by moment? It’s as if words are witnesses to all the cultural and historical movements. Most of all, words are witnesses of people, of personalities. They can be anything you want. They mimic the human universe to the point of merging with it. And maybe in the making of an universe, we think of words as our own property, a good granted through birth whose importance is less diminished unless it honors ours. But to grant them the importance of their existence is to honor our existence as humans. The conscience of a word is the conscience of a thinker. And what better opportunity to treat words right as being in another country? My love for English kept my enthusiasm alive and maybe where some saw the ordinary, my world painted itself in the whimsicality of the meaning. “Every day a new word” was a pledge I found it hard to keep but it was the one rule animating my fairy tale of words. Those fickle words that eluded me so often, that fooled me with their make-believe attire.

Because sometimes they did. I've grown to know how shifting the sands can be in the informal language. An assumed mask tells the opposite fairy tale or marries two fairy tales of meaning, subject to human creativity. “Dude” spelled out for me the tale of the young male, coming out of the mouth of youngsters. It just exuded pure masculinity to me, assigned in slang-ish contexts. I was extremely puzzled to find out it might as well be applied to the feminine representative of the human species. The fact in itself had a mind-boggling effect on me, but in the process of rationalizing the findings, the view seemed less incongruous. I mean, there wasn't anything that exclusively masculine in the poor word. An amazing return to the “wordy” senses! To make matters worse, a fraction of the same underground issuing power decided that there should be a proper feminine version to the unisex “dude”, namely “dudette”. Now, this does sound like a vindication of words’ rights – a masculine word should naturally have its feminine counterpart. In the process of the word creation, retort to French word formation is naturally inevitable. I guess it just adds some of the romantic mystery of less spoken language in the Anglo-Saxon scenario, or is there another reason that eludes me?

The curios case of “dude” is nothing but a mere example of word mobility in a language displaying severe symptoms of offhanded, but welcome creativity. Word on, dear friends!