secrets and Kate Zambreno and DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR DAUGHTERS ARE? part 2

you can read my first response to her book here.





preface:



books =

mirrors and sledgehammers.

when i read Barthes for the first time, The Death of the Author, my mind went angry, flopped out of my body, phished around on the ground, spiked by rocks and nails, until i read it again and understood the romance of it. the relief of it. the permission-slip. the courage and freedom given to artists and writers in that essay: we are not gods and do not have to impale ourselves on false notions of "genius" and "originality", creating suns to spin around... that this act of writing/drawing/mapping/making is a human act, a way of tracing our lineage, a mode of connecting, building, and understanding.

---

i received Kate Zambreno's book O Fallen Angel and Dodie Bellamy's chapbook Barf Manifesto in the same week. i read them back to back. a pairing that drastically (and thankfully) changed how i perceive the act of writing, the action of reading, and as a result, how i actively perceive the world.

and so i put the coffee on and i go to the page to write.

i try to put the events of my life in a line... as IF order is even possible. as IF finding an order will supply relief. as IF forcing my ideas in to some sort of easily managed whole will set this upside-down world right again.

nope.

life is too multi-faceted for that.
a single human being is too multi-faceted for that.

all the splinters a person collects. splinters and scars and treasures and junk. why can't i decide to see that chaotic multitude as Beautiful? the rich warmth and wealth of a single life, caught in the corners of the carpet, the innards of a young woman's notebook, the photos at the bottom of the box, the hair in her eyes and the smell of her blankets, graphite dust coating every inch of her home.

her vacuum cleaner is broken.
the dust stays.
this could be a beautiful thing.

these books become the well-spring of courage. it is where i go to draw faith and steam when my own seems to be running out, stuttering, sighing, exhausted. my keepsakes. my treasures. my Encouragements! my lineage!

this strange and painful coming-of-age.
---


the following is an "essay" in the Barf Manifesto sense of the word. a form that is very much a conjoined twin. individual meats breathing under the same skin. a deformity that shouldn't occur if you really do believe in Jesus. a grotesque tragedy that shouldn't find any good Christian.

or so it is believed in America.

as it is personified in Kate's book.







ranting essay:

AND GOD CREATED THE GODLESS WHORE:

(morals pillaged from under the bell jar of a suburban strip club on the way to art school-
one daughter's dutiful response to Kate Zambreno's O Fallen Angel)






O Fallen Angel, is that me?

am i Maggie?

lost in the spin of an upside-down world, reaching out for something real to hold on to amid the swirl of trendy desires, this eat eat eat and suck and swallow consumerism: our Pop-Religiosity.

Maggie won't wear the flowered dress because the flowered dress feels wrong on her skin. the hand of a creepy uncle. a kinder, gentler molestation.

it goes unnoticed. what's the big deal?


---


daughters who do not smile, daughters who are sad, daughters who are lost and don't hide it, are ugly.

Maggie is ugly.
i am Maggie.
i am ugly.

simple math.


the flowered dress feels wrong to me too.

and i know my sadness hurts my mother.


---


Maggie and i make the awkward jerk toward short-lived moments of feeling understood, of feeling safe, of feeling some sense of belonging. frenzied hands pushing through wild hair, hoping for an armature, an armor, that fits this body. the BAD DAUGHTER body: sadness on the surface, sadness in the eyes, sadness made evident.

they call this look Haunted.

my mother said it's like the light has gone out in you.


---


to not smile is the thorn.

sadness is offensive. it is an accusation. an indication that something is wrong.

sadness is an Indictment.

i think of Sylvia Plath agreeing to publish The Bell Jar under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, spare Mommy some embarrassment, just like the Mommy in her book, just like the Mommy is Kate's book- the daughter's sadness seen as an attack on what a wonderful mommy she really is. i was so good to you! how can you behave like this? you are so selfish!

a daughter's dissatisfaction with the ways of the world, the modes of the home, the call to docile silence and acceptance is seen as an attack, seen as ego, seen as a snobby up-turned spoiled-rotten nose, seen as ungrateful, seen as UGLY. our inability to slide in comfortably to the 50s, the 50s that are alive and well, is offensive. it is UGLY. you are UGLY. i am UGLY. i am UGLY Maggie.

and in addition to UGLY, we are CRAZY too.


just as i see myself peering out from behind the lines of The Bell Jar as Esther Greenwood, i see myself writhing in the sticky sheets Maggie cries in.


---


like Maggie, i know my status as Other.
like Maggie, i know my sadness is repulsive.
i know my discontent is an Abomination.

but am incapable of hiding it.

like Maggie, i went to the doctor to get a referral to a psychiatrist and the doctor said oh! you're sad? you don't need a psychiatrist for that! i can give you pills! want 'em?
and Maggie and i go to the doctor because suburbia is a Brave New World, full of soma, a place where sadness is unacceptable, one small step away from being criminal.

and i was afraid, had been afraid for a very long time, afraid that my sadness was symptomatic of insanity. the insanity of WOMAN that we hear so much about. the female mind that snaps and twists. you can see it! just look at her! she isn't SMILING! she must be CRAZY! sadness as Hysteria. to be dissatisfied by the expectations of the Status Quo, to express that dissatisfaction, to not hide discontent is a SYMPTOM OF INSANITY and has always been labeled as such.

unless you are male. then your discontent is REVOLUTIONARY.

there is the duty, still, to be pretty and pink. to smile. to say please. to keep your voice low. even and calm. watch your tone. can't you smile just a little? just a little? and give us just a little more leg, a little more cleavage while you're at it.


we must keep up appearances.


---


Maggie is an After School Special.

i am an After School Special too.

and the thing about After School Specials: they aren't supposed to come true. they are stories of Prevention.
don't be like this BAD GIRL!
don't be like this BAD DAUGHTER!

OR ELSE!

girls dressed up in the red whore robes of The Cautionary Tale. their stories are Preventative Measures:


---


i am Maggie: looking for something to love and be loved by.
i am Maggie: wondering if the doctors and the Mommies are right.
i am Maggie: twisting in blankets for a solid year, innumerable days spent in the same greasy pajamas, remote control in hand, chain smoking, not working, not holding down a job, art is not a job, writing is not a job, where's your big pay check? show us the green so we can know what you do has meaning!

i am Maggie: alone and afraid and lost, wishing i were dead, wishing i could fit in and be happy, wishing there really was a magic pill that could set my mind and heart at ease, ease me in to the swampy malaise of shopping sprees and idiot TV.
i am Maggie: wearing all black and saving up the pills, wanting to live and not knowing how to do that or what Living even is.

"Maggie is currently low-functioning"

isn't it more than just breathing? it has to be! isn't it more than work work work for a new dress, marry a man who ignores you, marry a man who goes to the strip club because it's just entertainment, you shouldn't be offended! all men do it. what's the big deal?

but i worked as a cocktail waitress in a strip club when i was 22, locked in "suburbia", afraid to crawl back home, afraid to admit failure to my step-father, the man who told me i was "property" until i turned 18 and therefore he was entitled to read my diary. the man who told me that even if he received a signed statement from GOD that i would go on to become a rich and famous artist, there was NO WAY IN HELL he'd help me go to art school. i could not crawl back to that. i could not bring myself to say you're right, i'm a failure. i'll do what you tell me to do and i won't talk back. my pride. my resolve. my short life, so filled with abuse and dominion and struggle and compromise. my short life.

but i had an apartment of my own where i could hang pictures of things i loved and stay up late if i wanted to and leave my clothes on the floor if i wanted to and there were no rules about how much milk i was allowed to drink and no time limits on how long i could stay in the shower and no one to explain myself to or fight with or be called names by...

unless you consider my dick-head boyfriend at the time who liked to wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me all the reasons why he couldn't marry me, all the things that were wrong with me, all the things i must correct in order to make it possible for him to continue loving me.

and then he told me he "didn't like bills" and left.

ran home to Mommy 2 months after taking the apartment.

there was no way i could crawl back. i was a line cook at Pizza Hut and going to school part-time at the local community college. there was no way to pay the rent with that. i was Maggie. and so i went to the man in town that knows how to make a pretty girl some money quick. i sold my morality in order to protect myself from the ethics of a southern-born step-father and a mother who was too lost herself at the time to stand up for me. there was no Help to ask for.

and so i waited tables in a strip club.

i know what the fuck goes down there.

i know what the fuck you go there for.

and NO not all men are broken down, hateful, sniveling, whining, conspiring scum.

the only men i saw in that place that had even a semblance of a right to be there were amputees and elderly widowers. even the dancing girls thought so. even the dancing girls said YOU GUYS ARE SCUM! and they laughed in your face and you sat there, stupid as Adam, taking it, forking over the grocery money to a woman you don't know and who will never let you touch her. and you know it and you don't care because all you want is to get your dick up and Wifey doesn't cut it anymore. ever since she became Mommy, you've gotten bored.

and so they took your money and i took your money. i accepted the bills laid on my tray to keep me there, pinned in the smoking room, just to listen to your sad-sac existence. for a while i pitied you. for a while i felt sad and motherly. for awhile i thought that maybe The Women were to blame. the wives and mothers that you went home to. that maybe if they shook their asses in your face, maybe if they crawled like a cat, maybe if they donned the attire of The Godless Whore every now and then, you'd be happy. not so broken down. not so low. for a while i blamed The Women too. for a while.

until my ass had been pinched one time too many. and that man tried to slide his hand between my legs. went right for the gravy, there in the center of the club with all his friends around. that chuckle head who thought that, simply because i was there, in a place like that, that i was there to be fondled and touched and compromised. simply by my being there i was asking for it.

and i have relatives who would agree.

this "agreeing" that women deserve violence has infected me. it has effectively kept me quiet, kept me in the house, kept me zippered and buttoned and flailing in silence. it has made me Maggie. Maggie, who slices her own skin. Maggie, who looks in the mirror and only sees UGLY.


---


Preventative Measures Must Be Taken.

We Must Keep Up Appearances.

The Image.

The Image.

IT MUST BE PROTECTED AT ALL COSTS.


---


in the strip club, the black-light erased the stretch-marks. the black-light erased the scars of the cutter. black-light foists the white, makes it glow, makes an Ugly Girl beautiful for the length of a song or two. and the strange thing is i can't tell you how many times i was asked what's a good girl like you doing in a place like this? and i can't tell you how many times the regulars said i'd rather watch you walk back and forth carrying drinks than look at the stage and i'd better never walk in here and see YOU up there!

they were not diluted about what went down there either.

they were not unaware of the milieu we were creating. everyday. all day. and all night. with a free lunch too if you came in before 2pm.

it is one of the saddest places i've ever been.

in a town classified as a suburb.




---


where is "suburbia"?

California is quickly becoming one litter-filled out-door mall.

suburb to what? where?

San Francisco? LA?

shall we say that only locations with respected names count? that only in these locales does crime arise? big fat NO. almost every female i know has been molested or raped or hit in the face in a place called a suburb.

and then the mothers, the mothers, who say Oh, chin up! it isn't that bad! the mothers, the mothers, who just like the women on Wife-Swap, beat in the Agenda of Beauty, that landing a husband is STILL Priority Number 1, that dressing up in pink and smelling pretty and making sure every inch of skin is hairless and supple and enticing is All Important and will make Jesus love you, that when you rip your unseemly hair out the angel sing.

in Walnut Creek, California, i saw a man walking down the street holding the hand of his tiny daughter. blonde and sweet, maybe only 2 years old, wearing those damn "jogging" pants, rhinestones stretched across her diapered bottom. JUICY on the ass of an infant.

and i am "crazy" for saying THAT is immoral. THAT is unacceptable.

the Trend Chorus sings: oh, you take things way too seriously!

this is the Banality of Evil that Kate Zambreno puts on center stage to pole dance for us.


---


in a strip club, the expectations are on the surface. the tatters of Jesus' robe aren't thrown on top in there. for all the fantasy involved, there is no cloak that covers The Real there. in the strip club, there are no minced words. no minced oaths. no hidden agendas. no hidden contempt. the contempt is on the surface:


"jokes" i heard in the strip club-

what's the best thing about showering with an 18 year old?
with her hair slicked back, she looks 15.

what do you say to a woman with two black eyes?
nothing. you already told her twice.

why would you never buy a woman a watch?
there's a clock on the stove.

how is a woman like dog shit?
the older they are, the easier they are to pick up.


i really can't see any difference between these jokes and the lessons i learned growing up in a somewhat Christian home. one is said crudely, the other has the glitter of the gospel on top. just like the sprinkles on one of Mommy's cupcakes: made with LOVE.


---


you know that Baudrillard essay, the one The Matrix movie is inspired by, the one that says the world we see is false, imagined, made up, a figment of our collective desires, an illusion, an apparition? when i read it in school, i felt really fucking angry about it. i thought:

fuck you, dude! i dreamt up my father's broken neck? i imagined the crack against the floor of that black bottomed pool? i imagined the halo bolted to his skull? and all this on Father's Day when i was a nine year old girl. i imagined the destruction of my family? the complete separation. the division. the splintering. our blood dissolving in the pool. my father's body floating limp. crushed hands holding on at the rim. the gasp for breath. the gasp for forgiveness. the instant wish for time to move backward. just a second. just a second. and all my pain is "made up"? everything i've cried for, struggled against, been tortured by, is a figment of my own imagination? these sidewalks and school yards where i was teased for being Ugly and teased for being Poor and teased for having Divorced Parent aren't real? fuck you! think the dean will buy it if i tell him "hey guess what, the world is imagined therefore my tuition isn't real and i don't have to pay it" ? think my father would be pleased if i came to him and said, "good news, old man! the world is imagined therefore your injury is not real! stand up and walk, Ye Are Healed!"

i took it pretty personally.


---


when i'm painting outside, sometimes a person will come by and ask about whatever it is i'm working on. lately i've been working on a portrait of Elsie Paroubek.

i tell them her name.
i tell them about Henry Darger
and how Elsie was murdered in Chicago
and her killer was never caught.

i tell them and they walk away.

fast.

but not before giving me The Look.

The Look that lets me know painting pictures of little dead girls whose killers were never brought to justice is BAD and WRONG and WEIRD.

and seeing my father come toward you in his wheelchair down an aisle in Wal-Mart makes people feel WEIRD and BAD too. makes people look at the ceiling, look at the floor, look anywhere other than The Display of Pain that is his body. Pain, Injury, Breakage that can't be hidden. his body, a signifier of Loss. his body, a cage.

as a culture, we like our sad stories locked away, glowing inside the rectangle of the television. my father's body, our destroyed family, the Reality of our history makes dominant culture "feel bad"... even our extended family looked away.

and so my dad stopped going out in public.

but shows like Wife-Swap are totally alright and not weird at all- trading one's wife for another, severing her from her children, placing her children in the care of some other psychopath who thinks prostituting the life and well-being of her own family is A-OKAY cuz LOOK HON! I'M ON TV!!!!! YAY ME!!!!


(side-note: i really hope the children who have appeared on this show become writers and artists one day)


and so i look at the TV and i look at the sprawl and i remember the disintegration of my own family, a disintegration that was not scripted or edited or cut for the most effect and i think:

is this real?

is this what we value?

this is what the world is?


it is our collective love of excess and contempt for ideas, for learning, for art, that makes "Real Tragedy" WRONG and WEIRD and BAD. it is our decaying ethics, decaying in service of entertainment, that relegates personal tragedy to the realm of Shame and Secrecy.

we must keep up appearances.


---


the art collector joke goes: you want Van Gogh hanging on your wall, not sitting on your couch.

" ...Mommy is in a way secretly glad that Maggie doesn't call anymore, because all Maggie does is bring up unpleasant things like war and drugs and the painfilled past, and Mommy feels like she wants to wash her brain out afterwards, because Maggie stirs up such unpleasant unnecessary things."

Tragedy offends. it isn't supposed to happen here. not in America. that's stuff for the Third World to deal with. and so Sadness, home-grown, right here in the back-yards of the good ol' U S of A, is hidden. especially when that Sadness sits on the face of the female. throw a tarp over it (powder and gloss) and forget all about that ugly mess (your ethical dilemmas) and let's get back to the BBQ.


sadness puts you Outside.


---


i am Outside.


---


i am Maggie: floundering and stretching and realizing that trusting the hands of the status quo has only done me deep harm. that i have swallowed and swallowed the call for Silence. here are your pills, miss. because still it is ugly for a woman to speak up and it is still ugly for a woman to cry out. it is ugly for a female to express discontent. it is ugly for a female to be anything other than happy. Kathleen Hannah: because no one likes a girl with a red face.


---


i twist away from The Mommy. The Mommy who would so readily go to a casting-call for Wife-Swap. the mommy who would see it as a Divine Call, an opportunity to teach that other BAD MOMMY how to be a GOOD MOMMY just like her. The Mommy who rejects her own child, the daughter, the daughter who is not dutiful (happy). duty laid out like a dress on the bed. The Mommy-Hand that stretches to feed-shove the ideals of middle-class malaise: drive a new car that the neighbors will sigh over, get a mani-pedi, swindle that poor sap in to marriage, shop at Wal-Mart it's good to save money, don't talk back, sit your ass on the couch and swallow swallow swallow! why aren't you smiling? you're so much prettier when you smile!

and so...


---


Our Fallen Angel shows more than just a little leg. she is The Godless Whore, smoking cigarettes and gaining weight anyway, cast in black, disowned by her mother. she can no longer read and no longer think, just like Esther Greenwood. she reaches for the stored up pills, just like Esther Greenwood. she lays down after the big swallow, just like Esther Greenwood. she closes herself, absorbs The Real, falls to the deep red and
lands in a hospital bed. her Mommy is offended. her Mommy thinks how could this have HAPPENED! i am such a GOOD MOTHER! this can't be REAL!


---


Maggie (i) doesn't fit in to the landscape. the sprawl. the concrete boxes with names written on them. the Ruscha pictorials that we call REAL.

this inability to slide seamlessly in to the landscape makes Maggie (me) a "judgmental ingrate". this makes Maggie (me) a "judgmental fuck". this names Maggie (me) HEATHEN. BAD DAUGHTER. GODLESS WHORE.


---


in a car, on the freeway, i gaze at the deep landscape of Forever 21s. i think of the song by Ladytron: they only want you when you're seventeen. when you're 21, you're no fun.

i notice bums outside the Taco Bells. the bums notice all the young girls. i pass the SUVs, Mommies behind the wheel with stickers of their cartoon family pasted to the back window, and remember the footage of all that oil erupting from the pipeline under the sea. under the sea... another song. a Disney reality. Ariel walking on knives just to get the guy. just to get the perfect wedding. just to get the Happily Ever After. i notice all the young girls too- smiling bright and pretty in all that pink, walking on knives between Edwards Cinemas and RV storage parks just to get the guys.

and...

the mother bought her daughter a boob job as a wedding present.

self-esteem with which to go to the alter, the union, the promise, the covenant.

big titties with which to kneel at the feet of Christ.

big titties to carry with you in to the role of Good Wife.


---



in a car, on the freeway, i notice the sprawl. i look at the landscape and think of Maggie, think of Mommy, watch the spectacle unfold unnoticed, and the Baudrillard essay begins to make sense.


---


Maggie twists in her sheets, alone, because she can't figure out how to make herself fall in line. she can't figure out how to put on the flowered dress and like it, she doesn't know how to be the pretty pink daughter her Mommy always wanted.

the unhappy daughter is Contrary.

a Girls Gone Wild commercial frolics in the background as we bow our heads at the table and pray to Jesus to bless the hands that prepared this meal.


---


i see how often i have kept myself silent.

and Why.