Anna’s Adventures

I am sending back the key that let me into Bluebeard’s study.
Because he would make love to me
I am sending back the key
In his eye’s darkroom I can see
My X-rayed heart; dissected body
I am sending back the key that let me into Bluebeard’s study.

- Sylvia Plath

Yes, I am sending back the key.

When she was a virgin, the girl’s brothers went away to war. Her father was a cruel man, emotionally cold: needing warmth but untouched by the brightest lights. After he died, there was noone to guide the girl in choosing a mate.

When Bluebeard came a-courting, her older sisters were wary. He was odd-looking (the girl found him interesting); he was eccentric (she found him charming); he was rumoured to have married before and murdered his wives (the girl thought there must be a rational explanation).

So, she married him (and her sisters we relieved it wasn’t their duty to marry this monstor). He took her to his castle, through the fog, across the moat and gave her the keys to every room. She was mistress now. Though he asked her to never, ever, go into his study.

Of course she respected this privacy. What maleficence could possibly go on inside this man’s private space? When he went away on business, and her sisters came to stay they taunted her about her right as mistress to enter each room. What had he to hide?

So she creeps up to the room, peers through the keyhole, breathes in and takes out her key. On openning the room, she sees the glorious horror of Bluebeard’s previous wives; executed, tortured, mutilated and adorning the room. She imagines herself punished with the same fate for her curiosity and mistrust, and is so shocked that she drops the key.

Though it is a small key, simple and brass, she can’t remove the blood staining it. She scrubs it with sand. She buries it to purify it under the moon. She hides it, but the blood soaks through, staining her hands, clothes, and betraying her loss of innocence.

Her betrayal, the knowledge gained, changes her. When Bluebeard returns, she is afraid of him instead of fascinated. She flees as he pursues her up each flight of stairs in the castle, until she locks herself into a room and he pounds on the door with a sword.

Miraculously, her two brothers return from the war and murder Bluebeard and the girl inherits every treasure of the castle.

The secrets of a cold man no longer interest me. The mystique of cruelty and aloofness can’t compare to the pleasure of my own imagination, my own company and my freedom to love. Not to possess sexually, but to love openly, unreservedly without shame or fear of falling, without recourse to safety nets and artificial devices of the heart.

The brothers who rescue me are the males in my head and my heart. When I am a wife, these brothers remain dormant. When I am a daughter to my mother, these brothers are absent. When I am a lover, I forget them. But when I call them by name, they will come because they are my brothers.

Printmaker extraordinaire!

Stich N Bitch

Originally uploaded by AnnaAniston

Ali and Kate sitting and knitting together at the last NewQ Stich N Bitch. Every second Tuesday @ NewQ (22 Enmore Rd, Newtown). 6pm til Laaaaaaaaate.

Lovely picture here

dsc00006

Originally uploaded by AnnaAniston

Oh no!

Laurie Anderson is coming to Australia. Why oh why? Now I need to choose: do I love her enough to go, or do I hate her enough not to? How can I choose?

I really love some of her music. But I really hate some of her simplistic politics. Sometimes her analysis annoys me. Most of her analysis annoys me. Grrrrr.

Famous Blue Raincoat

It’s four in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better
New York is cold, but I like where I’m living
There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.I hear that you’re building your little house deep in the desert
You’re living for nothing now, I hope you’re keeping some kind of record.

Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?

Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You’d been to the station to meet every train
And you came home without Lili Marlene

And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody’s wife.

Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane’s awake –

She sends her regards.

And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I’m glad you stood in my way.

If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.

Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear –

Sincerely, L. Cohen

Rubber whip

Originally uploaded by AnnaAniston

That was what the dream was meant to tell Tomas, what Tereza was unable to tell him herself. She had come to him to escape her mother’s world, a world where all bodies were equal. She had come to him to make her body unique, irreplaceable. But he, too, had drawn an equal sign between her and the rest of them: he kissed them all alike, stroked them alike, made no, absolutely no, distinction between Tereza’s body and other bodies. Her had sent her back into the world she tried to escpae, sent her to march naked with the other women.

– Milan Kundera, Unbrearable Lightness of Being

Tereza has this dream that Tomas doesn’t understand. A mere fuck isn’t a betrayal. But that line drawn between her and all the others is. He calls her attention to her sameness, her lack of originality; but in causing her to suffer it, treats her differently to all the rest.

She is not the same, yet suffers as though she is.