Read yesterday’s to follow today’s…
FROM BLAKE:
Attn. Daedalus (if that indeed is your real name) —
Poor sir, you’re a fool. This search for yourself in the eyes of women is dull and ordinary. Moreover, the identity motif in your slipshod reportage is not only trite but telling. No wonder you haven’t made any satisfactory gains on your unified field theory of women — you haven’t met any ? just these fantastic projections of your own neurotic notions onto the local talent. Borrrring. Need I refer you to Jung’s take on the anima once more?
[Women who are of “fairy-like” character especially attract such anima projections, because men can attribute almost anything to a creature who is so fascinatingly vague?]
Don’t you remember the time you were in the bookstore with Rocky Brava, your ex-girlfriend? You should have learned then. Look how that ended up?
In the motion picture version of your life, it would go something like this:
INT. OZMA’S USED BOOKS ? DAY.
(Daedalus and Rocky Brava, an alluring woman whose Latin looks seem refracted through the prism of Japanese animation, peruse the shelves.)
Daedalus: The old books mixed with the new. Bookstores like this have no respect for the linear nature of time. It’s meaningless here — only the arbitrary order of the alphabet, which is itself completely arbitrary. I mean alpha, omega, A to Z. Who’s to say? And even still that system is fallible. (replaces a mislaid title) What’s DeVore doing among the Munroes? And no Howell, of course. Tell ya, bookstores can be like a hall of mirrors for us bottom list writers — you can see everyone else but never yourself.
Rocky: (sighs) Dae, remember in the seventies ?
Daedalus: I’m a child of the seventies — I was swaddled in Christo’s Running Fence. Vote for Anderson?
Rocky: Remember the drought of seventy-seven?
Daedalus: If it’s yellow let it mellow; if it’s brown flush it down. Blah, blah. Why?
Rocky: We’ve reached the flush it down part of our relationship. It’s gotten too complicated. For what it was supposed to be.
Daedalus: What was that?
Rocky: Brief. Fuck, I don’t know. Maybe we just need some space — some time apart.
Daedalus: No more nights and weekends.
Rocky: Dae, this is a relationship, not a calling plan.
(Rocky’s phone rings. She fishes it out of her bag and answers while strolling off. Daedalus, lost in his own thoughts, bumps into an ATTRACTIVE WOMAN who is of fairy-like character and fascinatingly vague.)
Daedalus: I’m sorry, excuse me.
Anima: Daedalus Howell?
Daedalus: Er, yes?
Anima: Omigod! I read The Late Projectionist! Brilliant! I think your writing is just ? just meow.
Daedalus: Meow? No one has ever meowed at my work before. Or even read it for that matter.
Anima: I think you’re meow too.
Daedalus: What, should I pet you or something? (catches himself) I’m sorry, I’m being cavalier.
Anima: You can pet me. I like cavalier. I even like narcissistic.
Daedalus: Really? ‘Cause, you know, I have a lot of self-love to give.
Anima: Mmm, I bet.
Daedalus: (having painted himself into a corner) Okay, now I have to go.
Anima: No you don’t.
Daedalus: Yes, I do. You’re precisely the kind of woman I fall in love with — immediately — unfortunately, “immediately” wouldn’t give my girlfriend enough time to convince herself it was her idea.
(Daedalus begins to retreat.)
Anima: Wait! Don’t go. I’m ? I’m your anima. According to Carl Jung, I’m the female archetype within your unconscious.
Daedalus: (reconsidering) I thought you looked familiar.
Anima: I’m a projection of your inner, feminine side.
Daedalus: You’re definitely my good side.
(She wraps her arms around Daedalus and smooches him.)
Anima: Listen, let’s ditch your girlfriend, go home and get it on. I’m your ideal woman — not her. This is you’re ultimate fantasy.
Daedalus: You’re right. And it wouldn’t really be cheating, would it?
(Rocky returns, shocked.)
Rocky: Dae! What the fuck?
Daedalus: It’s not what it seems. She’s my anima, my inner female.
Rocky: You’re kissing her.
Daedalus: I know, but it’s alright, you see, she’s just a projection of an aspect of myself.
Anima: He’s hyper-critical of himself so he projects his longing for self-satisfaction on women, which he over over-idealizes in inverse proportion to his innermost anxieties .
Daedalus: (to Rocky) What she said.
Rocky: You may over-idealize me, but you’re kissing her.
Daedalus: I know, it looks bad, but this is really just an elaborate form of masturbation.
(Anima nods. Rocky is disgusted.)
Rocky: Then go fuck yourself!
* * *
As I was saying, the agenda of the unconscious in instigating this sort of entanglement is to oblige the man to mature by assimilating more of his unconscious personality into his real life. Sadly, your at a loss here, pal — your personality is lacking and you clearly don’t have a life.
See you at The Arch (you owe me. fucker).
As ever,
Blake Drake / Drake Blake
Assistant Managing Editor
Lumaville Daily Echo
