Sunday, March 14, 2010

Freak Flag

"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go. Things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right. You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together." - Marilyn Monroe


So today I finished reading As I Lay Dying while I waited for my summer intensive audition to happen and as I finished the book I thought of a quote by Marilyn Monroe. The book I can proudly say was easy to finish. I think for the most part I understood what happened. Well, I understood as much as humanly possible considering it’s still the worse written book I’ve ever read. I mean my mind goes in ridiculous directions but for the most part it’s still pretty coherent. Yet, back to the quote. As I read the last sentence of the book it reminded me of the preceding quote by Marilyn Monroe. Addie’s death is very potentially a good thing falling apart so a better thing could fall together. I mean in all honesty Addie was not a nice person which is very apparent from the chapter that was written from her point of view. I mean any woman who longs to beat children doesn’t scream Mother Teresa to me. So her death while it lead to a series of unfortunate events definitely wasn’t the end of the world. Like Anse got his teeth which I think is very important, I mean dental hygiene matters. Also Anse got a new wife! Yay for Anse, well at least I think he got a new wife he did say, “Meet Mrs. Bundren.” (pg. 261) If that doesn’t imply a new wife then I am a total moron who doesn’t know how to read. Which in the case of this book is very possible. Yet, Addie’s death wasn’t just good for Anse I mean it was good for the preacher too. He got to move on with his life and forgive himself for his sins because Addie died. For some people that might not seem like a lot but it takes a lot of courage to understand your faults and choose to love yourself anyway. From what I’ve seen there are very few people who can do that and even if it takes the falling a part of one thing for someone else to find peace then it couldn’t really have been for the worse. It’s like Marilyn Monroe was saying, “Everything happens for a reason.”

As I read I also started to think about insanity. I know that we were writing about it on Thursday but I didn’t really think about it until I read pg. 238 when Cash says,

“It’s like there was a fellow in every man that’s done a-past the sanity

or the insanity, that watches the sane and the insane doings of that

man with the same horror and the same astonishment.”

Insanity is such a weird thing, I mean because really deep down inside of ourselves all of us have a freak flag were just dying to run around waving. It reminds me of the hairy man with the Golden Ball from Robert Bly’s writings and Sigmund Freud’s concepts of the superego and the ego. In any society were doomed simply because if were normal and proper and socially acceptable we’re silently suffocating our inner wild man. Yet, if we let our freak flag wave and we act like a hot mess then we’re very loudly killing any respect that people might hold for us. It’s a no win situation, a moot point because either way some part of us will go insane. Either the part of us that longs to be freed from the cage or the part of us that’s just dying for a bit of normalcy.

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