jester – Page 2 – Deborah Makarios

August 28, 2015

Dr. Jeeves and Mr. Hyde Wooster

We are all, to some extent, Jekyll and Hyde. I don’t mean to suggest that we all make & take potions and turn into insane murderers (I feel sure I would have noticed), but we all have different sides to our selves. Not good vs evil necessarily, but, say, left-brain vs. right-brain.

The writing teacher Dorothea Brande suggests that in order to make the best use of these different elements of ourselves – she is speaking of the creative and critical functions – it is best to consider and develop them separately.

“By isolating as far as possible the functions of these two sides of the mind, even by considering them not merely as aspects of the same mind but as separate personalities, we can arrive at a kind of working metaphor, impossible to confuse with reality, but infinitely helpful in self-education.”

To arrive at the working metaphor: that was my goal. As I have mentioned before, there are few things I enjoy more than a really good metaphor.
Left brain / right brain, however, isn’t much of a metaphor, and it’s hard to visualize for someone who has never seen her brain (and doesn’t much want to).

The next classic metaphor is the “inner child” – which didn’t really work for me. While my creative side is frequently childlike, it isn’t like a child – and my “adult” self is frequently less than adult!

The thing is, in order to make the best use of the two sides, they need to work together; there needs to be a kind of equality between them. Adult/child is not a relationship of equality.

Yes, the creative side needs to submit to the ordered side’s discipline, or nothing would ever be achieved; but the ordered side’s authority is exercised solely to create the best conditions for the creative side. (Or at least it should be.)

I started considering relationships where this is the case.

The Governess, I decided, was an excellent metaphor for the ordered side: she governs, she educates, she assesses, she provides encouragement and rebuke as necessary, and she wields her authority for the good of her charge.

The only downside is that governesses do all this for children, and my inner self, etc etc. I suppose it is possible to have a governess for a lunatic (seems like something Chesterton would write) but I’m not sure that I’m that far gone.

Then I had a brain-wave: Jeeves and Wooster. Bertram Wilberforce Wooster is the immature undisciplined creative all-over-the-place person par excellence, and Jeeves’ whole raison d’être is to provide for his every need (if not want) and keep him out of prison, matrimony, and unsuitable apparel.

As mentally satisfying as that metaphor was, it still wasn’t quite ‘me’. My ordered side is more a Miss Silver than a Jeeves, and I’d like to think my creative side is less clueless than a Wooster. The Great Metaphor Hunt went on.

Eventually I realized that the metaphors for the two sides don’t have to ‘belong’ together, as satisfying as it would be if they did. I could pair the Governess metaphor with a non-child metaphor. But what?

The creative side really was much harder to pin down, which is fitting, I suppose. After some thought, I settled on the Jester – one of those simple souls who capers about singing songs of joy or sorrow and saying the sorts of things that reasonable people get their heads chopped off for. This is the side of me that laughs at toilet humour and howls at the moon. (I think it is best for everybody if I don’t sing.)

Interestingly, I’ve noticed a difference in what I like to wear, depending on which aspect is in the ascendant, or in use, whichever way you like to look at it.
The Governess side of me likes to wear 1930s style clothes: tailored, smart and tidy. The Jester, on the other hand, has a more medieval aesthetic: flowing garments one can move freely in, preferably topped with a funny hat of some sort (with or without bells).

Perhaps I can use that as a way to toggle the two sides. The Governess makes the plans for the day’s work, and then on go the ancestral dressing-gown and the funny hat, and the Jester comes out to play. When it comes time to review and edit, off with the funny hat.

Do you have recognized sides to your self? Do you have metaphors for them? I’d love to know!

July 24, 2015

Unashamedly Weird

I am weird and I admit it.
Fortunately I have friends who don’t object to my weirdness.

The weirdest thing I’ve ever done – and my nearest and dearest may wish to contest this, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind – is to attend a party wearing a jester’s hat (red and yellow motley, with bells on) and while there, embark on a fly-killing spree.

Yes, I am the Death of Flies (also Ants, Fleas, and Other Parasitical Insects).

I make up for the Caped Gooseberry’s extreme pacifism by wreaking wholesale slaughter on the pestilential creatures whenever they cross my path.
The party in question was held at a house that seems to be regarded by flies as the paradise of paradises: warm, airy, and with lots of high ceilings where people can’t get at you with fly swats.

Over the course of the evening, with the assistance of a rolled-up newspaper, I managed to kill over a hundred flies. And how did my friends react? Being, as they are, such excellent and eccentric-friendly people, they pointed out the flies I had missed (or rather, hadn’t seen yet) – particularly if conveniently resting on someone else – and raised a ragged cheer when I hit the century.

There are two lessons to be drawn from this:
1) why hide your weirdness? if you aren’t the kind of person who likes to make small talk with strangers at a party, do something else to make it a memorable evening.
2) choose your friends carefully. Friends who accept you as you are are worth their weight in gold.

March 8, 2014

The Eccentric Ethic & Æsthetic

My name is Deborah Makarios.

I’ve been blogging for the last 14 months as Sinistra Inksteyne, but eventually (dawn breaks over Marblehead, New Zealand) I realised there was little point in building an online reputation for an alter ego whose name does not appear on any other work. So Sinistra Inksteyne will have to content herself with being a URL from now on.

As Francis Bacon observed, great changes are easier than small ones, so I didn’t stop with the name. This new picture isn’t me, but it might as well be (I’m working on developing the smiley wrinkles):

As I’ve mentioned before, this blog started as a way of keeping me accountable for my procrastination, but it no longer serves that purpose. Because I am now a perfect paragon of proactivity and – ha, no, sorry, couldn’t keep a straight face. But I’m not as bad as I used to be, not by a long shot, and there’s only so much talking about it that can be done before people stop procrastinating and get right on to clubbing you over the head with a thesaurus to make you shut up.

So I thought about what I wanted to do with this blog, and I decided that I just wanted to be myself – that is, to champion the cause of weirdness, oddity and eccentricity. I believe that people are individually created by God, which means that there is no standard-issue to vary from. To put it another way, ‘normal’ is not a Christian concept.
I have a sneaking suspicion that an awful lot of apparent ‘normality’ is due to peer pressure. People feel they have to fit one of a limited selection of moulds or they will be ostracized – and they may be right about this. But is it worth the price you pay?

It is a sad fact of human nature that if we are surrounded by one worldview, it requires a lot of effort to not succumb to it. As the letter to the Romans says, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould.” (Now there’s a nauseating thought.) But resistance is hard. It is less hard when there are more of you. Enter the internet.

I am weird. I freely admit it. I am odd. I have never been and never will be cool. And I’m fine with that. If that’s the price I have to pay for not having to chop off the bits of me that don’t fit (like some Ugly Stepsister of the soul) then please, put it on my tab.

And so I give you (fanfare please…)

(…thank you)
the Eccentric Ethic & Æsthetic!

Eccentric: The Oxford Dictionaries’ definition includes the phrase “unconventional and slightly strange” for both adjective and noun.
If my picture doesn’t appear in the dictionary under the word ‘eccentric’ by the time I die, I shall have Unconventional and slightly strange graved (hur hur) on my tombstone. The oddity is partly, in my case, the result of being raised in a mixture of cultures, but one can only blame one’s upbringing for so much.

Ethic: One of my main reasons for not following the mainstream is because I follow Christ, and the two diverge widely. So truth is important to me. (Truth is my middle name – really…) Justice is important. Sustainability is important. Compassion, creativity and joy are important. Conformity – not important.

Æsthetic: Clothing sends a message. In my case, that message is “unconventional and slightly strange”. I find it lowers expectations that having the physical characteristics of the majority ethnic group means I have the same culture and value system. My personal appearance signposts my differentness – an early warning system, if you like. And it’s more fun wearing whatever I like anyway. I wish everyone felt freer to wear what best expresses who they are inside. Visual identity is a fascinating thing.

To sum up: this is a place for me to have fun being my eccentric self, and a place where others will hopefully feel encouraged to be their eccentric selves – particularly if they share some of the same eccentricities. As CS Lewis wrote: “Friendship is born at that moment when one man [/woman/small furry creature from Alpha Centauri] says to another: “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself…””