Shape Shifters

The summer I was nineteen, I made what I refer to as my pilgrimage to Mecca. My family had moved to England as Dad's job had sent him to Surrey. I opted to stay behind to finish high school in the states. But once May came, I flew across the pond to rejoin my family. I had no intention of letting what might possibly be my one opportunity to see the real Strawberry Fields pass me by. Especially when you consider that the island of Great Britain is smaller than most American states.

Liverpool was instantly more congenial than Surrey. With a few extremely friendly exchanges, I quickly made a few friends and found my way to Beaconsfield Road (or Lane, I don't remember now) There, nestled in ivy covered stone walls sat a small square brick nursery school/kindergarten building with equally boxy windows. Children between the ages of three to five years of age ran about with abandon, laughing gleefully. Behind the school, about ten feet from the nearest classroom window, there was a small dogwood tree, the perfect sort for a toddler to learn how to climb trees on. "Let me take you down" echoed in my ears as I imagined a small John Lennon helping a schoolmate out of this blossoming plaything. Suddenly, the song made complete sense to me.

But something was out of place: an eyesore. As I walked back around to the front of the school, back up onto the driveway, I took a better look at the statue of John Lennon that had been placed there. It had been posed in such a way as to make him look like a cross between Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, and Superman holding the American flag on the north pole. (circa the sixties tv show) This was the product John Lennon, not the man.

I stared at this bronzed misrepresentation of the man who taught me the Aristotelian art of catharsis through writing with his deceptively simple displays of exquisitely human pain such as "Crippled Inside", "A day in the life", and "Mother".

He stood, legs apart, clad only in tight jeans, boots, and an open leather jacket. His abs and chest looked like he'd been working out on a six day split with a personal trainer for at least a year. I know of no Qi Gong exercises or macrobiotic recipe capable of that. His hair was perfectly feathered, almost mocking the fact that Yoko always cut his hair. The most nauseating detail was the fact that this icon, MY icon's nipples were bronzed. Picture Allen Ginsburg's nipples bronzed
or Bob Dylan's nipples bronzed. Who among us really wants to see those who's intellects we admire quite so revealed? Not me.

As I look back now on that moment spent amidst a throng of Asian photo snapping tourists, I hear another Lennon's lyrics defining that moment for me in my head. "Not was he was but what he should have been" is a line from the Julian Lennon song, "Rebel King."

There in lies the essence of shape shifting: we are all simultaneously our authentic selves, and the self we hope we are projecting out to the world. It is thought that a healthy person might be solely their authentic self at all times. But is that necessarily what is best for us? Isn't shifting our display of who we are to suit a certain perspective necessary at times?

When I first started dancing, I didn't see the point of picking a stage name. I like my first name so why not just be myself? A few weeks later as I was wrestling with the notion of the champagne hustle, I introduced myself to a man who worked for First Boston bank.

"My project manager has a daughter named Gabriella. His name is Paul Clark. What's your last name?" Without having any idea what a boundary was, I immediately felt one was crossed, and excused myself to go come up with a stage name I could live with.

In that moment, I saw the benefit of shape shifting; disguising myself as something other than Paul Clark's daughter so as to achieve some sense of individuality that would not adversely effect my dad's reputation. As I evolved as a dancer and became a traveling feature, I truly saw the difference between the woman as consumable product and the lonely girl who isolated herself in her hotel room. Kayleigh was who they wanted and who I gave them. Gabriella belonged to no one but me ... or at least that was how it was supposed to go down. The dancing world does not play fair, so there was much reparation to be done each time I quit.

The year I started dancing, I also began looking for more information on what it means to be Strega. There wasn't alot of specifically Italian information. There still isn't much compared to how much info is available on Celtic Wicca.

I found a class on Witchcraft at the Arsenic & Old Lace book store in Cambridge. There was a class that was meant to teach us how to make clouds disappear and grass grow. I skipped that class on purpose. My inner Connecticut Yankee cynic just wasn't ready for allegory yet. But as I grew as a witch, I did eventually begin to see the benefit of perspective on how we view every aspect of our lives. It isn't that the cloud disappears, it's that it has shifted, thus our perspective of what is directly before us changes. So shape shifting is all a matter of perspective.

There are all sorts of folktales about Vampires and Werewolves and Shape shifters. Our teacher, Andres Corben Arthen swore to us that these creatures are all very real. How queer, I thought at the time. I was so puzzled by how these things could exist, but they do. It's just a matter of perspective.

My sister has coined the term N-SSEV in describing DJ, my ex-husband. N-SSEV stand for Narcissistic Soul Sucking Energy Vampire. My sister is not only brilliant, she's completely on target. I think we can all agree that we've each dated, if not married one of these, at least once in our lives. They come in male and female form. As do Werewolves, ravagers of unsuspecting victims in the night. We see them in the newspaper the next morning charged with rape or another type of assault.

But who are the shape shifters? The Gospel According to Aradia recalls a spell in which a young woman transforms herself into a dog so as to get past the watchful eyes of her parents and seek out her secret lover. Who are the young girls becoming dogs and slipping out bedroom windows? It's all a matter of perspective. She's slinking out of the house stealthfully, in the same manner a pointer might stalk a hare. Toe,heel, toe heel ... carefully not allowing a single floor board to creek. Listening for stirring parents, smelling the air for any sudden changes such as Dad shifting his seat to light up a cigar. She's shape shifting into a dog via stealth. Allegory, folks. Nothing is literal here. But it's all done out of necessity. We shape shift into the perfect obedient daughters to get what we want. We then shape shift into the seductresses our lovers long for when Mom, Dad, the Church, and society, are not looking.

Celebrities or those who are sought out as something they are not, such as strippers, are shape shifters when they turn on that part of themselves that is the product for the stage and for the cameras. They enforce their boundaries when they step off stage and the cameras are off and they retreat back to their personal lives. This doesn't always go as planned. If you're not aware of how necessary this is and don't consciously make the transition, your personal life can pay the price for you being consumed as a product. Once you've been consumed, it's hell trying to reconstruct yourself. In re-piecing myself back together, I often thought about my greatest literary influence and whether he was aware of the art of shape shifting.

"Not what he was but what he should have been"

Mmm ... maybe not.

Shape shifting may not be what others call it, but we all do it to some degree. We put on more palatable versions of ourselves to get along with co-workers we may not see eye to eye with. We definitely do it say, at a bar, during election season. (if we know what's good for us)

There is magic about all around us if that is how we choose to view our surroundings. Being dyslexic, listening to my literary influences was a hell of a lot easier than reading them when I was younger. People like John Lennon showed me by their example what was possible. So I started to write.

People like Julian Lennon, who's writing style is cryptic and nothing at all like my own, taught me what artistic enforcement of personal boundaries looks like. So I took the lessons and sat with them. I looked at how I could take from them a sense of personal reserve that worked for me.

In Jungian dream analysis, the most repeated answer to many of my questions was the following: "Can you sit with this feeling? Can you sit with it and face it? Because if you face it, your perspective on it will shift and in a few days, this feeling will look like something else entirely."

I may have skipped out on making clouds disappear, but I didn't miss out on the objective of the lesson. Real magic is all about perspective. Only you have the power to alter what that perspective ultimately looks like.

I heard a rumor that Strawberry Fields might have to close. If the statue goes, that's fine with me. But if the children aren't there everyday laughing and playing ... what will passers by take away from what they see when they look at the sight of the song's inspiration? They'll see the ultimate meaning of the song's lyrics: the death of innocence. Or maybe what they see will be determined by their personal perspectives. Maybe Strawberry Fields will have shape shifted into something else entirely. Something cryptic and safe ... innocent.