THAT DAY

Watch a movie--a Despicable Me sequel. Gru's neighbors and adopted kids try to find him dates; he avoids them and goes spying at the mall instead. Spying, he's comfortable with. A pointy-nosed girl starts working with him. She's got a plain face, he's deeply ugly... interesting just how hardwired I am! I find their caricatured faces ugly, so it's impossible they could ever develop any chemistry. Apparently even highly stylized cartoon characters have to share my exact tastes! Sheesh.

Then I reread Alison Bechdel's ARE YOU MY MOTHER? This time I'm struck by Winnicott's idea of "compromise formation", when two sides of you want conflicting things and those pressures clash, generating an outcome neither really wants--unacceptable urge + repression = anxiety, or pointless compulsion, or illness. I've sure experienced this. But it doesn't prove my health problems are psychosomatic! Still, the less energy locked in such chronic combats the better for my general health.

So I ask my dreams "Please show me any compromise formations that are causing me trouble... and how to deal with them."

THAT NIGHT

I'm on a crowded street in northern San Francisco. A flatbed election-truck comes by. A ridiculously Barbie-ish woman on it rants through a microphone. "We need two things here in San Francisco to become the best society--one is kindness and courtesy, the other is..." as she's turning the corner and disappears "...ACK!"

We need ack?

Oh. Word filters round the corner... "Barbie had a heart attack or stroke. She died on the platform."

Instantly I see that silly though Barbie was in life, her death has left us a weird legacy. I call out:

"Barbie died to help us! She is a SAINT. We can invoke her and do miracles in her name. Saint Barbie! When you need someone to give you some slack, you can invoke her and all San Franciscans are obliged to calm down & give good manners a try! Even gangstas with guns out will pause when they hear the invocation:

And it'll work. Rituals do. If you invent them. And inventing rituals that change us isn't hard. The trick is inventing ones that change us usefully.

This one does.

NOTES

• Invoking our better selves:
  1. An article in Atlantic magazine claimed "Science has proved we lack free will, but we need to lie to Great Unwashed about that, since they behave worse if they think they can't be blamed." Idiotic premise--what's a mind but a self-shaping entity DESIGNED to do the unpredictable if the predictable gets you shit? I'm not claiming we're rational; just willful.
  2. That "Despicable Me" sequel--Gru trying to be good but feeling kinda strangled by Barbie-ism.
• Barbie:
  1. Gru's new spy-partner, with a Barbie body but an un-Barbie pointy-nosed face.
  2. My friend Lori, a doll collector, said she has some spare Barbies for me to sculpt with.
• SHORT-TERM ACTION: Try it! Say it aloud where others can hear: "In the name of Saint Barbie!" Because we need this meme.
• LONG-TERM ACTION: to speed change in my life and encourage me in crises, try invoking not just Saint Barbie but other made-up figures--the Goddess of Dating, Emperor Norton I, Twilight Sparkle the Princess of Friendship. Because puritanical monotheists are just plain wrong--graven idols work! What you're really invoking isn't a false god at all: it's you. An image of your better self. That's how free will works. Picture something better! Or... someone.

Bumper sticker: What Would Twilight Sparkle Do?

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