Tag Archives: puppet battle

Occupy the Writeamatrix: A failed movement, for the moment

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So, after making it through the sandstorm-poop-a-thon writeamatrix beat down walk on the beach this morning now that the writeamatrix is back from vacation, I made it through the day of legitimate meetings with our contractor and CAD expert – mapping out our future home, but not without hearing the occasional whip-crack on the floor behind me.

SHE, meaning the writeamatrix, my academic writing whipcracker, did NOT want me to forget her presence – and the need to get things done. The wind on the roof, the sand in the front yard and the waves crashing across the street all added to her fury – or were they as a result of her fury?

In times like these, M. always tells me that I need to take a more eastern approach to life – relax more, live life, not worry so much.  “Easy for him to think,” I often mutter under my breath, “he’s a Bohemian with a capital B and an artist and has always marched to a different drummer.  I am trying to prove that I can have a career even if I started late and had a somewhat misspent youth that I have to make up for.”

As I closed the door on our contractor and CAD lady, the dog was literally dancing, as if to say “please, please, please take me for a walk, it loosk SO fun out there!” and in case I didn’t get it, the puppets also began an advocacy campaign akin to their Occupy movement a few months ago when they wanted some new music and got me to buy the discovered Ottoman records CD.

Today, however, it was about Occupying the Writeamatrix. “We are the 99% of you, and we want the writeamatrix out! They say banks got bailed out – we got sold out? You know? Well in this case, you bailed the tenure out, are we going to get sold out? You know, the 99% of you – and, DUH, M.? What about him? Please, m’lady, please,” they cried, “please just take the damn dog for a walk at the beach! It will be good for  you both – she’ll get over it if you don’t get RIGHT to work on your academic writing.”

The sparkles that almost captivated me away from the Writeamatrix at the Provincetown beach today

Feeling the pull, I quickly slipped out to the door.  When we reached the beach across the street, the waves were furious, white-capped and frothy in their fervor, my dog wanted none of it.  The air was invigorating – wild and wooly and wet and free and I felt as great as the sparkles all around me.

But the dog pulled me away, afraid of the mayhem.  Determined to give him a good time, I hopped into the car to take him to the Ocean side of the town – Herring Cove Beach – but the writeamatrix caught up with me there – projected through the droplets of sunlight on the seawater – but projected to larger than life, riding Poseidon‘s wave-horses onto the beach – splashing all over the cars watching the mayhem.  It wasn’t long before I got the heck out of there and back home, to work, on…….the……….article…….and……..the……….syllabus.

Esma, the tiny hippie puppet, still exuding ginger flowers and sharp birds-of-paradise flowers in her anger at the hegemony that is the Writeamatrix, with whom she is in an epic battle, just spent the evening sitting across from me, shooting her flower darts my way, saying “why are you 3 hours away from your husband on a Friday night? Why don’t you let it go a bit, let it step down, let your life come back in now that you have tenure? I don’t care if there is a windstorm, we are the 99% of you, and we miss M.  You need to go home first thing in the morning!”  Nodding, I decided to redouble my efforts to at least finish the syllabus tonight, and then go home for the weekend – just with M.

“Don’t forget, m’lady,” Hacivad Bey reminded me late into the night, “we are the 99% and while we may have lost this battle, we ARE going to win the war.”

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The Writematrix Makes Her Presence Known (even Karagöz is cowering)

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The Writeamatrix returned on a dark and stormy night - in an old fashioned ship - and she is pissed! (Image thanks to this link)

It’s about 3 a.m., the wind is blowing fiercely outside.  I can hear the ocean from here – even though it is across the street.  The waves are crashing on the sea wall.  It is a comforting moment to feel the warmth of my bed, the wind railing over the head – and most importantly – on the other side of the roof.   I feel the warmth of my dog on my feet and remember that I am visiting Provincetown on Cape Cod without M. to do some business later today.  I feel relaxed, as, after all, I have made it through my tenure hearing.  And then I remember all of the work that I have to do to get ready for the semester.  And then I hear the crash.  It makes my heart lurch in that “is this finally a heart attack” kind of way…

The dog jumps up off of my feet and starts to bark.

Karagöz is fomenting riot.

Yehuda Rebbe is trying to get his yarmulke on straight in case we have to evacuate.

Hacivad Bey is remaining calm, but looking around furtively

Esma is trying to calm the chorus of dancing lady puppets who are tumbling out of the purse.

Kenne the Queen of manners and maintained order is reading the evacuation plan out loud to no avail – she is calling for the ladies to don their robe-du-chambres so that they will be able to maintain their honor in the middle of the night.

Zenne the nervous nellie is literally a bowl of jelly.

Mercan Bey is gathering up his spice stash so that he does not lose his livelihood.

Generally, the entire troupe of puppets are in a jumble – screaming and pushing eachother to get out of the house (they think it is another earthquake – even though they are far from Turkey these days, they are still connected by a spirit thread to their homeland, and feel the pain of winter in Van this year after the earthquake).

Bebe Ruhi is strangely quiet, this usual questionner, but soon he poses a question – “do you think SOMEBODY caused that crash to get our attention?”

And I stop and think, as my brain catches up with my adrenalin in the deep dark night light and soon they, and I, and the dog, realize that this is not an earthquake, and it is not a crash from the wind in the attic – it is – well – it is SHE.

Who is SHE you may ask?

Here is my writeamatrix - she looks an awful lot like The Corporate Dominatrix, who you can read about here - note she is carrying a briefcase (image thanks to The Corporate Dominatrix at this link)

SHE is the writeamatrix – the intoxicating academic whipcracker who has been on vacation in the Tierra del Fuego conducting research about the hardships of Magellan’s voyage and how these might be applied to torturing me into producing more scholarship.

She has entered the house through the kitchen vent in the roof.  I later learn that she blew in from Provincetown harbor and directly into the attic – using her magically strong whip to push the removable panel in the closet onto the floor, thus the crash.

And then the whip began cracking on the floor, and cracking, and cracking louder and louder until she worked her tiny self through the closet, into the living room and up into my bed.

“Hacıyatmaz, you had better get your roly-poly self out of the way.  I don’t want to hear one squeak from you.  Enough of this ‘creative writing’ crap that you encourage m’lady to engage in.  From here on out you are not m’lady anymore, you are slackerific to me, nameless and worthless.  As I have just returned from vacation, I will have mercy on your slackerific self.  You may sleep until sunrise, at 7:03 a.m.  You may then get up and walk the dog – return and make a to-do list.  You will eat breakfast and make your work with your contractor and CAD designing as fast as possible.  I will not tolerate long, dawdles on this front.  There will be no beach visit with the dog in the afternoon.  You will go STRAIGHT to work.  You will not go home until you have produced the final syllabus for Spring 2012 and finished that manuscript on suicidal foster youth (so much for M.’s hope that I might move towards “happiness studies” in the posts-tenure phase).  Got it?  I want to hear nothing more about Rumi and writing and likening that to tripe-washing.”  She glowed in the dark in a creepy way – she is, you see, made out of glow-in-the-dark dominoes, representing something about the quantitative data analysis I do as part of my academic work (e.g. numbers).  Her weird domino skin is akin to the artwork of David Machs (see this link)

A dominatrix made of dominoes - the writeamatrix's skin looks like this, by the artist David Machs (see this link for image attribution)

Meekly, I mustered a “yes, miss, I mean, Miss Writeamatrix, I will do it.”  My heart raced until my dog came and curled up next to me, making an M. replacement, and eventually his warmth lulled me back to sleep, until 7:02 a.m. when the little chorus of dancing ladies made a chain from the kitchen to the bedroom and delivered a glass of çay to me, just in the nick of time.  She’s back…but I have a feeling she is going to be in for a run for her money (and her whip) as Esma is eyeing her with a great deal of defiant skepticism.  Instead of roses and jasmine flowers exuding from her ears (which happens when she is happy), she is shooting out sharp, tropical ginger flowers and birds of paradise.  She’s not messing around either, this little hippie poet.  Hold your horses ladies and gents, we’re in for a hippie-writeamatrix battle.

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Kenne and Zenne keep me up all night

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Me after about an hour of watching Kenne and Zenne debate about the correct way to bow to the tenure committee and decide just how much that committee is akin to the Sultan or not (they decided it is a direct match)

It was about 2:45 a.m.  That in-between, nether-hour of insomniac hell.  It is, as a matter of fact, the beginning of the third part of the day for insomniacs – you know – day, night and in-between.  I had been off to a great start – sleeping heavily – until those little ladies made their appearance.  Kenne, as you will recall, is the Queen of manners.  Zenne, as you will recall, is the little nervous Nellie, who usually quakes like a bowl of quince jelly (she tells me not to use the grape jelly image – too American). Here is what I woke up to:

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” Zenne is crying, “should we wake m’lady and tell her?”

From his sleeping spot on the windowsill by my bed, Hacivad Bey in an unusual show of gruffness, says “no, go back to sleep.”

Kenne, on the other hand, is wide awake and up to all sorts of antics – running around the windowsill, throwing herself about in various forms of prostration.  I can’t for the life of me figure out what is going on.  Don’t these little lady puppets realize that my tenure hearing is in the morning?

“She needs to do it like this,” Kenne proclaimed, making a wide, sweeping bow, her pinky finger sticking out just so. “She needs to treat this “tenure committee” as if they were the Sultan himself, and then beg for their kindness, isn’t that what we had to do in order to become – and remain part of the court?”

Zenne replies as I stir in my half-awake state “Well, yes, madame, it is, but should we wake her? I mean, she is all prepared and has a plan for how to handle the situation tomorrow, I don’t think she needs to do the bow – this is 2012 after all – maybe manners have changed some?”

“Foolish girl!” Kenne thrusts her words out with frustrated anger, her face turning red, “manners – the CORRECT manners are always important no matter what – this is timeless.”

After about a half hour of semi-awake observation of this unending debate, I got up, walked around the house, considered finally taking the Christmas tree down, decided against it, warmed up some milk with cardamom and as the light turned pre-blue, got back in bed and waited for the alarm.  The little puppets – and I – have now exhausted ourselves, and will just have to focus on instinct and preparation – and do the best we can!  After all of the nice notes and phone calls yesterday, we feel (OK, Kenne does not) buoyed up and ready to rock.  And I promise to watch my manners, Kenne.  Hacivad Bey and Yehuda Rebbe nod their heads in agreement, saying their last prayers over me in a lovely merging of spiritual and religious traditions.  M. and the dog head out the door after a big hug and good luck wishes. Now it’s time for me to make the trek.

Will report back from the other side.