by Sandra Beckmeier"

"Today I'm going to start my new life." This is a familiar phrase I adopted from someone I once considered wiser than me. I liked the idea that at any time I could stand up and reclaim myself, shout proudly and persuasively from high above the ashes -- take no responsibility and split. I guess you could call it freedom bound in disregarding reality. The real-deal I experienced in re-birth, however, has been an amazing process. While digging around in my wreckage, I pulled off a dirty pair of old pantyhose and held up the common desire among women, standing in the shadows of men whom we try and nurture more than ourselves.

I'm a woman, shaped into existence by a society where woman has been considered many things. Woman as object is fairly common (yet individually I know only a few men who have actually addressed the question for themselves), but woman as muse gets a bit more complex. Take Zelda Fitzgerald, for instance, who wanted to publish her diaries but her husband (F. Scott Fitzgerald) convinced her he needed them for his work. Zelda lived in a time not too far behind us, when women were not permitted to be self-expressive We were wife first, artist later. Luckily, there were many strong women who did it anyway, but for women like Zelda, who were not as far ahead of their time, what transpired meant losing the importance of mind. Zelda Fitzgerald was plagued with mental illness for most of her adult life.

My great aunt was diagnosed with schizophrenia after giving birth to her first child. I don't remember what her symptons were specifically, but she used to have visions in her head about things that weren't part of anyone else's reality. I guess it didn't seem important that she may have had something going on in her head that could only belong to her. What I do remember is how strange it seemed that no matter what was going on, she enjoyed herself at family gatherings. I only saw her during the holidays, and every year she would consistently find a chair and isolate herself from everyone. She sat alone in complete silence, except for giggling to herself from time to time. Whenever anyone would ask her what was so funny, she always ignored the condescending tones in their voices. Her unusual behavior always fascinated me.

Whenever I flopped myself in her lap she whispered to me in a softness no one else could hear, and told me what a smart little woman I was. Back then it was like hearing the observations of an alien -- confusing because everyone in our family feared what we only knew as illness, and intriguing because I was so young and enjoyed being considered a grown-up. I haven't seen my aunt in a long time. She has experienced a revolving door of hospital stays. Her present condition is Alzheimer's, and it's too painful for my uncle to try and deal with the opinions of family members. He told me she rarely even smiles anymore, but she still speaks to people no one in our family knows. I can't help but think my aunt knows a hell of a lot more than the rest of us.

Once I shed my fear of mental illness and stepped into therapy, I quickly began learning a foreign language. The deepest part of the experience was a rather rigid intellectualization of my imaginative mind. The most helpful part was recognizing a problem, and according to the definitions of anorexia, symptomatically I had an eating disorder. I freaked out. Later I realized that all the fashion magazines I read for so long infiltrated my perception of beauty, as if it were an exterior image attainable if I worked hard enough at it. At the same time it was pointed out to me that I had symptoms of extremities -- irrational opposite moods of mania and depression without the balance in between that is considered more "normal." I started panicking because it was pointed out that I was obsessing about a man -- who I worshipped because I'd never met anyone so honest. I didn't know there was anything wrong with essentially loving someone from far away.

I don't identify anyone as insane anymore. That to me is like calling an artist a liar. I think about Sylvia Plath, Tennesee Williams, Georgia O'Keefe, Charles Mingus and Cole Porter -- these were all folks treated for mental illnesses. I doubt any Napoleon would argue with me that these were amazing artists, and if anything simply ahead of their time. If society wasn't so rigid on the issues of right and wrong, no one would need any excuse for their behavior.

I am entering womanhood with a dream to always be who I want to be -- a modern human and striving artist. My great aunt and I share something in common. Like her, I have visions in my head of the theater. They are called dreams and no one person has the power to take them away or to treat me like I'm crazy unless I allow them the opportunity. It works the same way for everyone.

Considering what I observe everyday as power-plays in a so-called equality, the primal instincts I possess as a woman are much stronger than that macho bullshit that leans too heavily on the pseudo-idea of physical endurance. A primal kind of bond (and scientific for those who like to intellectualize) between men and women is sex. More specifically, the release. Whether it be woman and woman, woman and man, man and man, or a great big orgy, when we reach the point of ultimate release we pump it out with a set of rhythmic contractions at 0.8 second intervals. As I ponder life with my new pair of eyes, I like to remember that women and men are at the very core of ourselves equal without even trying.

Happy Anniversary, Austin Downtown Arts. I toot your horn as we all grow, ching-ching-ching.