butterfly haven

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Drawing by Darwin Leon BUTTERFLY HAVEN By David Arthur Walters The massive dislocation of men and women from home to factory and farm to city during the Great Depression and their pathetic plight under unadulterated capitalist greed are a matter of public record. Fortunately for mankind, it has a few angels at large: As each wave of misery swept over the uprooted and homeless, newly freed to beg for work, social butterflies appeared with schemes that fell far short of envisioned paradise, yet still much was done to alleviate the suffering. Page 1 of 17

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Drawing by Darwin Leon

BUTTERFLY HAVEN

By David Arthur Walters

The massive dislocation of men and women from home to factory and farm to city during the Great Depression and their pathetic plight under unadulterated capitalist greed are a matter of public record. Fortunately for mankind, it has a few angels at large: As each wave of misery swept over the uprooted and homeless, newly freed to beg for work, social butterflies appeared with schemes that fell far short of envisioned paradise, yet still much was done to alleviate the suffering.

People who had plenty to get by made vehement objections to any progressive move. Economic depressions are caused by bad attitudes, they believed, a lack of faith in the robber barons and Wall Street. In any event, everyone must work, and if they do not have a job it is their own damned fault for not taking one even if none were available on the free labor market, which was paying little or nothing at the time. The Invisible Hand would naturally provide abundance to all who did what they were told; if not, at least the fittest would survive to perpetuate the super race.

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Poor relief was out of the question, as far as they were concerned, for it would only impoverish the middle class by taxation and cast everyone except the filthy rich on the rolls. Not even war veterans were entitled to public support: The army, under command of officers soon to become famous in the next world war, would use bayonets and tanks to run homeless veterans out of their makeshift tents in the nation's capitol.

On the other hand, notwithstanding the patriotic protests of plump conservatives loyal to wealth already pocketed, revolution by those who have nothing to do must be averted; therefore, a New Deal was in order and was so ordered. Idle hands are devils' hands. The industrial revolution had divorced work from play. Alas, when there is no work and only leisure remains, free time is a dangerous proposition, and something must be done about that. Even when work is available, leisure must be well-organized, for only intellectuals know how to keep themselves occupied.

Today, if we really wanted to share the wealth, we would only have to work four hours a day to provide everyone with their basic needs, thanks to technological advances. And then we would enjoy extraordinary leisure time for artistic pursuits instead of the production of the usual garbage, trash and junk, token wealth for the masses, and the luxuries for the rich that now preoccupy the workforce. People would have a guaranteed subsistence income, leaving them with the choice to work for more.

Instead, we have an abundance of make-work to keep the masses busy. If someone is not busy, we have work-fare for them. But the sad results of work-fare are now in: The number of people on welfare has been drastically reduced; however, poverty has not declined. Families headed by single mothers are even poorer that before. Go figure. People are taking jobs and still living in the same old poverty, but now they have to work for it. Well, work-fare was designed not to reduce poverty but to reduce case loads; little or nothing has been added to the national wealth by work-fare. President Clinton remarked on the "dignity of work" but said nothing about the dignity of the worker. Of course, "dependence is reduced" because the person is made dependent on a meaningless job spinning the economic wheel; otherwise, she might be wantonly wasting leisure in irresolute dissipation. Even more worrisome is the possibility that unemployed intellectuals, alienated social butterflies, would be fomenting rebellions.

No, today's work-fare program is not the panacea people thought it would be. In retrospect, the New Deal work-fare program, despite Red Scare hysterics to the contrary, was more effective in terms of producing enduring physical and spiritual wealth. .

The Work Projects Administration employed about eight-million people During the Great Depression, mostly in manual labor on public works projects such as bridges, roads and parks. The WPA body had its psyche in the Federal Arts Project, under which 6,500 writers, some of them beginners, were given jobs by the Federal Writers' Project (1936-1940) at an average salary of $20 per week. We recognize famous names among those writers, such as Ralph Ellison, Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, and Margaret Walker.

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The WPA writers were not supposed to work on their own projects while on federal time; of course, many of them did just that: if a worker can complete the normal work in half the usual time, why not? Why must the advantage go to the employer who should be paying him double?

As for the official work, the Federal Writers' Project is best known for the state guides it produced. A less well-known, hidden treasure is preserved by the Library of Congress in the form of 10,000 life stories, interviews with people from all walks of life recorded by the writers. Samples of the interviews may be viewed on the Internet, at the site 'Voices from the Thirties.' (Copyright 1980 Ann Banks). We take for example this excerpt from Ralph Ellison's April 30, 1939, interview with a man at Eddie's Bar in Manhattan, in response to the question, "Do you like living in New York City?"

"Ahm in New York, but New York ain't in me. You understand? Ahm in New York, but New York ain't in me. What do I mean? Listen. I'm from Jacksonville Florida. Been in New York twenty-five years. I'm a New Yorker! Yuh understand? Naw, naw, yuh don't get me. What do they do; take Lenox Avenue. Take Seventh Avenue; take Sugar Hill! Pimps. Numbers. Cheating those poor people out a whut they got. Shooting, cutting, backbiting, all them things. Yuh see? Yuh see what Ah mean? I'm in New York, but New York ain't in me!" (Transcript #21020403)

Many of the persons interviewed were dirt poor, but they did not mind talking to the federal writers since the writers themselves were on relief. The writers were fascinated by the stories of ordinary people. It is hardly surprising that the interviews fostered literary realism in the United States, with its stories from country porch to city stoop, railroad box car to shanty town or jail, and factory to stockyard. Black speech was especially enjoyed. Jazz musicians and prostitutes added special flavor to the mix. Everyone got their story told for a change, and none were too boring to listen to. The natural, first-person character wanted out of the dirty, monotonous industrial closet; the more grotesque or burlesque the character the better, the more real in contrast to standardized man. The alienated and bored butterflies spread their wings. A few found solace in art or in social reform, while others took to crime and business. Many were those who fell under the spell of the hypocritical bourgeois underbelly in Europe in order to lose their suffering selves in organized crime legalized.

Along came Hitler and Mussolini to save the world from the disastrous consequence of private international capitalism: the Great Depression. Therefore the war to save private greed from totalitarian regimes. Thus was the United States saved from revolution--and revolution was in fact impending.

The Federal Writers' Project came under attack by red-baiters and was halted. The Library of Congress collected and housed the material for our mutual benefit. What was the fate of those 6,500 scribbling souls drawn to abstract pursuits? I do not know--I shall make inquiries. We do know something about the famous ones, and it will behoove us to read their poems, stories and novels from time to time, for that was a crucial time in our

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history, a time when dislocated Psyche struggled desperately for reunion in that missing truth called the Self.

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by Darwin Leon

ANONYMOUSE ANNIEMany writers are possessed by the writing urge at a very young age. While some children, secure in their cocoons, fear flying, others, perhaps bored or appalled by present circumstance, spread their wings when imagination buds and seek refuge in the glories of thin air.

An anonymous playwright. whom I shall call Annie, confessed in an article entitled 'What the WPA Did to Me' in The Forum (Feb. 1938), that she desired to become a creative writer when she was a young girl. After she left school, she occupied herself with commercial writing jobs. The imposed work dulled her desire to do her own, creative work. Nevertheless, she felt sure she would have been a commercial writer to the end were it not for unforeseen circumstances.

"With whatever lack of interest I regarded my work," said Annie, "I was steadily employed and did little writing for myself. Then came 1933, the bottom of the depression, and no more jobs were to be had."

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Annie had some money saved, so she wrote a novel. She agreed with the publishers that her novel was "a poor one." She felt she was not cut out for being a novelist, "But my creative urge, long stifled and defrauded, had been given a chance to breath; now stronger than ever, it moved me to try my hand at a play. I finished it and saw that it, too, was poor."

However, an experienced playwright encouraged her, giving her a few pointers. She decided not to waste her time and precious money looking for unavailable jobs, but to apply for relief:

"There followed three blissful months when, installed in a cold-water flat, the bare necessities of life assured me, I had nothing to do but work on my play. When it was completed, I took it to an agent, who accepted it with enthusiasm."

Annie applied for a job with a playwriting project under the newly organized federal arts projects, submitting her play as proof that she was in fact a playwright. Her application was accepted; she was given an assignment to write a play about American history at a weekly salary of $23.86.

"I went about with a beatific expression. What a wonderful government was ours, which subsidized us to do the work we loved and then let us keep the fruits of that labor for our own!" she exclaimed.

The government lawyers, however, said plays produced on government time must be government property. The Dramatists Guild put the lid on the coffin, insisting that the artists must retain rights to their produce. Wherefore Annie's blissful project was abolished. But not to worry, she said, for, "the government nevertheless was in agreement with the opinion that the only way to rehabilitate a man is to allow him to work at his own craft, thus to retain or recover his skill and accomplish something that may help him to be reaccepted by private employers." Annie the play writer became a play reader for the Play Bureau of the Federal Theatre.

Annie was not very interested in being rehabilitated in order to work for private employers. However, for she managed to do her federal work in a couple hours a day instead of the usual five, and devoted the rest of her time to working on her historical drama, to which she would now have all rights. The managers wanted options on her first play, but it was too expensive to produce. Broadway took an interest in her second play, but, alas, it was not commercially oriented.

"I am not commercial-minded. I know very well what the producers want but cannot bring myself to do it. My commodity has no market. I have the will to fail," our independent-minded WPA playwright honestly stated, knowing full well that no external economic obligations should be imposed on free artistry. After all, economy is of this grave world, the very tomb from which the butterfly takes flight to ride the wind for thousands of miles to unite with her true love. Mediocrity is painfully plain to see in

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some sorry art interested only in a career instead of the beloved Work painstakingly produced yet joyfully created.

Annie proceeded with her third play and finished it. Her agents said it was a fine play, but they refused to handle it because it was difficult to sell. Since she remains anonymous and her work is unknown to us, we have no way of assessing its merits. Perhaps the agents were at fault, or the public was not quite ready to make the investment.

"With three plays written and no production in sight, I have not the heart immediately to start on play number four. I am taking a breathing spell to write this article and to think."

As for the WPA, "It has been driven home to me that mine is a talent which, had there been no WPA and no arts projects, would never have had a chance to develop. Only a person of independent means can afford to cultivate a marketless talent...But there was a WPA...that talent...was nurtured to maturity by emergency home and work relief."

We do know what happened to anonymous Annie, whether she went on to become a successful playwright or writing teacher, or whether she failed miserably and took to drugs or drinking heavy, winding up in a institution, or whether she became a housewife or secretary or five-and-dime clerk, and so on.

"Well, can I be content again with ANY commercial job,” she said, “of whatever nature, that lasts for eight hours a day? No, by God, I can't and I won't. I am a playwright. The government recognizes me as such, and producers have assured me that I have an authentic dramatic talent. I have long ceased to be a hack writer..."

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by Darwin Leon

MOST ELUSIVE BUTTERFLYDon't be concerned, it will not harm you

It's only me pursuing somethin' I'm not sure ofAcross my dreams with nets of wonder

I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love. Bob Lind song ‘Elusive Butterfly

The Greeks likened the human soul to a butterfly and called her Psyche and made her the beloved of Eros. He took her as wife under the condition that she not look at his face during his nightly visits.

Psyche, however, prompted by her sisters to suspect that Eros was in fact an ugly monster, was persuaded to light a candle one night, wherefore she beheld a most beautiful being. Eros, awakened by a splash of molten candle wax, discovered that his command had been disobeyed. He vanished, leaving Psyche to suffer many trials and tribulations until she, thus purified by suffering, is reunited with him forever.

The metamorphosis of distrustful Psyche from blind lust to enlightened agape—ultimate union in loving friendship—is analogous to worldly metamorphosis from lowly cocoon to angelic butterfly. So, the struggling soul or fleeting mind is referred to as an "elusive butterfly."

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The old Greek myth, derived from an even older folktale, survived the centuries because it expresses the truth of the existential contradiction between "reality" and "imagination," which moves life expectantly forward to the wedding of mind and body in passionate embrace.

Along the way there are many high peaks and low valleys for the "over-sensitive" soul who rises from depression to mania, where she is relieved of her burden at the glistening peak for a brief moment, but then the Stone rolls back down into the dark pit where she must, like Sisyphus, follow the Stone to take up the Stone yet again.

Sisyphus, who cheated Death and was therefore sentenced by the gods to the repetitious Task which he performs willingly to spite the vigilant gods, is the model prisoner. The Stone he rolls up and down is the Sun, therefore the performance of his Task enlightens all who are free of his most onerous burden. But Sisyphus has hardened to the Task over the eons. We mere mortals rarely enjoy his resolve, nor do we in our habitual rounds illuminate many of our fellow creatures.

Now everyone has experienced the ups and downs of life; but a few people, driven to extremes, feel them even more, as if the gods were angry at their defiance of gravity and exaggerated the heights and pitfalls in these ecstatic/melancholy souls for humankind’s own damned good. Most of us have some sanctuary in massive normality where we enjoy the comfort of the middling road, while others are given a roller coaster ride and made to suffer even more for human willfulness; the wax affixing their wings is melted by the Sun during their grand imaginative flights, plunging them into the abyss of despair. Whether all this is by material accident or divine design or both, we shall leave the doctors of science and divinity to discover in their laboratories and oratories.

In fact, the nosological doctors have long been doing their best to sort out the different species of elusive butterflies in their respective precincts. Learned men have always noticed a marked propensity for gifted prophets and poets to be quite mad at times; even uneducated laymen have noticed mental abnormalities in many of our most gifted artists.

I prefer my artists a little mad, don't you? For their inspired art has more feeling and originality, something refreshingly sincere and insanely novel about it, as if it were inspired by the gods who are quite arbitrarily mad themselves, or at least not quite rational when we merely moral mortals reason on them and their immortal immorality.

Many artists are enthused or "god-possessed" men or women who need to practice their art to overcome their high flying contempt for mundane reality and their grave depression. Art hopefully allows them to level off their flights of imagination and curb their steep declines by being somewhat "normal," meaning engaged and employed, being at least creatively useful in order to participate as "productive members of society."

Art keeps many artists out of mental hospitals, prisons, and morgues, and otherwise serves the community well by providing a vicarious life to those engaged by other

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occupations. Indeed, the spirit of art is the inspiration for all human endeavors. Therefore it disturbs me when I see talented artists unable to develop or pursue their novelties for lack of real social support. Grants are all too few and too little, and there are too many fortunate people who look to the costs rather than to the benefits of supporting artists with what they require the most: ample time to appropriately respond to their respective muses.

Of course not every Tom, Dick and Harry who fancies himself a painter or writer deserves to be granted support. Tom, Dick and Harry are content to dabble in the arts as hobbies, thus they are blessed with a well-balanced life. More deserving are artists who are possessed by the Urgent Idea, those whose psyches have been fatally struck with the abiding urge to create yet who suffer imprisonment in regular jobs that do not afford them with the time they need to pursue their higher calling to the end it demands. To add to their woes, many of them despise the normal, bourgeois pursuit of money and curse the hands that clutch it, so they never get the wherewithal from business or appanage from patrons to buy their freedom.

Consider the ordeal of Amy Hillgren Peterson, a talented young American writer who, in order to make a living, was condemned to sorting pig semen files for a prestigious Iowa law firm. She has self-published her first book, Elusive Butterfly, at Amazon.com.

Amy received her BA cum laude in English. She has worked as a public affairs specialist, Spanish translator, private investigator, legal assistant and freelance journalist. In 1999, the law firm where she worked as a high-level paralegal assigned her to a case involving a dispute over techniques for artificial insemination of pigs with genetically engineered swine semen. Her task was to create a filing system and to organize swine semen charts, a clerical task far beneath her skill-level. Although there were several people handling hundreds of boxes of files, Amy was accused of losing or misplacing crucial semen charts, whereupon she flew into a bipolar rage, retaliated against her boss, and was fired.

Amy threw herself into her book. I encountered a sample chapter on the Internet. I was charmed by her passionate intelligence. She is obviously a "street-wise" intellectual, a rare butterfly nowadays, just the sort of author I emulated when I was a young man with high hopes for a creative writing career. I was a bit surprised to see such sensational yet idealistic work from Generation X. Amy is, according to her bio, "sensitive, arrogant, kind, bipolar, intelligent, passionate, resourceful and cool." I believe she is right on all counts, with one reservation regarding cool, when she loses her cool.

Elusive Butterfly is Amy's novelized memoir. It has not gotten the attention it deserves. It has received much favorable criticism, although several complaints were voiced about production and editing quality. Only one critic, an anonymous Internet identity using 'The Doc' as his handle, trashed it, and in such a rude manner that his virtual reputation as both medical doctor and literary critic was utterly ruined. He castigated the author in lewd terms for the revelation of her college escapades and for her romantic characterization of bipolarity. He took umbrage with and quoted the following excerpt from Elusive

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Butterfly, one which I personally find to be a beautiful expression of the Eros and Psyche dialectic:

"We make love at midnight and again at dawn. I know, even as I lay beneath him, that I'm letting sex masquerade as love, but inside the parenthesis of the moment, I make them one and the same. In the half-light of early morning with adorations whispered in my ear, I can convince myself that when two bodies merge together in an act to produce a third, if only his can sink far enough into mine, we can create a perfect whole: me."

The Doc remarked that, "It is this insipid romanticism of casual sex and idiotic female neediness that really disgusted me about this book!" Then he went on a rampage of disparagement to which the Internet writing community responded vigorously in defense of Amy.

Leonard Marks, PhD, a commentator, castigated the critic as follows:

"Your obvious obsession with 'sluttiness' defines you as a monogamous misogynist, and begs for a therapeutic deconstruction of your social conditioning. The possession of one woman as private property is a crime against modern humanity. Not until women are factually loved regardless of their superficial characteristics will the monogamous misogynist (who is in his self-deprivation; i.e., self-hate, really a misanthropist) be freed in LOVE. In fact, calling this marvelous woman a 'slut' works against your vile intent, as it makes her even more attractive to true men of genius. I suggest that you approach as many 'sluts' as you can with a repentant heart and engage in promiscuous discourse with them. As for Peterson's writing abilities, judging from what I have seen she is the best author around, with exception perhaps of The Bald Guy."

The Bald Guy is suspected to be none other than Marks himself.

'The Doc' also took Amy to task for writing that, "the bipolar disorder provides a mixture of the transcendent and the trashy in one soul. It has been described as a cycling from kaleidoscope to pitch darkness and back again. But within even a manic episode there is the experience that pushes the limits of the soul..."

From cocoon to butterfly—what is The Doc’s problem? He says it is because "Amy makes bipolar disorder look like fun." As if those who are bipolar do not know what it is; as if those who are bipolar have a choice, as if those who are not bipolar will want to be bipolar and have the chemist make it so with a new designer drug!

We all have our butterflies which are at once abilities and disabilities. Amy has her butterfly. I have my kite. You have your own contraptions. So let us use our wires and waxened wings, levers and pulleys and strings and other things to fly anon. Writers, pick up your pen and write.

But just as Amy was really beginning to rock and roll with her writing, she ran out of money and had to take another job. She wrote a pained article as a consequence, entitled

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'Failure--The Gravesite of Dreams.' It certainly was not a masterpiece by any estimation, but it pierced the heart of all obsessed artists who have experienced or who fear the experience of a brutal, time-stealing, soul-crushing day job. In part, she wrote:

"I had to do this (take a job).

"I'm no longer a writer.

"Sure, it's seared into my soul and as I cry into my keyboard I miss it like a dear friend. Or a twin.

'You can still write for fun.' 'Do some writing on the side.' 'Writing can be your hobby.'

"Oh, sure, okay, I could do that right after I request a public flogging. Or I could slice out my heart with a spoon. It would be less painful.

"I have failed as a writer, and since it once defined everything I am, I don't know anything anymore and certainly have no purpose in further prevarication.

"Rest in Peace, soul of mine."

-E-

Quoted: Peterson, Amy Hillgren, 'Failure - The Gravesite of Dreams', Australia: Written by Me (defunct website) 2001

David Arthur WaltersHonolulu 2001

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