So, it’s been awhile

What can I say, the spring and summer have proved themselves drab.

Currently grieving in a stage of limerence over the loss of the only person I’ve truly loved. Life will go on, I’m sure.

What else…

I found a very unique store right here in Berwyn called Horrorbles – they seem to carry everything related to the darker side of things. Oh, goody! They were able to order some really nice Theda Bara prints for me.
This woman is still a mystery, as is my own family history. Whether the 2 mysteries intersect is a third mystery in itself.
Hooray?

If your eyes happened to fall upon this page, be well, whoever you are.

Mystery makes magic

You know what, screw it. I’m glad that my search has been so sluggish. There’s beauty in mystery.
Everything I hold dearly is something I have not completely figured out.

The man I love, for example, is someone who shows nearly controversial amounts of mystery. I love that he doesn’t readily wear his heart on his proverbial sleeve – I was never drawn to those types too much.

Well, it should be obvious that I don’t have my heritage search figured out quite yet.  In all honesty, I’m probably going to hold off on the Library phase until Spring. I’m already skeptical, however. According to brief e-mails from my Uncle Ronnie, the national origins of the Burman family don’t even match those on record for Theodosia Goodman.
Maybe there’s another reason I’m supposed to be looking.

On the note of looking -
I don’t have my career path figured out yet, but I’m goddamn lucky to be where I’m at.  I may not want to do clerical work for the rest of my life, but it’s graciously keeping a pretty neat roof over my head.

So if I don’t have my love life completely figured out yet either, that’s ok. But I know that if you stay near people who make you smile the most and who seem just as fucked up as you are, the awkward path to figuring it out is a lot less lonely.

But what fun is it without the mystery?

People who pretend that they have everything figured out really scare me. If you’re lucky enough, you find people who are in this together.

Right?

Confidence Now: Notoriety Later

It is my intention to point out that while a lot of things written here are controversial, I do not wish to glorify any type of behavior.  The side of myself I’m choosing to share is a side that is easy to judge, hate, or have strong feelings against.

That being said, I believe that everyone should take the time to get to know and understand the “bad” side of themselves.

What do you feel guilty for? What part of yourself are you ashamed of, if any?

If you learn to love the worst of yourself, loving the rest should come easy.

And now, from current self-searching to digging up the past -

 I finally watched my new copy of A Fool There Was.
A delightful, clearly groundbreaking film for its time 95 years ago.

“The Vamp”, the woman of pure selfish drive, using her seductive powers to control the world around her, was beautifully portrayed by Theda.

So, could this woman be my great-aunt? She certainly LOOKS like all of the women on that side of my family, according to very old, yellowed photographs.

Yet I can’t help but recall growing up in a house full of myth.

A large painting of a man and a woman hung over our artificial fireplace in my childhood home. I was told for years “that’s a painting of Grandma and Grandpa, they posed for it when they first got married”.
That seemed to make enough sense. The man in the painting looked Sicilian and strong, the woman, dark-haired and lovely. It certainly could have been my grandparents years before.

It wasn’t until I brought up this painting years later as an adult that my mother had a good laugh over it – “Ohhhhh, no. That was just some painting, we used to tell all the kids it was Grandma and Grandpa; I can’t believe you still thought that all these years!”

Innocent little home-spun fables every now and then surely kept my childhood interesting, but they also seem to have left me buried under an information pile in which I can’t separate fact from fiction.

Note to self: Leave a legacy behind; make it fairly easy to trace. You know, just in case I disappear into history with just enough notoriety to make a relative curious enough to look me up in 100 years.

You never know.

Other Woman-Hood

I was 17 years old the first time I witnessed my mother’s reaction to my dad having an affair.

I’d never seen a person cry so hard; holding her stomach and trying not to vomit between incomprehensible shouts.

It was probably that moment that changed my perspective, but not in the way you’d expect.

In-between awkward attempts to comfort her, I decided I would not allow myself to step onto this level of vulnerability.

I vowed that I would NEVER take society’s expected view of monogamy too seriously. If I could convince myself that every man, nay- every PERSON is merely a wandering self-fulfilling machine of needs, then this would all make sense. If I could believe that love and monogamy were not necessarily parallel, even better.

Instead of demonizing infidelity, I began contemplating the meaning of it, arguing that the problem is more so based on the expectations so many women have. Too often I’d see my close guy-friends berated by their girlfriends for the most illogical things. So many young healthy males were kept in cages, not allowed to do so much as LOOK at a pretty girl in public.

My “other woman”-hood began in high school, when a particular attached/caged boy I had a crush on kissed me on a playground slide.

Years of trial-and-error in the relationship department led me to my biggest “goal” yet – a seemingly troubled, miserable man who was terribly in need of reviving.
In the short time we spent in pure, uninhibited selfishness, I was fulfilled more so than I imaged an “actual” girlfriend could be.

I looked forward to little gifts he would leave on my desk.
I looked forward to our long walks and long talks.
And of course, I looked  forward to those random moments in which he’d allow himself to overlook the weighty guilt and finally just grab me and do as he pleased.

“You make me feel young, and I haven’t felt that in so long…”
Ah, the cliché words that every mistress wants to hear from the man she shouldn’t love.

More so than a guilty conscience, I gained a friend through this experience, and the feeling that I was actually ready to move on.
Move on from him, of course, as he is still taking his (real) relationship forward, but also ready to move on from these “safe” scenarios in general.

I have a regular boyfriend now, a true love-turned-to-friendship-turned-to-love story, and you know what? I look forward to discovering his flaws. I look forward to him discovering mine, and most of all I look forward to the adventures we’ll encounter stumbling across the many mistakes to come.

It’s more obvious now than ever; while everyone WANTS happiness, it seems that the main thing hindering so many men and women is their own level of expectation. Those who paint a picture of the perfect or ideal relationship are doomed from the start, and will likely rather try to “shape” their poor partners to fit this ideal rather than the other way around; molding a person to fit the relationship they want, instead of realizing that a loving relationship is bendable, malleable, and open for interpretation.

Bottom line – we’re all perverts, whores, saps, suckers, jealous monsters, and selfish beings. And as far as I can tell, we have 2 options:
1. Dream of the perfect fairy-tale love story as a child, hold onto it, and try our best to squeeze every person we meet into this box.
2. Let our feelings for each individual situation or person be the foundation for building happiness from scratch. No expectations, no disappointments.

Family, Loss, and Other Excuses

Well, after at least a year of hoping my unintentional disappearance went unnoticed, I called my uncle.
Angela Marie, professional procrastinator.

It’s not that I’m TRYING to be reclusive at this phase of my life. My father and I text every week!  And every once in awhile I’ll see how my brother is doing via Facebook.  See?  I’m a regular family gal.  At least when I feel like poking my head out.
Of course, it wasn’t always this way.

Growing up in a house with 2 mismatched parents, 2 aging grandparents and a rotation of often-inebriated brothers staying with us to get their lives back on track “for good this time”, I was always used to a full house.

And surely everyone assumed that in the days, months, years following that November morning in 2007 when we lost my mother, the matriarch extraordinaire, we’d somehow find a way to stay even closer.

Well, 2007 was a year of change for me.  I got my first full-time office job and my first apartment. Finally, the joy of solitude!  The lazy evenings I was able to spend any way I wanted overcame me.  I started taking the short drive back to visit my parents less and less.  I was even short with them on the phone.  Even in the weeks after we learned about the cancer, part of me intentionally ignored the call to go “home”.   Selfishly absorbed in my first taste of freedom, I simply wasn’t ready to be that perfect daughter, returning home for Sunday dinners every week.

This is probably why I didn’t cry very much since that morning-after-Halloween when I got the phone call from my dad.
Sometimes lessons have to hit you with force, and I still believe it’s your responsibility to take them with grace, with comedy, and without asking for sympathy.

I never wanted to hear the scores of “Oh, I’m SO SORRY” awkwardly poured down on me like soggy confetti.

No; I’m sorry, now can’t we just move on?

Moving on in mind – back to the phone call with Uncle Ronnie.
It was truly wonderful to hear his voice.

He offered very little information regarding the ancestry of my grandmother, and even less concerning that of his great-cousin Theda.
Coming from a long line of people that don’t leave much of a trail, I wasn’t too surprised.

All the more motivation to keep looking, I suppose.

And, all hopelessness considered, if I happen to leave my own trail along the way, I suppose this journey won’t end up completely fruitless.

My first idea was to make a memoir-style graphic novel.  As you can see, learning how to draw would be quite the time-absorbing process.

My first sad attempt at making lines look like things. Traced over my monitor, no less.

However, gathering and recording this information is priority 1.

The medium in which I present my sure-to-be awesome story – that can be figured out later.

After all, I am Angela Marie: Professional Procrastinator!

In Search of the Vamp: The Theda Bara Legend

The Vamp Herself - Family or Myth?

It wasn’t until Tim Rabble literally got on his knees, positioning himself to kiss my stomach, when the phrase “brings men to their knees” came to mind. I laughed to myself for a moment. This vague blend of diversion and comfort would be gone as soon as he was back in his girlfriend’s unsuspecting arms.
That’s right, in my early 20′s, I’ve been comfortable living as a muse. A symbolic distraction from love rather than the image of it. The men I’ve decided to keep as lovers were usually the wistful types. The types that saved their love for the good-girls. In the name of embracing the unexpected, I’ve been comfortable fulfilling my duty as just the opposite.

My fascination with the seductress, the femme fatale image, undoubtedly began during my own ridiculous  high-school rebellion phase. Once sexuality is discovered, its power proves endless. I looked up to strong female characters in the media who weren’t afraid to exploit their powerful/seductive sides. Not to mention enough black eyeliner to paint a small room.

However, perhaps it’s also partially the memories from my childhood that grasp me.
You see, from early childhood on, my grandmother and mother (rest their souls, respectively) would ease my jealousy of classmates claiming famous relatives (“the guy on that show is my cousin!” proclaimed Stephen Jones) by telling me stories about how we, the women on my mysterious Jewish side of the family, are directly related to a woman named Theda Bara, who was a silent film star.

Years before the internet found its way into our home, I had few sources to research this person. It didn’t catch my interest much back then, either.
It wasn’t until years after my grandmother’s passing – and months after my mother’s passing – that I really decided to look into who exactly this Theda Bara was.

What I’ve found, though minimal, is nothing short of amazing.

Theda, born Theodosia Goodman, aside from being known as “Hollywood’s first publicity-created superstar” (http://thedabara.net/), she is also credited for being the first woman to portray the “goth” image onscreen. In fact, the term “Vamp” comes from her nickname. She was the original femme fatale in the flesh, the living fuel behind the bad-girl image that I could only dream of imitating!

As the breakthrough dark seductress, the image of the mysterious bad-for-you-girl, I would be obsessed with this woman even if it weren’t for the legend of our family trees intertwining.

However, it has become my mission to find out once and for all.
Of course, there will be a few difficulties on the way.
Despite making over 40 films, only 2 or 3 still exist today. Not much is known about her aside from the same mass-circulated biographies.
With most of my maternal side of the family deceased or living privately in places unknown, it’ll be quite a challenge to trace back my family even just a few generations.  However, for some reason it all seems clear that this is what I must do.
I might find out that this is merely family folklore (as some things have turned out to be, discovered after my mom’s recent passing), or I might find that I have family somewhere in the country that I would otherwise never know.

Either way, I, Angela Marie, self-proclaimed modern-day vixen of sorts, will not rest until I find out the truth behind my connection to this revolutionary figure. Despite her birth in 1885 and mine in 1985, I have the strangest feeling that this century of separation could be less than it seems. Does the character she’s portrayed, invented, give answers to the reason I’ve felt I’ve had to unintentionally “play” the same character growing up? And who would I be without the invention of this image and it’s rightful place in feminist revolutionary history?
Who am I now? A good girl playing a role, just as my supposed great-cousin Theda was, or have I let the evolution of that role define me?

Family tree construction time.

Step 1: Contact my uncle Ronnie. Only known living relative on my mother’s side.

More to follow…

Myself at 24, before going back to my dark-haired roots. Pun somewhat intended.