Pizza and Personhood
“I thought this was going to be a personal pan pizza,” I said to Adam, my sparkle hoodie-bedecked alto colleague, when the proprietor of the restaurant across from the monastery placed before me an embarrassment of mushrooms, bread and cheese.
Adam laughed at my choice of words. “Did you read five books to get that?”
“Girl, look at me. I read more than five books.”
Personal Pan Pizza, a leftover concept that came into being around the same time as the Book-It program from the Pizza Hut of the 1980s, was an individually prepared and boxed pie, perfect for grown-up snack or childhood meal alike. Because America is based on nothing if not Synergy, and because most children require motivation to read, The Department of Junk Food and the Department of Education teamed up and presented this awards program in which a child who read five books in a week was presented with a coupon, redeemable for one personal pan pizza.
Never without at least two books in my backpack, I got a coupon every week. The closest analogy would be to say that I was the Belle — of Disney’s Beast fame — to Sparkman Elementary School’s librarian. (“You’ve read that one already!” — “But it’s my favorite!”)
Juvenile Fiction, Mystery, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, Earth Sciences, and at least 70% of the Entire World Book Encyclopedia, whose topical, ordered entries — complete with SEE ALSO further reading breadcrumb trails — I adored. When at a loss for other material, I even read Judy Blume (though her work was considered “for girls”). I know now that this was the beginning of my career in the world as a generalist. I loved knowing a little bit about everything. Adults marveled at my ability to contribute to any conversation, ask pertinent questions. They did not, however, care when I corrected their international pronunciations. I reveled in the praise when I got it and assigned the negativity to the necessary opposition to Great Minds.
And movies, of course! Like you, I devoured movies and screamed at the shortcomings of my favorite characters. “Don’t do it! Can’t you hear me? I said DON’T DO IT!” And then that character, without fail, proceeded to do exactly what I cried my eyes red begging her not to do. Just like in the beloved adaptations of Dubois’s classic, Wilbur still went to the fair. Charlotte still had her babies after winning the spelling bee, and Spring and Autumn came every year. With them, birth and slaughter.
How could these characters, so otherwise bright, be so blind? How cruel even a fictional world it is when an omniscient narrator withholds salvation.
And so it was that I began subconsciously to understand that if I hoped to escape with only scratches instead of a self-inflicted dagger wound, I was to pay very close attention to plot. I was to know all the stories, all of the twists; I needed to recognize in living context both Iago and Boo Radley, confusing neither of his Janus faces for the other. I was both repulsed and glorified that, even before my first decade was done, I had an inkling that mine was a plot with the potential weighed heavily in favor of Antigone. And while my childish heart knew that exile was imminent, I hoped to change my story instead to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. In favor of immolation, I would escape in drag to return triumphant. It worked. Mostly.
A childhood prophecy. The father’s law violated. The omniscient silence. And my (hopefully often-checked) hubris. Just add a few decades, and is there any wonder that I often expect to find myself in utterance like, “It’s been nice fucking you, Mom, but I have an appointment with an eye-puller-outer in forty.”
However, as the decades have passed, I’ve come to understand that my story is not up to me entirely, and that constantly waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop doesn’t stop it from doing so, nor does it put me in a position particularly advantageous to deal with the fall-out. It has resulted in my having tended to live my life with my shoulders parallel to my ear lobes. It often gives me cause to be in a position to seem nonchalantly unsurprised when awful things happen. Looking over my shoulder has only gotten in the way of my seeing the loveliness that’s right in front of me; it has robbed me of happiness in the now and given me anxiety regarding the as-yet, non-existent future.
The wrestling match with narrative that I’ve set up — (“And now, for my next act!”) — is to come to terms with the fact that there is a resonance field between stories that have been told to us, and the unconscious self-fulfilling prophecy of the story we want to tell for ourselves; that the narratives to which I devote my consciousness in some ways determine the progression of my personal story played out in the field of Time.
If I don’t like the story arc of my life, I have to change the attractor relative to the end of the story. If I feel drawn to disaster and tragedy in the narratives I read, it is likely that I am drawn to similar feelings in my own story and will unconsciously try to act those out. It has been my experience to interpret the formative Ground of the physical plane as primarily mental. As thoughts inevitably become actions, they reinforce the abstract nature of those thoughts and bring them into our world more strongly over time. There is also, I have come to note, the tendency that whatever is on the inside of us to to make its way out, either with our approval (consciously) or without it (unconsciously).
Being constantly vigilant in the direction of negativity is not helpful, but constant vigilance to the self can be quite useful. I can’t stop my fate, though I can be aware of myself so that, when faced with my own crises, I can at least be sure that my character is poised to respond in ways that are in line with my core values instead of just trying to do damage control.
My story has not so far been one of great heroic endeavors, but by the end of this narrative, we will all know me more fully: my tragic flaws and my good intentions. The distribution of the tale isn’t nearly as important to me as the character work of the author on its protagonist. The work I’m doing presently is less concerned with the opinion of others, so my Department of Education can sever ties with the Department of Junk Food and bring to an end the idea of that perfect little boxed reward of the personal pan pizza at the end of my story.
