So I’m reading Vanity Fairs profile of The Prisoner of Bedford-Martha Stewart, and I am thinking yep, same old, same old, ie: Martha’s a control freak, Martha’s lonely etc, when two things strike me:
First, Martha is only allowing black animals to reside on her new farm. Can this be true? Is she really only allowing her majestic black horses to graze at night in case the sun bleaches their glossy manes chestnut? What happened to that snuggly caramel coloured cat she posed with on the front of Living a while back? I mean really. Even I find that ridiculous.
But what the hell hey? People have the right to be as ridiculous as they choose. Ridiculous I can live with, but the second revelation broke my heart: Martha can’t sleep in the dark. How sad is that?
From the day he was born Finley has slept in the dark: no night light, no hallway glow, no illuminated stars, – just the dead of night and his own babba thoughts. I wanted him to grow up without fear, to be comfortable with himself and learn to appreciate peace alone. I wanted him to make friends with the shadows and understand the difference between night and day. Most of all I wanted him to be able to switch off form the hullabullub of his day and relax…
While Martha was in prison, she persuaded her cell mate to sleep with the light on; at home she is famously insomniac and spends her nights making notes and never switching off her alter ego. While I appreciate there are security issues we lesser mortals may never understand, it seems to me that to be scared of the dark is to be scared of oneself: to be scared of who we are when we shrug off the vanities of our day.
I don’t suppose it matters what seemingly ridiculous decisions a woman like Martha makes within her own home because it seems to me that she has earned the right to be more than a little eccentric, but more and more I am coming to understand that woman such as she are not who they say they are: all too often they are driven by fears and anxieties on a scale we, Thank Goodness, may never have to deal with.
Bless her cashmere socks.
Interesting. Very interesting… I don't know what to believe when it comes to media's treatment of her. Somehow, I believe myself to be an augerer of the gold in her deepest essence, and I simply like her, cash and fear and power and pride–be they as they may… How does that poem go? I think "I glimpsed the pilgrim soul in her"…. now how about that? But I don't think she'll have her beautiful tan animals done away with… Vanity Fair may have decided to leak yet another bit of eccentricity, and I don't think Marhta's above baiting the news a little… She's learned it doesn't matter what you do, the news will print what they want… and actually that it doesn't matter what the news prints, people will believe what they want… Aren't we a quaint species??? And Alison… see you in the dark! What a girl!