Pandora
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Pandora
Vitals:
Distinguishing Traits: - a different voice and speech mannerism than others in here.
Favorites:
A few times recently we've been going "That doesn't sound like me...." and Pandora has been going "That doesn't sound like them..." and we'd go "Who are you?" and she'd go "Well, matter of fact, I have no clue...!" -- so we gave her a name.
It all started with a metaphor for issues not being dealt with. When you deal with an issue, the issue is "on the table." When you choose not to deal with an issue it gets "swept under the rug." But what happens when you deliberately choose not to deal with an issue, and set it aside for a while? In this case, we started to say that the issue was "in a box." Then there were the ominous "boxes" that were cluttering my head...issues deliberately put off because contemplation of the issue was going to wreak havoc on my life at that moment, or it was too soon to consider it. Life changing decisions to be considered, for example, are put "in a box" when it is just simply not the right time to consider them.
All the talk about boxes, and we started to think of Schrödinger's Cat, and unopened boxes -- anyone who doesn't know, my mind consolidates Schrödinger's Cat theory as pretty much saying that if one takes a cat and gives it a poison that has a 50% chance of killing the cat in one hour, and you put the cat in a box, an hour later, what do you have? Is the cat alive or dead? The answer is that, as long as the box remains closed, you have neither an alive or dead cat--you have a "whirling mass of probability." This is the foundation for chaos theory or somesuch that I really don't fully understand. At least take my word for it that this is how I think of it.
So, finally we sig filed a humorous scenario, because a loved one and I were discussing whether or not to "open a box," and wondering what would come of putting the issue "on the table" rather than putting it off. Somehow a part of my mind started to imagine being like Pandora of the ancient mythologies, far too curious about what would happen if "The Box" were opened. Now we have the archetype of Pandora and the theorist Schrödinger in an interplay in my head:
"Oh, look: a box. I wonder what it has in it," said Pandora.
Schrödinger looks over apprehensively, "Maybe it's a dead cat."
Pandora looks thoughtful a moment and mutters, "Oh. Yeah.
Hrm....Wanna open it?"
"Hell no!" exclaims Schrödinger, "Do you wanna open it?"
"Fuckno," denied Pandora, then looks sheepish. "But I really
want to know what's inside..."
A few months later, though, those boxes started to be opened, and beautiful and wonderous things started to come of them...things I had not even imagined happening. Time and again, my mind kept turning to the situation of Pandora and Schrödinger that I'd started, and the imagery of Pandora birthing the world through opening a box...which led to a second sig file building on the first one:
Pandora looks sidelong at Schrödinger, nervous & fidgiting. In a sudden move,
Pandora runs over and knocks the lid off the box.
All Hell breaks loose -- explosions of color and light, creatures of many sorts
flying and leaping and crawling out of the box, objects, elementals, elements....
all manner of things...
In a few minutes the chaos subsides.
"Well, I guess it wasn't a cat after all..." said Schrödinger, apparently
unmoved. "It really *was* a whirling mass of probability."
Pandora still hasn't picked her jaw up off the floor.
Then, days after writing this, there's this woman in our head taking front lately who has a different voice. Then she wrote this poem (see below) named Pandora... and we decided that she, indeed, was the person who keeps putting herself in the position of Pandora when opening these boxes...and we gave her the name. Then Frank drew her...(see comic).
She appears to be adultish. We have some suspicions regarding her real origins, but we're still not ready to put them on the page.
Pandora
-- 7/12/03
There are no words to convey, as the plain brown box I open,
The complex kaleidoscopic matrix that unfolds before me --
Shimmery mystery, each compartment intricately defined.
My finger nudges open another unrevealed masterpiece within
This blooming ordered iridescence in indescribable technicolor,
Undoubtedly the product of so magical an act
As the intertwining of two lives.
I cannot wait to see, in my insatiable feline curiosity,
What delightful complex chain of mechanical incomprehensible play
This box will now reveal to me.
Again a finger barely grazes some hidden switch or camouflaged button,
Sending the metamorphosing marvel into fits and unfurling glimmering.
I am unable to turn away from this awe inspiring interplay
'Til eyelids droop and sleep calls me to slumber
And thus I lay down to dream more of wonder.
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