Posts Tagged: Blue Light Makeover

My Wife Has a Cow, But Do You?

 

Indiana appears to be turning slowly into a desert.  Hester Prynne was getting too hot in her Puritan apparel, so we decided to give our lamp friend another wardrobe change.  We evoked an ancient symbol of fertility in the hopes that the weather gods would notice our plea for some more fertile weather.  And in the immortal words of Gertrude Stein, “Nearly all of it to be as a wife has a cow.”   Indeed, what is to become of our fair magazine if no wives have cows, literary or otherwise?  Without cows, where is growth, where are archetype and metaphor?  This could easily become a world in which every intellectual (and physical) plant withers without the nourishing rains of creativity, of literary integrity.  In this period of drought, we must strive to birth our own creative cows, rather than waiting for new ideas to rain down from the heavens.  So, “As preparation prepare, to prepare, as to preparation and to prepare. Out there.” (Stein, “As a Wife Has a Cow, a Love Story”).  Prepare, prepare for that dry world out there.  Remember our cow, and may she guide you to a place of mental fecundity.

The Blue Light Goes Red Light!

Here at Indiana Review, our little blue light has undergone a makeover.  We thought she (he?) was looking a bit naked, so the most apparent solution was to break out the scissors and construction paper. The raw emotional power and slight sexiness of the lamp made it obvious that it should be dressed as Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne, cloaked in Puritan layers and with only the bright and scandalous letters “IR” to show her secret shame.  In time, perhaps these letters will become as infamous and compelling as the original scarlet letter.  After all, wouldn’t it be exciting to find oneself in “a moral wilderness” that’s “as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest” (Hawthorne chapter 18)?  Standing on her scaffold of a chair outside the office, Hester the lamp is a reminder that words are untamed, and that the wilderness of literature is not necessarily a bad place in which to find oneself.