2007-01-14 - 8:48 p.m.
Hopelessly trapped. That�s how I feel sometimes. That�s how I feel right now. But don�t worry, I�ll get out of it. At least for a little while. But what I would really like to do is get out of it forever. I need to do something about the cell bars in my mind.
Looking away from myself into the outer world, normally what goes on the �bread and circus� of the mass-media news doesn�t interest me, but every once in a while, a story really does catch me. An example of one that goes in one ear and out the other is that one of several months ago in which that freak �confessed� to killing Jon Bonet Ramsey. I�m sorry, I have no place in my mind for any of that. I couldn�t even tell you much about the Jon Bonet Ramsey case, itself--it�s all just too sordid for my taste.
But this recent one of the two boys being found who had been kidnapped by the same man, one several years ago, that one piques my interest. It�s one that I would really like to know much more about, to the extent that if a talented investigative journalist wrote a serious book about it (not a typically trashy book), I would like to read that book. But alas, I feel that the chances of that are nil, for all we would be allowed to get would be yet another replay of one of America�s typical metamyths, in this case, the one about the dangerous male predator waiting behind every tree, ready to spring out and take your kids, a cousin to the child molestor next door and the predator on-line.
Now, to be sure, there are such predators in the world, kidnappings do happen, there are child molestors (next door, even), and there are on-line predators, although just how truly numerous these people are, just how much everywhere as the myth goes, I�m not so sure. I�m not making the kidnapper in this case out to be a non-dangerous man by any means--what he did was, of course, dead wrong. We can't have people snatching children up off the street. But watch how throughly he will be vilified, how much of a bad man he will be touted to be (he certainly wasn't as bad as the woman in North Carolina a decade ago who wanted a baby so bad she and her boyfriend cut a live baby out of another woman's womb--true story). There were already some intimations of sexual molestor attached to him, as he was already revealed to have been a registered sex offender in another state--for indecent exposure, not for having sex with minors. But I am sure that in the police investigations and psychological therapy that these boys will undergo that there will be much harranging of that subject, probably to the extent that the boys will ultimately �reveal� that indeed there had been a sexual component to this kidnapping whether in actuality there ever had been, or not, because that fits the myth and therefore the story that MUST be told (instead of the true one). The kidnapper has to be totally bad, the police have to be totally heroic, the parents have to be totally victims, and the boys are left being the pawns in this whole thing.
But I have my suspicions about this case.
Of course the question has already been asked--just HOW was the first boy KEPT there with this man, no further away than a hour�s drive from his home, for five years...and lame answers have already been given--that people can be psychologically trapped by fear of the unknown, or promises of violence or death to them or loved ones if they make a move to escape, and so on. And for sure, battered wives have felt trapped by their husbands (but some have resorted to murdering them), abused children have felt trapped in the family home (but some have resorted to running away), and, I, myself, just stated at the beginning of this piece how trapped I feel in my present circumstances, and I don�t have any predator three times my size breathing down my neck or any other external force keeping me locked up. So making moves to rescue or save ones self are sometimes very, very hard to do.
But really...on the other hand, I would really like to know just what kind of threat or psychological power this apparently unsophisticated man was able to use to keep a physically healthy and apparently psychologically sound boy coming back to the kidnapper�s apartment day after day after day for five years. There would have been so many chances to escape! Apparently the man did go to work, to two different jobs, no less, and there is no indication that the boys were somehow kept chained up in the apartment. Presumably, they went off to school, where they had at their disposal dozens of adults and people in authority. There were neighbors, there were strangers in the street, there were policemen driving by, there were pay phones...in fact, the older boy even had his own cell phone. Not ONCE did he think the coast was clear enough to call his parents to say where he was and arrange a rescue?
Also, I don�t know what other people think, but despite how amazingly and justifiably ecstatic the two families were upon being reunited with their lost boys, while the boys were smiling broadly and seemed happy enough, to my taste, there was something missing in their actions. I�d give them no better than a B- in their expression of �homecoming emotions�. The younger boy, to whom the experience was much more recent and therefore should have been potentially more traumatic, didn�t even want to be hugged or cuddled, but only wanted to go back to his room to play computer games.
I have read several accounts of child molesters who say that they can almost always accurately pick their mark. They can sit on a bench in a park and watch children playing in the playground and determine which child is the one they can get. The unhappy child, the lonely child, the ignored child, the one who doesn�t quite feel that he or she is getting what he needs at home, they are vulnerable to the attentions of the molester. This kind of thing, of course, seems to make the parents at fault and, really, that�s not quite the point, although it does seem to indicate to me that parents do have the tools within them to protect their children from such predators by making sure that their kids aren�t vulnerable to the attentions of the predator. Making them afraid of every stranger is not the answer, but strenghtening them with love and security so that a stranger with nefarious purposes will move on just might be the answer. All perpetrators, whether a burglar scoping out houses or a rapist stalking potential victims, look for the easy mark, so if there is any way that good parenting can prevent children from being that easy mark, then that is something worth understanding and pursuing, rather than passing ever more draconian laws against every potential predator and meanwhile hampering the ability of children to deal with the outside world.
I am going to go out on a limb and say that the man in this case who kidnapped the two boys had something to give to them that they weren�t getting at home, and thus the boys were willing to accept staying with him. In the �atom� of humanity, I think of females as being protons in the nucleus, and males as being electrons buzzing around in the outer orbits. Girls yearn for marriage, home, family, and stability, whereas boys yearn for action, adventure, and experimentation. From time immemorial, boys have been scouts and adventurers, the ones who go off to sea or join the circus, or simply light out into the country (and the age of this kind of thing happening was somewhere in the early teens). Girls are more willing to stay home.
I remember an occasion when I was ten years old. It was during a trip to our home town one summer. This trip was different in that my grandparents, my father�s parents, rented for us a vacation cottage to stay in for the two weeks that we were going to be there. I loved that cottage--it was two stories high, we each had our own bedroom, and it had a huge, wide porch in front with a couch-swing. It was in a complex of other similar cottages, called �The Manor�, and had a huge swimming pool and other areas to play.
One afternoon, my mother was shopping downtown with us kids. I don�t remember where Dad was at the time. It was very crowded and suddenly, I got separated from her. I was in a panic and pushed my way through the crowd, trying to find her, calling out to her, but couldn�t find her. The more I looked, the worse it got. I felt completely alone and unprotected, but that feeling of helplessness was something that I simply could not stand. I couldn't simply stay around in a bad situation, I had to do something to fix it. Suddenly, the idea arose within me to go back to the last place I had felt secure, and a place where I could be found...back to The Manor! So that�s what I did, I found my way back to The Manor. This was a walk that took several hours and took me all the way out of downtown out to the area where this place was, quite a long distance (I doubt I would walk that far now). It was amazing that I could even manage to find my way there, but I did.
My mother, meanwhile, was probably in even more of a panic than I was, and naturally (I can understand NOW) spent every effort trying to find me in that downtown shopping area. Never in a million years did she ever think that I would walk back to The Manor. So she tried everything, including going to the police. Ultimately, at the end of her rope, she had to temporarily give up and go back to The Manor. And what should she see there, but me peacefully swinging on the couch on the porch! This was NOT a glorious reunion, I can tell you...I was severely punished for this. Apparently what I was supposed to have done was to stay PUT downtown where I had been lost, so that in her search she would have found me there. But I can honestly say that such a solution would have been the very last thing I would have ever considered. Boys are action creatures, not �stay in one place and wait� creatures. And even though I was on Mom�s shit list for the next several days, I was rather proud of what I had done and my grandfather (Mom�s father) secretly told me that HE was proud of me, too, and utterly amazed at my strength, courage, and ability to find my way so far at such a young age. And I think those skills have served me well ever since.
So what I did at the age of ten makes me think that either one, or both, of these kidnapped boys at the age of 13 could have managed to somehow effect their escape from their kidnapper if they really wanted to leave--they would have had the strength, moxie, cleverness, and energy were they so moved. Instead, the situation was more likely something they liked better than at home, or, if not, at least exciting enough of an adventure that they were willing to tolerate it and see where it led. But we will never hear THAT.
One of my favorite books is Robert Bly�s Iron John: A Book About Men that served as a sort of �Bible� for the �men�s liberation movement� of the nineties. I am sorry that so many men joked about their view of �men crying in the woods� or whatever they thought of the men�s movement that they, themselves, as they worked their way up in their empty Wall Street career or whatever felt was beneath them and their so-called �real� masculine strength and sensibilities...because ultimately, they, too, would wake up and crash and burn in their careers because their yuppy greed had only masked something fundamental that had been missing the whole time. (They were doing what Joseph Campbell referred to as �climbing the ladder and reaching the top, only to find that it was against the wrong wall�). But I, myself, had always been fascinated by myths and fairy tales and loved exploring the deeper meanings of stories whose �wisdom had been distilled through the sands of time�. And I especially love it when a real life example seems to follow exactly what is told in an ancient story!
In the Iron John tale (that Bly retells and analyzes in his book), something dangerous in the woods is killing the hunter�s dogs that lead the way into there, and it is determined that this dangerous force reaches up from the murky depths of a pond (here we're discussing something deeply instinctual that rises up from dark emotional depths). So it was decided to drain the pond to find this force, and what they discover is an old, hairy, WILD man, coming up out of the muck and mire. Rather than kill him, the townspeople capture this wild man and bring him back to the king and queen, who lock him up in a cage in the courtyard of the palace (showing civilization's mastery over wildness).
The king and queen�s young son (I think he is 9 or 10 years old) is playing in that courtyard where the Wild Man is caged--obviously curious about and fascinated by this being, as any boy would be (probably teasing himself and testing his courage with just how close he is brave enough to get to him). He plays with his �golden ball�, which stands for some kind of spiritual or soul force that is powerful for the being of the boy. And right there, think of a boy�s masculine, playful, exploratory, developmental, skillful relationship to his ball, any ball, football, basketball, baseball, soccer ball, etc., and you will begin to understand the potency of this symbol. And the fact that is �golden� makes quite clear that this is some kind of totem of power.
Well, as it so happens, as the boy plays with the ball, it gets away from him and bounces between the bars and into the cage of the Wild Man. Isn�t that always the way of boys and their balls? They seem to serve as some sort of model of that very buzzing �electron� that they, themselves are, leading them on to the next adventure, whether that adventure be simply facing up to knocking on the door of a mean neighbor in order to retrieve a ball that has gone over the fence, or having to work hard to earn enough money to pay for a window that was broken, or kicking a soccer ball all the way forth to international fame and fortune as a soccer star, and every possible thing inbetween.
But in this story, the golden ball ends up inside the Wild Man�s cage.
What is the boy going to do?
Robert Bly makes a big deal out of the boy losing this golden ball at the age of 9 or 10. �Don�t you remember losing something very precious when you were nine or ten?� he asks. Oh yes. I think that maybe that is the age when a boy finally forgets the spiritual world he came from and becomes a fully earth-bound human (his innocent purity is now �adulterated� by the physical world). And now the rest of life�s adventure is seeking to regain that spiritual heritage.
For sure the boy wants that ball back, so ultimately, he has to ask the Wild Man to give it back to him. �Many men wait many years before they summon up enough courage to address the Wild Man,� Bly says. But this boy only takes a couple of days.
However, the Wild Man won�t give it back. Instead, he says, �I�ll make a deal with you. If you let me out of this cage, I�ll give the ball back to you.�
Whoa! This is very heavy duty. Let the Wild Man OUT? You�ve got to be kidding! But there is no way around it. That�s the only deal that the Wild Man will accept.
At this point, many men simply give up, according to Bly. It�s too much, they�re trying to be civilized, they were taught to play by the RULES, they can�t let the Wild Man out. (These are probably the Wall Street yuppies laughing at the men drumming and crying in the woods. They�re beyond that sort of thing. Of course, they then have to live life without their golden ball.)
The boy thinks about it for several days, but finally decides he will do just that. But when he goes to do it, he finds that the cage is locked. �I can�t let you out,� he says, �I don�t have the key.�
�Your mother has it,� the Wild Man says. Yeah, gee...even in the European Middle Ages, or in times before that, before feminism and the angry sisterhood, people understood that it is the MOTHER who locks up wildness. Woman is the domesticating force.
�But how do I get the key from her?� questions the boy. �If I ask her for it, she WON�T give it to me.�
�No, no,� explains the Wild Man, �you can�t ask her, she won�t give it to you willingly. You have to steal it from her.�
You have to steal it from her. This is perhaps the first act of a son�s independence and separation from her, and she won�t give it up willingly, you simply have to be assertive and rebellious and TAKE IT for yourself.
�But I don�t know where it is,� the boy complains.
�She keeps it underneath her pillow. You have to steal it from underneath her pillow when she sleeps at night.�
Now this is so filled with imagery and meaning that Bly probably could have written a whole book on just that. But the gist of it is that the mother has dreams for the son, and NONE of it has to do with wildness! For the boy to reclaim his own spiritual heritage, he has to actually sneak into the inner sanctum (enter into a forbidden and exceedingly mysterious realm) and get THIS CLOSE to the mother�s dreams (which he will thwart) and then snatch that key away.
Again, a step that many men never succeed in a whole lifetime to do. Forever more tied to their mother�s apron strings.
It takes this boy several weeks to screw up his courage, but ultimately, he does it and then he goes down the courtyard and succeeds in letting that Wild Man out!
But now there is a serious problem. The Wild Man is let out, and soon enough it will be clear that it was the boy who did it. �What can I do?� he asks theWild Man. "When they find out, they will punish me."
Bly describes that as very poignant, because a child�s punishment at the time of this fairy tale would be very serious indeed, and really, all that is really going on is that the child is asserting his independence and reclaiming his spiritual self-hood. But you can�t do that within the confines of the palace. It simply is not allowed, and they have ways to ensure compliance.
�There is no other solution,� says the Wild Man, �you will simply have to come away with me.� And so the boy climbs up onto his shoulders and off they go, out beyond the Palace and the city and off into the deep woods. Robert Bly is beside himself with ecstacy over this moment; he can think of nothing more marvelous than a boy having the unique and most special privilege of being taken away on the shoulders of the Wild Man. For it is being under the tutelage of the Wild Man that is the true treasure here--the golden ball is all but forgotten in comparison. And obviously, very, very, very few men living today ever manage this particular adventure.
This that I have outlined is only the very beginning of the Iron John tale; this boy goes off to have much in the way of instruction and adventure and ultimately returns as a King in his own right with armies and lands and a golden Queen and treasure infinitely beyond anything that his parents had ever had before him, but all that is beyond my purpose in mentioning it here.
I think these two boys, in their kidnapping, were taken off on the shoulders of the Wild Man, and they knew it. This is not to say that the kidnapper is suddenly turned into a �good� man (although maybe he is)...we�re talking spiritual metaphor here and he serves as merely an agent to the action within. The Wild Man upon whose shoulders the boys ride is something within their own psyche, activated and animated by these external events and their responses to them.
What I would really like would be to see an expose of how the older boy (and maybe even the younger one, too) has been changed due to this adventure. Rather than he was harmed by his kidnapping, I would like to see how he has grown spiritually--maybe the kidnapper actually had a special something to give him that the parents did not have (in fact, I am sure of it). I guess that he is the one who should write the book, not an external investigative journalist. But he will write such a book only if he is strong enough to freely interpret and understand all that actually DID happen. But I am afraid that the police, and the psychologists, and the courts, and the parents, will not want to let that happen. They will seek to interpret it for him in only a negative way. But time will only tell. If he really were taken away by the Wild Man, then someday he will be able to tell the tale, pure and accurately. I can only hope so.
Meanwhile, I need to get my own Wild Man back. Where are those strong shoulders to carry me away from the trap I feel I am currently in? Well, I know exactly where he is, inside of me, embodied within the personal instincts that civilization has placed in the shadows. I only have to summon up the courage to call out into the murky darkness for him. But I know that that is a very big "only"!
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