Gargamel: Man, Myth, Legend

Everyone knows Gargamel - or they should. This plucky fellow was the bane to all Smurfs. His only desire was the capture the Smurfs in his nefarious plot of the week. But has anyone really thought about Gargamel, the Man? Has anyone considered Gargamel's past, his possible motives, or the evidence of his deep emotional disturbance?

Gargamel spent every waking moment of his life pursuing the Smurfs. Ordinarily, if a man chased little blue men all week long, he'd be locked away. Luckily, as we can tell by the architecture of his home, Gargamel lived in the dark ages, when chasing woodland creatures for nefarious purposes was a time-honored tradition, along with bathing in urine, locking up women during menstruation, worshipping graven images, and beating up old people with long wooden poles. No one questioned a bald guy in a black nightgown who chased little men all the live-long day.

More importantly, Gargamel represents the inner pain and struggle in all of us against the relentless forces that cause us to suffer. When Gargamel has the Smurfs in his clutches, only to have them escape, embarrassing him in the process, we all see our own dreams escaping from us. But we don't bang our heads off of trees as often as Gargamel does. And, again, our dreams don't employ woodland friends, like rabbits and deer, to thwart us.

No one need question Gargamel's motives. Obviously poverty-stricken (notice the patches on his clothes), and perhaps a war veteran (he did know how to make explosives out of common household items), Gargamel's poor appearance and male-pattern baldness created a romantic rift in his life. Sexually frustrated and living alone in a shack (much like the Unabomber), Gargamel was striking out at his own personal demons - little blue creatures, two apples tall, who enjoyed singing and wore only pants and hats. We all have to fight our own demons. We hope that they don't live in mushroom houses, but occasionally, they do.

Gargamel seemed extremely intelligent on the surface - a complex vocabulary, a knowledge of alchemy, and a seemingly infinite knowledge of the arcane. However, there are slight flaws that show us he lacked in the common sense department. For instance, why did he always wear that dress if he knew he was going to be chasing Smurfs all the time? It doesn't look like that outfit gave his legs a lot of room to run.

Furthermore, Gargamel should have realized that targeting Smurfette was the key to getting the Smurfs. If Smurfette were re-captured (recall that Gargamel created Smurfette to trick the sexually-deprived Smurfs), every Smurf in the village would go searching for her - or as they say in Smurf, "Go lookin' fo' dey ho". If Gargamel could capture Smurfette, then he would control the means of production - he could (theoretically) breed Smurfs.

(Of course, the breeding habits of Smurfs remain a mystery. We are never told where Smurfs come from or, more importantly, why they all call the guy in red "Papa".)

With the power of Smurf breeding (which I honestly hope will be a technological development in the next verion of Civilization), Gargamel could make a commercial empire based on the Smurfs - just like Hanna-Barbera did in the 1980's. Unfortunately, Gargamel lacked the chutzpah and motivation that was so necessary to succeed in the harsh business climate of the 11th century.

There is an important lesson to learn from Gargamel - keep your mind on your goal. Gargamel could never seem to decide if he wanted to eat the Smurfs, turn them into gold, use them in some bizarre arcane ritual, or pose them playing pool and laquer them. Because Gargamel never stuck to his goals, he was doomed to failure. So remember, kids, put your goals down in ink, and don't stray from the path.

And if you see little blue men, for God's sakes, just leave them alone.

I was
a daughter, a sister,
a lover, a friend,
a wife, a mother
while learning to be myself.
Now, I’m just a disillusioned bitch.

I am
on an endless quest.
What does she mean
you might wonder, or not.
Nothing much.
Aw, that’s not true.
It just not what you think.

I will
cloud your thoughts,
mess with your head,
blow smoke in your eyes,
dance as a Tasmanian dervish.
Can you still see me?

There's a full moon out tonight
I went into my garden
and there it was
a beautiful gem in the sky,
creating shadows
among the bushes and trees
I'm sure I saw a fairy whiz by
perhaps it was just a firefly

As a non sequitur

Grief is like this foreign place you are forced to move to, you just have to fit in somehow. I'm still discovering how it feels to be in this foreign place. Strangers make me feel more at home than family or friends. Some old friends have disappeared. Pulled away. The feedback comes in the form of comments like this: "I can't talk to her. It's too sad." Yeah? Well, F*** ‘em. I don't care about those people anymore. If they can't get beyond their own feelings and be a friend then I don't need them.

These old friends were never friends. Sunshine friends. Fair weather friends. I’m moving on, but it hurts sometimes. People can be so cold. One girl, before this happened I would have referred to her as "girlfriend." I knew her for years. We took vacations together. We hung out when our kids were little. You know, Thanksgiving, July 4th weekends ~ our families spent tons of time together over the years. She used to send those Xmas calendars every year to my daughter. You know the kind, the ones with chocolate candy behind the days of the month? Advent Calendars! She sent one every year for 16 years to my daughter. I have not heard one word from her since my daughter's death. Not a phone call, a letter, no third-hand message, NOTHING! What is wrong with this person? Surely last Xmas she must have had to scratch Gina's name of the list? I guess, it's that easy for some people. I asked my sister who saw her last summer, "Did Jeannie say anything about me?" Jeannie's the one who said, "I can't talk to her, it's too sad."

Yeah, sure. I get it. Everyone needs their comfort zone to make it through the day. God forbid that some element of sadness enters into their life causing some ripple in their energy field. Where's compassion for your fellow man? Does she walk by the homeless lady on the corner and avert her eyes? I sure hope so, cuz then I’m no less than that. A total stranger in a foreign place where friends don’t exist and nothing you have ever known is the same.

Ok, I'm done venting for now.

There is a moment of sweet tension as I hold the glass in my hand. The peat-rich fumes rise to my nose. The color is amber promise. I raise the glass to my lips. Molten honey in the gut. The switch flips. Sweet warmth begins to flow from my belly to my fingertips. The mind becomes soft and fluid. Images appear. I drink more. I'm feeling deeply now, deeper than I do without the booze. I'm seeing the truth of things. The landscape of the page becomes languid and it seems possible to get what appears in my head down onto the page accurately, precisely, and completely. I drink more and begin to write--frantically, feverishly, propelled by the urgent volume of all the perfect sentences pressing up against my brain. I drink more, not wanting to slip even a millimeter from the peerless pinnacle. Purity. Prismatic perfection. Write. Sip. Write. Sip. And so on, until things become bleary, unclear, swirling concrete weights, black shadowed water ...

4:00 a.m. I wake up with a jangled sense of anxiety in a sour-smelling bed. I rise early, not out of enthusiasm for the day, but because I feel so crappy I can't sleep. I scrabble through the papers lying around my desk and find what I've written the night before. Always that moment of hope--is it as good in the light of day as it seemed under the fuzzy gloom of evening? The first sentence, good, the second, not bad, and then, by the end of that first page ... Crap. I've done it again--written the world's best first paragraph (or so I'd thought last night) followed by nothing but self-indulgent shit. Where did all the wonderful words go? They used to come and stay and sing in the dawn. But for so long there's been nothing but by-blows, changelings, twisted imps ... My stomach churns and my nerves rattle. I'm frightened. I vow I won't do it again. I put everything I have into that vow.

I've made the same vow the day before and broken it, and the day before that, but today will be different.

That was the daily cycle. Of course this was a few years into my career as a drinking writer and even as I said the words to myself I knew I was lying. I knew that by six o'clock I'd be back at my desk with a glass of scotch in my hand, chasing the muse. And there's the crux of it, really. How could I, a person whose craft depends on piercing through the layers of mucky garbage to get at the shining truth, expect to succeed when I began the day with a Big Fat Lie?

When I was asked to submit an essay on the secret life of writers, the first thing that came to mind was to write about alcohol. Why? Because for years being an alcoholic was The Great Secret, The Central Secret, The Defining Secret of my life. I spent decades floating in the shadowy waters of addiction and the effects of that addiction on my work and my life were as devastating as a North Atlantic gale. But then I thought: I can't write about alcoholism and writers. What the hell is there new to say ? Maybe nothing. But maybe even if it's been said before it bears repeating, for the truth of this disease and its siren call to writers is that it wants not to be talked about, or written about. It wants to scuttle back into its crepuscular cove and wait there to ambush another unsuspecting scribe.

excerpt from "When There's No Sky Left" by Lauren B. Davis. Ms Davis is the author of the novel The Stubborn Season (HarperCollins Canada) and a short story collection, Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives (Mosaic Press). She lives in Paris.