I'm off to see the Lizard, the wonderful Lizard of Laws

I'm going to make an application in the Human Rights Tribunal really soon. I will challenge the Ontario welfare policy that steals kid's child support payments from social assistance recipients. In BC this battle has been won, however Ontario is by no means prepared to do away with the policy (despite what you may have read in the press.) Subscribe to this blog to learn more.

Since I'm making a justice claim in my own right, I need to do some intensive reading to equip myself to explain my cause from my perspective to people who are predisposed to discriminate against me and my son (ie just about everyone). Research is lonely work. We search out muses for company. Until a magical muse touches me, I am satisfied to choose The Wizard of Oz as my muse. The book's main character, Dorothy, is an illegitimate child who gradually learns to accept motherhood from her aunt. Dorothy's dangerous journey is about equipping her to accept her mother substitute. This narrative mirrors what the child support clawback does: the policy causes illegitimate children to suffer a risky, uncharted environment most of the time (poverty), while simultaneously rendering them in need of state protection. The policy damages the child in inverse proportion to the fortunes of the father: the more money he has, the more the child becomes a ward of the state (any child support award over 951.00 a month renders the mother ineligible for welfare (or unfit to parent)). Note that if the payor father is quite well off --such that the child support award is so high a small family can be supported by it--that's a different story.

Someone said "Professional writers don't have muses; they have mortgages.” Are you bored? Then seek out a professional writer! Or muse along with me. Enjoy the fact that characters in the book possess exploitable weaknesses that are recognized and addressed (oil for the Tinman's joints, protection from fire for the Strawman). These characters represent the accommodations afforded by human rights law. They get a brain, a heart, etc.What does Dorothy get? Nothing.

From Fathers and Sons.in Cinema:

"In our modern society without the father, instead of a father-initiator, the son gets a dragon-obstructer, the same archetypal ogre found in many myths and fairytales. "In mythology there stands beside the creative, positive father the destructive, negative father, and both father images are as alive in the soul of the modern man as they were in the projections of mythology". 

  The prototype of the positive and negative fathers (albeit in its feminine form) is The Wizard of Oz's Good Witch of the North and the Wicked Witch of the West. The two are projections of Dorothy's introjected mother. In melting the witch, Dorothy slays the introjected dark side in her unconscious that had become an autonomous being with a life of its own. that is why Miss Gulch, who is the "wicked witch" in Dorothy's Kansas, is not part of the family portrait at the end of the movie. Having integrated the dark side of Auntie Em in her consciousness, Dorothy no longer projects it onto Miss Gulch, who ceases to be the menacing figure of her everyday life just as the witch ceases to be found in her dreams."
I also stumbled upon a secondary muse. A song and lyric entitled "Off to see the Lizard". Jimmy Buffet wrote it. It's associated with Australia, and some "critics have suggested that Baum may have been inspired by Australia, a relatively new country at the time of the book's original publication. Australia is often colloquially spelled or referred to as "Oz". Furthermore, in Ozma of Oz (1907), Dorothy gets back to Oz as the result of a storm at sea while she and Uncle Henry are traveling by ship to Australia." In Australia the child support enforcement system is known colloquially as "The Scheme".

 We can't know everything about our muses. We just have to trust that they are real. 

I was raised by a maid who came from Martinique
She wore geckos round her neck and bracelets on her feet
A superstitious woman from the land of sugar cane
She'd sing the sun to bed and dance out in the rain
Dance out dance out dance out dance out in the rain

 She'd excite us with this legend that the Africans had told
About a red iguana who turned lava into gold
We'd mount an expedition headin' out into the bay
Superstitious children playing pirate for a day

 Off to see the lizard
Off to see the lizard
Deja deja deja vu, believe it
And it will come true
Veja Veja Veja du
What works for me might work for you

 Bein' rich and famous seems to have its ups and downs
That's the price you pay for being troubadours and clowns
Godzilla's halitosis it be vaporizing cars
Elvis up in Michigan or maybe out on Mars
Dance out dance out dance out to the stars

 But livin' in the briar patch ain't what it appears
Sooner or later you gotta face your fears
I heard it from the parrot verbalizing in the tree
I heard it in the song lines of the aborigine

 Off the see the lizard
Off the see the lizard
Deja deja deja vu, believe it
And it will come true
Veja veja veja du
What works for me might work for you

 Does it work for me?
Yeah yeah
Will it work for you?
Yeah yeah
If you believe it will
Yeah yeah
It will come true

 I got problems with my brain underneath my curls
Problems wif Loraine and all the other girls
Love a wealthy woman and the pretty plane she flies
If you think this songs confusing you should see it through my eyes
Dancin, dancin, dancin through my eyes

 I'm turning off the waterfall the tourists can go home
Feel it time to travel time to write a poem
Time to seek some therapy I'm goin' walkabout
Answers are the easy part, questions raise the doubt

 Off the see the lizard
Off to see the lizard
Deja deja deja vu, believe it
And it will come true
Veja veja veja du
What works for me might work for you

 Deja deja deja vu, believe it
And it will come true
Veja veja veja du

What works for me might work for you

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