Worlds collide: A guest post by Obscura

I’m Obscura. I’m a relative newcomer to the world of Richard Armitage. Like Servetus, I teach university level history; unlike Servetus, I was not trained as an historian, but as an archaeologist, a related but distinct discipline. The historians I work with put up with me graciously, though. Some of what drew me to me + richard armitage was a certain affinity of thought.

Like many of us, I think, my life is divided into a number of separate pursuits. I’ll call them worlds. The only thing that connects some of my worlds is my presence in both. I am a professor, so I have an academic world. I am a daughter, a sister, a wife, and a mother — my family world. Christian worship is an active part of my life, a practice that defines my church world. I was born and raised in Wisconsin (something else I share with Servetus) and it was to Wisconsin I returned to raise my family, having picked up an East Coast husband along the way.

For many in the United States, and even internationally, Wisconsin is synonymous with two things: cheese and the Green Bay Packers. At the risk of being branded a Dairyland heretic, I can take or leave cheese. Today I’m going to leave it, because I really want to talk about the Packers. The Green Bay Packers are an iconic franchise in the National Football League, with a long and storied history. Packer football is embedded in the culture of Wisconsin. We schedule weddings and funerals around games. Woe to the hostess who neglects to consult the Monday Night Football schedule before sending out invites to a weeknight jewelry or purse-selling party that will be doomed if it coincides with a game. Even those few Wisconsinites who are not Packer fans will inevitably concede defeat in trying to schedule events against the reality of the Packer season juggernaut.

This is my Packer world. I am not a superfan. I do not own a foam hat in the shape of a wedge of cheese. I have never been inside the hallowed halls of Lambeau Field (the only game I have attended in person was played at County Stadium in Milwaukee!) but the Packers are an undeniable part of my life. Packer football, whether I watch it or not, defines many of my activities from August until (hopefully) February.

In the past six months, a new world has entered orbit around me — Armitage world.  My story, I have discovered, is quite common in the global ranks of Armitage fandom. I “found” him accidentally via North and South this past summer, and was inexplicably captivated. You know all the triggers: the looks, the voice, the intensity. “What am I doing?” I thought. I had never been inspired to fandom, even as a teenager. OK, Rick Springfield was droolworthy, but I never even bought a record; I was content to listen to him on the radio. (Now you know my age.)

Inquisitive by nature and a little afraid that I had finally fallen off the deep end, I continued to investigate in secret. No one should find out — what would they think? I googled, I watched, I listened, I read, I lurked here and there trying to figure out this strange obsession I had developed. A month in, I was no closer to understanding it, and it was getting stronger. On August 22, 2012 (an Armitage intervention?), I was inspired to break my silence and comment, but to do so, I would need a virtual disguise.

Thus, “Obscura” was born.  Obscura is Latin, meaning dark, secret, unknown, as I rather prefer to remain in the context of this world. At least for now.

These are my worlds, and to some extent, I try to keep them separate.  The family and church worlds are related and intertwined, as church is an extension of my family and vice versa. The church, family and Packers worlds are combined in sense that Packer football infiltrates virtually every aspect of life for many Wisconsinites. For example, I set up the TV for the annual Packer Party at church which my mother and kids attended with me — enough said?

The academic world had been the furthest removed from the rest of my life. I am the first in my immediate family to have achieved a baccalaureate, much less a graduate degree. This context, against a career in higher education, makes my professional life rather difficult to merge with other aspects of my existence. The vocabulary I use in academic world is different, the jokes I tell are different, the people I interact with are different. Not better, not worse, just different. Some crossover occurs, but not a lot, and that is deliberate on my part.

Although I strive not to impose my academic world on my family and friends, beyond the kind of carping that everyone does about work from time to time, what I do for a living is no secret. Not so Armitage world.  I’m still conflicted enough about this world that I would rather remain Obscura, especially in terms of professional credibility. I doubt that disclosure of my Armitage world would seriously affect my career, but neither do I need the hassle of students or colleagues ribbing me about it. I have only recently let my husband in on my “secret” and he has been remarkably supportive. He scratches his head a lot about it, but he says, “If it makes you happy…” My Armitage world is safely confined. (If anything “outs” me publicly, it will be my young daughter, who has abandoned Justin Bieber in favor of Richard Armitage. I don’t know whether to be proud or afraid!)

Having successfully integrated Armitage world into a separate but parallel orbit with the rest of my worlds, I continued blithely along — working, mothering, churching, Packering and Armitaging–  until a most unlikely collision of my worlds occurred on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  The family and church worlds had enjoyed a busy few days, and now it was time to enter Packer world as I settled down with Obscurus (that’s Mr. Obscura) to watch a Sunday Night Football edition featuring the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants. Expecting to hear Faith Hill belting out the SNF theme song, I was shocked when I saw, not Faith Hill in a leather catsuit, but Packer and Giant player footage interspersed with promo scenes from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Imagine my surprise!

OMG! Danger…Danger…collision imminent! Of all worlds to intersect, these had never intersected, not even in my dreams. It was absolutely surreal, and absolutely over in 30 seconds.  I honestly don’t remember if Mr. Armitage’s character, Thorin, was featured in the promo, which rather cheesily (pardon the pun) compared the “Road to the Super Bowl” to the Unexpected Journey. (I have scoured the internet, and reached out personally to friends in Packerland trying to find video evidence of what I saw, but it turns out, that when the Packers lose 38-10, EVERYONE deletes the DVR footage of the event.)

Six months ago, I would have dismissed this collision as exactly what it was: a blatant attempt to shake the target audience from their fantasy football-induced stupor and remind them of their love of blockbuster fantasy films. That was before Armitage world.

I looked at Obscurus. “Did you see that?” I asked, trying to maintain composure.

“Yup. Weird, huh?” he replied nonchalantly.

What is wrong with him?! Is he blind? Can’t he see the explosion right in front of him?  Oh, right…that’s only going on inside my head.  I digested it briefly, but was then temporarily distracted by the unfolding Packer debacle – Packer world is a powerful force.  Later the same evening I mentioned the collision in a comment to Servetus and here I am.

Since this cosmic cataclysm, I have come to accept that, for some inexplicable reason, Richard Armitage has entered my life as a sort of lodestar. I’m not fighting it anymore. I still don’t fully understand it, but I don’t know that I actually need to define what it is about him that inspires me, although I enjoy pondering it. Things that seemed so far out of reach are now almost within my grasp. My worlds are aligning and balancing with the universe. After the Packer-Armitage collision, I no longer doubt this. I’ll admit, Richard Armitage is probably not an actual supernatural force, but somehow he has managed to unlock a whole lot of doors inside me that were keeping me stuck in a place where I didn’t want to be and I am grateful.

So is Obscurus. Mr. Armitage, if you are ever in Wisconsin, Obscurus says he owes you a beer! (We’re pretty famous for that here too.)

~ by Servetus on December 10, 2012.