Experienceing the line between reality and fiction tastes indescribable, feels reality bending.
Reality, sometimes fluid often pliable can be the original awsome, even creepy, depending on the cultural vocabulary of images you can reach for when you attempt to describe what the hell just happend, or didn’t, either way, to yourself.
The universe isn’t so dull, is it, that each experiancer, always gets the same “unimaginable” experiance, always clearly describable in no uncertain terms, predictable, always positive or always negative or always neutral?
The boring-est movie ever is just like that. Zero ratings is just like the way I notice expecting my reality to behave: bland, unsurprising, predicable, all done before then institutionalized in some Bible or other. The terms, the code rules my experience snuggles under, folds into and creates itself by must be wearing a mass uniform.
My expectations must be so I can pass the boring enough test, sane enough test, scientific enough test, has it happened before enough test.
Then, if it happens to pass those tests, these ones will weed it out: The is it possible? imaginable? repeatable? duplicatable? Even the just credible tests I lay on myself cuz I sorta want to fit in turn my world pink and elephantine.
Does my world exsist?
Nah.
Squishing this me into a tiny cell I give myself as a sanity challenge doesn’t only look weird.
Squashes brain, constricts heart, deflates lungs, feet and hands cramp and tingle, tucked in tight.
I am gonna fit in. I wanna live in the world.
To live in here, is to fit in here.
Toes can’t even wiggle.
Wooooot! I am sane!
That and love began to exist the precise instant science figured out how to prove it does.
Before that, it didn’t exsist.
urgency flashes
a storm of wonder
tripped angling twirls asunder
drank two into three
gives away four
has five more than just before
of six impossible things unexpected
un-suspecting me
Two makes language. Two communicates.
Sad, I thought, when my sister hollered up the stairs: An airplane just crashed right into a building!
I don’t watch news.
Oh, my god! Another airplane just crashed into another building. Just now! Just now!
My mind flips into mode. I don’t react. I ask. What is going on?
My newborn is laying next to me, where I’m reading. I look at my tiny baby asleep safe on our shared bed. I gently snatch my precious two-month-old into my arms head for the stairs and march down with her nestled to my chest. I’m fixen to set to translating this language of two.
What is being said here?
But I lost my brain and train of thought waiting for the firefighters to rescue trapped people form that crash, to evacuate the first building. Two buildings side by side airplane wounded, bleeding smoke.
Tell me people got rescued. Common firefighters get up there already! Get up get out.
It’s about time for an update. Suspense isn’t joking. Are the people out of danger? Like when baby Jessica was in the well. I’m not sure I can stand them in there any longer when my body feels a backbone crushing from the bottom up collapsing me one vertebrae at a time. It disintegrated and went up in a cloud of dust I can’t breathe.
They didn’t have time to get out! They didn’t have time to get out! All those people. All those firefighters. I just commanded them to get in there! They did. They didn’t get out!
They didn’t have time to get out looped my brain.
I rebooted it. It turned to rescue people charred by the other plane. No way such collapse would happen again. It was a fluke. It was only a fluke. People will get rescued this time. This building will hold as buildings do. So get em out.
Get out!
My inner voice shouts. Hurry! It works as much as cheering a team playing a game on tv at making me feel better.
Nothing feels good enough and I can’t just sit here. Scouring the foot of the building hoping to see people come out is almost useless at so far off a screen view. Parched thirst for safety turns desperate like desert heat and blazing sun. The firefighters are in there. That’s no wet enough news. The spot on the ground I’m scrutinizing for exit movement liquefies. The tower squats down, shrinks, disintegrates, plunging my soul with it into a pile of rubble erupting ashes and dust of hope. Nothing makes sense now.
I look down at what I discover in my arms. Future in the baby face nuzzled at my breast vanishes. I can no longer imagine milk ever flowing out for her, again. There is no world now. No world for her to live in.
I ghosted back upstairs, put my sleeping child down in her un-safe spot on the bed, then went to find us some safety in a stillness, a quiet surrender to what is. Letting go of what I think and feel-a hopeless end. A world. Allowing something that just liquified and collapsed to begin to regenerate or reconnect in me, then to my world.
What desperate heart-piercing scream erupts in these two molten crushing voices?
I sit and search, finally melting into the stillness where life is.
Till I’m wretched out of a concentration maintained fragile focus by my sister. Another airplane hit the pentagon!
Goddam! War-cries explode into being inside me. Instead of lighting up with those, I flee to a quiet place to put out the fire and stitch the world back together.
Later the story of the plane down in a field jerks my mind the other way. That one did something to me.
I imagine my people taking out the pilot and going down with the plane. Finally, I don’t feel bound and helpless. My hero’s, my people, succeeded. They did stuff for me. I feel like my fellow citizens and some pretty sacred symbolic place got rescued.
The Brave. The cost! Imagining that person, those people, instantly facing death, trusting each-other, banding together, standing up, thrills me and cancels out the already-in-the-grave feeling of helplessness. At the last-minute choosing to go down with the airplane in a spot were no one else would be hurt, fired up hope again. These are my people! Fiction or not.
Then I thought of the hijacker.
The contrast for him. Alone. Thwarted. Failed. The creeps of failure along with death. The guy or gal who may have, according to the speculation, took that plane down dies a glorious death while even the children on that flight, doomed, where not enslaved and twisted into instruments of more destruction. This is a victory even in death-or something like that. Then I thought this is what really matters to me-to people.
One hijacker had the worst possible death. He died hopeless, a failure, crushed by letting down what he was willing to die to uphold. So, what was he upholding that mattered that much to him, then? What band of brothers did he feel like he betrayed? My emotions settled here, and everything started to make sense. This kid knew when he boarded the plane that he was going to die. He couldn’t chicken out. He couldn’t afford to really see one human being on that plane with him. No person could be more cornered or desperate, and sad. I wept for him. Then, I wept for his fellows.
When memorials were held, I scheduled my own. I’m already feeling like an American about my own American dead. So, I don’t focus there, were everyone else is already showing up. For each memorial, I brought a flower, to take time and felt the grief for each hero of a cause I don’t understand. And for his mother. For a kid compelled to shout-out that blood shrill for help. I don’t understand it. The kid, I figure, really didn’t understand it, either. We are equally lost in the world him and I. He stood for something just like my heroes. He was a person. He died failing, or triumphant. But that wasn’t what I wept for. I wept for the time he passed a beautiful American girl on a New York street and didn’t allow himself to see her beauty and love her, because he might have to kill her. She is them. This is not for me. Bitter tears dripped for the hours he spent at the airport, then on that plane looking at children, babies, couples in love, not seeing this was for him. Not seeing himself in them. I wept for his looking yet not seeing community, only death.
It took me a few years to tell another person after that first person I told. She looked at me like I’d swallowed the devil whole and alive. It doesn’t matter that I don’t agree with Osama Bin Ladin, even if he is not framed, but I let my heart try to hear the people he speaks for, is blasphemy. My position made me shake all over, but I can’t just pretend I feel different.
When Osama may (or may not) have been killed. I take it hard.
Every time the subject or name of Osama has come up for the last decade or so, I handle it by imagining Jesus getting accused. I don’t know anything, but he is my friend because I made a choice to listen to and honor him with my thoughts. I don’t know what he is saying, I’m just listening.
He just got crucified.
While my community celebrates, grief crushes me. I cry on my walk. Grief floods me making lunch, on my way to pick up my kid, while I play Runscape with my online friends, but I don’t talk about it to them. While walking off the feeling of indigence over my country taking-out my friend for me, my walking buddy Lois brings up the politics and his death. A lump grows and grows in my throat choking up tears I can’t hold back.
I lost my imaginary friend, today. Yet the grief is mostly over the idea of celebrating it.
Nature has no name. Where wooed urgency tumbles into a howling excitement, desire, need, while I stare under a green world with the sky falling into me, and into the water below. New water, big fun water.
Fun gets whispered flowing in inaudible waves that catch and play a melody on my inner tuner. At first, they hadn’t been whispering. Suspicious, they changed their minds. Instantly, I sensed subterfuge and started asking questions.
You are too little. You can’t come. It won’t be fun for you.
They must mean my little brother. I can come. I can tell it will be fun for me.
No one helped me, though, so I helped myself. I did what everyone else was doing.
They told me not to come. I followed them anyway. The pack of them out-ran me fast disappearing far ahead while I am still in the familiar playground of the park in the woods across the street. They leapt like deer one after another into the bushes and disappeared.
They had all been changing into shorts. This was important for some reason. When they said I couldn’t, I proved that I could. I’d gone and done the same. Fishing a pair of shorts, my little brother’s were the first ones I could find, out of the big pile of clean laundry on the couch, where everyone else was getting theirs from. I proudly put them on, without help. I don’t need anyone to help me get dressed, see. Whatever they were going to do, I was coming.
I am wearing shorts I shouted, then screamed after them. My two older sisters, Nicky, she didn’t go to school either, Tosh was old enough to go to school, and Moe, he was already in fourth grade. Then there was my half-brother Ben, and a friend Matt. Moe and Tosh warned me not to follow them.
Stay here.
We were in the usual park across the street, where I played all the time. They warned me not come into the dangers after them. Danger wasn’t stopping me. My little brother didn’t come. He was the little one they were avoiding and not letting come. Not me, though. I am big enough. I headed straight for the trees were I thought I’d last seen them. My world went silent while I kept on going into the unknown.
I might get lost in here forever. Forever started to happen.
Just shy of forever, an intoxicating siren song of squealing roaring, fun, drifted into the silence or the scream of the endless forest. I could navigate by it, jumping over logs, creeping between trees, crawling under low branches squeezing through scratchy walls of pokey bushes.
They said I couldn’t. But I can.
I’m saved from being lost forever, maybe kidnapped by the sight of Ben, Tosh, Nicky, Moe, Trish, and Matt, splashing, laughing squealing shouting tag.
See, I can! I tear up to the edge of the creek shouting.
Surprise, then signs of exasperation turn the air to soup. Every glance up at me, a groan.
You can’t come!
We told you not to!
I’m here! See, I could, too, come. I’m so proud of myself that at first I’m smiling smug, triumphant, standing there, waiting to be accepted, and join the game. The fun stops.
I’m not taking her back, you take her back.
You are the one who couldn’t be quiet.
Well mom told you to take care of the little kids.
You ran too slow.
The nicest of my two big sisters tried to get me to leave back the way I came.
My next sister growled for me to stop ruining all the fun and just go away.
She might get lost, you need to take her back.
She ruins everything. I’m not taking her all the way back.
I’m not going!
Well you can’t swim!
Oh, that is what they are doing-swim. It’s what they were all talking about. That’s what they are doing. I could do that. It looks easy and fun.
I can swim if I want to. You are not my boss!
But you can’t.
Yes I can. I can if I want to.
Tosh splashes Matt and laughs at him. He lunges for her. She is the one who would say get out of here. I expect that.
You’re it!
She turns and tags Nicky. Ben lets Nicky catch up to and tag him, then roars after Moe.
Moe would tag me when he get’s caught, so I’m heading right into the game now. It felt like everyone was just right there, but when I try to join the game, I have to climb straight down a dirt bank as high as I am. I edge up to it and dangle my legs down over the side. It’s scary. But I’m calculating my leap into the water.
No! Moe shouts.
I’m dumbstruck. He is usually sorta nice to me, so him not wanting to play with me hits me where tears are. I start to sob and I can’t stop. Then, all the unfairness of it, the anger of being left out comes up in an epic wave of repressed wails. No one likes me and no one is nice to me fills up my chest with a bursting pain shattering my my body into shaking like I’m crying all over.
Shut up! You are ruining everyone’s fun! Tosh groans.
Ben is still chasing Moe, so he is gone somewhere where I can’t see him. Then he is somewhere else, then somewhere else. He looks at me every time he is somewhere else with a strange face that makes the wailing come harder. Tosh reproaching makes me madder, till I’m screaming uncontrolled at the top of my lungs cuz I don’t know what else to do. I’m almost beat. But I try to slide down and reach the bottom with my feet, but the bottom is water and my feet don’t reach it. I want to jump, but it’s not the ground I’ll land on and it’s high and to scary.
No one will help me, wells up in my chest and erupts in a fresh ear piercing howl of sadness and despair. I see it reflected on their faces.
Someone is gonna find out we are here if she doesn’t be quiet. But, I don’t care. If someone finds out, they will not be so mean, and help me play, too. So, I let my head start to pound with the shouting without letting up.
Matt swims over to the bank were I am. He looks up at me with a different face and says something I can’t hear while I’m screaming my head off.
You want to come swim?
Yes! I stop crying like the sun came out.
You need some help getting in?
Yeah, but no one will help me.
I want to help you.
The soup in the air vanishes, it’s slurped up and a fresh breeze blows through the trees and through the trees in me.
He comes close to the bank and looks up at me. Can you jump? I’ll catch you. His head disappears under water then bobs back up.
Where did you go?
Moe stops and gets caught. She doesn’t know how to swim!
I can to jump! It scars me, but I’ll do it, I’m thinking. But where did Matt just go?
Why do you keep going somewhere?
My feet don’t touch the bottom here. I have to swim to not go down. I can catch you, but if you can’t swim then you might go down and not come back up.
I thought of Moe disappearing then coming up somewhere else. I’d do that.
I’ll do what Moe is doing.
Do you know how to swim?
I think so.
Have you swam before?
No.
Oh, then I better not bring you down here. Your mom would be really mad at me if you went and drown.
What is drown?
It’s when you go down but don’t come back up.
I thought about Moe going down and I wonder about where he is, and wonder and wonder cuz he doesn’t come back up.
But I will come back up. Why wouldn’t I?
Well you have to know how to do it. If you never did it before, you don’t know how and you will go down and not know how to come back up.
Oh.
If that happened, you mom would be real sad. She would never see you again.
My mom would be sad if I were to go down and never come up?
The idea struck me. Mom would be sad if I went down and didn’t come back up?
Are you sure she would be sad?
Yes, I’m sure. She would be so sad and real mad at me.
The idea felt like a miracle bloom. I’d never even Imagined mom would be sad if I never came back.
Oh, and I sat down at the edge of the drop off, happily watching my family wade and swim, totally content that mom would be sad if I drowned.
A deep contented satisfaction filled my chest growing till it moves outside of me all around me filling the creek and the water. Watching everyone who would take me across the water but didn’t do it so I wouldn’t go down and not ever come back up, and that mom would be sad if that happened to me and she never saw me again, felt fine. It was nice. Since they couldn’t carry me across but wanted to, that means they did want me playing with them. And all we needed was a bridge.
Bliss erupted! Out of it shot a bridge. A bridge appeared right in the middle of the swimming hole. I leap onto it run across like a deer hop off then splash into the shallows on the gravely beach on the other side. I feel myself swimming, laughing in a paradise of cool water like the creek over near the park, but lots more and fun, and I dip and duck under and splash my sisters.
A deafening sound blows me off my balance, turning my mind blank. I don’t know what happened. When I open my eyes everyone stopped playing and stared shocked out of their minds. I look up at the difference everyone is staring at.
The tree that had been to my right and just behing me, lay right across the middle of the pool.
Blinking, I stare at it. Then follow the length with my eyes. It goes to the other side where feeling like I’m playing.
Oh! My bridge! Yay! I think, leaping up onto it and skip like a deer to the other side, hop off, and dash to the water.
Wow, you are brave. Ben stares at me with a face I don’t understand. I wouldn’t have gone anywhere close to that thing. It almost landed on us.
Why? It’s all right. It’s my bridge!
I am four.
Game over
Re-group
Re-design
My Earth-Game-Plan
Gather more supplies
Wait for the team
Return
Start over
Damn
My character falls
For it
Hoping like hell
I won’t have fell
This time
Messing up my glorious
Virtual-reality-
Multi-player-adventure-game
Again
Still mortal?
Yes!
Onward!
Fun
To
Quest Complete!
“You’ve imbibed a special potion that makes you immortal.
Now that you’ve got forever, what changes will you make in your life?
How will you live life differently, knowing you’ll always be around to be accountable for your actions?”
“I can’t believe I still have to stand here and hold this sign!” Woman supporting filibuster outside Texas Capital.
So I can take a pill to take back my period.
“Being gay is not a choice, but being a bigot is.” I instantly re-tweeted from God@thetweetofgod. It’s funny, not true.
Took me a while to figure out how it’s not true, but like art which is not true, it points to truth. Like the Pietà, Michelangelo’s sculpture that shows Mary the mother of Jesus strong and tall while her crucified son is like a child in her arms. Not necessarily true proportions, just true about a mother’s heart.
I don’t believe being a bigot is a choice. It’s not a permanent state of being, either. Gay is permanent, judging from my straight perspective, though I might be off. But bigot is like pregnant. It’s a state. It may or may not be a choice. It can and will, usually, end. It’s story and outcome are what epic is made of. Plenty of bigotry ends in abortion. Other bigotry ends with new life. Bigotry, yes, is human. Mine and yours. It’s a place on a journey, a grade in school, an incomplete quest. What we do with it may become art.
High school kid calls fifth-grader stupid.
Well, she don’t know The Grapes of Wrath isn’t fruit!
Art doesn’t make sense, it helps me make sense-of people.
This “Yes-we-are-allowed-to-end-a-relationship-before-it-bigins-filibuster is pregnant.
Art is being made here. Bigotry is a shiny material.
Inspired history feels like community committed art. HIstory is being made here.
Could making history be making art?
An attempt at a discrimination graphic. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Evil” is permanently banned from usage. It’s the way we use it that sucks.
Evil Eeyore (Photo credit: ybnormalman)
Not ban the word evil. Just its use, its interpretation.
The word “evil” is a cop-out.
Daily Prompt: If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?
Young Helen Keller is evil in our current interpretation. Anyone who can’t see, hear and so, speak human, and therefore acts in an incomprehensible way, terrifying, terrified and violent and we feel we can do nothing to stop it qualifies as “evil”.
Evil is where communication failed. Evil is an un-touched child in a grown-up body. Evil is an impossible extreme were only an Anne Sullivan destined to attempt the impossible finds purpose and fulfillment and something priceless.
Yet, once the magic word “evil” gets applied, challenge extinguished. You don’t have to stretch, work hard, grow, come to understand or be accountable for your actions toward anything tagged “evil”. You can do the same things “Evil” did or does without becoming “evil” yourself. It works, I promise. It’s a game of tag. It’s a magic bullet. It is the most useless word for getting any peace and happiness, except for in the form of entertainment. Movies and stories of “good” vs “evil” are fun.
If you want action-adventure, to fight and be right and win, if you want to use the essential word “evil” to set up this story-game, set it in Middle Earth, a galaxy far far away, or The Matrix. There is no place for this word among human beings in this realm. Here, when tempted to label any person “evil”, consider it a sign of ignorance. Maybe it’s a moment to reconsider what you believe and an opportunity to connect a Helen Keller with her Anne Sullivan. It may become a heart warming story. And perhaps, only the one right person may be the answer.
Photograph of Helen Keller at age 8 with her tutor Anne Sullivan on vacation in Brewster, Cape Cod, Massachusetts (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Failure to see the truth and find the right solution and connection does not equal “evil”. It just makes a mess like failure to find the solution that works in any other kind of problem. It’s just an unfinished adventure story, success story. When you see “evil”, you are on that exciting catalyst dilemma part of the story where you can’t see the truth yet. It’s one of the best parts of any great story, though it’s challenging. If you tag it “evil”, there is no adventure, no story, no growth, no fun for your superhero. And you become what you see. By seeing “evil”, you become the antagonist. Have fun being the antagonist while thinking you are the hero.
“Evil”, like “sodomite” is a magic bullet irrelevant interpretation of a word. It only works like “Tag! You’re it!”, or normal people transforming into Agents when they see “evil” , if you are playing tag or plugged into the matrix.
Possible interpretations for the word evil:
I tried everything and failed.
I don’t know were to find the person who has got the medicine for this.
I don’t understand this person/problem. Can someone else f-ing figure this out?
That is an “evil” person, project problem, we need an Einstein.
No satisfactory solution or balance has ever been achieved here, yet.
It seems impossible, but since it needs to get done, it is possible.
WTF! I am so not the person for this issue!
Help!
Evil
I know there are lots of other options, just can’t think of them just now.
A mosh pit, uploaded from flickr (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The handsome strangers whipped the towns people into a frenzy, a witch-burning riot for blood-relief extasy. They just had to take them. They had to have them now. You know, like a mosh pit out there, no one willing to take no for an answer. There was no security and no manners.
Bring them out that we may “know” them!
The mob of rioters surrounding the house didn’t chant “please”.
The towns people broke down the door to get at and gang-rape the two fine men.
These irresistible men where Lot’s house guests. Lot helped his fabulous angel friends make a Hollywood escape. Then, he had to get the hell out of there before the town lynched or raped him instead. Probably just lynch actually, he wasn’t that hot.
English: Fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah Русский: Бегство Лота из Содома (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The townships were Sodom and Gomorrah. Both towns got nuked for their wicked behavior that day.
The one and only problem here is the town-mob not gang-raping women. That’s why sodomy means gay. So, gay is really bad. Like Sodom and Gomorrah fire from heaven bad.
Lot leaving Sodom, Woodcut from the Nuremberg Chronicle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Hypocrisy, fake smile, self-righteous, were words mother said in a tone that told me she is right, and fake smilers are exceedingly wicked.
Wasn’t sure what all that meant, but I couldn’t stop wondering about this song we sang, and fake smiles:
My mother told me something
Every boy and girl should know
It’s all about the devil
We learn to hate him so
Let the sunshine in Face it with a grin Smilers never lose And frowners never win
Let the sunshine in Face it with a grin Open up your heart And let the sunshine in
So do hypocrite fake smiles always win, too, mommy?
This baffled my mother, at first. Mostly cuz six was to young for the nuances of good and evil. First she ignored me. Then suddenly she froze, gave me a bewildered look, while invisible wheels churned light into her eyes.
She stopped writing, put down the pen, stopped eyeing the phone, sat down. Then she beckoned me to her, pulled up a chair for me, waited for me to sit down then paused before she focused her passionate attention on me, for a solemn inner circle grown up talk. She captivated me with the sacred duty of the righteous and temptation and lies and evil. I listened rapped about the cunning of the devil, his fake smiles, and his cruel war on God and His people.
By the end of this intimate time capsule I know who is good, who is bad. Bristling, I brandished my inner hero’s sword eager to vanquish all the wicked once and for all. Point me in the right direction. I feel incensed. I will stop children suffering, persecution of the innocent. I’d assassinate Hitler myself, if I could, but I’ll settle for the next devil’s servant. Why didn’t a hero assassinate Hitler once and for all and save millions of lives? It couldn’t have been that hard! These new bad guys are worse than Hitler though, because they are wolves in sheep’s clothing, with beguiling fake smiles. I want to single-handed take out all these villans. I know the Bible stories and now I know who the bad guys are here and now, same as the Bible wicked. I know who and where they are and can’t wait to get at them. All hypocrites, acting like they are the good guys of course.
I was smart enough to notice that the song’s smilers might not include hypocritical ones. So I was pretty smart. But not bright enough to see the God/Devil frame of reference for what it just might be, a gaming structure. I totally bought into it.
Jumping on the trampoline with my daughter in this cool spring Texas sunshine and feeling like a kid, laughing I bust out singing a sunshine song. This particular one. I hadn’t even remembered this song in ages and ages, but when I sang it aloud to my daughter, to my horror, I found myself recommending hate as a way of life.
Hey, I was reaching for sunshine not a road to holocaust, here. This song is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. No wonder I keep ranting about good and evil, God™ as trademarkable, and the devil as arbitrary and customizable to our needs and prejudice. This kind of rubbish is stuck in here somewhere. My mind hadn’t tagged this ditty as b.s. yet. I wonder how much other rubbish is in here un-sorted, not hazard yellow corded , not yet trashed. My un-tamed poisoned frame of reference is dangerous.
This one has vicious fangs, hiding somewhere in my brain filed under “sunshine” and “open up your heart”. An invisible place holder, lurking here, the sheep clad wolf in my mind. It’s a given by this conditioning that it’s my job as a good little girl, and citizen, to hate the Devil and vanquish evil.
Now all I need to do is just fill in the blanks with Evil’s description. Pick one. Or choose your favorite not mentioned here: Jews, Indians, witch, terrorist, religious fanatic, heathen, unbeliever, Philistine, homosexual, evil person, Muslim, American, apostate, criminal, negro, _______ … I should by truth and right bring just punishment to whichever my upbringing tells me to fill in the blanks with. It’s my right and duty. It’s the heroic thing to do.
Not to long ago, Jews filled in the blank for almost the entire world, not just Germany, like we choose to remember. For our joy in Western shows and cowboys and Indians, Indians rightly filled in the just-kill-em-slaught, of evil. Evidently, somewhere I must still have a lynch em, exterminate em, and the world will be better for it, slaught. Who will I fancy to fill my free slaught with next? Give me the right propaganda and I’ll give you my slaught to fill. Then I’ll support exterminating whomever is put in my evil= ________ slaught.
“God”, good guys = ___________ , must be a blank slaught, too. What if it is a place-holder that could work the same way as the devil place-holder? Rather like any game with rivals. It takes at least two to play any exciting sport. Yeah, I want the game. I like games, too. But I don’t have to hate the kids playing for the other team. Do I?
They know they are the good guys and I am the bad guys, just as sure as I know what I know. They are just as committed to good, truth and justice. Just as willing to fight and die for it. They have their own lovely sunshine ditties, and loving mommies who know without a doubt who the bad guys are and what duty bound honor dictates we must do to them.
Realms touch
Powers mingle
Magic born
Of fairies
In people
Impossible charmed
Wind alive
Unimagined desire
Dot a dot
Life on fire
Dream physics
Demand require
Honey-dipped moon
Mother heart
Solid revere
Human art
Watch your step. Come in. Come in! Right through this door. No mater that you don’t see it.
You step over the threshold into an aura magnificence. You can tell by the eager faces behind you. You feel it. You bow your head. You bow because the person if front of you bowes.
The line of visitors behind you eagerly push you forward. Ceiling is lower. You bow deeper.
You are compelled. Reverence by low ceiling. Lower, lower. You bow.
Then you kneel before the Alter of Le Clown.
The passage is narrow. The way through is forward.
You do obeisance to LeClown. LeClown trademarked God™. Waywardspirit heisted LeClown’s magnificence™. So God™ is in Waywardspirit’s pocket. As you bow before the altar of Le Clown owner of God™ your power got sucked out of you and into Waywrdspirit’s Magical Power-Saver Gene Jars™. Your power just got sucked out and stored up just like when you sign your signature.
Thanks for coming. Invite your friends. Come back next week for great rewards in heaven™. You’ve earned them!
My passion she –
She chose her Way
My now
My choice
How to
Not
Or feel
Today
***
Hardness or Harness-A story
My baby might not live she whispers; hollow calm lands on my stunned disbelief.
I’m staring at nothing, holding my breath mind goes blank. It’s about the phone. How did I get a call here?
This is a clinic. I’m at a clinic for my pre-natal. No one is that interested in my baby or my check up. It’s just us now. Who would call here for me or care how my check up went? When I walked out of the exam room, The nurse blankly informs me I have a phone call. Before I can protest, some confusion, she qualifies.
You are Jessica LeBaron right?
I nod.
She leads me to the front desk. Confused shock has me when the receptionist staring at the file cabinet hands me the phone.
I’m bewildered.
I didn’t give anyone this number.
Shock didn’t know which to choose, Eva’s unexpected voice and those words. What do they mean? How did I get any call at a midwives’ office.
Eva knows I would be at a clinic on Ben White. That’s it. She is seeing her doctor today too. We were going to talk about our maternity checkups when we got home. Our random appointments ended up being on the same day. This serendipity delights us. Not as much as finding our we are due within the same two weeks though. We thought of riding together to our appointments, but it hadn’t worked out. Our appointments were at almost the same time like our babies, at opposite ends of town.
We were room mates after I got separated, till she got married. We are best friends. We are having babies together. We are excited. We both laugh a lot-till now.
I lose control of my jaw.
Did you hear what I said: My baby isn’t going to live.
She is quiet till I grasp and gasp.
Oh, Eva! I whisper into the receiver.
My baby is not going to live, she repeats with stunned emotion.
Oh. All I can do is sigh.
I’m calling you first because I know you would understand. Would you come over?
Yes, I’ll be right over. I’ll be right there.
Okay, then.
We hang up.
I turn around and rush back to the midwife.
Please help me! My throat clenches tears in my eyes. My friend. She just found out her baby may not live. What do I do? How do I help her?
I don’t feel like I can do her any good.
They tell me how to just be there, to listen and allow her to grieve. I can help then, I figure.
We were going to meet at my apartment. But I go to hers, now. She is on the couch wrapped up in her arms staring into space. She turns and stares at me. Just stares. We stare at each other. The emotional territory was to expansive and explosive to enter. Everything is numb and blank and hurt.
I’m going to a specialist for another sonogram. The doctor is sure of what he sees, or doesn’t see, but he sent me to a specialist. I can’t believe he knows what he is talking about.
I need to calm down. I need to call mom and dad. I still have to tell Jon. How do I tell Jon? I can’t tell Jon!
Jon is out-of-town for another few weeks on in-between job training for the new one. Eva’s parents live in Arizona. She asked me to come. We go to the second appointment together. It’s scheduled around my classes. It was the quickest appointment she could get. Either way I was going.
Five happy moms smile contented almost cooing rubbing their bellies or reading baby magazines in the comfortable deep cushions of the waiting room. I try to do none of those things. We only glance at each other, hoping not to convey despair to the blessed. We don’t talk or leaf through baby magazines or act blessed however. We fidget till we are called back into the brightly lit sonogram room.
The sonogram technician had a softness about her gentle way. Eva lies on the table. I sit in the chair next to her. After she introduces herself and settles Eva she squeezes warmed gel into Eva’s hand then waits for her to rub it around her belly with hopeful stokes. Eva wanted to apply it herself. She places the ultra sound device on Eva’s belly. We all turn to the screen.
First we hear it. A familiar heartbeat. Everything good and normal so far! Eva sighs, fights back tears, stays calm.
We follow the image watching intently as the tech labels and describes the sonogram in a matter of fact way.
The amniotic fluid is very low. There is almost none.
This is the heart here. It’s located on the right side.
Here are the lungs. They under-developed.
Kidneys should be here. Pause.
All of this could be good or at least okay or remedial, we are hoping. We look at each other with another flashing spark of hope. Get some synthetic amniotic fluid inject it, no problem, or something like that.
So what is the problem then? So everything is really okay?!
Well, kidneys are not visible.
What does that mean?
I assume she will just keep on looking till she finds them.
I am not finding kidneys.
What does that mean?
Kidneys manufacture and filter the amniotic fluid. The amniotic fluid gets breathed into the lungs. It is how lungs develop. There is not enough amniotic fluid to develop the lungs. Kidneys are not producing it. There is only one and it is small.
Can that be fixed? Can one be added or something? I could give one.
Even if we could fix that. This shows that the heart is on the right side instead of the left.
Lungs this small won’t catch up in time to breathe at birth, or ever.
Eva whimpers and hides her face.
This small kidney here. Too small to filter enough blood. No kidney visible here…
Stop stop! Stop it! Please stop telling me wrong things about my baby! Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me anymore. She breaks down sobbing shaking, just contained urgent wailing trapped in her not catching her breath.
Tech leans forward pats her and lets her cry.
I understand how hard this is for you. I am sorry.
When she recovers her voice after a while, the tech asked if we were ready to see what the doctor had to say. She Tech led us to the waiting doctor.
His gentleness let her fall apart, again.
She wept then cried out: Why? Why did this happen?
There is no reason. No cause that we know of.
So this just happened to my baby for no reason? She demands.
I’m sorry there is nothing I can do to make this easier, but yes. It’s sad that someone like you who really wants a baby doesn’t get one when I’ve seen babies survive a whole bottle of Drain-O, just fine.
We look at each other horrified.. How could someone not want a baby?
We know the stories, yet we are incredulous. Unfairness is deep.
When you are ready, we can talk about what you want to do next. Come back as soon as you are ready to consider what course of action you want to take.
This is a great loss for you. You and your husband must have been very excited about the arrival of your first child. Take a day. Come back in a day or two. After you talk to your husband, to discuss what you want to do. Be back within two days, I’ll see you whenever you come. He soft smiled warm reassurance then he got up and left.
Like what? What we can do, didn’t hit us till we got home.
Next appointment is about risks and options.
Should I go full term or terminate and start the healing process?
The child can’t breath. It will never breath. It won’t ever function or live. It will suffocate as soon as it’s born, if it doesn’t die during the stress of birth or even before then. It could die at any time.
You could decide to carry to term. If you decide to go full term you need to be seen every week in case the fetus expires and labor doesn’t start. That could lead to blood poisoning, a risk. Otherwise, you can go into labor at any time. There is no way to predict an outcome.
Then in the middle of bewildered not, letting go while not wanting to hold on, or prolong anguish, and wondering, he drops another bomb:
If you are going to choose to end it, he pauses with a sigh of frustration, you have three days to decide. In three days third trimester, anti-abortion laws come into effect. If you don’t choose to terminate in the next three days, after the three days, we can no longer assist you in termination. You must either go into labor, or your life be in danger for the pregnancy to be terminated.
I have to decide now?
You must decide, if you want to take action, yes, within three days. After that there is nothing we can do. Our hands are tied. The law is clear. No exceptions. No third trimester procedures. Third trimester starts in three days.
We sit on her couch staring into space and crying. Her crying makes me cry. I feel the loss of my son all over, plus her loss. By heart about bursts. It has been five years, but when I found out in the middle of getting divorced that I was pregnant, I considered not going through with it, just to be responsible to myself.
I’m in the middle of school with two kids to keep and figure out how to support without a partner. I’m still not able to describe what is going on, but the idea of losing a baby on accident or on purpose both add up the same in my feelings. The idea of adopting my baby out to someone else is unthinkable. We may have no stable future, but in the world I exist in now, I have no other choice. In about a week I love the baby as I knew I would. It would be stupid for me to put my heart up for adoption, or to end the relationship. Even if it’s not responsible to have a child without support, I surrender to being a single mother and feeling happy with Eva.
Now this.
Her parents arrive. I go back to school grieving indignant, and remembering.
While I volunteered for Campus Crusade for Christ and attended the meetings that rallied Christians and got Bush elected in the early nineties I was into the anti-abortion campaign, especially no third trimester abortions. Now something is happening. It’s not black and white anymore.
I can’t just not be pregnant anymore just like that Eva steady wails! The kids at school…the other teachers..the girls they pat my tummy lined up on the way out of class.
If someone asks me if it’s a boy or a girl when I get back I don’t know what I’ll do. Everyone will ask.
Have you got a name yet Miss?
How are you Miss?
How is that baby?
I couldn’t keep explaining there is no baby, her voice cracks, for another three months…but it will be right here…
For three more months. I couldn’t work this way. I couldn’t explain it either. I will just bust out crying, for the next three months. I couldn’t work this way. I’d just be knowing the baby is not going to live or already dead. I don’t know what to do!
I could stay home and be with the baby. It’s to soon to make this choice. I wish Jon could come back and be here. He can’t take off till the end of the week. We have till tomorrow to decide.
Now, I’m in this government class writing a paper about laws. I have allot to say about how stupid this anti-abortion law is. It’s taking Eva to a whole new level of misery, like insult on injury.
My government teacher read only my outrage essays to the class while I skipped it. I went to the hospital with Eva to celebrate the sacred death and birth of her son. Jon couldn’t get back in time. The law couldn’t wait.
We were into our babies.
If she had not been into her baby there would be noting to cry about.
Abortion is like a break up with the baby when this relationship just isn’t working both ways, before you marry…When I’m just not into you.
A shaman woman I know, went into a sacred meditation to talk to the child when she discovered their relationship. She talked to it and listened. She acknowledged their relationship.
I’m thankful you like me she told him. It was a boy. You chose me to be your mother. So I am. Yet, it’s not a good time for me to be in this relationship. Would you try again later?
She got a “sure”.
Next day she started bleeding and thanked her child for honoring her choice.
Wonderful woman I know made their choices to not be mothers when they were not ready. That choice did not include being an oven to bake a child for nine months then give it to someone else.
The adoption choice works good for some people, which is cool.
Pregnancy in the 26th week. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Me? No way is my body gonna be forced to make a lonely baby whom I’m not attached to. No way would I choose to be sick for months, throw up constantly, gain forty lbs, go through labor delivery blood spouting major surgery that takes weeks to recover from, while everyone is wondering, family asking as I’m to wiped out to take care of myself, with no support just to give some one a baby for free.
Pretty dumb all around, if you ask me.
There is nothing wrong with adopting out. I’m personally not into it-at all.
It’s defiantly not the only valid response to birth-control malfunctions. There are as innumerable appropriate valid responses to unplanned pregnancy. As many as there are woman and situations.
The relationship between mother and child is what it is to me. I am in or I’m not. Just like any other relationship.
I can break up. A possible child need not force me.
Babies don’t force me to become their mother. Nor does a baby need to endure a horrible non-wanted toxic environment. It’s a crappy co-dependent relationship that way.
I choose if I want to invite a spirit into a body with my body, into my life. I choose if I want to help someone else by baking a baby for them. I am a free woman. I have lots of choices! Perhaps unborn spirits have choices we don’t know about.
Wouldn’t put it past them. I bet, babies would choose to be happy and mom be happy, too.
This is a “thought bubble”. It is an illustration depicting thought. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Remember when we were dumb?
Seven-year-olds looking back at being six.
Remember we thought we ‘d get lost if we walked over there behind those trees?
Yeah!
We were so dumb!
Remember when we were dumb?
We used to be so dumb. Every year. Then, the next year we were smart.
One of my sisters or I would inevitably pop the question. We laugh at our old dumb selves. Then start remembering something even dumber.
Remember when we used to fight for Roundy?
Yeah! That was so dumb!
No it wasn’t! Food actually tastes better when you eat it with the one-and-only round spoon!
Remember when Sandra decided to just keep the dang thing in her pocket all day? She could instantly win the fight to eat supper with Roundy?
Well that was smart. Till it fell out of her pocket into the outhouse.
Remember how mad I was at her? She was so dumb! I chased her all over to get her to stop and listen to how mad I was, and how dumb that was. When I caught her I punched her. Wow. She slapped me back. So I had to chase her to hit her back. I was so dumb!
We were thirteen when it dawned on us that we were always going to have been dumb.
What are we going to think is just dumb?
What are we going to know was really dumb?
What is gonna be really, really dumb and what will be, cringe, so, soooooo dumb?
Remember when we used to believe snakes and scorpions would chase you as soon as they look at you? Remember we used to practice out-running snakes?
Yeah!
Remember we thought scorpions were gonna be as big as squirrels. They were going to chase us with their stinging squirrel tails curled forward to jab us to death with that one deadly poison sting.
We were so dumb!
Scorpion (Photo credit: patrikneckman)
We could try to avoid some of those.
We tried.
It hasn’t worked.
I can still sit and ask my sisters this same question and get the same kind of answers. Still makes me cringe. Still embarrassing. Still unthinkable. Still nothing we can do about being so dumb.
Remember when we thought “bad people” were all going to hell?
Yeah, and we really felt dark skin was inferior, too.
Yeah. Don’t remind me!
Remember black people just were never going to add-up?
It’s to soon to remember that one. I don’t want to remember when we were dumb.
Well, we really did believe that.
I know we did! But it’s so embarrassing. I’d rather remember squirrel tailed scorpions. Remember we argued whether scorpions were furry like squirrels or reptilian like lizards?
Remember when I found a lizard that curled up it’s tail when it raced by? I ran like hell. It was a baby scorpion and had a momma scorpion, like a mamma bear, near by.
Yeah and I took you to find that lizard to prove that scorpions were lizardy not squirrelly. Remember we figured hunting a dragon. We crept into a dragon’s lair, over there between that cactus and those two bushes. Glad we practiced running like hell. This scorpion might attacked us.
I was so going to prove to you that scorpions were more dragon-lizard than vicious-squirrel. I had already practiced my acceptance speech.
Remember a tiny scorpion. The stare in disbelief at the puny thing after we shook, ran just from the name? Just a weird insect thingy. After we named it we ran for our lives. Deadly!
Remember we thought gay was an abomination, condemned?
Would you please shut up!
Remember when….
I’m not listening!
Okay remember when we puffed our bangs up into that big forward arch? Remember we thought that was tho only pretty way to do bangs?
I try not to!
Oh, but even worse, we thought there was one right way to heaven and we were on it. All ten of us, while everyone else was going to hell. That wasn’t the worst part though. Everyone else was going to hell unless we showed them the right way.
Yeah, okay, I remember, unfortunately… See ya the hell later. I’m getting out of here. Want anything from the store?
Competition focuses, reaches, catches, traps, evolves, gives, takes, glorifies, laughs. Competition is a god.
Competition is like love. I don’t want to give it up! Like love, competition puts the fun in everything. Competition makes games. Games make fun. Fun makes community.
Competition is god. Sometimes though, we stand up to god. We can pick how we want to worship. We get to say what games we want to play. Vote with our feet.
The game where a few smart and amazingly talented people beat the rest of the world at the Monopoly is not fun. The point of a game is fun right? Fun on both sides. When the game is over, it stops. Or when we say it’s over, it stops. It’s a game. We made the rules, remember?
Play a new game.
Tug of war competition in 1904 Summer Olympics. Photo taken from Wikipedia.
Tug of war is no longer fun when it’s people against a machine. Maybe this game got dropped from the Olympics for good reason.
Give us bread lest we die.
It’s that old story. Growing up I always thought the protagonists that the God in the Bible Stories helped were the good guys.
But Joseph Sold Into Egypt he was more like a Red Ocean dreamer of dreams. So, like Warren Buffet, he could tell what the economy was going to do. We get the story that his prognostication was fair and based on the weather. Maybe so. In that case, so is the economic climate: There was going to be an inflation then a drop. So he invested and bought up all the corn. Yeah, people ate nothing but corn.
Then when the Great Depression err famine came he did the usual.
The people spent all their money on food the first year of the seven-year famine, Great Depression.
Second and third years people traded their cattle for food.
Next years their land.
Then the clincher: Give us bread else we die!
So, our righteous Joseph-Sold-into-Egypt accepted the lives of everyone in the kingdom in exchange for feeding them. Viola!
He was the king’s deputy. Kings are servants of their people. Not the other way around. They got their jobs backwards.
I don’t know if a God did or didn’t give him the heads up or the vision of patterns and the wisdom to save the world from starvation. Enslaving everyone was not necessary, though. Or was it? It was four hundred years later that, well surprise, Joseph’s own descendants are enslaved to the system that he started when he might have just served.
They wanted out of slavery and vicious miracles got them out in our Exodus Bible story.
Key to being enslaved is both sides play the game.
Oh, so you want just you and the Pharaoh to be left alive then?
You lose us, you lose your kingdom. Ayn Rand glorifies this outcome. In her popular novel Atlas Shrugged, just a Pharaoh and a Joseph and a mighty girl are left after they didn’t help the people. Try and get dumber than that. No one else was worth it. Some folks do seem to think that is a great story. (Note: I was one of them. People change.)
“Give us liberty or give us death!”
It’s just an attitude, as opposed to:
“Give us bread else we die!”
People are more important than game rules. Rules and games are for people. People matter. Public servants are for people. Smart ones are great gifts to all of us. Smart people matter just as much as not-smart-in-that-way, people.
Joseph and Warren Buffet can serve and care and offer their gifts how their hearts desire.
We have hearts, too. We can dictate what we experience and believe by consciously making choices.
We don’t have to sacrifice liberty to live. We don’t have to kill anyone, or die.
My childhood hero Joseph Sold into Egypt no longer impresses me.
It’s hard to tell if my conscience is more like a tar baby, or more like a hand rail.
Maybe it’s a tar covered hand rail. A handrail along the straight and narrow that get’s me all sticky, and glued to it. I’m wondering if my conscience is meant to keep me on my path, or meant to keep me stuck.
Or, it may be meant for something totally different, perhaps outdated, or just very basic.
Conscience must be one of those special use tools. It’s like a hammer. It works real good for nails, but not for scraping ice off a windshield. Or a tool like the weather station, which may predict hurricanes, and tornadoes, but isn’t any help with earthquakes or volcanos.
If I count only on this conscience of mine to guide me, I still get into trouble, and karma. I stay stuck. Or even dig myself in deeper trying to defend it.
It seems my conscience plays by the rules I already know. It does not cover what my consciousness doesn’t cover. Whatever my consciousness is, so is my conscience. If my consciousness is narrow, so is my conscience.
By narrow, I mean it has a small umbrella, doesn’t cover much. I can do everything wicked outside my umbrella without a pang. It’s how, when I’m a soldier, under orders, committing murder somehow doesn’t equal murder. That’s conscience for you. It plays.
Or maybe it’s following some life purpose or blueprint like what I came to learn or perhaps what I learned in a past life didn’t work. I don’t think it covers what I haven’t, at some time, already learned.
As I grow, so does my conscience. I have to believe something is wrong for my conscience to work me. It doesn’t function with what anyone else believes. It only works with what I feel, and believe is right or wrong. When my beliefs change, so does my conscience. I don’t have a conscience, without something to base it on. No one has the same conscience, I guess.
So, now, I’m only counting on it for what I already know, or have known, sometime.
The unexplored worlds beyond my present experience, for these, I figure, my heart knows, and will know what is right for me. My feet know their path, too. They can keep me on my straight and narrow: straight, because it is always the step straight ahead. It’s narrow, because only I fit on it. My path is only mine. My heart figures stuff out, then tells my conscience. That’s how I must have come to have some conscience so far.
I learn by experience, vicarious or otherwise. My personal conscience also seems to be made up of what I’m taught, when I actually believe it. If I don’t believe it or feel it, no conscience for that one. If I believe a lie, then my conscience may bug me for something like walking barefoot, or telling the truth.
Fresh ground, French pressed, light roast Ruta Maya agave half and half swirling. My Christmas mug in August runs over with amazing coffee. You know that feeling.
Mostly it’s the quiet. The time to visit a familiar quiet blank “space”. Yet it’s the thick acid free, line free, sketch-book journal, and it’s mate, a good Precise, extra fine pen by Pilot, in lieu of a fountain pen, which fetch me at least my four, maybe five, smiles. Five if you count this hitherto unnamed, yet, possible, other place to smile from.
There is no sence going into the state of fountain pen magic in my life right now, to avoid the grief, of loss of nib- please, pretend it wasn’t mentioned. *Sigh*.
With or without the unmentioned, the best part of the morning is spacing out, wandering in wonder, exploring the creation, this evolution of cyberspace on internal internet.
What kind of space is this? That other possible one to smile from, perhaps. A telepathy place, to connect with my friends, inner circle, think tank, mentor, writer’s group, The Wind, then to quest for the holy anything. Then, to quest for its opposite.
The adventure flows or drips from an inner, innate, inkwell, through a blue inkwell in my hand via a fuzzy dial-up connection that drizzle patterns onto the journal, swirling like coffee, of the day’s living, the milk, and the honey.
A walk, a pretty shop, an artful display, some verse, an essay, a snippet of story, some stretching, a bit of yoga, memories, might delight today, sprinkled with a mini Tarot reading for myself.
The cards are in my book back for…Oh, the gamble! The anticipation, the grounding of that little random picture-telling- the little coffee joy if it. The giggle, a furrow, a what? Hmmmh, and an I never would have thought! So, this is what that feeling was. The surrender to: Okay, I’ll be practical, and do the polishing kind of rewarding hard work…And an oh, no wonder! All of which are sweetly anchoring for a spirit tripper.
So, Spirit descends like coffee, and through the pen, to be born of flesh this morning, and live.
waywardspirit 
