INANIMATE OBJECTS MOVE AND MATE

She was the new girl in high school, burdened with going to the school where a parent had been hired in administration. An introverted genius who was always so serious. She was most likely depressed, depressed in that slunking slithering teenage way. 

That didn't stop Patricia and me from befriending her. We were open minded!

One day she said, "Jesus and Satan were friends. God made them both!"

Ok.

To show you just how open minded we were, when she, one day, furthered the theory that inanimate objects move and mate, even reproduce, we entertained this theory.

Delivered without a smile, without the slightest indication of a sense of humor, but looking into my eyes deeply, she said, "Wire hangers mate in closets. If you look in your closet you'll see more of them in there. Every time you look!"

"Ooohh. Wow! You're right!"

"And yarn. When you're not looking it moves to touch the other yarns and gets itself all tangled up."

"Oooooh!"

As the new girl walked the halls to change classes, she clutched her notebooks and purse to her chest and refused to look at anyone. She hated being there. She was going to bear it without grinning. High school was such shit. When would it all be over?

Patricia and I, still silly and innocent enough to think that the first girl to claim a crush on a boy could expect all other girls to give up, did dump the new girl when she dared express her crush on Smiling Sam. This we were not open minded about. Sam had the most brilliant perfect toothy smile that went on forever. God knows why he was so happy all the time but he was lit from within. Maybe his parents were uncharacteristically unconditionally loving. Maybe he had a bright future in accounting or management. His overall attitude and composure was open and friendly, just the opposite of the new girl who wanted him. Patricia had claimed Sam first and we two were horrified that the new girl wanted him and we had bonded over her dibs on the boy. So we stopped speaking to the new girl and didn't look at her to see her ignoring us when we passed her in the hall.

Sam married a girl from his church not long after high school, a girl no one had ever heard about. He must have been aware that Patricia had an obsessive crush on him. They had talked. She reported to me that he had said to her, "If I hadn't married my wife, it would've been you!" How diplomatic!  How impossible!

What made me recall this story?

I have yarn. This morning I wondered how it could've gotten entwined with the electrical wires of my clock radio and cell phone. To detangle, I had to unplug.

Fortunately, all is well in my closet.

C 2021

Seriously, April Fools.

VISCERAL : EXPERIENCE FIFTEEN: CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP

 

VISCERAL

When have you had a visceral reaction such as skin crawling, throwing up, or a sudden massive headache to a person or in a situation? Who. What. Where. When.

(Maybe this writing exercise will clear you or bring back the sensation.)

Christine Trzyna 

This exercise is part of a series of writing exercises and to bring up the whole series use the tag Christine Trzyna Writing Workshop. 

C 2018-2025  Christine Trzyna

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
OK to use this post in not for profit situations. Please credit me. Send me love.  It's karma.

9/11 as I REMEMBER IT - VIOLENCE REDEFINED

The morning of 9/11 I was listening to KFI - Bill Handel on the radio.  Bill is still on the air but I don't listen to KFI much anymore.  (Audio Books suffice.)  He is known for a sort of jokey sarcasm - and an exaggerated way of telling stories - on himself - and on others.  For instance, he once gave a blow by blow account of a death row inmate being fried that was compelling.  So Bill is a character - a personality - and when he started talking about what was happening in New York, there was a question in my mind - it's a joke right?  But it was not.  The television set confirmed it and of all people to call first, I called my then building manager. He didn't believe me. Then I called my best friend - who didn't answer the phone. Like everyone else, I was riveted to the television set. 

And then, then I became depressed.

Someone gifted me something I really needed, something that no one else on this earth at the time would have thought to gift me, something that no one else I knew at the time could afford, and probably the most generous gift I ever received, but the box sat there unopened.  I wasn't even curious to open the Apple box.  I was moving through molasses. I awaited word that we were going to war, that war had been officially declared and called war, rather than a "military action."

At this time I went to a number of coffee houses in order to write.   I went over to one where I had a coffeehouse friend who was an artist, a painter of dog portraits, whose work was even published in a book not of his own making.  The artist told me his own mother had been in the building that the first plane hit.  In fact it probably hit her very office.  His family in New York City wanted him to get on a plane and fly there right away.  They were in denial.  They wanted him to go to the hospitals looking for their mom.  He didn't go.  He knew there was no chance she was alive.

The impact of the loss of his mom in such a horrific way was so strong that this artist could not paint.  He could not hold a brush.  Months later he was trying another form of creative expression - writing songs - to overcome the paralysis. He was clearly not in his normality for a long time.

A couple weeks after 9/11, while still feeling angry and powerless, I went ahead and opened the gift.  It was a laptop computer and I needed it to write.  It was intended as a practical gift but it became one in which self expression was also a way of maintaining the healing I needed because of this horrible event.

While the construct and enormity of 9/11 made it a special attack on an icon of the United States of America, I realize also that it was the closest thing to a military attack ON OUR TURF since Pearl Harbor.  Imagine though what it was for the Japanese when the United States dropped the atomic bomb.  Or enduring the Holocaust.  Or any other violent events that have taken place on this earth - and do now.

Is the world really getting more violent?  Mass shootings for no good reason beyond someone's hatred or insanity seem to happen with regularity.  Would they be as appealing to their originators if it were not for the fast global news coverage made possible not just on television but internet and cell phones?

A recent foray into a Fundamentalist Bible Study - long story as I know you know this is not like me - has been interesting in that just about every other woman there believes with certainty that we are in the End Times. Some people there think that President Donald Trump is in place, no matter how he screws it up, to usher in the End Times, citing his recognition of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Trump and those like him are, to me, believers in the Prosperity Gospel, a kind of  New Age defilement of Christ's message. Christians feed the hungry, cloth and shelter those who have none, and there is a traditional acceptance and embrace of the poor as worthy human beings. The Prosperity Gospel to me is more like Janis Joplin singing Mercedes Benz.  I guess it could be argued that God gives prosperity to those who HAVE so they can give to the poor, but let's not talk about Amazon's unlivable wages, or that Google's blue collar employees live in RV's near the Silicon Valley "campus."
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Some think President Trump can do just about anything, because it's really Vice President Mike Pence who is the Real Believer and the Next President, one way or another.  There is lots of talk in this group about which politicians are "Believers" or not.  I'm not there to question the class or the teacher's belief system, just to absorb differences as comfortably as I can and learn some things that I didn't know about the lifeways of the ancient people of Bible times, particularly the few women mentioned.

As a more liberal Christian friend of mine said, "There have ALWAYS been wars.  So it's always the End Times."

One day in the class, someone said that Oprah Winfrey was leading millions of people straight to hell.  (On the list of deceivers was also Shirley MacLaine.)  So what is that if not intolerance?

And this is CALIFORNIA? 

I have no answers at the moment.  I just know that 9/11 became a pivotal moment in our history which marked a change of consciousness about our vulnerability and need for defense.

As a child in Catholic grade school we often prayed for the President, to make good decisions for us all, just as we did the Pope.  If you're a praying person, this is a good time to do so.

C 2018 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved