BOOTED OUT OF THE NURSERY
I fell from Grace flat on my face. Boom! said the star that saw me do it. I was glad to have a friend witness my distress.
I've landed in a strange but well populated place. Everyone is in some way bizarrely bent and twisted out of shape. Some talk funny. Some walk funny. And some refuse to move in any way at all. They all eye each other and me with deep suspicion and, occasionally, disgust. Mostly they don't see one another.
The pervasive emotion, which I am beginning to sense and to feel myself, is that the beings here are all under the impression that they had been booted out of the nursery...by somebody else.
Now, this is important...who else is there? They don't ask that kind of question here. They prefer to spend their time complaining and criticizing...and do it in a very obvious way. Naturally, they don't like it done to them.
They appear to be obsessed with power and never seem to have enough of it. They think they have to get it somewhere outside themselves. They're extremely unhappy, but don't think happiness is anything important. The happier among them are generally looked upon as being seriously deranged.
On the other hand, the greatly admired ones tend to spend their time accumulating a lot of titles, epaulettes and tangible knick-knacks. The trick, it seems, is to show how much power one has managed to grab. Unseen power doesn't seem to count. Conversely, they're very much into hiding things. And hoarding. They hide their feelings and rarely tell the truth, especially to themselves. They frequently congratulate themselves on how well they've kept their true selves secret.
They're pack rats of emotion and have countless notions of how things are supposed to look. They value people who look the right way. They don't even care to know your name if you don't come up to dress code. There is a very, very, very long list of things to learn about functioning here. It's all made up, of course, but they pretend it's dead serious and they even tell themselves and each other that it's from GOD. GOD?!
They talk about God a lot -- mostly to get each other to do something...or not to. They love to tell each other what to do. And when. And how. They call this good behavior. Being adult. Responsible.
They like to be grown-up, though I doubt they've ever seen one. They mention often how grown up they are...this from beings who stand about as straight as pretzels.
Still, I think they're dear things, all dingling and dangling as they are...and, besides, I've become just like them. My heart goes out to them when I'm not obsessing about how to untwist myself. What really scares me is that I might truly unravel myself ...for if I stand at my full height I might bump into the sky...which is fairly low, as skies go. Thoughts here don't reach very high and the sky has been forced to reach down to meet them to properly do its job.
Many are trying to bring hope to this funny place...creatures like the star who said, Boom! when I fell from Grace. Incidentally, she said another thing. She said we'd all be back home soon.
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Words & Pictures © by Arlene Graston
All Rights Reserved
