Exposed, the End or Beginning
Claire knocked on Charles’ door, curious, excited, and yet wondering if she had lost her mind. The door opened and she saw the same emotions mirrored in Charles’ eyes as he let her in. She smiled as she realized, “he wonders if he’s crazy, if I will think he is, yet he can’t wait to find out my reaction to…whatever it is he is so anxious to show me.”
He showed her where to hang her coat, and then said, “Shall we get right to it?” She nodded and he led the way down a softly lit corridor and stopped before a closed door. He turned, and said, “You go in by yourself for a few moments, it will take a little time to fully see and comprehend what is there.” She entered the room.
Large floor to ceiling windows overlooked the rocky shore and the ocean beyond. A large bed on the opposite wall was laid with pastel colored comforters and pillows. But it was the three walls with no windows that captured and held her attention.
One wall was an ocean scene, viewed from the shore – huge waves breaking, a stormy sky overhead. The second was of the open sea, the sea was calmer and there was a break in the clouds, with the sun’s rays illuminating a brightly colored ship and its sails just before it disappeared on the horizon, no land in sight. And the third was a seascape far beneath the surface of the waves, with coral and fish and more.
Claire studied each of these panels separately for a long time. The longer she gazed at them, the more she saw. In the huge waves crashing on the shore, she began to see pieces of human forms, an arm here, a face there, and she wondered if these were people who had been shipwrecked and drowned.
She didn’t detect fear or pain or panic in the faces, however. In fact, they were decidedly unemotional. She realized they were representing the elemental nature of the sea, all the life that is behind it.
In the panel with the illuminated ship sailing away, at first the water seemed dark and thick and dull…but the longer she looked, the more she thought she saw faces there as well. These faces were in agony, as if they were the faces of the dead who had been swept away by the storm, or perhaps the faces of mariners who had died at sea.
The third panel was of a coral reef, complete with colorful fish and all sorts of sea life. Here too a hidden seascape slowly emerged, and here was the sharpest thrill of them all. As she gazed at the painting, the water almost seemed to move, the fish gently breathing, fins faintly moving. As she stared in wonder, a shape slowly began emerging from the opalescent depths.
Claire squinted and stared; she saw what looked like hair and wondered if she was looking at a rendering of a mermaid; however this female creature seemed to be seated, and Claire slowly began discerning the folds of a gown or robe. And then the face became more apparent, and Claire found herself looking into her own face….
Startled, Claire turned and ran from the room, and found Charles in his study, reading and writing in a notebook. She sat down in a chair in front of his desk, visibly trembling. He looked up, put down his pen, and rose.
“Can I get you a drink? Some water, tea, wine, brandy?…”
“Brandy, please.”
After taking a couple sips, Claire put the glass down. Her trembling had stopped. She looked up at Charles in wonder. “What does it mean?”
“Tell me what you saw.” She told him, then waited while they looked at each other.
“You didn’t see all of it. Maybe we never will. But there is something else I want to show you.” They went back to the bedroom together.
Charles took her by the hand and led her back a ways from the undersea scene, then said, “Look behind her, behind the throne she is sitting on. You do see it as a throne, don’t you?” Claire nodded as she stared, then her eyes widened.
“There is a man behind her…and it looks like you!”
He looked at her face, as the wonder and amazement swept over her features. Then he took her by the hand and gazed into her eyes. “I can’t tell you what it means, but maybe we can agree that we should explore this together?” Claire nodded.
“And there is one other thing, that maybe I shouldn’t tell you, but I feel compelled. I never slept in this room, in this bed. When I discovered her in the painting, the attraction was unmistakable. When I am in this room, I cannot take my eyes off of her. It is as if I have known her for a very long time, and it felt as if this was her room, not mine.”
“When I first met you, I was shocked, amazed, and frankly, overwhelmed. I’m sorry if I appeared rude and abrupt at times, but I knew of no way to venture into this conversation, yet could not deny the sense of destiny that I have felt being around you.”
“When your performance was not up to par, I realized I had the opportunity to determine if you were ready for this room, this relationship with me. It doesn’t feel like romance, or that sort of attraction. It’s more like a door is opening and together we can explore where it leads…and it feels BIG.”
Claire looked at Charles directly, without flinching. “So that is what testing my resolve, my willingness to be open with you, was really all about?”
Charles nodded, taking both her hands now. “I was tested as well. I had to do this in such a way that I would not chase you away. I had to trust my intuition that you were ready. I had to risk losing you. Through it all, I had to reaffirm that I am ready to go somewhere I’ve never been before, cast aside all that I believe in – rationality, that this life has to make sense, there have to be reasons – and step into an entirely different life, one of opening and listening and feeling. And I had to believe that you were ready too.”
Claire dropped his hands, slowly turning and looking at all three panels, letting them simply sink into her consciousness.
“I’m ready.”
Exposed, Part 3
Claire had decided to film everything she did, and this took more courage than she’d ever had before. She’d thought it through and decided that complete honesty was more important than her pride or her dignity.
But it was more than than. She sensed that Charles would understand, and she trusted that he had no questionable motives in demanding this of her. Claire believed he had her best interests at heart.
Still, she sat on the edge of her chair next to Charles and hesitated, then pushed the Play button on the remote and they watched the video together.
What mattered most, Claire had realized, was the purity of her intentions. She needed to clear all needless thoughts out of her mind. She also had decided to narrate her experience on camera.
The tape began. She was sitting on the edge of her bed. Staring at her hands folded in her lap, she began to speak. “Inanna, Sophia, Santa Maria, please be with me now. I ask you for your grace, your wisdom, your guidance, your strength.”
She closed her eyes. “I wish to bring your love, compassion, and understanding into the world. I am an empty vessel, big enough to hold your love. It is time.”
Reaching into the drawer in the nightstand beside the bed, she pulled out her vibrator and lay down on her bed. She closed her eyes and continued her prayer.
“For too long now your presence has been absent in this world, I invoke the power of the ocean, the power of your name. Be within me and guide me throughout my days and my nights. Let me be your emissary, your avatar, your presence on Earth.”
Claire closed her eyes, opened her robe, and held the vibrator to her clitoris. She knew that the carefully positioned camera would only capture the expressions on her face. She pleasured herself, repeatedly, for half an hour, each orgasm a little less intense. When done, she rolled over on her side and closed her eyes for a few minutes. Then, sitting up, she spoke for the camera, describing and explaining her experience.
“The first time is always more than I can bear, I feel the need to moan or scream even, yet over time I am able to relax into the waves of physical sensation a little more, a little more each time. With practice, I have become able to control my experience.”
“While yes, an orgasm is at first primarily a physical sensation, I have become able to transform or elevate it into an out of body experience. I don’t disconnect from my body, it’s more like a parallel experience, one of being pure energy. This is when I feel connected to the goddess…”
She paused and then looked directly into the camera. “I’ve found that many of my distractions, from my work and from all aspects of my life, are grounded in not caring for myself. I need to learn to bring love to myself through a spiritual connection.”
“It is only when I can fill myself up with the Source of Love that I have love to share. When I am not taking responsibility for developing my spiritual connection and learning to fill myself up with love, then I become needy.”
“When I am needy, I am restless, uncentered, and unable to focus on my work or on any one thought, feeling, or task. I then look to others to fill my needs, and they experience our relationship as draining and unproductive rather than energizing, stimulating, and mutually creative.”
“I have other ways to achieve the same ends, this is one I have found to be simple, direct, and quick enough to fit into the middle of a busy day. Now I am energized, connected, and inspired. Time to get back to work.”
Claire turned off the monitor and the video machine and turned to Charles. Blushing, she still looked directly into his eyes and said, “I trust that you understand my intentions and what I am able to accomplish in this way.”
Charles returned her gaze, and said, “Yes, I do…but you’re fired. Let me explain though.”
Stifling her emotions, Claire forced herself to remain seated. She felt so angry…and betrayed.
Charles continued. “I have something I must show you, it is at my home, and once I do, I think everything will change, forever. Something tells me you will know exactly what it means. Even simply inviting you to my home privately changes things, and I think it would be totally inappropriate for you to remain in my employment.”
“However, I’ve arranged an appointment for you somewhere where I think you will be quite happy, with my sister’s firm. I think you will not only like her but will be quite honored with the step up as vice-president.”
“But first, can we make a date when you can visit my home? It’s the paintings on the walls…murals, not framed paintings…that I think will interest you immensely. They were there when I bought the home, they are the reason I bought it…I want to surprise you, but trust me, you will be amazed, as am I…”
(to be continued)
Point of view
illustration credit: Steven Stahlberg
Ah, the poor fairy, about to be devoured, or tortured, or somehow taken, by the murderous serpent…
Or, the serpent simply delights in terrorizing her…
Or, the fairy has mesmerized the serpent and has him under her spell…
Who is taking whom? Who is in control? Who has the power to transform the other?
She seems intent, focused…the serpent is drooling…she is speaking to him?
How might this story end? That she makes a deal with the serpent to kill her older sister instead, and frame her sister the Fairy Queen’s husband, the Goblin Prince, thus starting a war between the fairies and the goblins? Which, in the serpent’s eyes, is far greater a reward than he would receive from merely killing one fairy…
Freedom in Striving
“I act like shit don’t phase me, inside it drives me crazy, my insecurities could eat me alive.” – Eminem
Another Mike’s Hard Black Cherry Lemonade later and Effie was contemplating the meaning of life…well, her life as a woman. Why is it that when a woman wants to undertake ‘male’ activities such as voting (pushing a ballot through a slot), she is flying in the face of what God and Nature had created for her. Why?
Well, at the age of 3 or 4, Effie had discovered the Difference. She deduced that she had been castrated. This was particularly traumatic since her brothers were favored, a common family pattern since the days of Queen Victoria. In the normal course of her development, per Freud, she resolved the resulting turmoil by accepting her punishment, her mutilation, with total resignation, and adopted the passive feminine role as designated by male society.
But somewhere along the way she changed. Now she strove for physical and intellectual competence, but not because these are a good in themselves – she resents discrimination in education, the arts and employment and is frustrated rather than fulfilled by male domination; but rather, because she perceives these male activities as a symbolic substitution for the penis of which she was robbed in infancy. (You’d think they were hard to come by.)
Effie, in her infancy, misinterpreted the differences between the sexes and spoke lovingly but firmly to the child that still existed in her mind for years, “Little girls are like little boys turned inside out, so they can fit together.”
But with that behind her, she is still far from ready to consider what it means, not to be a woman, but to be a free human being. Effie is climbing out of the social and psychological box of the role definitions she has accepted without examination all her life. Until she sees this conditioning and understands it consciously, she won’t be able to evaluate the female role and choose to accept or reject the dictates of its components. It must be intellectualized before she attempts freedom of choice.
The articles in girls’ and women’s magazines are relatively easy to counteract compared to those forms of indoctrination which infiltrate Effie’s personality on a less conscious level – the animal instinct to imitate her mother, jokes, cartoons, movies, comics, fiction, and above all, advertising, where some of our culture’s better intellects are assigned the task of identifying certain patterns of behavior involving profits for their clients with grace, beauty, sexual felicity, power and love.
Women should undergo this process of self-examination with each other, but away from men. Effie is fortifying herself against the punishment of the male chauvinist and the paternalism of the male liberal.
Effie can’t do this alone; she feels the need to share this with all women – the process of self-discovery and the experience of independent decision-making. Only then will they all be ready for the real struggle.
Women cannot be free until men are free. A less facetious look at her husband Frank is no less discouraging. He still needs to feel resourceful, competent and useful in a world which denies him a social context for his work that will fulfill these needs. He needs work that is honorable, significant and challenging. He needs schools that do not smother his brain. He needs training and opportunity for his creative talents.
At seven in the morning Frank sallies forth from his humble castle to bring home the bacon. All day he contends with the forces of the Real World, which weary and batter him. He’s under the pressure of important, ulcer-making decisions. Or he sells his personality to clients. Or he smothers his resistance to the arrogance of his boss.
His ego is submerged. He is a cog in the corporate machine of technological society. He is one more sardine in the subway; one more ant on the freeway; one more rat in the race.
At five he staggers home, a beaten and belittled man. And there is Effie. She’s got 16 hours to get him on his feet again. To make him feel important, necessary, competent, and resourceful.
No matter how Effie’s day went, she must greet him at the door with fresh lipstick, a cheery smile, and a “how did it go?” Listen to his troubles; fetch him a beer or martini; shoo the kids out so that he can relax.
She mustn’t encumber him with all the petty irritations of running the house; he’s had enough of those at the office. But do ask his advice. Make him feel that he is still the Captain of his little ship.
Build him up.
“Frank, can you get the top off the peanut butter? I’ve been struggling with it all day!”
Effie must be smart enough so that he can be proud of her; stupid enough that he can feel smart by comparison. Make sure he knows she would be lost without him – confer on him the glow of paternalism, and on herself the dwarf-life of eternal childhood. Convince herself that propping up a collapsing male ego is a true vocation and, if he is not too tired, Vaginal Orgasm shall be hers.
He needs a veritable Martha Stewart; but Effie can be Martha no more.
Effie wonders how the young are cared for in a society that offers no alternative to female indentureship. Where do women work in an economy with high unemployment and frequent recessions?
The problems of women are problems of the whole society; the solutions for women lie in solving far-ranging social problems. But this involves nothing short of a revolutionary restructuring of the most basic institutions in society – the tax structures that can give us parks and nursery schools, the economy that can give us jobs, the schools and the arts. The task is almost too great to be contemplated. Effie shrinks from it.
Except for this. There is freedom in the striving.
Exposed, Part 2
Taking a deep breath, she entered her boss’s office, wondering if her lying by omission would be obvious.
She closed the door behind her, hearing the loud click and panicking, wondering if that was indeed the sound of the door locking behind her. Taking a deep breath, she stood there a moment, exhaled, and walked across the room towards the table where her boss sat.
Looking up from his laptop computer, he motioned to the chair next to him, and she sat down. She could see that he’d been looking at the videos she had left with his secretary.
He turned to look at her over his glasses, and she struggled to remain still and calm, returning his gaze, as he said nothing for what seemed an eternity.
“Tell me how you feel about what you have shown me. Do you find it to be a helpful process, reviewing your activities like this, and knowing that I have seen them as well?”
“Sir, I feel exposed, laid bare. It is a difficult process because I find the videos both humorous and embarrassing. But I think discussing them with you will be helpful and worth the embarrassment.”
He watched her carefully, and again she felt naked before his penetrating stare.
“Embarrassing? Why is that?”
Her voice shook a little and she pressed her hands firmly into her lap to keep him from seeing how they were trembling as she said, “I am not proud of how distracted I can be at times, sir.”
“Please, don’t call me sir, I keep wondering who you are talking to.” He smiled as if his questions were simply an inconvenience between old friends. “Call me Charles. And are you sure that is the only reason why you are embarrassed, as well as why you are so nervous right now?”
“Charles, I’m not sure.” Always her instinct was to be completely honest, but now she saw his demeanor change as he stared at the tabletop as if he would find the answers there. His casual manner caused her to let down her guard for an instant. Too late, she realized she’d have to tell him the whole truth now.
“I know the object of this exercise is to expose my everyday habits so that we can analyze what is detracting from my effectiveness as I work at home, and how I can change to become more productive. But I’ve deliberately…well…in a manner of speaking, hidden behind a fig leaf. I’ve changed a few of my habits because I thought they energized me and helped me work, not the opposite. I…I…it was a gray area, I wasn’t sure if I was being deceitful or not.”
“Claire…your name means what, clear? transparent? You must be with me; no…wait…you can be nothing but, I can read you like an open book. You have no choice, really. And besides, your job is at stake here. I know you care about that.”
He opened his briefcase and took out her file, the videotapes, and his written evaluation. He got up from his chair and walked across the room to remove the last tape from the machine. Sitting down again, he pushed the whole pile towards her.
“Read what I’ve written and continue with the video taping. I want to see everything, hold nothing back, nothing. And remember, I’ll be able to tell just by looking at you if you’ve held back.”
She looked him squarely in the eye. “I have no and had no intention of deceiving you, I simple was unsure of how to define the naked truth. Sometimes omission doesn’t seem like lying, it’s a fine line.”
He looked long at her, as she gathered up the tapes and files, thanked him profusely, and rose to leave. He reached out and touched her arm. She froze, blushing with a mixture of relief and then discomfort at feeling the warmth of his hand on her bare arm.
“Claire, I’m asking for mental nudity here, nothing less.”
As she closed the door behind her, she felt the need to hurry to the ladies room. Blushing, breaking into a run, she didn’t care that everyone turned to watch her. She had never felt so exposed, his intuition was uncanny, it was as if he knew what she had not filmed.
To be continued…
Is Loving at All Too Much?
Up at the crack of dawn, but the mother bird beat me to it again. I’ll never get a worm this way. Nothing frantic or manic in her behavior; yet, dawn to dusk, she is almost constantly moving. She stops on the handrail outside my window on the way to her nest, wriggling insect in her bill, and again briefly before taking off to find another, as if she’s checking in with me, “I’m off again!”
She doesn’t fret about whether her babies are developing character, getting enough protein, or if she is loving one more than the others. She isn’t loving at all. She has no need for Prozak, or sleeping pills, or coffee. She is like Robomom. She should do a Nike commercial, “just do it”.
Do we overthink our existence at every turn? Why do we love, and is it necessary? Would we abandon our children if we didn’t love them?
Should I just delete this post?
Exposed
She set up a “hidden” camera in every room, so she could watch the tapes and follow her movements throughout the house. For the first week, she simply erased the tapes and taped over them. She was still too aware of the cameras.
Starting about midway through the second week, however, she began gradually slipping into her old patterns. She studied the tapes, mapping her hours spent at work at her computer and her activities during her breaks.
Increasingly, she was also able to map her thinking, watching with some amusement, fascination, and then embarrassment as her patterns and distractions unfolded before her eyes. She smiled as she saw herself stalking the annoying fruitfly for several minutes, finally clapping her hands and then wiping it off of her palm.
Then she watched her surfing patterns from the vantage point of the camera looking over her shoulder. She observed, and duly noted, exactly what distracted her and how, valuable information in terms of marketing strategies and webpage design.
Finally, the embarrassing distractions…not only could she follow her actions, but her thoughts were naked as well. She watched herself as she tried to jot down some ideas in her notebook but the pen wouldn’t write. Disassembling it, she found that, indeed, it was out of ink.
She paused for a moment – she was contemplating throwing it away or was it worth purchasing a refill? She put it down, deferring the decision until another time.
Remembering another pen upstairs in a bedroom drawer, she walked into the kitchen. Instead of just passing through, she stopped to scrub the wok soaking in the sink. Then she wiped off the counters, wiped down the stovetop, and saw that the floor needed sweeping.
She recalled noticing that the children had taken the broom outside the day before; sure enough, it was not in its usual place by the mudroom door. Walking outside, she rearranged the children’s wet clothes hanging on the railing, and saw the dustpan in the driveway.
No broom in sight. But there was paper trash blown all over the driveway and into the road. Picking up the bag that had obviously been taken out of the car and then dropped, she tucked the dustpan under her arm and retrieved all the trash. Gathering up the garden hose left extended across the front yard, she coiled it neatly.
Looking around the yard, she noticed the children had not picked up their toys as asked. Since the landlady lives right across the street, she figured she’d better tidy up the yard as well instead of waiting for the children to get home from school. Once the bicycles were put away and all the toys and lawn furniture rearranged, she continued the search for the broom, to no avail.
Back in the kitchen, she made the turn to go into the family room, on her way to the stairs, but noticed that there were dirty smudges on the mirror. After washing the mirror, she went upstairs and checked the children’s room for the broom.
She’d left her shoes at the door, so when she stepped on the wet diaper on the floor, her socks became wet immediately. Going into her bedroom to change into dry socks, she observed her laundry bag overflowing, and remembered that her sheets needed washing too.
She stripped the linen off the bed and took the laundry downstairs to wash. After starting the first load, she returned to her computer, only to realize that she still didn’t have a working pen.
She got up and passed through the kitchen, hitting the on button on the electric teapot as she passed by, ran upstairs with her eyes closed so she wouldn’t get distracted, and almost stopped to make her bed. She laughed, catching herself before she started, grabbed a pen and ran back downstairs, tripping on a doll on the bottom step and twisting her ankle.
Hobbling to her computer, she sat down with a sigh. Her ankle hurt too much to allow her to get up for another two hours. Finally! something forced her to focus on her work.
Until she leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and softly began snoring…thank god that teakettle has an automatic shut-off…
She turned off the video machine and sat in shock for a few moments. Observing her actions for those hours, actions that bared her thoughts so unequivocally as well, made her wish she could keep them private.
Instead, she put them all into her tote, checked the clock, and ran to try to make her appointment with her business productivity counselor on schedule. She arrived in his office, feeling like Lady Godiva as they watched the videos together.
Her next assignment: share the tapes with her boss, identify the issues, work through them. There’s a reason she hasn’t taken time off to pleasure herself with her vibrator while filming, even though it is her favorite way to unwind during a 15-minute break. Mental nudism is difficult enough to reveal.
Should she be completely honest in documenting her “normal activities” during her workday? She felt that mental nudity was all she could expose to her boss, but the dishonesty bothered her.
Is omission of sexual activities dishonesty? The question haunts her…to be continued…
Revealing the Truth
baring the truth to my friends
He left the country with only an “I’ll be back, honey!” How could he? And can I bare my thoughts and feelings to strangers online, in such mental nudist fashion, when I’ve been told to stop being so emo by all my friends offline?
We’ve been planning a trip like that for months, saving our nickels and dimes, working out to get in shape for the inevitable hikes and perilous adventures – then he gathers up a group of friends, most of whom I don’t even know, that are more experienced travelers, hikers, backpackers, climbers…survivalists…and takes off, saying he’ll bring back what he learns and teach me everything.
I’ve sat myself down and looked at this from every angle. I’ve tried to explain my feelings, my reactions, to our other friends and they all tell me to calm down, get some rest, and come back when I’m not so emotional. That emotions don’t have a place in our circle. That what we do doesn’t work if emotions are involved.
Let me explain a bit. “Our circle” is this cool bunch of exciting, adventurous people that love to take off at a moment’s notice and do fun, unusual, crazy things that require group effort, teamwork, and yes, there has to be clarity and awareness every step of the way.
But I’m talking about meeting them at the coffeehouse and talking things over, asking for their help in figuring out if I’m over the top or if I have a right, if it’s natural to feel the way I do. And all I get is just to stuff it, as if we were in the middle of an Everest climb and there was no place for my feelings. I feel as though I undressed before them all and they just told me to put my clothes back on, I was embarrassing them all.
So now I’m asking you, my readers, since there is a bit of distance between you and I. You are not in this circle, and there are miles between us, and then there’s the anonymity of the internet.
I’ll try to strip away the nonessential and bare my thoughts and feelings. This is not as easy as one might think. I have to prepare myself to hear what I might not want to hear…
He and I were planning this adventure for a long time, along with the group of course, but he and I were the leaders on this one. We’re an eclectic rag-tag bunch with varying degrees of ability, different strengths and weaknesses, but we work wonderfully together. We balance each other. Normally none of us plan this much, we just say let’s do this! We can sever ties with our various normal lives, and off we go. But this adventure required planning…or so I thought.
I understand the part about the difficulty, and how he wants to go do it and learn before the rest of us try it. Except that we were planning this together for a long time, it was like the culmination of everything we’d ever done. Our ultimate dream. And now he’s chosen to go do it with someone else, and I am feeling it as a rejection, I feel really let down, disappointed, and left out, like I’m the little sister, not the co-partner that I’ve been all along. It’s a bit of an insult, and it came with no warning.
The part that I need help with is my experience of this as a judgment of my abilities. I feel like I’ve been judged as “not good enough”, and I’m afraid it will affect my confidence from here on out.
This isn’t about me and him. It isn’t even about what is most definitely his judgment of my abilities. It’s about my self-confidence. It’s gone, in terms of these activities.
I know that I’m the same person as I was before all this happened, but I’m wondering if I’ve been deluding myself as to my capabilities. Can others see something I’ve missed?
I bared my soul to my friends, and they basically told me to get over it, as if I was premenstrual or something. Now I stand before you mentally nude, ‘you’ being a world full of people I don’t know. Maybe by baring my thoughts and feelings I can gain some clarity, with your help. I hope I’ve told you enough that you can understand. By all means, tell me if I need to reveal more details.
Rumors of Paradise
To the eye, there was little difference between this hallway and the one she had been walking in the moment before, but Diana sensed the change. Her hand dropped quickly to her side, away from the carved symbol on the wall.
How long had she been standing here? She looked around and noticed that the hallway seemed less dim. Moving forward cautiously along the curved corridor, at the next turn she found herself standing under a starlit sky.
The Aurora Borealis moved in the sky as she looked up and spun slowly around. Then she heard the voice, at first distant, then gradually closer.
“Breathe in, breathe out, relax…”
Startled, Diana looked for the source of the voice.
“Why are you surprised?”
Diana felt her body tremble in fear, as she fell to her knees. The voice continued.
“Relax. You have been here before. In fact, you live in this world too. Surely, you remember…”
In a moment, Diana knew that this was the place where all things exist, and she knew that Michael was alive. A tear ran down her cheek as her heart soared with hope. But how she could explain herself, her questions, her desires, to this being who never “died” but simply changed form?
The answer came to her before she asked. “Past, present, future, all exist at the same ‘time’, in the same place. Whenever you imagine, every choice you make, the world changes.”
For a moment, Diana touched Michael’s spirit. He’s alive! In that same moment, she felt herself tumbling back into her body.
“Diana, are you alright? What are you doing here?”
Dizzily, Diana sat up. She realized she was lying in the grass at the edge of the forest behind her home. The sun shone brightly in her eyes, but she saw Alyssa and Matt leaning over her, concerned and confused.
“Were you looking for the ball also? We thought you were still inside.”
“Come play with us! Our team is winning!” Alyssa exclaimed as they helped Diana to her feet.
“I was looking…yes…” said Diana, wistfully, as she followed them towards the others. Would she ever cease mourning?
Wondering what plane of existence Michael was traveling on now…could he come play as well?
Have I been living under a rock?
Maybe the rest of you (meaning the world, I guess) will just look at this and yawn, mmhmm so…? but I’ve never heard of such a thing. The jewelry is one thing, but the header at the top of the page is what really made me laugh…
I know that people travel around the globe in search of a better doctor, treatment, medications, cure, and so on, and I know that there are countries that cater to, for example, plastic surgery vacations (return home with a tan on a new face!), but…dental tourism?
Since most people detest going to a dentist…can this really be a tourist attraction?
Thank you, Universe, for whatever can put a smile on my face (sans diamonds, in my case) in the morning!
http://tinyurl.com/38v3b97
Tirika