oz

The Good Witch says to Oz: I always knew you had it in you.

Oz asks: greatness?

The Good Witch says: no, goodness.

In his quest for greatness (a cloak for his rotten core), he finds a Good Witch who knows he is a liar and a conman and a fake. And yet she loves him. When she tells him he is good, he says to her: so I fooled you. He does not allow for the possibility that he is good with his flaws, he thinks he won't penetrate the force field that allows only good hearts to pass because he believes he actually IS bad. She loves him not for the illusion of greatness but for the honest goodness inside.

The same lesson taught to us in story after story. We don't understand it until we do, then we see that everyone has been talking about it all along only we didn't understand the language.

on alice

Only a few more in this series... Bear with me.

Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next.

It's Alice in Wonderland going down the rabbit hole.
She let go
let it happen
did not try to control it
did not try to go a certain direction
just
watched
as
she
went.

From a place of trust, of vulnerability, she opened up to what was happening in that moment. She let herself be who she was in that moment, did not hold on to who she was:

Who are you? said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I - I hardly know, Sir, just at present - at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'

And because she had let go, she knew there was nothing to fear. She had faced it in vulnerability and had come out unhurt. The fear that had been associated with it was no longer a concern:

After a fall such as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down-stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!

As a result, she just moved with openness:

'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where -' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'- so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.'

From Pema's The Wisdom of No Escape:
Alice became a heroine for me because she fell into this hole and she just free-fell, she didn't grab for the edges, she wasn't terrified, trying to stop her fall; she just fell and she looked at things as she went down. Then, when she landed, she was in a new place. She didn't take refuge in anything. I used to aspire to be like that because I saw myself getting near the hole and just screaming, holding back, not wanting to go anywhere where there was no hand to hold.

up

When it feels you've seen it all, there's always another dimension.

new york in reflection

two people, the lonely ones

Munch. THE SCREAM, the scream, the scrEAm. Variations on a theme of this:



I didn't feel moved to take a picture of the pastel colored pencil version on special at the MOMA.

BUT.

I couldn't tear myself away from this:




And the title really tore into me. Two People, the Lonely Ones.

THE lonely ones? I asked myself why. Why THE lonely ones? Why is she in bright colors? Why does this hold me? Who were they? Where did they come from? Were they lonely alone or together? Did they undo each other's loneliness? And why am I still standing here?

I also learned ANGST is red. It makes sense - just something I didn't realize until I looked at the title of this piece:

cutting for stone

I'm hooked.

But it happened at page 200!! An editor's mistake, I am boldly willing to say*. Because there is no reason to introduce each character and their history and what makes them what they are all in the first 200 pages. You tell it as you need to. That's what I think. Too heavy at the beginning - it had a hard time picking up momentum with all that mass (M = mv = mass x velocity).

But then you get past it and the story starts to move.

The moment I fell in love was when he arrived in NYC (this morning, as I told my friend, because I read it on the morning commute, the events so much a part of reality I lost the distinction between time in my real world and time in the book).

Superorganism... consciousness and intelligence resided not in the individual ant but in the collective ant mind... Order and purpose must reside somewhere other than within each vehicle. That morning I heard the hum, the respiration, of the superorganism. It's a sound I believe only the new immigrant hears, but not for long... It became part of what the mind would label silence. You were now subsumed into the superorganism.

It is the beauty of being a part of the swell of the morning commute, the bike cutting in front of the car turning at the intersection as the pedestrian finds space between the taxi and the bus. It's the feeling that there's a place for everything in this place, that all of the components belong and have a role in keeping the body alive. It's like being in a dream and knowing you're in it, you're a part of it, but being a part of it nonetheless.

* When do I ever say things unboldly? My working hypothesis: if it's not worth being boldly stated, I choose to stay quiet. A self-directed filtering of anything below the threshold of BOLD.

say what?

Customer: Hi. I'd like the turkey avocado sandwich.

Server: Would you like the whole sandwich or half?

Customer: Oh, do you sell them as half sandwiches?

Server: No.

Customer: (Silence. Waiting for her to catch up.)

Server: Ok, so you'll have the whole sandwich.

(No joke.)