Life loves time
Rough draft bit of the usual story.. parallel universe, strange world, weird gods, bad psychiatry
It was a dark and stormy night; and, though the girl railed at the heavens, scolding it for the cliché, the lack of light and fussiness of the firmament continued.
“Nature cares very little for the thoughts of Man.” someone whispered to her from behind the trees.
“Behind the trees?” her sister asked her, in a pretense of interest in the subject, but really with the goal in mind of pointing out, once again, the lunatic nature of her youngest sibling. “Behind the trees, Angela? Don’t you mean in the woods?”
Angela did not mean “in the woods”, though. She meant “behind the trees” as she was sure that was the proper emphasis to put on things, which would more fully explain the nature of the whisperer. Whomever it was, they were not a person who happened to be in the woods and then whispered out of it, but they were a person who was purposely behind the trees to prevent Angela from knowing more of them. Which is precisely what she told her family, too, whenever any of them asked; which led to it being what she told a school counselor; which led to it being what she told a bald man, who wore glasses that had obviously not been designed for his face shape, in a room where only he was allowed to hold sharp objects.
The sharp object he was allowed to hold was a pencil. It often became a dull object, in the hours she was in the room with him, and he had to pause and leave the room to travel to the small machine that would make it a sharp object again.
“Why don’t you just bring the sharpener in here?” she asked the man.
“How do you know there is a sharpener?” he asked, by way of reply.
“I assume there is a sharpener, because you leave with a dull pencil, but when you return it has a sharp and pointy end with which to write.” she replied, humoring the madman. “This seems to indicate sharpening has occurred, especially as, by the bite marks, it appears to be the same pencil. Since pencils are normally sharpened by pencil sharpeners and not by magic fairy dust, I assume that a sharpener is what you used. Though, if you did use magic fairy dust, it would still be “a sharpener” wouldn’t it?”
Prone to thoughts of violence and does not deal well with authority, the man wrote with his newly sharpened pencil.
“An interesting series of observations.” he replied, as if he was addressing the girl. However, the man had the annoying habit of not looking into her eyes, nor was he pointedly ignoring her gaze. She wasn’t sure what he was doing, but, whatever it was, it was a lack of acknowledgment of her person-hood, which persons of his profession seem to engage in frequently. Not that she knew this, since she’d only met the one so far and wasn’t even sure what his profession was; but, the sad truth was that, to him, she was not a person, except in theory. To him, she was a case study.
“Is it?” she asked, genuinely perplexed as to why he would find it interesting, or equally why he would lie and say it was interesting if he did not find it so, and why he thought it was a series of anything at all.
“ Yes, it is. We aren’t allowed to bring sharpeners to these .. interviews. Someone might take advantage of the situation and use them to … well, in a way they were not intended.”
There was an uncomfortable pause, rife with grimacing contortions, in between the words “these” and “interviews.” Another occurred, even more pronounced and with a blush attached to the end of it, between the words “to” and “well”. Angela was beginning to feel distinctly nervous. The man was uncomfortable, having paranoid delusions about seemingly common objects as if they might be dangerous weapons of war or somesuch. These were her feelings, and she did not like being locked away, alone, in a room with a man who made her feel this way.
“You do realize it is only a sharpener and probably can do significant harm to no one?” she asked, trying to soothe his fears.
“Perhaps; or, perhaps it could be turned to advantage by someone who was looking for the potential to cause harm.”
“What harm?”
“I am not at liberty to discuss potential harm factors of various office implements, young lady. We do not find it conducive to the process to effect the patient’s potential for imaginating the psychic power potential of their dream cycle by adding to the dynamic whole of their inward fear assembly.”
“What?”
“If you were told the sharpener was dangerous, it could objectify the rationality sphere of the potential office drama for you and prevent you from being able to copiciously work in an efficient environmental capacity in your latter years of young adulthood.”
“What?”
“It is possible I might create a fear response in your inner psychic dynamic.” he retorted to what he imagined her responses were intended to signify. “If we had it here and you saw the blades ..”
“If I saw the blades … what? I might get an urge to sharpen a pencil?”
“Or something more. .. “ he didn’t finish the sentence, but something of his gist had become more clear to the girl, by the way he shrugged his shoulders and turned a strange shade of red. It wasn’t the red of embarrassment or anger, but the red of suppressed and denied fear.
“It’s a pencil sharpener! Just a pencil sharpener. Even if it is electric, still, unless you are going to conduct the rest of this … whatever it is we’re doing .. in a bath tub, it’s not exactly dangerous is it?”
Has disdain for anything which is not made to be an instrument of torture,wrote the man.
“Never mind all that.” He waved away the prior conversation. “Why do you think the man was hiding behind the trees?”
“Why do you think it was a man?”
“Do you believe animals can talk?”
“No.”
“Do you believe trees can talk?”
“Not as such, no.”
“Not as such? So, sometimes they can talk?”
“Sometimes they are referred to as talking, singing, sighing, and such. I don’t think they talk as humans talk, though, no.”
Anthropomorphises trees he wrote, rather incorrectly.
“Do you think, “ he queried, “that it was a woman?”
“ I think I did not say it was a he, is my point. Since I did not say he or she, but, only that it was a person, why do you assume it is a he?”
Has gender displacement issues,wrote the man. His glasses were beginning to fog up with excitement. The girl was a raving lunatic. Oh the papers he could write on her!
“Alright! Alright! So this person, “ he began, pausing to indicate quotation marks around the word person by finger gesturing “was in the woods, waiting for you? Just to tell you how nature feels about men? Do you think it was Gloria Steinhem?”
“What?”
“This person,” he quotationed at her again, “obviously has gender-bias issues, don’t you think? Saying that nature hates men? Tell me about your father.”
“My father is likely to kick your ass when he sees where this conversation has gotten to, you weird little man.” replied Angela, having realized that she was never going to be listened to, and being thoroughly tired of humoring the insane. “Now let me out of this room.”
“Why? Are you afraid of expressing your true feelings?” he asked, in a patronizing flare of calmness.
“I am not afraid of anything. Just disgusted and weary.” she replied.
Has no natural fear boundaries and feels nauseous when discussing her father, he wrote down before releasing her back to her life.
....
“Tell me,” said the woman behind the desk. “why you think voices speak to you from the woods?”
“I don’t.”
‘That is strange. I have a report here that says that you do believe so and it is because of this report that you are here visiting me now. You think a person has spoken to you from the woods. What do you say to that?”
“I say .. thank you for not using quotation marks.”
.....
“It is normal to feel some anxiety towards nature, late at night, alone .. man versus nature and all of that. Did you feel that anxiety? Do you feel that raw pull and fascination with the dangerous side of nature, Angela? Thunderstorms, hurricanes, wild animals, all teeming with vibrations of danger?” queried the man with the stylish pony-knob.
“How strange!” she declared.
“No, no, you mustn’t judge yourself for those feelings. Yes, they feel unusual at the time.” he replied, using his fingers in the dreaded quotation signal as the word unusual worked its way through his tight lipped oral obfuscation center (as she had secretly named his mouth, for her own amusement purposes). “But, they are often felt by many men, because nature is so big, so vast, and we are relatively small and unarmed without the tools we build. Our natural defenses to nature are almost nil, except for our mind. Danger is imminent.”
“I meant how strange that you think man is not part of nature.”
“Excuse me?Do I look like a tidal wave to you?” he asked. It was not the best choice of questions, as he was dressed in a rumpled steel blue suit, with a white tie and light blue shirt, his face was naturally angry looking, and he had a habit of lunging forward quickly to make his point and then slowly receding back into his proper seat.
“People deny God, don’t they, because they say we are descended from apes or ape-like beings? Right?”
“Well, sure, that’s just fact.”
“Natural fact?”
He smirked the smirk of a man who is feeling benign enough not to laugh at the young female peon’s obvious ignorance. “Sure!” he said in a way that had a nose-blowing quasi-harumph at the beginning of it, and reminded her a great deal of the sound of wind and sea spray. “If you like, then yes: natural fact.”
“It all makes no sense. “
“Sure it does, sweety. See, there is this philosophy called Darwinism…”
“Not that.”
“Yes, honey: that!”
“What I mean is, “ she interpolated rather loudly, desperate to avoid further explanation “that it makes no sense to say that Man is nothing more than another mammal, higher functioning or not, and then later to say that he is not even a part of Nature at all.”
“I don’t think you understand the bigger picture. It’s the nature of man to be afraid of something more powerful than he is, so ..”
“It seems to me that it is the nature of man to deny that he is natural. He cannot be created because then he is no longer of himself. So he denies God and embraces Nature. Then, and only then, does he realize his mistake. To embrace Nature is to make it his creator and to make himself part of the whole of the planet. Either way, he’s stuck in relatively the same position, only with the latter choice no one has his back. So he sets himself apart from Nature and says that there is Man and there is Nature and he must conquer Nature before Nature conquers Man.”
“Woah now! No one said anything like that. What I am trying to explain is…”
“Why do you think I need you to explain something to me? Anything? I just went a thousand leagues beyond your comprehension, oh Man Who Would Be Ocean. I understand! Either there is a God or there is not, but, either way, we are all a part of nature and to deny it is .. unnatural.”
Unable to accept her role in society ,he wrote, his stylish pony-knob bobbing in the wake of his furious pen scribblings.
......
“So, I see you say a voice spoke to you from behind the trees?”
“What?”
“A voice : it spoke to you from behind the trees?”
“Okay, you win.”
“What?”
“I don’t like this and I don’t need you, persons of your sort of profession. Since no one is likely to believe me, they will probably keep dragging me to strange offices to put up with inane questions from people who managed to learn a lot by rote, apparently. At least you seem to have read what I actually said. So, if I must talk to someone, then you are the someone I choose. Let’s make appointments.”
“You wanted to say idiot, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“You wanted to say that if you must talk to idiots, then I am the idiot you choose. Yes?”
Angela grinned. “What’s your name?” she asked the lady across the table from her, fully noticing her for the first time.
“Saran.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Nope.”
“So, this is a first class Shrink Rap, with real Saran rap?”
“I’m afraid so. Names, you know, sometimes govern people’s lives.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. Even before anything else, I realized that everyone I knew named Debbie was the same as the other people named Debbie.”
“Oh! And ..”
.. no response was forthcoming …
“How were they?”, Saran asked.
“Oh no! I shouldn’t like to offend them by saying.”
“So, names make the woman, we agree? I am Saran, mighty Shrink, ready to rap. Or, wrap.” she said, pulling Angela into her arms for a hug a bear would have envied. “Who are you?”
“Angela, the messenger.”
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