A Whole Cast of Charactors

              Introducing the characters:   Control, Powerlessness,Victim, Action and Reaction


Here is control. It is the other side of powerlessness  I am told.   I am  powerless over everything, including the other guy, so the other guy should be powerless over me too.   Right?   But, in my opinion, this is only true if the other guy agrees that he or she is powerless over me.  This may or may not be true.  Perhaps because I allow the other guy to make me feel lousy he or she does have power over me.  That sounds right, but how does that make me controlling?  It's still controlling, I suppose, to only want the other guy to leave me alone. It's still trying to force my will on someone.  But it sure feels like other guy is the one doing the controlling.

Maybe the Victim comes to play in here.  A victim controls by making the other guy feel as if he or she has power over me, there by giving the other guy permission to continue his or hers behavior.  Kind of a sneaky form of control, but control none-the-less.

Now I see Action versus Reactions coming in,  These are interesting little creatures.  The other guy acts, then I react, then what does the other guy do after noting my reaction?  Does he or she react to my reaction?  And then, do I, in turn, react to his or her reaction? Which one is reacting?  Which came first the chicken or the egg?  If I tripped over a pile of dirt would I be acting or reacting to its natural state of lying there in the way?  I assume that the pile of dirt is not going to react to my tripping over it, since it is an inanimate object.  The other guy, however, is not an  inanimate object and can react therefore to my reaction.

All this being said, you can clearly conclude that I an undoubtedly insane.

I could now bring out another character--Insanity.  But I am tired and will leave him for another time.

Becoming Human

I was born from human parents so I am told, so I must have started out human.  I don't know when it happened but somehow early in life I lost my humanness.  Humans, I hear, have an instinctive need to belong.  They are social animals.

I was a different animal since I spent most of my time alone and I liked it that way. I noticed when I posted poems about my childhood, many of them spoke of my aloneness growing up.  I have lived a lifetime not actually living at all.  Maybe I ruminate on the past too much, I'm sure I do, but one has to know before they can grow. All I know is that I always felt different  from other humans, and I didn't know why. 

Lately I have discovered my humanness.  I like being human.  I have discovered the joy of life and friendship for the first time in years.  I keep surprising myself by climbing mountains that should have been climbed decades ago. I keep growing, I've got a lot of years to make up for.

Tanner's Creek

I grew up in a small town

Where no one was concerned to see

A young girl walking down the street alone.

Sometimes I would go down to the creek.

My mother warned me about that place.

She said that it wasn't safe

For little girls to go there alone.

I wondered why and went anyway.

I'd go to sit on logs

And look at wildflowers.

I would pretend I was in a jungle

Far, far away

and I'd follow trails for hours.


On steamy summer days,

When I was older,

My friends and I would swim


In the murky water

With all our clothes on,

Even tennis shoes

So our feet would be safe

From snakes and sticks.

We'd emerge from the brown water,

Our clothes clinging to our wet bodies,

And walk to the chlorinated pool,

Only a stones throw away

To use the showers.

How strange some must have thought it was

To see three teen-age girls

Soggy and slightly rank

Stroll into their sterile environment.

Camping at Anastasia

I can still remember the velvet night

When the dew fell like rain

Splashing from the leaves far above us

And tapping on the canvas.

Later the reflected brilliance of the moon

Illuminated the walls of out portable home.

Peeking out, we saw a family of racoons

Approach the campsite

And rummage through some refuse

Cast off by other intruders.

Otherwise all was still

Save for fowl  of all descriptions

That warbled in high voice

Deep in the woods.