Alice Walker says "writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence."
"Being saved/ saving" is your story portal for today: Challenge yourself to make it a story with a beginning/middle and end.
10 Minutes.
GO.
What saved me from the inconvenience of violence? So many things! But let me share a story I know about a woman I will call Joan:
Joan was pretty messed up by the violence of the Vietnam War--back when images of war were not censored from the USA, when we could see blood and burns and body parts and naked girls running down the street arms uplifted and crying. She went for various psychological treatments, all geared to lift her from depression and try to make her want to live. Needless to say, violence does not cure violence. What finally helped Joan was finding her way to a commune where even eating became a path to learning non-violence. She stopped eating animals and made friends with many of them, though she still ate animal products like eggs and milk. She always asked permission for eating anything, giving back in care and love as a true steward of life in all its forms.
But war continued. And Joan couldn't listen to the radio news without re-triggering depression and even convulsions. One day a friend suggested that her response to violence could be a political action if more people could see it, if she transformed it into public action. After several shy attempts to make her concerns into narrative, Joan decided to show what happens to her in the face of violence. She created a solo performance.
She came on stage in peace, hanging up a sign with the 4-H pledge. Do you know it?
 | |
| 4-H Clubs, Cornell Extension |
The sign backed all the action of her piece.
She brought with her a basket with materials to demonstrate how to re pot a plant and also carried a transistor radio--a cassette player that looked like a radio. She unpacked her basket and began the demo, switching on the "radio." It played--I actually don't remember what she played--but my memory tells me it was something soft and Simon and Garfunkel that transitioned into Joan Jett's "Born to be Bad"--which can't be, because that song came out years later--unless she WAS Joan Jett? Anyway, when the music switched it was interspersed with news of war--Oh--maybe we were in Desert Storm by that time? I don't remember. When the sound changed, she began mutilating the plants, slowly picking up the violence until pieces flew.
I was in the audience. I remember moving into a gasp and then a silence. The show ended with a freeze of her, exhausted, slumped over the mess. We sat there quietly too. Then Joan unfroze, went to the corner where there was a straw broom and cheerfully began to sweep up the mess.
Did she talk to us? I don't remember. But it was a relief to walk out into the fresh night air with my friends, tears streaming down our faces.
She brought with her a basket with materials to demonstrate how to re pot a plant and also carried a transistor radio--a cassette player that looked like a radio. She unpacked her basket and began the demo, switching on the "radio." It played--I actually don't remember what she played--but my memory tells me it was something soft and Simon and Garfunkel that transitioned into Joan Jett's "Born to be Bad"--which can't be, because that song came out years later--unless she WAS Joan Jett? Anyway, when the music switched it was interspersed with news of war--Oh--maybe we were in Desert Storm by that time? I don't remember. When the sound changed, she began mutilating the plants, slowly picking up the violence until pieces flew.
I was in the audience. I remember moving into a gasp and then a silence. The show ended with a freeze of her, exhausted, slumped over the mess. We sat there quietly too. Then Joan unfroze, went to the corner where there was a straw broom and cheerfully began to sweep up the mess.
Did she talk to us? I don't remember. But it was a relief to walk out into the fresh night air with my friends, tears streaming down our faces.
The End.
© 2020 Susan L. Chast
(12 minutes including looking up the 4-H sign and Joan Jett Songs. Then slightly edited. )
#
No comments:
Post a Comment