THE RECEPTIVE ROAMER

The human emotion of melancholy in the past conturios was considered a fashionable state of mind. During this lifetime, melancholy persists as the key that slides one into a back door of depression. One is able to watch the sliding gain momentuin from behind their own drape of despair. Suddenly, you have slided, chicknd your frame of mind into that void of depression The surfacing once again, the needed balance to regain control demands conscientious contemplation.

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I sit and ponder; my fate, this melancholy that had surrounded my night came on slowly. It was ignited quite innocently by a friend. The Individual, gazing openly into my eyes, stated "you seem so alone." With the departure of these few words, I was sealed in a vacuum of despair Someone had uttered a truth that I was anxious to conceal. A bottling of dama ging thoughts ran rampant through my mind. I tried to flee, I felt the urgent need to be alone. Yet, wasn't that exactly what had just been

Bess Lawrence

proclaimed. Why continue my search by running off alone into the black coldness of a naive night.

Wasn't I here in Santa Fe to further my search for Truth, wasn't I here in Santa Fe because of the enormous changes in my being that have left me isolated from an estranged past Lam Alone, yet am I not also Life. So, I step off the weary wheel of search, glance at myself and regard the changes To all sides be mountains and an abundance of clouds and a blue sky: my shelter which | have roamed towards. But the bare facts re main conclusive am alone... far from family, without a mate or child. I am hfe.

Screaming in tears, which I try to hold back, I protest saying individuals are always alone and isolated within themselves. Any sense of strength has long been fost as I sit dazed and confused, lost in the conflict.

Amidst my strained smile and gazed eyes, I am allowed to understand an important idea. I hadn't fled my friend's embracing grasp of compassion. Instead, allowing myself to open forth to asked question, my own questions. and our answers, another alteration had devel oped. How could I be alone, lost in isolating illusions and delusions; if I allowed myself to share the pain of my friend's statement. Another lesson, a new learning experience was pursued and I emerged winning this round of rantings and chantings. Sharing has become my new goal towards the extinction of that affliction in my face which causes a person who is beginning to know me to proclaim such thoughts.

Sharing....a new milieu, which perhaps with the passage of time and additional change, I will become better acquainted. Acquainted not only with my own existential cries, but also helping other friends in dire need.

FEMINIST FABLES

While reading What She Wants one day, it struck me suddenly that we needed a few "lighter touch" articles in our paper. That is, something light but that still conveys some type of message. So therefore, being a wornan who likes to write, being a ferminist who is sick of chauvinistic literature, and being a mother who is into finding some refreshing literature for her child, I decided to try my hand at writing for often re writing) some tales. And

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THE PRINCE and the CHERRY

There once was a princess who was told by her parents that she must find a husband soon. But this husband must be a REAL prince. She traveled all over the world to find one, but there was always something wrong. There were plenty of princes around, but whether or not they were REAL

princes she had difficulty in discovering. There was always something that was not quite REAL about them. So at last she had to return home and tell her parents that the man of their dreams could not be found.

One night there was a terrible storm. It thundered and lightninged and the rain poured down in torrents. It rained so hard that the river flooded.

In the middle of the storm somebody knocked at the town gate, and the old King himself went to open it. It was a prince who stood outside, but he was in a terrible state from the rain and storm. Water streamed out of his hair and clothes. He was covered with mud and looked as if he might be the town beggar. But alas, he said that he was a REAL prince!

'Well, well,' thought the old King, 'we shall soon see if this is true,' He went into the bedroom and took all the bedclothes off the bed. He then took an cherry and laid it on the bedstead. Next he put twenty mattresses on top of the cherry and then piled twenty heavy quilts on top of the mattresses. Up on top of all this was where the prince was to sleep that night.

In the morning when the prince awoke, the King went to check the cherry. For you see, a REAL prince, being very masculine indeed, would have completely smashed the cherry while he slept on it. Checking, the old King found the cherry still in one piece, exactly where he had laid it.

So the royal family now knew that their midnight visitor was not a REAL prince and he was soon on his way out the door. My story ends happily though, because who would want a REAL princess to marry an unmasculine prince???

page 5/What She Wants/September 1974