Is Jess in a Cult?

Three girls sit in a living room. Eva has just had her wisdom teeth taken out.

Eva: I am not seeing him. I am seeing him insofar as that we are hanging out, but we're not dating.
Sal: But you're kissing him.
Eva: Ya'll! He's kissing me with my puffy cheeks.
Sal: Post-surgery? Ewww.
Eva: Yes. He's like looking in my eyes and kissing me, but my face is swollen and my lips are numb. I couldn't feel the kiss.
Sal: That's weird.
Taylor: Jess is in a Cult.
Sal: Oh my god, Taylor.
Eva: What?
Taylor: She is.
Sal: No she's not.
Taylor: Jess is in a Cult. I yell it out like I'm joking, but I'm only talking about it all the time becuase I'm worrying about it. 'Jess is in a cult' haha but seriously... Jess is in a cult.
Eva: Why do you think she's in a cult?
Taylor: I looked it up online and what's she's told us about her "group therapy" fits almost everything. Loss of ego... cutting ties with friends and family.
Sal: What I think is going on here is Jess is doing something not considered normal. But that isn't bad. We just don't know.
Taylor: You heard her talk about it when we visited.
Eva: This was going on when you guys went up there?
Taylor: Yeah, and like, people can change a lot and I get that, but Jess has never been a "group" person, and now she's relying on this group-
Sal: We don't know that.
Taylor: Yes she is! They told her to give up photography, and she did. Giving up your passion for the group is a sign.
Sal: But was photography really her passion?
Taylor: I think she really liked it.
Sal: And they didn't tell her to give it up, they told her that they didn't see her passion in the photographs that she brought in and then she decided to set it aside for awhile.
Taylor: This isn't a photography group. So why are these people even telling her stuff about her art? They aren't even real physchologists-- they're like people who think they know how to help. But they're not even educated--
Sal: We don't know--
Taylor: They call each other names like Laughing Dolphin and Red Bear.
Sal: This might be a positive thing for Jess if she's feeling lost in the city.
Eva: I mean I know the difference between doing something different and outside your comfort zone and... drinking the koolaide.
Taylor: Jess is more... susceptible... now, to this stuff. she's way wrapped in it. They told her to cut her ties to her friends and family.
Sal: No they didn't.
Taylor: Yes they did, didn't you hear her say that?
Sal: No I don't remember.
Taylor: Look there's a deer.

They all look.


Taylor: It ran away. She told us that they straight up told her to stop talking to her friends and family back home.
Sal: I mean her mom is actually crazy.
Taylor: My mom is actually crazy, but I don't need somone saying, "you don't need to talk to her anymore." Friends wouldn't do that. Eva wouldn't do that.
Sal: Yeah.... We just don't know how they're talking to her, what they are saying. We could have found out if we went to the meeting. She asked us to go. She wasn't being secretive. That's not cultish, being... unsecretive.
Taylor: I'm glad we didn't. I asked like can we just listen? Because in highschool if I went to those bible studies where people talked in tongues, Maggie told me I didn't have to participate. Maggie is the one who brought me. But Jess said that if we went, we had to talk. And I was like, I don't want to talk. I'm freaked out that they would... like attack me. Like whatever I said. And I'd probably just blurt out oh my God you guys are in a cult. And if I said that I don't want to talk, then they would talk about why I didn't want to talk, and ask me questions about it--
Sal: Like "Why do you feel uncomfortable sharing with strangers? Why do you assume that you will be attacked or critisized if you talk about yourself?"
Taylor: Yeah...
Sal: (to Eva) Do you think its weird, to make everyone one-- strongly encourage everyone, to participate?
Eva makes a face like 'thats drinking the koolaide'.
Taylor: I am just freaked out if I went to something like that, they'd make me feel like the crazy one and they'd be the sane ones.
Sal: We just don't know. We don't know what's going on.
Taylor: You don't want to know what's going on. You are not thinking about it at all so you don't have to worry.
Sal: There is a thin line between cult and... say in Eastern philosophies, in Buddism, when you have a spiritual guide or a guru, they run your life. That's a path to enlightenment, and brainwashing to others.
Taylor: I've read that book too.
Sal: What book. There's lots of books?
Taylor: In highschool... Mrs. Hughes, Siddhartha.
Eva: This is like Waiting for Godot, except it's waiting for a cult.
Taylor: I hate that play.
Sal: The cult is everywhere, the cult is nowhere.
Taylor: I just feel like a bad friend, the cult thing makes me want to run away and have nothing to do with it. If we were closer I could talk to her. We used to talk a lot freshmen year right when she moved out there, but in the last two years we havent hardly at all. And I can't come out of the blue and say hey we haven't kept up with eachother, you are in a cult.
Eva: I've got to run.
Sal: Okay, see you soon?
Eva: Yeah, I've got a job interview tomorrow, so after that. Tylers driving out there with me. You know, just pecking kissing is getting boring. We can't do more than that because--

she gestures to to her mouth.


Eva: You know.
Sal: Ew.
Taylor: Tyler is a racist. But I love you.
Eva: I love you too.
Sal: See you soon.
Eva: Okay bye!

End.

my new BFF

My petsitting ward, Oli the teacup poodle, occassionally makes little growls. Today, while working at my desk, I heard him growling behind me. "Why are you so grumpy?" I said. And then-- ohmygod. I just completely had that moment when the herione talks to her companion animal (which happens more than people realize). Like Alice conversing with her cat, Dinah. Or Jasmine sulking to Raja. Life imitates art (or Disney), and how did I get here-- being the cool teen girl in the cartoons, Sabrina scolding Salem? I'm so lucky. Oli is more than just an accessory. He's an accomplice. Who occasionally farts.

Do you get it?

If I wiggle my eyebrows at you and say "do you get it, do you get it?" Would you get it? If I nudge you and open my mouth, shut my mouth, roll my eyes, flop my hands like soft hammers, huff a frocked and frilly sigh and stare and stare and stare would you get it? Do you get it? You either do or you don't.

Maybe one day you didn't get it, but that can change, and you can get it. Sometimes it never changes and you will never get it. Once you get it, doesn't mean you always got it. But you can never forget it. But dont trust remembering it. Try to forget it. And get it again. You can't get it from a person if you don't have it. But you can't have it unless you get it from a person. Sometimes.

There should be an eyebrow/handshake code so those of us that get it can find others. We can take turns running towards each other, then running away.

"At first I wasn't sure, but now I have no idea"
--Dr. Dog, Drop Me Off

Shakespeare Beginnings

I am noticing something new about Shakespeare. In terms of play making, he hides catalysts. In Hamlet, the Ghost is the clear catalyst to get the story started, but Hamlet's melancholy, rebellious state has well begun when the curtain opens. The cause is shrouded... and while there are plenty of factors for Hamlet's internal state (the death of his father, the remarriage of Gertrude to his Uncle blah blah) not one cause completely encapsulates the effect. Hamlet's cause remains off stage, unrepresented.

In Winter's Tale, Leontes's jealousy loses him his family and best friend. But what caused the jealousy? It was disproportionately engaged after Hermione convinced Polixenes to stay longer on Leontes's behalf. Like a switch turned on, Leontes turns completely away from his former character of restraint and reasonableness and into a paranoid hater. In my book on playwriting by Lajos Egri, this sort of "jump" in conflict is bad writing: "between winter and summer come autumn and spring.... there are steps which lead from one to the other. Every step must be taken" (Egri 155). Leontes's steps are compressed-- and as unnatural as time moving backward: he is spring, then winter. (The overall play structure, however, moves nicely from winter in the first half (I-III) to spring in the second (IV and V)). The catalyst is on stage this time in Act I, but something is missing... hidden from the audience.

I think Shakespeare was an early Logician. To supremely capture humans, as he does, one must acknowledge cause and effect,but also flout it. There are certainly a ton of cases where Shakespeare builds steady action-- but there is a signature, jarring effect. I would illustrate with more examples but its summer time and no one reads this blog anyway. The highest degree of conflict comes from pattern breaking, disruptions, unpredictability. Steve Martin, before he became and comedian and a playwright said this of his undergrad program of study: "I majored in philosophy. Something about non-sequiters appealed to me. In philosophy, I started studying logic, and they were talking about cause and effect, and you start to realize, 'Hey, there is no cause and effect! There is no logic! There is no anything!' Then it gets real easy to write this stuff [stand up routines]"... (from Wikipedia).

I always made an unexamined assumption that I was like Writers. I must be like them... because I read so much! But reading about writing is causing me to think that writing is different from reading and that writers are acutally totally different from readers. I wish that reading and writing were the same thing-- as interchangeable as breathes: breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out. And that I could switch from one to the other just as effortlessly. Of course there is a component missing from reading and writing which completes the triad... and that is "thinking". But reading, writing, and thinking do not divide so nicely into the dual nature of breathing. If thinking were to fit into the schema, it would be the hesitation between breaths-- because thought is inaction, and eventually we must stop thinking so that we will not suffocate and die.

I am very pleased with this metaphor.

"Rematch"

I have a movie idea. Its called "Rematch"-- an indecisive woman re-dates every boyfriend she ever had in order to double check she didn't miss The One. Can she learn to trust fate before bringing the wrong man to her best friend's wedding and second-guessing herself into oblivion?

The B-story: Indecisive Girl has an assured best friend-- confident in her engagement to a handsome, successfull Indian man. The wedding finale takes place in Calcutta.

The premise is that indecision leads to misery. Of course the protagonist will move from indesicion to certainty... while the audience should move from certainty (they know how these movies go, they know what she needs) to uncertainty (IS fate working in our lives? IS the protag better off moving on to the next catch?) The B-story is the surrogate audience. Best Friend is the foil/reversal  of Main Girl.

Drawback: The main girl won't be likable enough and the audience will boo and throw popcorn at the screen.

Found Poem-- Craigslist Pet Ads.

HARLEY IS 4 1/2 MONTHS OLD PUPPY

You are his life, his love, his Rabies Vaccination

This girl will be a big girl
I would prefer she have a playmate
I have one

Would like to trade her for pr of parakeets
but thats just something I want

The dogs below are in need of more information

He LOVES men,
rough play,
being able to run/hunt freely

and just laying in the shelter

He is a very good boy and needs a very good sliding lid and overhead lamp

Forever Home.
but thats just something I want

potential adoptive families

I will not give him away to the first person that asks... I have to be sure that where he is going is a good place. to ensure she is going to a good home

small rehoming fee of 100 (cash only)
to ensure. i need to be sure

i need to rehome
but thats just something I want

I do not have "papers" for him

That is really not as big a deal as some folks think it is

Purring is just one of the things she does best

but she kills chickens
That is really not as big a deal as some folks think it is

THANKS FOR LOOKING