WAIT
A response to a tiny newspaper item that turned into the subject of a story about a crowded mental hospital.
by Susan Holland
Reveries and groans about things beyond our control…
I always wondered what darting thoughts go through the mind of a person who has lost every dollar, and is standing on the windowsill of a tall building in NYC about to commit themselves to the several seconds’ fall — waiting to jump.
What are they thinking about, and what logic do they use?
Are we going to decide to do this sort of thing? Are we thinking about the fall and the squash at the end of the fall, and wondering whether we will have passed out on the way or whether we will feel some sharp pain before disintegrating?
It’s a 9/11 kind of verge I am thinking of with the blast of heat and fire close behind a person until the only respite is out the window — a possibility of a few breaths of cooler air before oblivion.
Many people are standing on that windowsill after the surprise ending on Tuesday. [ Election Day 2016]
But the building is not burning yet.
Are we going to, in a sense, push the red button for The End in this state of shock and anger and fear? Are we afraid that the person we just got for our next four years is the kind of person who will rush to the Nuclear Option whenever he gets shocked and angry and fearful?
That’s the sort of thing that hysterical people do, isn’t it? Can we check our own pulses for such hysterics?
I’m not sure what is ahead. But I will hang around one day at a time to see what happens next. And do the things I always do. And let my Adrenalin settle down. And make some lists of priorities that I am in charge of.
Writers are usually emotional people. Many a manuscript has ended up trashed because we went into a frenzy and goofed it all up.
Let’s write the future carefully, each one of us, and without yielding to mass hysteria.
One day…
Next day…
Etc.
Originally published at cowbird.com. under pen-name Fellow Traveler
Edited 2/24/2017
Both watercolor and Pastel Study by Susan G Holland ©1997 using a small
newspaper photo of an inmate at a terribly overcrowded Mental Hospital.
