A Bright, Vibrant Blue Diamond
A Bright, Vibrant Blue Diamond
John Æonid, Reflections in a Personal Web Site
John Æonid, Reflections in a Personal Web Site

The Little Girl with No Hands

Dec 19, 2019, John Æonid (2nd Draft Dec. 24, 2019)

I initially drafted this two days from Winter Solstice, and I'm now preparing it for posting, its 2nd draft, Christmas Eve.

This arose out of a text conversation with my friend Paula.  We tend to cover some worthy topics, so here I'm going to see if I can recount how one of these discussions emerges.  Note that there are frequent texting typos, some of which I keep, some of which I fix.

I start the text chat with Paula like so:

Me: I dreamed of a little girl with no hands this morning.

Paula: Oh my, what was going on in that dream?

Me: I think I was concerned about a niece having body-image issues.

Me: Also, hands have a special symbology for me, as I had once tried to put my parents hands together when they were arguing (link to full story at the end of this article).  I was a toddler at the time and not yet talking.

Paula: I see

Paula: Isn't that a shame about the body-image issues, which I believe originate with our culture and our media.

Me: And, even though we've known about it [as a culture] for decades now, the disease is still propagated by the culture.

Paula: Very true. It is one of the many issues that I deal with, with clients.  I have and anorexic client whose husband has been cheating on her for 30 years, but we are making breakthroughs ;)

Me: I took the little girl in my arms and awoke weeping.

Paula: Wow poignant

Paula: That shows what kind of human being you are

Me: Being a guarded personality, it isn't expressed [so I feel I need to confess it when the opportunity arises].

Paula: Of course.  And another thing our culture does is chastise men for crying; what a shame because society does not [grasp] who a man, or a woman for that matter, truly is

Paula: For some reason the word "grasp" got left out of that text.

And, Paula respond just as I've completed the above transcription.

Paula: Perhaps this dream happened to give you more fodder for what you are writing about.

Me: Already typing a transcript of this conversation, with more to come, prescient that you are.  :)

Here I go on with my writing, during which Paula responds to the above:

Paula: Awwwwwww ^.^

And, this is what I've written so far:

This is the earliest of stories that explain what has led me to study and work with the chakras.  For, me this more an exploration of various manners of emotional experiences than anything else.  More specifically, it's a study of what sorts of emotions are experienced with certain locations within the body.

I should first explain that the meaning of this story ties to a particular situation that children of dysfunctional families experience.  Often children find themselves attending to adult responsibilities, forcing them to grow up too fast, and depriving them of a reasonable period of normal childhood development and experiences.  This is not a little thing.  It follows one throughout their lives.

This earliest of emotional experiences that led me to study chakras, was a seen in a movie.  It was an experience of a physical feeling associated with a particular emotional experience.  There is a particular chakra interpretation to this.  So, as I recount the story that follows, watch for that in the…

The text chat continues with few off topic points about breaking a phone and talk to text challenges.

Paula: Anyway, I would be interested in seeing your transcription if you feel like sharing.

Me: You should get it in an email today.

My writing continues:

It happened in a movie theatre, presumably in 1989.  This was not one of those multiplexes, at least not one with those little tiny screens and seating areas.  And, the movie was Three Fugitives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Fugitives.

The movie involves a widower father struggling to provide for a tiny daughter who'd gone mute since the death of her mother. It's when an ex-convict is in line at a bank (if I remember correctly) that the widower attempts to rob the bank.  The three end up entangled in a comedic adventure that ensues after the widower badly bungles the robbery.

The widower manages to shoot the ex-convict in the thigh as he drives the getaway car.  They end up at a senile and/or vision impaired veterinarian's surgery, where the ex-convict passes out from blood loss.  The widower father finds that he has to go on an unavoidable errand.  So as he prepares to leave the daughter at the veterinarian, he speaks to her in a gentle calming father's voice and instructs that the ex-convict is injured and needs to be watch over.  This is the seed that leads to my response in the key scene; an adult responsibility has just been put upon a little lamb of a child--an emotionally injured one at that.

Eventually the ex-convict gets up; and in a weak and someone dazed state, he wanders off, presumably seeking escape.  The little girl, mute as she is…

This is the moment.  My heart leaps into my throat, and my chest heaves.  Tears well up, and I sit there nearly shuddering from the emotion that has just arisen.

This is the child taking on the weight of the World.  This is the adult responsibility that too many children are forced to bear in dysfunctional households.

Here's a video to see what happens, I'll summarize following the link below.

(Scene from Three Fugitives)

The ex-convict staggers into a commercial building, down a half flight of stairs, across an empty concrete floor, and finally collapses.  In walks the little mute girl, hands hanging at her side.  She approaches the ex-convict, and the stoops to sit cross legged at his side.  There she sits, hands in her lap, watching over the fallen man.

The seen continues.  She pulls her sweater around her, and then lies down beside the ex-convict.  One might wonder if she means to wrap comforting arms around him, but it seems more that she's fallen asleep as a child in need of comfort.  Either way, this relationship between the mute little girl and the big ex-convict is a stark contrast.  It is the little lamb laying down with an injured lion.

Eventually, the lion slowly awakes and finds the mute little girl asleep beside him.  He then gently raises his hand and lightly places it on her back--in a gentle caring manner.  His facial expression shows deep realization of this child's need, as he then lies gently beside her, and the stark expression of deep reflection continues on his face.

Now, some will say this is all just too sappy.  Well, maybe I am sappy.  Maybe, I was always sappy.  Or maybe, I've had the kind of experiences that make me sappy.  If that last point is truly the case, then my being sappy is not a happy story.

The chakra experience here is that of the heart or something getting caught in the throat.  The metaphor for this is that of a truth needing to be spoken.  Yet, it gets caught there when it seems it has nowhere to go and no one to hear it.

These are deep truths of the dysfunction in our culture.  And yet, it's perpetuated.  This part of the cultural samsara, as I've recently come to call it.  It's a karma that the culture needs to clean out.  And, in the general way the karma has a kind of momentum it propagates from generation to generation changing only a little with each decade.  A deliberate intention to clean this out would be needed to accelerate towards a cultural liberation from this.  How to do that is, I think, best expressed in Zen.  We won't do it with good works; we won't do it prohibiting or punishing behavior.  We will only do it by passing on the clarity that recognizes the cravings that get passed on from generation to generation.  Then the generations to come will be able to see that these things are just not something to have, and they will simply fall away.

Last text to Paula before I send it on to her for her review… and she then texts just as I finish this sentence:

Paula: OK apologies for the delay.  I had a psychic call ;) Looking forward to it!

Me: No problem.  It let me concentrate on it (fate?).  I just finished the first draft.  It'll be on it's way soon.

Final note: I've emphasized the hands to show how significant the symbology is to my world view.  The full story for that appears here: Childhood C-PTSD

News

Nov. 8, 2019 Shadow
I've replaced the home page, though the old is retained, and I'm going deeper into shining light on the shadow, taking more risks..

May 14, 2017 Listing
I'm now generating a chronological list of postings here (in addition to the sitemap).

Jan. 14, 2017 WOT
I now participate in WOT.

Oct. 20, 2016 New Website!
This is truly in its infancy.  There is much that I want to share, yet it's just beginning.

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