Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
Once upon a time there was a girl with ideas. They bubbled up inside her and shone like a light out of her eyes. The trouble was – she was also very pretty. Everyone she met would comment on her beauty. She was patted by old women and men alike. She was paraded, she was photographed, she was primped and pinched. She tried to share her ideas. She tried to tell people, she tried to write, but it soon became apparent that beauty was her only worth. Her ideas shrank and formed a small ball in her head. They could not come out of her mouth, but she needed to air them. They needed to be placed on an ejector seat and shot out into the universe.
She was lauded for her beauty, everyday people pushed and pulled and preened. She was put on show, a sash placed across her magnificent chest; Winner – Miss Atlanta 1922. They asked her questions, but as her ideas began to spew forth, they laughed and shut her down. Her ideas were of no value in this world, how could she be rid of them? Her head hurt. She knew it was because of those ideas, contained, caged for so long, creating pain. “Don’t look so sad, don’t look so worried” they said, “You will spoil your pretty face” they said. “Stop frowning. You think too much.”
One day she felt her head might just explode. She paced, she cried, she howled like a banshee. She was not a happy girl. She was not a pretty girl. “Who is this terrible girl?” they asked. “Does she need a nap?” “She needs some quiet time” they suggested.
Her head screamed “NO”. She needed to be loud. Because of that, they locked her away. She was shut off from the world. “From beauty to tragedy” they lamented. “Its a madness” they said .“ Probably from the mother’s side” they mused. “She needs to get these silly ideas out of her head”
And because of that notion of madness and worse, they injected her with a poison that calmed her mind. It entered her knot of ideas, that pulsed in her head, that pushed on her skull. The ideas dispersed, they were lost in her head. She struggled through the fog, searching and seeking, unable to find them. She found spicks and specks, dribs and drabs, bits and pieces, but nothing whole. Her face remained in it’s frown, a dull look in her eyes. When the ideas were lost, so to was the beauty. Until finally people forgot who she was, her value was gone. That girl they had patted, preened, pushed and pulled, left alone in her cell, searching through the fog of her mind for those fabulous ideas that once were there, but could be found no more.