...they can only choose one...
They opt for the Grannie Annie story swimming in the Beck's pool. Kids always love that one. She was hot an needed to cool off.
Kim takes the Mic and challenges the kids in another style of narrative writing, and asks them to journal about life since March and their responses to it. How have they coped?
You join, and being the visual learner that you are, respond with a .png image of your head and thought bubbles (dang, you, can't figure them out use speech bubbles instead). Sadly, you do such a bad job, you you need to cover the edges of your choppy head with a wig, and when you find one you make yourself look eerily like Justin Bieber. That's was not the look you wanted, so you find a beard to counter the Bieber facade. You decide a bearded you is much better, and begin to reflect. Creativity is survival, you think, and I wonder about those without creative outlets to cope.
You can't get Kanye West out of your mind, however. You've always thought he was a bit of a douchebag, even when he was in pre-Kardashian land, and living with his academic, English-teaching mom. She was still alive then, and already whispers of her disappointment filtered through the communities where I taught. You say to others in the group, Kanye always seemed like a spoiled, narcissistic brat...his music was okay, but you don't pay attention. The whole Hollywood tea-spilling of the stars is mind-numbing and a distraction. Who cares who is saying what about who and why. You aren't above the gossip, though, and the kids who are chatting in a group chat on ZOOM prompt you to think critically of the singer.
Mental breakdowns are real. Did he have one? Is there something deeper going on? If so, why go forward with his nonsense on national news?
You flash back to when you were working with Sudanese people in Louisville and Syracuse and watched this White guy, some Christian, who created this non-profit corporation telling the story of this one Sudanese youth and, as you watched his movie, you kept thinking how the hell does someone turn the sad situation of Sudanese lost boys into an international fund-raising campaign for white people. At the time, you realized it was because they were connected to mega-churches and guilt and, even so, the whole thing struck you wrong and felt wonky.
A year later, you learned this White guy, some Christian, as his image was portrayed all over the news in a manic, pyscho outburst where he ran the streets of California completely naked ranting nonsense about devils, and Jesus, and Africa, and his wife, and you thought, "This is sadder than you wanted it to be. You only wanted to be sad because it seemed unjust to make so much money off of the Sudanese refugee story."
You didn't want him to publicly meltdown. You read why on Wikipedia - 'brief reactive psychosis' caused from exhaustion.
Like Kanye, you think. The synapses aren't firing. Both somehow chisel your way of knowing the world.
And you remember the psychotic break a friend had in KY and how it was one fo the scariest things you've ever experienced. It lasted for a long time and you realized the chemical self has tremendous strength over the body when the rages happen. It is not fun to watch or witness. It damages many in its path, and feel empathy for those who suffer from such trauma-triggered behavioral malfunction.
But then you remember Kim's prompt with how you have been coping since March and you realize you continue to write every day, read every day, and create every day, knowing that stupidity cracks you up more than anything else, and to demonstrate this, you make yourself look like Justin Bieber as a lumberjack. So, you find a forest, which makes you look like an Ewok, and then you lose your mind for a few hours looking for the back story of the Christian man who lost his shit.
Losing one's shit is never a good thing, and you think about the kids and their writing, Kim and her prompting, Dave and Shaun and their beautiful collaboration with Kim, and you stop responding to the prompt.
That's when you think, "Hmmm. This would make a good blog post for Calendric Crandall."
Then you create it.
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