Park Bowl- a series of commands.

A virgin gives herself to an admirer after a courtship of 1 year. He leaves her immediately afterward, feeling conquered and mortified.

She thinks “From this time forward, I feel as one that has died. I have lost my days and my travail of abstinence, and my tears and prayers and vigils are brought to nothing: I have angered my God, and have destroyed myself. Sorrow upon me, with every spring of tears!

Where shall I flee to hide? Where can I find a pit wherein to throw myself? I dare not look at heaven, I that am dead to God and man. Better to go away to some other country where there is no one who could know me, for I am nought but a dead woman now, and there is no hope left to me any more.

Even bowlers have their trials with tedium or perturbation of heart. Like a fever mounting at a regular time, it brings a high tide of inflammation to the sick soul. When this besieges the unhappy mind, it begets aversion from the alley, boredom with one’s ball, and scorn and contempt for the league members, as careless and unspiritually-minded persons.

Also, towards any bowling that may be done, we become listless and inert. It will not suffer us to stay in our shoes. We lament that in all this while, bowling in the same alley, we have not improved our average, we sigh and complain that bereft of sympathetic fellowship we have no spiritual fruit; and bewail ourselves as empty of all moonlight bowling profit, abiding vacant and useless in this place; and we have enriched no man with our example. We cannot even procure one’s snacks without enormous toil. Finally we conclude that there is no health for us so long as we stay in this alley, and go elsewhere as quickly as possible.

And so the wise suggest the bowlers would never, especially the younger, to be idle, measuring the state of their heart and their progress in patience and humility by their steadiness at bowling; and not only might they accept nothing from anyone towards their line charge, but out of their own toil they should support such bowlers as came from foreign parts, and send huge stores of Cheese Combos and videos of tournaments to those that pined in the squalor of the prisons.

Tips for Bowlers:
– Escapism and Solitude will not solve anything. You are forced to live.

– Pink rooms are psychologically sedative. A combination of recreation facility and endangered species habitat may bring you to your gentleness.

–Mind games are passé. Positive thinking helps you control your personal aggression.

– White lies combined with acceptance of common vises exhibits a respect for others.

–Stop drinking and smoke dope.

–If you are in love with the sound of your own voice,
shut up and try thinking for a change.

Missing Bowlers

I am a big ugly girl. Many times boys approach me an tell me that they think I have bigger arms than they do. It may be an insult to me, but they seem embarrassed after the words have a chance to hang in the air.

I live in a project on the west side of town. On Saturday, 4:30 pm I go over to Bossen to bowl. It’s a five mile walk. One cold fall day I looked through the trees and saw the lake. I decided to try taking the shortcut across the ice. I use the water tower to aim where I wanna go. It only takes 20 minutes to get to the Bossen Bowling Experience.

I told everyone at the lane, and for the next week I talked it up at home. Soon I was leading my friends on the walk. All winter we enjoyed the Big Sky out on the lake. The booming sound the ice would make as it cracked on sunny days was scary.

One day in March, we all started across the ice. There were puddles on top of the ice, it had been raining that morning. We had our rubber boots and it was a bright day, so we were in mind for a little adventure. Jolene started telling one of her jokes and we were giggling and sloshing along at a good clip. The ice began to bend and ripple as we progressed. I smelled that something was wrong, just wanted to get off the lake as soon as possible. Looked all around to see where the closest shore was. Then it gave way and we were all in the drink.

There was a large hole above me, and the surface was cracked apart. I had released my bowling ball at the first shock of cold water and kicked hard to swim up. Everyone was going the same way. Everyone was trying to climb back up on the thin ledge of ice. Panic and survival instinct made them scream and claw toward that ledge simultaneously. It was breaking up more.

I kicked off by boots and tried the edge that was facing the point. My arms buoyed me up like water wings and I could hook my legs up first. The ice continued to crack as I snaked along on my belly. It was like swimming, worming along in puddles of slush. It took a long time to reach the point, I was crawling and crying in frustration and fear, my clothes were so heavy and stiff.

I lost my closest friends that day, but we are still walking on the thin ice of a failing economy. Only luck and a pair of fat arms saved me that day. I had to let go of my beloved bowling ball to survive. I started reading books and studying hard. I know that an education is going to be like my arms someday. Young adults are particularly vulnerable to hard times.

Moonflowers knows that these days a significant percentage of teenagers are engaging in sexual activity. There are moral, social, economic prohibitions on contraceptives. In fact, coerced pregnancy and childbearing is widespread. Everywhere, young women are faced with a mix of government policies, cultural traditions and economic pressures that conspire to make pregnancy and motherhood mandatory.

Teenage childbearing has enormous consequences. It limits educational opportunities, thereby reinforcing the low status of women, and the poor children that live with them.

A Dead Ant is 2D

The Class Arthropoda is made up of 800,000 kinds of insects.

By far the largest group is ants. Six-legged creatures crawl all over our planet. As they scale the side of your house the gravity pulling against the sticky feet on this new surface is the only indication of up. The ants go marching in through the window and across the cupboard to the sugar bowl. The appliances grow larger, mutate each moment, twist and contort with foreshortening. Edges flare and recede nonsensical as they pass.

To ants the Earth is flat. A two-dimensional world; forward and to the side. Our third dimension is incomprehensible in minds devoid of concepts. According to P.D. Ouspensky in “Tertium Organum, A key to the Enigmas of the World”, time replaces our third dimension for these creatures of the 2d world.

Flocking behind the leader, who is the ant in front of you, struggling beneath enormous loads, they return to the nest. They have remarkable memories. Labyrinths of tunnels covering up to an acre are negotiated only by remembered sequences of turns and of smells.

“No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women, no fun, no sin, no wonder it’s dark.” This song, “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors, sums up the worker ants’ life. They build the new colony from nothing. They are the whole defense of the colony and nurturers of the young. Besides gathering food, they plant gardens of mushrooms in the depths, and herd and stroke the cow-like aphids for sweet milk. Mother Earth is God. Through floods, and winter they perservere. Death comes from attacks by giants and aardvarks.

For citizens of a society that provides survival for six or seven years, if not freedom and concepts, there are benefits and obligations: Ice cream socials, community action committees and service projects, PTAs, bowling leagues, giant square dances and an underground system to shame that of London.

Individualism cannot be tolerated in a society that only tries to survive, thrive and share equally. Are we wrong to proclaim INDIVIDUALISM as the ultimate social manifestation? Or are the complexity of language, nuance of manners and solid social customs just survival schemes in a land where people live on top of each other? Small differences within the same limitations?

If ants represent the 2D and our world is 3D, what is next? Is any man/woman able to take the next step, beyond concepts and become the future fourth dimensional being?

Alternative Lifestyle in Prison

After the drama and arrest and trial, my life has settled into an unbearably mundane level. My arrest was a complete fluke. Our passion for sex on balconies erupted into a media conspiracy. My boyfriend was released on his on recognizance shortly after the incident at the Women’s Club.

Ah, politics! I especially balk at the term “indecent exposure” being used in my case, and “repeat offender” offers the same tainted vision of this state’s moral myopic misogyny. My lawyer said, “It’s a nasty twist in the new crack-down on sex offenders”. The blue-haired, be-necklaced ladies of that Loring Park establishment weren’t the only victims.

It’s my second time in the slam for indecent exposure. The culture of troublemakers, a twisted group support system, cracking my new strongarm and buying ketchup, Zu-Zu’s and Wham-wham’s again are precious and quaint for a little while. A short bit indeed.

Deprived. The top three problems of incarceration are caused by deprivation. Being institutionalized separates me from:

–Freedom.
I dream of swimming and flying often.

–Family and loved ones.
I miss my boy, my dancing partners, roomies, colleagues and lovers. I’m so out of touch that I worry That some emergency will not be reported to me until it reaches a horribly late point of no-return.

–My favorite special activity.
Pleasure. I’m sexually frustrated, it’s a difficult thing for me to abandon. At a specified hour I lie on my bunk and concentrate on him. If I know that he is doing the same simultaneously, I can imagine I feel him inside me and transcend to oneness again. Thank god there’s a bowling alley here. Substitute kegeling.

I feel sorry for myself, angry at the system. The next moment I’m overwhelmed with apathy, boredom, hopelessness. I’m increasingly insecure about my safety and development. Most of the dangerous power trips of alcoholism, drugs and guns are precluded. But incidents of shanking are common enough to scare me.

After just a few weeks I began to take many of the restrictions for granted and settled into the ROUTINE. The rhythm of life is locked into institutional routines, narrowing my attention to the present moment. The count is steadily chipping away at my peace of mine. I avoid thoughts of the future, except as a source of fantasies; and thoughts of the past are limited to some of its happier moments. Many of the rules have changed since I was here last time. I feel like such a fool sometimes, not knowing where I stand. Stripped of my usual mates, I try to cultivate new ones here, but they are twisted souls for the most part. The good ones are suddenly transferred and moved, it’s out of my control.

How can I avoid the entanglements, obligations and conflicts, adopting a solitary lifestyle, after being such a social animal on the outside? The old inmates are socially self-contained, hardened for psychological survival, they manage to cope, but the cost is considerable.

I rebel with a sinking sensation in my stomach when I’m told what to do, so staying out of trouble is a constant struggle with these motherfuckers. The screws are mean and uncaring, my grievances are genuine, but ignored by my Team. The self-improvement programs are ineffective given the negative environment, negative emotions, negative vibrations trapped and swirling inside this drainpipe. Chronic problems remain chronic. If anything, there is a decrease in pressure to change, a reinforcements of bad habits and attitudes. The peer pressure resembles that of a suburban junior high.

If anything, coping and adaptation is more difficult the second time. Jumpstreet. Is jail my alternative lifestyle? I hate conforming with these lowlifes. Most importantly, confidentially I believe that I am going mad. My altered state come without the use of drugs. My imagination is running wild, it’s the only thing that can. Paradoxically, one does not thing of prison as a place where problems can be escaped. I wake up in a good mood in the morning and imagine that I am in a cheap hotel while on a foreign holiday. But when I see the missing toilet seat and realize it’s not a bidet, I come down for the rest of the day.

Remember driving through a twisting winding road at high speed and how fast your synapses popped and made your muscles react so you didn’t even have to think of how to drive? There is a cosmic number- 30,000. Your mechanical being is that much faster than your mind. But furthermore your emotions are 30,000 times faster than that fast driving thing. The shiver up your spine is a clue. The emotions drive our imaginations like rocket fuel and it can be truly ugly when it careens out of control.

Most of the inmates are using reactive solutions to cope with problems. Or with a teensy bit of forethought, they can anticipate trouble using avoidance techniques. Or in the put-a-patch-on-it worldview, palliative schemes, like excuses or apologies that offer no cure to the real problem. These are low-level coping, common inside and out.

Inner dialogue is only a start toward self-knowledge. Re-evaluation of myself has filled the endless winters. I am gaining the skill to control my thoughts. It’s having just a small beneficial effect on my emotional life. But the mind can play tricks on you.

A new scheme involves persistent, though largely ineffectual runs at consciousness. Still I have been sleepwalking for 99% of my waking hours. It takes considerable energy to phase in. Daydreaming and self-analysis does nothing to help my future. It’s time to wake up, wake up, wake up. Say it over and over, pay attention to Square business.

So, I go downstairs and bowl until I’m so tired my mind turns off. That is when I feel closest to the something that is glorious and infinite.

What about the separation of church and bowling?

Bowling is THE wholesome activity. It is one of the few remaining middle-class participatory sports. The pinnacle of innocent fun, I have heard that over in St. Paul there’s an alley in the basement of a church. What about the separation of church and bowling?

Most censorship of public morals is carried on by churches. The effort to satisfy a wide range of sensibilities forces them to swing to the right. The objective decisions of their censorship boards apply only to members of that church. Using threats of boycott and other economic pressures, the boards can force private firms not to publish or print distasteful subject matter.

The controversial photograph by American photographer Andres Serrano, “Piss Christ” is something that the middle class family normally does not come in contact with, since it is found hanging in an art gallery. The media outcry “lofted” by the late Jesse Helms has brought it home and up your alley.

A pilgrimage to the new frontier would find the Judeo-Christian-thought-police are still here. I, too have been programmed. Themes of belief and damnation are central to the production of my obscene material. Being an artist, language is inadequate to express my dreams, desires, emotional and altered state. I need visuals, perhaps technically-assisted telepathy where you can literally see what I mean. A little imagination is needed by everyone, as opposed to a fine line of discrimination.

My goals are Truth and Beauty.