[MD] Uncertainty

[John Carl]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 11:26 PM, MarshaV <valkyr at att.net> wrote:

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> I like spiders...
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Ok that reminds me of a story.  A story with a moment hanging by a thread
and the thread was a spider's web tendril, woven by a damaged spider.
 Damaged but alive.

The spider's plight was witnessed by a little girl, with her dad, at the
dump.

I guess I'm gonna tell you the story because it's been in my head to give to
you.  I'd like to plop the book it comes from in front of you and make you
read it for yourself in the author's own excellent words.  But I can't do
that.  All I can do with your eyeballs is try and lure them onward with
words.

so sit down and shut up.  You wanna hear the story or not?  It's called, The
Garbage Man's Daughter.

The story as I heard it was told through the viewpoint of a young woman.  A
bit troubled.  Worried somehow, that things went amiss and she's writing a
letter to her father, going back to where she felt they went wrong.  Where
they took a wrong turn from understanding each other.

She starts by describing her nature as fact-oriented.  Every evening, as she
grew, she spent in front of the tv, absorbing the facts of her world from
Dan Rather.  She got kinda gloomy after a while.

She never believed in Santa Claus.  She called her parents by their first
names and announced, "Bill, Wanda, I don't want you to write "From Santa
Claus" on my presents anymore.  Santa doesn't exist.

She also didn't want any such things as pretend dolls, or toys that were
imitations of things.  She wanted microscopes, a gyroscope.  She'd sit in
front of the tv, play with her gyroscope, contemplating  the way a planet
spins, and absorb the facts as presented by Dan Rather.

She pondered the idiocy of the whole Santa Claus - Tooth Fairy mythos.  Why
would adults make up fairy tale characters to take the credit for the good
things they do?  Why not rather invent mythical creatures to cover up
embarrassing moments instead?  "oops, it looks like I've been struck by that
nasty fart fairy again, the wicked little beast."

But in her extreme empirical devotion to fact, she goes a bit too far.  She
hears her folks talking about the garbage man and assumes him to be another
one of those inventions to cover up the fact that adults have to take out
the garbage in life.

Only this one seems kinda cool to her.  A character with a little pizzaz.
 She pictures him, big belly, cigar, curly hairs poking through the top of
his long-john tops.  She's actually pleased that the "oldsters" have a spark
of creativity in them after all, after all that other blatantly
manipulative,  "Be a good girl or Santa won't bring you any presents" crap
or the equally offensive "Nice girls go to heaven".

Jesus, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the easter bunny?   Boring.  But the
Garbage Man, he strikes her fancy.

And then, one early morning, when she happens to be up for some reason...

She hears out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

She springs to the window to see what is the matter

And what to her wondering eyes did appear,

A man in coveralls with a garbage can coming out from the rear.


All of a sudden, the thought that the Garbage Man is actually real shakes
her empirically built universe of cold hard fact to its core.  She finds
faith.  She constructs a world where the Garbage Man lives - at the Dump!
 In a teetering shack where his many children scramble through the crap
looking for the good stuff.

It makes her mad that his children have to live in squalor.  It doesn't seem
fair.  Are all the other fairy tale creatures slaves as well?  Maybe some
fiendish intelligence is MAKING Santa live in the cold North Pole and maybe
the tooth fairy doesn't like changing good money for germy teeth.  It sure
makes sense that Jesus didn't want to be crucified.  Who would?  What kinda
mean intelligence is running this show?

She begins to make little offerings of good clean food and nice clothes in
the garbage.  She worries that it seems like the Garbage Man just mixes up
her stuff with all the other messy garbage in the back of the truck, but
figures it must be one of those magic things like Santa being able to visit
all the homes in the world in one night.  A soul  finds  faith and makes
offerings, the old pattern arises.

Until, after a while, her parents noticing the disappearance of food and
clothing from the house, start to cross examine her and through their
questions, she begins to realize the mistake she has made.  The final blow
comes when her dad takes her to the dump and she sees the fact of the
enormity of the place and the enormity of her mistake.  A deep depression
starts to step in, but her attention is distracted by the weavings of a
damaged spider, and the magic that is life enters her mind and helps to heal
her.  One little spider.

The mind makes its own magic, whole worlds out of the slenderest of threads.
 That's a good thing.