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One time earlier, there was a young woman named Sally who lived in a bungalow, (small rustic dwelling) in a village inside the Metropolis. In this time, Sally was having a rough week amongst a rough life. Her mind was floating low and wide, awash with junk. The junk was white coloured powder. It made feelings remote and it performed much in the substitution of Sally's reality.
Sometime later the young woman woke. Her landlord walked into the bungalow and said, 'You cannot pay your rent, I am tired of sleeping with you. You must leave'.
She walked from one village to the next village in the Metropolis and her head came clear and her body came to hurt from starvation of junk. The young woman sat down and measured her options. Her feet also hurt from climbing up and down water drain-pipes and her hands hurt from breaking glass windows of vehicles and her cunt hurt from being fucked too hard and too much.
The young woman decided to make a decision she had lain aside for several seasons. She walked to a place she knew of, named Detox. The people of the Detox asked her to stay for a while. She thanked them because she was tired and needed to sleep. After a while Sally woke up again and she went through great torment and cramping because of her junk-love. The hovering shadows that had surrounded her for many months were upset with her because they were hungry.
Later, the torment and cramping let go and the shadows went all dormant. The young woman ate many beans and much corn. She felt much better and hhmmmmed and thought, 'I can now leave and score junk'. She thought and hhmmmmed deeply about this for four days and decided to not, and decided that her life did not want junk anymore. The young woman exited Detox and walked west through the many villages of the Metropolis, and as she walked, thought of smoking some smoking-weed, but like junk, thought there would not be any place for the smoking-weed in her life now.
She kept walking and passed by many factories and some chemical plants. Ideas with acid, pills, peyote, gas of laughing, mescal, lager and the linking memories of these passed through the mind of the young woman, and she came to think of them and their kinship with junk and weed. There were some times of good but times of darkness and confusion too.
Sally stopped walking and stared at the prickles of a thistle plant that sparkled with moisture in the late day light. She looked at the purple flowers. The thistle plant spoke to her. It said, 'Listen'. Sally said, 'Yes thistle, I shall listen', and sat still in the scrub until the next day.
The next day the young woman came to the final thought that all the airs and waters and earths that changed her mind had no part to play anymore because her mind did not want changing. This was not a decision, but a reasoning and when Sally made this bold reasoning she felt cold inside. Sally was used to fuzzy vision and felt fear of the clarity of the landscape and the morning light of sun. She asked the thistle, 'What must I do?'. The thistle did not answer, so she started walking west again.
The young woman came to the village named Geelong and lived there. In the village she helped other folk out of the confusion she had known well. But the young woman learned through her experiences of doing this, that each must walk their own track upon which, the guidance of others makes only a little difference. She noticed she had neglected her own life track and yearned for a candle inside that did not flicker as much.
The young woman started making decisions again and stopped eating animals because they were not eating her and it was fair. She stopped smoking leaves of tobacco and drinking caffinated beverages, for they changed the way of her body's insides, and the way of her body's insides were now linked close to the way of her life. Many young men of the village coveted and winked at Sally, though it was at this stage that she ended sexual practices with others and by herself because she did not need sex. She felt that her life was turning good and she came to the thought of wanting to spread her love (like radiowaves) of other life evenly over all the things that lived in the cosmos and the things that made the life happen, like the clouds, the sun and the other stars, but she could not see the other stars so clearly in the village's night air.
Her perception of the village had changed from the village looking small to looking large, and changed from feeling relaxed to feeling filled with many problems.
The social welfare construct said to her, 'Do not leave the village, you must get work. We will stop feeding you if you leave'. Sally accepted this and was okay to be free of their expectations.
The young woman walked away from the village and away from its people and its constructs. She walked and remembered more things that would be left out of her life now, things like television and eating chicken's eggs, cheese, chocolate and drinking cow's milk.
The young woman walked along the track, and came to a little hamlet named Winchelsea, and she visited the local head-hair-cutter and asked to have all of her head-hair shaved off.
'Yes, I will shave it off, but I am curious. Why do you want me to shave all your head-hair off?'. The young woman did not know why and said this. She thought that perhaps she should have left her hair in Geelong. Sally gave the last of her money to the man because she decided that she did not need money anymore.
From Winchelsea, Sally walked south toward the blue forest. In the forest she met a group of people who lived much the same as she did. They asked her to join them but she saw that they had devised as many needless and ponderous constructs as the villagers had, only different. She kept walking and came to a small and empty dwelling that she decided to live inside of. This was very near to the great ocean.
The young woman grew food in the earth and came to eating the vegetables uncooked as this was how they were grown. She played a musical instrument called a lyre and found a stillness in movement, like the stillness in sitting, called tai chi. Her days were filled with these simple activities and sitting by the great ocean and staring across the great ocean. Seasons, coloured yellow, orange, grey and blue, yellow, orange, grey and blue, moved through the forest.
The candle-flame in her did burn steady and strong. Sally played the lyre little now and found the stillness of tai chi, but not the movement, was all she needed and became still in this way while sitting by the ocean.
One day the young woman heard a voice without sound or definition call to her from above and across the ocean. It called her name. She had heard this several times before. The first time it was only a whisper but this time Sally felt very sure about what it meant and walked into the ocean and to the voice.
She awoke from a very long, long dream into a place of invisible sweet liquid light. Sally stood up and was aware of the presence of The god. The young woman spoke.
'I am here. Before I came life was good but much of it was bad. Why did I suffer so?' The god replied.
'You had to, as many before have, suffer so that you would come to know what your life is and who you are, and so on. You came to understand that you had the decision of living in confusion or seeking clarity. You chose good, and I wish you well because after your holiday you are to move on.'
There were two variations on the end note that followed the telling of this story in the region where I compiled it. The more popular goes along the lines of the young woman moving on to another place that little is known about. Generally, the story teller and the audience break into discussions of their visions of what the next place is like and what goes on there.
The less popular end note says that after her holiday the young woman returned to the land in the form of a golden Labrador and spent her life helping a visionless human.
Team Sunny Breaks,
1998