Pursuit Of The Blue Fairy

Pursuit Of The Blue Fairy Friday, July 31, 2009 | A Funny story  Pinocchio was my first book of note. The possibility of a boy of wood excited me at that young age. But there was a whisper in it, a foretelling, and a prediction. Over time, the prediction became a reality and that whisper became audible to me and to my audience. I know because I gave it its voice.   A guardian angel in various guises would appear to rescue the puppet Pinocchio from impossible situations. Was this a story of the supernatural?  My magical thinking made me a fan of Collodi's work and set me on my lifetime path of learning, discovery and performing the role of a puppet who lived outside the fringe of realty while at the same time struggled to belong. As in the case of Pinocchio, he sought the secret of becoming a real boy.     The nuns taught me up to the age of nine. They were the closest idea I for me of a good fairy existing in the real world. The nuns were a part of two worlds. In Pinocchio The Blue Fairy, like the nuns, created hope in the midst of impossible situations. They made me feel good somehow. And unlike the torture I was subjected to at home, the nuns discipline did not equate to the destruction of the soul.   'magical thinking' that is, when the rational world makes no sense, is at times nonsense, is in fact...at least in storytelling, better than no sense..! Who was it who said: "The person that remains calm when everyone else is panicking just doesn't understand the situation." If identifying one's self with a fairy tale character may safely bridge what may prove to be a deadly emotional impasse, when self destruction seems the only way to escape the pain of the heart, then the fairytale has achieved a purpose beyond mere entertainment.   God,. I was taught was all powerful. A Father, a creator of me and of all the world. He could help me said the nuns and the priests and the brothers at my school. Where was he though when my earth father was away at work, wehen the beatings, the humiliation, the sexual abuse began at home at the hands of the woman who replaced my own deceased mother? Where was God? I really needed His help.  When my own father came home then came the accusations against me as excuse for the blood marks across my back, my legs, my bottom the result of torture and daily whippings with an iron tipped dog's leash...There was the time her foot pressed my neck to the floor, she took boiling water from the stove and poured it on my face. My father there did nothing more than try to ease my pain by rubbing olive oil into the wound. Where was God?   "Mother dear", was the name I was forced to use when addressing her. She married my father when I was three going on four after the death of my real mother.   The thought of a  Blue Fairy, an angel who would love me, protect me, gave me comfort. But how can a thought have more power than anything else to relieve terror? What is it in the power of thought that can do that?   Can we sculpt thought ? Can fearful thoughts be transformed into thoughts of hope? Or the reverse? Can hope be tranformed into confusion..panic, self destruction? I learned over time this was so. I learned as well that God existed and learned to recognize His voice in my dreams. (To  be continued)