rollercoaster mon uow rollacoasta 050404 ... raze of love 241128 ... ovenbird The wooden beams are rotting. You can see how they bend under the weight of the car you’re buckled into. You’re making that first ascent. The one that brings you to a spiraling drop. The one that sends you over an edge that will leave you breathless and screaming. You tell yourself you’re having fun. This is fun. Fun. Exhilarating, even. You feel alive. Except you’re strapped in and you can’t get out and you don’t recall making the decision to get on this ride in the first place and as the rusty belt pulls you upward you see skulls and bones poking out from the framework underneath the track. Squirrels and coyotes are picking at the sockets, gnawing on the joints. An analyst would have a field day with this, you think. When you get to the top of the first rise you don’t go over. Instead you get off. There’s a platform there and the car comes to a stop and you get off, right at the top where you can see the entire fair spread out below you. You just get off and walk away. What are you feeling right now? your therapist asks. Stuck, you say. Trapped. You can’t see a platform anywhere. There’s no exit. You draw a card. XIII: Death. Of course this is what comes to the surface. Change, transformation. Endings. You close your eyes. You’ve never liked rollercoasters. But you’re having fun, aren’t you? (If you’re having fun, why do you keep looking for the emergency lever? The one that will pull everything to a grinding halt?) And all those bones…are they the bones of the people who left? Or the bones of the people who stayed? Or the bones of the people who could never decide and rode this ride forever. Over and over, until the wind stole their breath and their bodies found the only stillness they could in a world that wouldn’t stop moving. 260520 what's it to you? who go blather from