Sunday, April 4, 2021
Miss Linda's Humanities MA Philosophy Paper on Consciousness and Lucid Dreaming: "A Dream within a Dream"
Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Rancho Tarzanadu: "Miss Linda is Still a Doll"
She wasn’t too clear on the timeline for being a doll, remaining a doll, turning into a doll, or any of it.
She had been sleeping way too much…she could escape in her dreams and get lost in them, which was comforting, yet also odd since that is when she transformed into a doll in the first place. Waking up was the difficult part (and she certainly didn’t mean this in a Right-wing conspiracy-theory sort of way, but in a literal, physical way). The sun kept unrelentingly rising, and she was arduously slow to rise. Thank God(s) for her Pandemic Relief money and Government Cheese, because she wasn’t sure how to properly function in the “real” world anymore, which was now more virtual than ever before.
Her mother was gone, and she felt a reverberating black hole in the Universe, and now she was a doll. Still a doll.
She reached out to her sister and a few trusted friends, informing them of her predicament. To her surprise, they were not surprised, but empathetic to her condition, and offered their emotional, virtual support.
She had somehow managed to finish a group presentation in her Philosophy class on “Consciousness”, which was extra ironic, considering her situation. She had been participating in all her Zoom classroom meetings with her camera turned off, so no one there was the wiser (at least that she was aware of).
Her philosophy professor kept advocating for the sound reasoning of Science, and that someday artificial intelligence would be able to feel, the same way that humans do. She kept arguing that it would not be possible, because human emotion is so complicated…how could a robot ever even begin to understand the complexities of human emotion? She could think of a handful of ex-boyfriends who never came close to mastering this. She also felt that being a doll was an intermediary step in the wrong direction for her philosophical argument. She made an oversized White Russian (which was harder than it sounds, but worth the effort) and contemplated this. She was confused. She was the first to admit this. Somehow, she faked her way to a 4.0 grade point average, and got a grant from the school board for the Spring semester. If they only knew they were giving it…to a doll.
She contacted her friend, Sister Eartha, a PhD in Women’s Spirituality, seeking counsel. They had known each other since 1980, and had been through a lot together. Probably too much, to be honest. They didn’t even need words to communicate with each other, but only telepathy. They had been refining this technique for decades, even through their “rough patches”. Actually, enhanced through their rough patches.
One good piece of news: Manuel would be returning home to Rancho Tarzanadu from Guantanamo Bay, due to COVID-19 (to prevent further outbreaks there). He had been gone for four years and twenty-two days. Miss Linda wondered how he would react to the fact that she was now a doll. It had gotten a little dicey with exerting her authority around Rancho Tarzanadu…it’s hard to be taken seriously as a doll, let’s be honest. She had to overreach to make any sort of impression at all, and then called out for that, and it was frankly emotionally exhausting. She was only human, after all. She was only human…now she was just uncertain. Of everything.
Monday, February 8, 2021
Rancho Tarzanadu: "Miss Linda Turns into a Doll"
Miss Linda was turned into a doll.
She was not exactly certain how it happened, but she’d been mulling it over quite a bit, as you might imagine.
She’d had another night of extremely fitful dreams (some would call them nightmares), in which she was trying to navigate her way through crowded college campuses, trudging her way up lengthy winding stairwells, and running perennially late for class.
She arrived at one class later than all the other students, and was ushered into what looked like a restaurant (it had been nearly a year since she’d been to an actual restaurant), and was seated at a small, child-like table with a green and white checkered tablecloth. There was a bottle of red wine on the table – the kind that comes in that little basket-type thing, and there was also various fancy cheeses and hearty bread. Just as she came to the realization that she had been out-and-about without a mask on, at crowded college campuses, enclosed winding stairwells, and now here at a restaurant (!), she woke with a start at 4:30 AM, to the stark discovery that she was now…a doll.
Her mother had died three days after Thanksgiving (nine weeks ago), and Miss Linda let the waterworks flow for a solid two weeks after that, then began functioning in a sort of melancholic daze (some would call this depression). She had been isolated at Rancho Tarzanadu for almost a full year due to the pandemic, and as beautiful a place as it was for a person to be isolated…it was still isolation. She had busied and distracted herself for weeks with tying up loose ends (some ends inevitably slipped through the cracks) from her sweet mother’s death, and now felt like a lonely orphan. One of Miss Linda’s neighbors actually said to her: “You’re an orphan now!” As old as Miss Linda was, she did not disagree with her; she was an orphan now.
Miss Linda’s theory was that all of these things combined had turned her into a doll. Which felt strangely…natural, considering the circumstances.
Now she had to figure out how to turn herself back into a human.
Maybe she’d wait a little while longer before rushing to figure things out.
Maybe being a doll might actually be better?
She definitely had plenty to think about.
As long as she could still fill out her unemployment forms online, it might not be so bad to just stay this way for a while.
She had a paper due the next day comparing the Ancient Greeks to modern-day Polyamorists…getting that done could be tricky. Typing it up would definitely take longer than usual.
There were lots of things to figure out…lots and lots of various things, but she decided to go with the flow for now…what else could she do, really?
(Photo credit: self-portrait by Miss Linda, on her first day as a doll.)