The Strange Case of Willie Wobble

A psychoanalytic romance
​Chapter One:  A Narrow Escape

Attack of the Gobblers
I don’t know about you, but when I wake up in the pre-dawn darkness, I feel desperate and down. Desperate and down grow bigger and bigger, stronger and stronger. They shape themselves into menacing Gobblers who shoot bolts of fear into me until my mind freezes and my arms vibrate with electric tension. Then they grab me around with their giant gnarled claws and gobble me up.

​That’s all there is.  There isn’t any more.

You don’t want to know how many times I’ve been sucked into a Gobbler’s gaping maw and dissolved in its massive corrosive stomach, which has a pH of 0.13.
 
Which is a terrible, terrible experience.

Stand-off at Prisoners’ Point
Gobblers are devious.

They fill your head with terrifying nightmares while your guard is down, so when you come to, you’re even more vulnerable.
 
One night I dreamt

I’m trapped in sector A of a circle in Flatland, where everything is two dimensional. If I don’t escape the circle in six minutes, my life will be ruined. My only way out is through the permeable boundary of sector B.  To get from A to B, I have to move through P, the impassable Prisoners’ Point.  No matter how much I shrink myself there will always be more of me than fits through a point.  If that isn’t bad enough, my alter ego is on the other side, opposing me.  I’m panicked, and hope is slipping away.

After a while I realized I was waking up.
Unfortunately, still panicked and losing hope.
 
The Gobblers tried to take advantage of my weakened state by flash freezing my brain, making it that much easier to grab me around with their giant gnarled claws and gobble me up.
 
Just before my frontal cortex reached absolute zero my enfeebled ego put out a little message:  Think about something, before it’s too late.

I start thinking.
​
The opposing arrows in my dream remind me of a painting by my favorite artist, Paul Klee.
 
Klee’s Arrows
He calls it Separation in the Evening.

 I call it Vertical Standoff.
 
Vertical standoff is a terrible thing.
Even worse than horizontal standoff.
Top and bottom arrows are having a perfectly nice day until top falling, and bottom taking off, crash into each other with unimaginable force.
No doubt they are going to be totally demolished…
 
But wait...
The color bands, blues at the top and starkly contrasting yellows at the bottom, find a way to meet in the middle by softening as they go.
Maybe the Klee’s arrows are having a colorful meeting of the minds.
 
I feet a little surge of hope, until I think of
 
Pi Pie Psychosis
My circle prison has a circumference (perimeter) of 2πr.
π (pi) is the first letter of the Greek word perimetron, which means “measure around.”
 
Pi is a terrible thing.
 
Perimeters are closed boundaries.
There’s no getting out of a perimeter.
Pi is an irrational number.
Irrational is not what I need right now!
 
No matter how many decimal places you go out to calculate pi, you can never arrive at its exact value. 

​There are few things as unnerving as an out-of-control decimal.
 
Pi reminds me of pie.
 
Pie is a terrible thing.
 
People think they are delighting me by serving me rhubarb pie.
I have to fake smile because I hate all pies except pecan and pumpkin.
If only I could fake eat it.
 
Pie derives from magpie, which has nothing to do with perimeters.
 
The only thing pi and pie have in common is their sound.
 
When you think one thing and then another because they sound alike, and they have no meaningful connection, psychiatrists call that a “clang association.”
Which is a symptom of psychosis.
 
Maybe I should have let the Gobblers take me out while I had the opportunity.
 
The Romance of Pi(e)
I’m about to turn myself over to the Gobblers when I’m thunderstruck by an isomorphism:

​There is a meaningful connection between pi and pie!
 
Pie is circular, right?
So, if you’re having trouble measuring the length of a pie crust, just multiply the length of a slice of your pie by 2pi.
 
Really, pie and pi are made for each other.
When they get together, they really come alive!

​I don’t need to get to sector B.
I don’t need to escape my circle.
The secret is inside it.
Inside me.
 
All I need to do is to trust my associations.
To put my parts together to make something new!
 
I’m not crazy.  I’m creative!
 
If four and twenty blackbirds can be baked into a pie and come out singing, what is not possible?

I felt pregnant with something.
Something that is me, yet not me.
 
I didn’t know what was coming, but I knew it would be good.
 
I jumped out of bed, leaving the dark spell of the Gobblers behind, moving into the warm light of the morning.

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Inspirational Links:
Gobblers
That's all there is, there isn't any more.
Flatland
Think before it's too late
Klee Separation in the Evening
Make something new
Four and twenty blackbirds
Something's coming, something good