i know how those ladies felt in salem.

persecuted by bullies and villified by liars - it's annoying. at best, a frustration. but at its worst, the tension and fear will drag you down into sheer empty sadness.

i know how those ladies felt in salem.

a simple concept - organize a group of people to share something. how could anything possibly go wrong? i will spare you the nitty-gritty details, but i will tell you that any concept that involves a group is by definition no longer a simple concept. there is danger in groups because everyone fears the inverse: being left out.

i know how those ladies felt in salem.

if from the beginning you are the odd man out - the one thing that is not like the others - the unbelonger. if your innate differentness is not a choice but rather a part of your being - you will attract attention even as you attempt to deflect it. you become the focus because - even though thru no fault or choice of your own - you are different and in your difference you embody the ungroupedness that everyone fears.

i know how those ladies felt in salem.

the natural unbelonger. the innate outsider. everyone fears being outside the circle, and yet they bear daily witness to the one living outside the circle. time after time after time your orbit grazes by all the others - visible but not touching, present but separate. you live beside them, but not among them.

i know how those ladies felt in salem.

they fear being outside the closed circle circumscribing normal existence, and yet they are unutterably attracted to the very thought that it would be possible to exist, at all, out there. it is too much for them to bear. they cannot reconcile in their tiny little pathetic inadequate ignorant minds.... they cannot reconcile that they are so attracted to that which they so fear. freedom. they cannot reconcile it, and they cannot have it, and further they cannot even begin to comprehend that it cannot be possessed at all. that it is not something one has, but rather, it is something one is.

i know how those ladies felt in salem.

there is loneliness outside the circle, and there is a frustration in being misunderstood by one's fellowman, a frustration that leads to a sadness that runs deep. but, side-by-side, working to redeem the sadness of frustration and the loneliness of being outcaste, there is an abiding joy in freedom. a joy that is tinged with something that is sometimes somewhat bittersweet - but it is a bittersweetness that does not diminish but ironically rounds out the joy and makes it real & whole.

i know how those ladies felt in salem.

i do.