Wanda and the Winking Turd

[Steelhead]

>From the Tinasky Files. May 20, 1987.

Dear Editor:

When I was a little boy back in Indiana or Illinois or Ohio, I've forgotten
which, I was hiking with my father across the fields.  We had just topped a
rise and were looking down on a small stream which watered the horses in
the spring.  I saw a turd laying on the ground near a nettle bush.  It
winked at me (the turd).  I mentioned this to my father when he asked what
I was doing for God's sake going back for horse turd.  Father became irate.
Said I had always been strange but if I'd drop the shit he wouldn't tell
Mother.  So I did drop it but I carefully marked the spot where it lay.  I
returned later that night when my parents were busily engaged in argument.
I found my winking turd and much to my surprise and delight it could talk
too.  It said that it didn't ordinarily manifest with everyone the way it
had with me but it knew I was special because most people, unlike me,
couldn't see it was animated, full of life, as it were, mostly in the form
of combustible gases, but nonetheless...

I was flattered and sat right down and commenced speaking with it.  We
talked a lot that night, the turd and I.  I shared my inner secrets,
doubts, fears, things like that.  The turd seemed very wise.  Often it
would remain silent, letting me do the talking while it just lay there
looking thoughtful.  Most of the time it gave me good counsel.  After a
while I said I had to return home before my parents missed me, or at least
my mother.  Father would have left the house as soon as he divined he was
going to lose the argument.

The turn advised me to be of good cheer.  That all things passed, witness
himself.  I said, in my youthful enthusiasm, "You are so good and wise.
Almost as I imagine God would be if he talked to me."  The turd said it was
funny I should mention it because he --was-- God.  I was incredulous.  I
said I didn't believe him because I liked him so much that I felt like
picking him up and hugging him and I didn't feel that way about God at all.
That the things I had been taught made God seem remote to me and the
churches and the people who ran them, well, etc., etc., I supposed some of
them were OK but most made me feel not good enough nor did I ever think I
would be and didn't he think I was too young to be made to feel that way,
etc. etc., In short, God seemed definitely unhuggable, whereas he, the
turd...

But it, or he, as I now thought of it, became quite agitated and started
bouncing around under the nettle bush and said for Our sake not to pick him
up for he had a tendency to fall apart under pressures.  I said OK.  I
wouldn't touch him but if he was really God it seemed to me he could
withstand anything.  The turd said I was partly right.  However, there was
a scheme to things and since he had reincarnated as a horse turd this time
he had to respect the fragility of horse turds, and that he was not ready
to be transformed, although it would happen when  it happened.  Probably,
as soon as he had had sufficient sun, wind and rain.

I thought I had him then.  I mentioned I had heard that ruly divine persons
did not have to reincarnate.  He said that this was partially true.  Those
with lessons still to be learned did.  And those with lessons to impart
did.  How else would anyone learn?  Then he went on about the natural
progression of things and how neither I nor he nor anyone should bleep with
this natural order.  I ventured I thought it was neat he had chosen to come
back as he had.  He said he had no choice.  I couldn't quite understand the
logic involved and therefore doubted his conclusion that as God he never
had the last word because as God he was everywhere and everything and I
could imagine the confusion, could I not?  I asked a lot of boyish things,
you know, like are you in my bicycle seat too?  Snickering, for I had
forgot my determination to be polite out of fondness for that big brown
thing just laying there in the grass under the horse nettle bush, the moon
(for it was full) shining on him and me alike.

Finally the turd wearied of my childish badinage and said:  "Look, Kid, if
you don't get it, you are going to have a hard time of it.  I am in you and
you are in me."  I bridled at this and said that if he was trying to tell
me I was a piece of shit I was going home right then and there.  He replied
that all he was saying was that God was everywhere.  He was no more God
than I and no one was The God, that was inconceivable.

"I am God?" I asked with awe.

"Yep," the turd said. "Just as much as I or this nettle bush under which I
lay or the horse that placed me here."

Just then I heard my sister yelling for me to come home before I got my ass
kicked.  And she?  Yep.  God too.

A few days later I tried to return to the winking turd for further
enlightenment but meanwhile it had rained and the pigs got out and rooted
around the place.  He might have been eaten, or trampled into an
unrecognizable form or washed away.  I don't know.  It doesn't matter.  I
have the experience.

Of course, my story is rather mundane now, except for the medium.  God
seems to be on a veritable talking binge lately.  Chattering away to Oral
and Pat and those of their persuasion.  I've got to acknowledge that those
folks are flourishing, while I, but then I didn't write this to complain.
I'm not sure why I'm writing about it after all these years.

Now that I've set it down, I can see that the experience messed me up
somewhat.  Certainly slowed me down.  Before the revelation I was on my way
to being a political activist.  Now when the bile rises against the
inequities and injustices and those who perpetrate and perpetuate them, I
think of the words of the winking turd:  "I am in all things and they are
in me." And that calms me, which isn't what is needed.

Perhaps I was too young to know how to use revelation.  Oh, I don't mean
for financial gain, like putting that dear old thing in a box and taking it
on tour.  But perhaps I should have concentrated less on what he said and
more on what he didn't say.  For example, he never mentioned a thing about
proportions.

Thank you for letting me share.  I thinking I've had a real break-through.
I feel like going out and kicking ass.

Sincerely
Claudia Smith
Redwood Valley

PS I had a sex change operation a few years after the revelation. Had
nothing to do with the "experience."  I just never liked the name Claude.