"The Conversion Zone" a short story by Julianna Rowe

 

“The Conversion Zone”    by Julianna Rowe 

Rimrock Road 8:23 am CST April 23^rd, 1923   

 I stood watching the children play. The boys racing their tall tricycles and the girls dragging cloth dolls on the ground with one hand while blowing harshly on their new bird whistles with the other. I know not how I knew them or why I was there, I just was.   The children began gathering around me staring.  So, I stared back.  Children don’t get embarrassed when people don’t respond to them immediately like adults do.  But I held my ground for as long as adulthood allowed and then I exclaimed.

“What?”

They continued to stare in silence.  I was no longer embarrassed rather I was getting scared when I noticed each child had white hair and steel blue eyes that were piercing through to my soul.  Then over to the left of the small group of the children of the damned stood a man clearly surrounded in a grey mist, with dark hair and dark eyes.  He seemed to be their master. 

Where was I? Who was I? And most of all, who was the group of weird people all pointing in unison to the vast acres of land across the street.

That was when a voice spoke up saying. 

“That is the half a million-dollar land you lost to your sister.”

I turned so slowly it was like a scene from a slow-motion movie reel. I needed to see the losses they were all pointing out to me but when I turned all I saw were acres of dead earth possessed by more of those same children of the damned and their leader.  Although I did spiritually connected with the money I and my family had lost to those thieves. Yet the land belonged to the dark man and his children all possessed by past and future generations who lurked upon the cold deceased estate.

One of the children caught my attention when I couldn’t help but notice her eyes changed like that of a chameleon in danger.  Her white hair turned yellow blonde and she came alive like the sun and her steely scary eyes went golden brown and shown beauty like the autumn leaves. She looked like a child version of me.  As she left the others and walked toward me, she reached for my hand and I obliged as I took hers into mine.   I knew her but I didn’t know how I knew her.  She led me away from those withering souls through a misty yellow porthole to a quiet neighborhood where the sun was bright and a feeling of freedom lifted me from the dark evil place we had left behind.  At least I hoped we had.  She then safeguarded me to a truck sitting by itself on an empty street and then she disappeared in a blink but where she had stood was left a beautiful glow of soft rainbow colors.  I quickly moved in an attempt to retrieve her as though I had lost part of me and had to get it back.  When I reached for the space where she had disappeared, all the gentle colors of who she was enveloped me, offering a peace like I had never known. Was she me in a past life? Was she an Angel warning me?  Or helping me?  I think she was me in 1923. She had come through the porthole from the fifth dimension to aid me in the loss of my family inheritance and to assist me toward a better future. 

I had been told by a spirit, before this encounter, there are twelve dimensions in all that surround our Universe. Each of the twelve are comprised of different phases of learning. Sort of like a school where you escalate according to how far you evolved during your living years.  One being the most evolved and twelve being pre-kindergarten.  I knew from the spirit man who visited me that when you pass on you carry a light.  Maybe to light your way was a guess on my part.  He told me some have brighter lights than others but they all ascend magnetically to whichever dimension they belong to continue their journey. It’s all about energy and physics. But what did all this have to do with me and the very large truck I was heading toward sitting on the very empty street?

The truck was like an army transport vehicle.  I walked around it peering at the dark green almost black color with its huge back doors latched using a long heavy metal bar.  What was inside the dreary dark machine appeared to be a moving prison. 

I was in a trans of wonder when from behind me came a man who opened the barred rear door and pushed me inside slamming it shut.  I could feel the air sucked out of me as I felt the heavy clank when the bar came down locking me inside with no escape.  Where was she?  Where was my angel, or what I thought might be the other part of me?  I needed help. I could see no escape from this horror. 

First it was the dark pied piper man and his little fleet of children of the damned with their vast fields showing me all my losses, to the little girl from somewhere who led me to the black Auschwitz on wheels!  Now I was afraid.  Fear gripped every cell in my body when abruptly a different compartment door opened and several foreign men appeared in chains.  I did not belong there and I knew it.  Why was I with these people? And then the truck began moving and a window on each side of the vehicle mechanically slid away opening the heavy metal plates to expose heavy glass windows.  I thought at the least now we could see where we were being taken.  No one spoke but me.  No one answered me, they just stared ahead, sometimes out the window, never looking at me. 

Once again, I thought they may be dead.  Why were all those dead people surrounding me? Why all this negative light around me?  I had no choice but to sit and look out the window trying to decipher what would be next. I wanted to scream with terror because I hated being locked up especially in a small area knowing I could never escape the iron walls of what had become my personal prison.  Why?  Suddenly I lost who I was or where I came from. I had lost my identity and become nothing more than those empty men who couldn’t speak for themselves, who were lost, maybe dead? Yet alive.  Like me, yes, they were like me.  I had given up after losing my inheritance and struggling to maintain life surrounded by people with no purpose, no drive, no reason to live. 

Then out the window in the midst of my trance while discovering the why’s of my situation I see the ocean ahead.  It was coming closer and closer as was my terror.  I had always had a fear of going into the water in a locked vehicle and there it was coming to fruition.  The truck sped up and I knew this was the end.  I didn’t have time to think on whether my light would be bright or dim or what dimension I would end up in or how much I would suffer or how fast the water would come in.  Would I float as high as I could to the ceiling begging for one more breath of air struggling just as I had before this day working, toiling to make ends meet, striving for one more breath to keep living?  Not seeing there was a way out but I didn’t take it.  Afraid to take it. 

And then we were airborne!  We flew off the edge of a cliff and were descending like a rock toward the ocean floor.   I was dizzy from agonizing paralyzing fear.  The men didn’t move because they had given up on life but I hadn’t.  That is when she appeared again pointing to the window.  The little me from 1923 telling me there was a way out and it wasn’t as hard as I had thought. 

I turned, pushed on the window pane as though time had stood still and gravity was not in force.  The window popped out more easily than it should have been possible to do. (That is usually how it is but we can’t always see it.)  Centrifugal force pulled me out in a nano second of time!  I was free flying toward the water…….

I woke up from that dream screaming and crying.  Then laughing out loud at the wonderment of the Universe to give me a dream so vivid it relayed to me what was happening in my own life and how to rectify it.   There is always HOPE and HELP from the Universe to get us through our down times and back to the sunshine and smiles.

  I got my humor and direction back!  Thank you to my own spirit and that of the others who came to my earthly rescue through that amazing dream.  It was given to me in the form of a spiritual movie.  Sort of like there are two different ways to learn mathematics.  Earth and Spirit are the same.  I was told I need to balance them more and never forget the Spirit because I can’t see my answer in the flesh.   To always look beyond for your answers.  Be safe....   

Are You an Uppie or an Undie...................by Julianna Rowe

Me, I'm an Uppie! Not a young and upcoming Entrepreneur, but an Uppie. Using Podie Paper (on) Inteneded End. That is putting toilet paper where it unrolls topside. Some people like it to unroll downside....nope, it gets lost that way. And it is just simply wrong! Have you ever needed IT and IT is not to be found. How does one lean, bend, and then have to sometimes turn sideways and then bend and turn again and IT is stuck on the backside...no not thy backside, ITS backside. At this point if you or I need to be to work or somewhere, you spin IT... Nothing....You spin IT again....nothing...IT is STUCK and so are you. What to do? Next time replace IT as an Uppie not an Undie. Undie's get STUCK don't they? All puns intended. Ever been walking and undie is stuck? Sure you have. Seeing people unstick the undie isn't good. Problem is? Your toilet paper, or tissue paper, lavoratory paper, podie paper, or corn cobs, Sears catalog, whatever one uses, IT sticks, makes you late, makes you mad, makes you stuck if you don't figure IT out. So, are you an uppie and an undie? Personally, which obviously I am not too personal or I wouldn't share so much! Hey I'm honest and open to a degree, but then to what degree is the question? Most folks don't discuss their bathroom issues. Why not, we all have them. They are normal. Well undie rollers aren't normal in my estimation or blog estimation anyway. Maybe they are Republicans, or Dems. Whom-ever you think is worse! I do wonder what the statistics would say? imustbedreaming.wordpress.com

Penny Loafers.............by Julianna Rowe

 Penny Loafers.....  

I was so excited to get my 1960's brown leather penny loafers to wear this fall with my cool jeans and flannel shirts.  

Sometimes it takes me more than once to learn a lesson as most of my friends can attest to considering my relationships of past which cost me way more than these VERY poor imitation of the photo I thought I was ordering. 

When searching GOOGLE for these priceless brown loafers I found a sight called Floralmoda.com.  What I did not learn was any sight that says USD ahead of the price....DO NOT BUY or even entertain the thought of it. 

Altogether my purchase was $50.00 of which I will never see again.  What I received gave me and my family a lot of laughs to say the least.  

The package came today and I was so excited.  I opened it in front of my son and his fiancé.  I screamed.  He laughed. And she said.

"Never buy anything with USD in front of the price."

I repeated that so you all get the lesson the first time.

They are rubber and sewn on a regular sewing machine.  

These are the poorest excuse of a shoe and they smell bad.  Like chemicals.  I suspect the pattern is cut out of a large piece of rubber or plastic before being sewn.  I can only hope I learn this and a couple other lessons before I check out from this planet.  I am so embarrassed.  And angry.  That is a lot of money.   Then we all laughed.

Fifty Shades of Illegal...............by Julianna Rowe

How the system of bad-good guys uses people who have made errors to further themselves.

They take people who have made mistakes and turn them into money making monkeys.  Scientifically at times.  Put them in corporate concentration camps called prisons.  Give them menial medical attention.  Let them die as in Oushwitz, Germany as in Hitler..  The Corp-orations are nothing more than gassing people in  these prisons.  Horrible people run these places.  And where horrible people are horrible things happen.  Where troubled people are, trouble happens.  There is no rehabilitation!!  Only agitation and humiliation and degradation. The Warden that gets the job is the one that saves the corp the most money. He is truly the loser but that wont show until the hereafter because there really is such a thing as KARMA you sons of bad mothers..... 

To right the wrong system is possible.  :Merely costs big bucks only corps have.  So they win each round.  You can try to sue them but JUDGES let the cases sit on their desks forever.  They laugh at the incarcerated.  They enjoy the medieval grandstands of killing and hate while they eat grapes and have sex with their women and drink wine.  We have not evolved from those times and as I see it never will.  We must use each other up the way we are! (As my Papa Joe always said)  Stay under the radar.....don't rock the boat of anyone more powerful that thyself....  Not so smart.  Seek the spiritual word is my only advice.  Don't type any key words Google can send to the government because they are doing just that, searching the key words..  I can type something in an email and the next day I get an email advertising of reference regarding it.  So I know they caught the key words. 

My point?   Prison system is horrid.  Avoid it like eboli virus or COVID19!  Nothing is worse then being in a cage and no one comes with the help you truly need.  UNLESS YOU HAVE  ENOUGH MONEY.....  Don't say sad.  Just get the damn money and make it happen.  Go with the flow of fifty shades of illegal.....  Turn it around like the movie story did.  Turn it around.  Thank You God for opening the bars for my son Daniel R. Hull.  He is as wise a man as Paul.  Well maybe not quite, but a good man with much to offer on the outside. 

I found this poem written by a Judge Dennis Chaleen. 

                               Prisoners

We want them to have self worth, so we destroy their self worth.

To be responsible, so we take away all responsibility

To be part of our community, so we isolate them from the community

To be positive and constructive, so we degrade them and make them useless

To be non violent, so we put them where there is violence all around

To be kind and loving people, so we subject them to hatred and cruelty

To quit being tough guys, so we put them where the tough guy is respected

To quit hanging around losers, so we put all the losers under one roof

To quit exploiting us, so we put them where they exploit each other

We want them to take control of their own lives own their own problems and quit being parasites, so we make them totally dependent on us

Death..............by Julianna Rowe

Death.  Is it the end or the new beginning?  I hope its like the story of the Dragonflies: Dragonfly nymphs live in the water while they grow and develop into dragonflies. This portion of the dragonfly life cycle can take up to four years to complete.  And when they have developed to a certain life phase they leave their water family and friends to fly away to another world. Their water family WONDERs where they went.   Just like we WONDER where our people go when they pass on in death. 

Today my friend died. That is her on the right. 

I feel bad for myself because she added some very special things to my life.  She taught me to keep giving love even though I had been hurt so badly.  She taught me to be gracefully still and watch for good to come forth.  She was gentle yet strong, carried herself with compassion, courage, and ease.  Everyone that met her loved her even though she told me she didn't understand why.  That her mother had taught her at an young age that she was unlovable.  Yet before she passed on she was shown by many in this life how much she was loved. 

She always thought of the other person first.  She had values yet strayed from them on occasion and we would laugh and discuss those times trying to make good from them.   She was honest. She was tenacious like I used to be. She taught me to get out of my self made cardboard box and live. To be brave. That it wasn't a coffin all nailed shut, rather a box I could step out of.  Yet she ended up the one in the coffin, not me.  She had integrity. She was intelligent and could shut down any discussion using her beliefs and her wise words. 

She loved her grandson to the moon.  Wanted to live just one more month to see him get his black belt.  She singlehandedly had gotten him that far.  She wanted to live for him.  He is only twelve.  

We grew up as neighbors me being six years her senior.  Our mothers were much alike as were our fathers.  She told me she always looked up to me.  The teenager with a horse who gave her a ride one day.  Said she never forgot it.  She gave me back way more than I ever gave her. in my mind anyway.  She never preached to me, rather she showed me by how she lived.  She was a flannel shirt and blue jeans lady but one of the most beautiful women inside and out I had ever known and I needed her and she is gone.  Selfish?  Maybe.  Its been a very long year in my life and she came into it in the middle of what most would say a learning time. I have to believe that or I might die of the pain it caused my soul and spirit.  I learned she was enduring the same pain and grief I was.  One day after she told me she had stage 4 pancreatic cancer I sent her this message. The one about Thelma and Louise.  We laughed like she was never going to die.  We prayed for her to live two more years but life only gave her two months.  

She was in love for the first time in her life.  They were making plans to be together but that never came to life. He may not have been my choice for her but he was her choice and I respected that.   We would talk about him for hours.  

There were other men that loved her just from seeing her photo and talking politics with her or any other subject.  She could hold the floor yet was tender like a man likes a woman to be.  She was not weak, no, I said tender.  Loving and caring and giving of herself.  Always giving. She rarely cried.   I cried all the time this past year.  She taught me not to cry anymore....To get out of the house and join the world again.  To work on retrieving the old me.  The happy lady who was giving and caring.  Yet she didn't belittle me for loving someone for many years that didn't love me like I felt  I should be. 

She told me she loved me.  And she did. And I loved her as the friend she had become in our later years.  We shared so many similar life issues.  

I didn't think she was finished with life.  But someone higher up said she was. 

I selfishly cry even though I believe she flies free. 

Song Associations ....... by Julianna Rowe

Obviously the photo is me wailing out some tune before bedtime!
As you all know or may not know...I live by associations.  When I go to a certain clients and their dog Benny greets me...that's it, its all over!  I start to sing immediately. "Benny and The Jets, bomb bomb ba bomb and so on!   

I sing "Old Cape Cod" and "I Was Waltzing with my Darling" and I wasn't even born yet at the time those songs were around.  

I am at another clients in her nautical room, and so begins, "Row Row Row Your Boat."  

If someone tells me they are sorry, I start..."I'm Sorry, So Sorry" by Connie Francis!  For hours!  Waltzing Mathilda is another one. 

One day my friend said someone was stupid!  That is all it took for me to start:  "Stupid Cupid, Stop Pickin' on Me!"  

The other day I put a James Blunt CD in and listened to it more than once.  Big mistake.  For two days, including middle of the night I sang, "Your Beautiful!" The medical name for that is "Ear Worms."  How disgusting. I sang to that woman James Blunt saw in crowd for two days and nights.  I did not want to sing to her for him or me.  I gave the CD away the next day. 

I met a guy who never stopped talking.  For days I sang. "You Talk to Much, You scare me half to death, you just talk talk talk to much, You talk about people that you dont know, You talk about people wherever you go!"

If I see a rainbow I'm off with Liza Minnelli's mother's (Judy Garland) "Over the Rainbow" and that one I don't do so well. 

If I hear on the news someone is to be executed  I start in with "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley, poor boy your bound to die!"

And if anyone tells me they had a dream.  "Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream, make him the sweetest that I've ever seen, make his complexion like peaches and cream, and tell me that my lonely nights are over. Mr. Sandman, I'm so alone, don't have nobody to call my own, please turn on your magic dream! Guess that one is my fav. huh?  Clue: It was on the first album I ever rec'd for Christmas with my new Hi Fi Stereo at age 12. 

God forbid if anyone introduces me to anyone named Maria!  In fact I had a woman named Maria work for me for a long time and I sang, "Maria," from West Side Story over and over.  

Do I need meds?  Probably but then there are worse things than singing, aren't there?   I keep saying I am going to keep a list of all the songs I sing in one day and what prompts them, but then I don't do it.
I am amazed at the part of my brain that remembers all those songs.  Yet when the doctor gives me the THREE WORD TEST....I fail it miserably.  Hope its not time for brain dye!

(This is a re-post from 2011)

Garlic..........by Julianna Rowe

How can one little piece of something called GARLIC smell so bad like ass.  I hope my mother doesn't read this.  Or my kids.  Or my clients.  But hey... garlic after eaten, mixed with saliva or whatever body fluids it uses to digest, smells awful.
And the person that eats it, said person cant smell it!  I mean who cant smell ass if it's in the room?  You know unclean ass anyway.  Oh I shouldn't speak this way.  Why not?  It's the truth and we are not on censored TV.  Fact is I heard on Dr. Oz the other day that garlic is a natural antibiotic.  I am here to tell you I won't be sick for many a long time then.  My friends dog actually likes it even though I just found it he shouldn't. But then dogs likes dirty under ware too.  I told you what Garlic smells like you know what! On the other hand my two cats notsomuch.  They are staying far away from me and my breathing air in and out thingy. 
I can hear people screaming as they run away from the smell when I get the mail in the small entrance to my apartment complex.  Good things sometimes come in small smelly packages called GARLIC!  What else in this world do we eat that makes us smell so bad and comes out our pours and breath like garlic?  I wonder if I drank some baking soda if it would take it away. Or some lemon juice?  Or just go to bed and only eat it when I am alone and I've finished for the day. I think so.  There are always garlic pills but you cant spread those on your pork chop or burger.  I know I know, red meat issues.  But wont the garlic kill all those issues? Probably.  And do not go to a movie and sit anywhere after eating garlic because it happened to me once.  The man behind me must have eaten an entire clove because I almost threw up it was soooo bad.  Like I said, eat it only when  alone and home!  If married, both eat it at the same time is the solution.. It really does smell like ass. But then so do onions, beans and booze afterward.  What!   I can't fix it!  I live alone so I don't really care.  Just sayin'!  What's the Happy News? The darn stuff keeps you healthy but stinky.  So does poop.  Dr. Oz says Pooping is life. Same as getting born, having to die.  Eat food to live, then poop and stink.  It's all good.  It's life.  I remember when I was about 6 or 7 years old.  We would go to my Grandma's and Grandpa's over by the Arboretum....  They had no indoor rest room (I am trying to class up here toward the end :))
No rest room.....an outdoor toilet. While sitting on the hole (eeww I actually remember it vividly) I noticed a writing on the wall.  Written was:  "Some people come here to sit and think, others come here to shit and stink!"   Seriously, I swear, that is what I read as a 6-7 year old and have remembered it for many decades more along with the fact I had to use a Sears catalog page to wipe my garlic ass.   I didn't eat garlic then!  I shouldn't say ass.  I should say or type ars.  That is nicer. I will be nicer tomorrow. I had to type what came to my head tonight.  God forgive me.   We can all rise above the "crap" on earth. The garlics of life.  
photo from:  www.thestuckcreative.wordpress.com  And I do not know that guy!