The Waterfall = CHANGE “Preppy”
“If we open ourselves, don’t we lose control over our transformation?”
Rendering a garden makes order out of chaos. And yet we want Nature – in all its rude, obstreperous glory – to pour out constantly through and on our little carefully tended patch – without, hopefully, overwhelming or destroying it. The Waterfall is a perfect metaphor for organizing chaos, making it beautiful and extracting our necessary nourishment from its dangerous jaws.
The Waterfall represents sudden, possibly violent change. Surprise reversals. In our quest for soulmate, we have to hold ourselves ready for these astonishments, because they are the essence of what the universe has to teach us. Right when we think we have it all figured out is when we are most in need of a surprise.
Often this comes in the form of chemistry: who we are attracted to versus who we THINK we are attracted to. At the beginning of our lives, our minds were unformed. Our wild, unique self lay still undiscovered. We often THINK we desire a High Status Individual, someone the Pod – the amorphous mass we came out of – would approve (even envy.)
Friendship often teaches us the delight of the quirky. Someone who loves us, whose face lights up when we share, becomes beautiful to us. Someone who reveals themselves, takes chances with us, becomes magical. There is a reason that rom-coms focus on the “surprise” in love; learning that the person who is good for you is not the source of dangerous thrills you’ve been desiring. That’s because this is often the way long-term love gets going. So – better be ready for your own Surprise.
PREPPY
Corseted with verbs
French teacher sweeps
Cherry blossoms from the tennis court
As she would like to french
The cherries, squelch them soundly
Beneath her soccer-spiking shoes
While the headmistress
Cello-breasted
Polishes graffiti carved upon her coffin
In Chaucerian High English,
And the girls –
Nun-white, nun-blue
Soar above the hockey fields like
Foul-mouthed angels, anticipated ecstasy locked
In narrow hope chests ripening on
Amphetamines
Free Love
Bad dreams.
Alysse Aallyn 
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