Imaginary Monsters

Excerpt from the award winning new novel Community Board by Tara Conklin. Which references or was inspired by the authors experiences, perhaps with the Nextdoor social network during periods of COVID pandemic isolation. But the community board depicted is rather spare and I don’t recall references to images or styling & whatnot. Text Focused. Harkening back to modern internet forums, the slightly pre-World Wide Web Bulletin Board Systems which; I knew about the precursor, Community Memory (from reading Jenny O’Dell’s book How to Do Nothing before reading about it on Wikipedia, and various types of Internet forums, but I guess I had a misconception (only a very thin notion to begin with) of what ‘BBS’ means. All of which, you know refer back to physical bulletin boards…. The only-local-visibility of things is a feature of the Nextdoor network and early sharing systems but was initially I guess regarded as a bug or a hindrance, not a useful or desirable feature, as Internet Forums opened their doors to the world and technological limitations on breadth of visibility and interaction were never replaced with deliberate local localized boundaries.

No, I did not see the sunrise, I answered, but I have a question for you. Please tell me your secret. Why are you always so cheerful? / / / You think I’m cheerful? / / / Yes! You’re always smiling. You’re always happy to see me. / / / Dear, you bring me chocolate. / / / Yes, but that one time I forgot, you were still cheerful. You didn’t even seem disappointed. / / / Well, let me think. Fanny sucked on a square, chewed, and swallowed. I’m cheerful because the opposite isn’t very appealing. It has nothing to do with you or the chocolate or the world at large. I just hate being in a bad mood. Good cheer is a selfish gesture, now that I’m thinking about it. / / / So you force yourself to be cheerful? / / / Fanny smiled. Well there’s always something to be cheerful about. It’s not that difficult. / / / But Fanny, the world is depressing. I’m not even talking about the news. I’m talking about the Community Board and all those aggrieved dog poop people and grumpy driveway hogs and fearful gang spotters. My friend Marcus is trying to build a playground and people are mad about it. Mad! About a kids’ playground! And come on, are there really gangs in Murbridge? / / / Fanny tilted her head. It’s been a while since I’ve walked our mean streets, she said, but my guess is no. People are generally afraid of material and bodily harm. It’s the survival instinct, Darcy, don’t judge. If you’re too old for the bogeyman under the bed, you need another imaginary monster to blame for yours fears. / / / And you don’t find that depressing? / / / I’ve seen plenty of real monsters, Fanny said. But some people haven’t. It’s not their fault, exactly, it’s the natural limitations of their experience. They don’t realize how great they have it. Honestly, I think everyone should face a firing squad or serious car accident. A near-death experience is good for the soul. Then everyone would stop believing in imaginary monsters and find something to feel cheerful about. And then they’d be more vigilant about the real monsters. Here Fanny paused. Darcy, I know we usually talk about you and your problems, but perhaps we can discuss me today? What do you think of my escape plan? / / / Last week, Fanny had handed me an elaborate sketch and outline of her illicit exit from the Marian Sisters. The proposal included bird-calls, headlamps, and a length of bedsheet and Fanny scaling three stories down to a waiting car (preferably convertible) with me inside, ready to speed off. / / / Um, Fanny, I’m not so sure about your plan, I said. It seems a little, well, dangerous. / / / I am perfectly capable of descending the side of this building. Look at all those toeholds. Fanny gestured to the stone walls. I was always an excellent rope climber in gym class. / / / But it’s been a while since you climbed a rope, right, Fanny? / / / Fanny rolled her eyes. The one characteristic I cannot abide, Darcy Clipper, is meekness. Do not be meek. Be bold. My body may be weaker than it once was, but my mind remains strong. I remain strong. Why aren’t you strong? / / / I did not answer Fanny Immediately. First, because the question seemed a bit rude. And second, because deep down I knew she was right. I wasn’t strong. I was meek. And I didn’t know why. I could blame my parents for loving me too much or skip for leaving me or Todd Pevzner for breaking up with me the morning after prom, but if my months of solitude had shown me one thing, it was that staring down your own bogeymen took time and patience and was really, really hard. My imaginary monsters still lurked around the bed. I wouldn’t be strong until I’d faced each and every one of them. / / / I’m trying, Fanny. I said at last. Can you wait for me? I’ll get you out of here, I promise, but not yet. / / / Darcy, you may have noticed but I’m not getting any younger. Please hurry up with whatever soul-searching you need to do, stop being such a snowflake and start lifting weights because you may need to catch me. I measured, and the sheet only comes to the top of the first floor—I’ll still be a good eight feet off the ground. Fanny paused, gazing at me steadily. I’m too tired for a longer visit today, she declared, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the chair. I’ll see you next time, dear. / / / Her words felt like a rejection and, like most rejections, this one stung. But there was nothing more I could say: Fanny was already snoring.

Thought there was going to be something about Jane Austen in here, didja? Well after looking up Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, and Mr. Darcy while I was trying to figure out why the AI was suggesting adding those tags, I thought, ‘hey, couldn’t hurt visibility and may help and maybe give someone somewhere a pleasant surprise’. So yes, WordPress go ahead and add those tags you suggested! If you enjoyed this, you can trick your Jane-Austen-loving friends (or enemies or others……..) into reading it, perhaps, with the URL https://lostinmist.blog/tag/jane-austen/ …… like IDK say umm, “You won’t believe how stupid this thing Cooper said about [insert Jane Austen book or character]] is!” or something that will inspire the inner nitpicker or literary critic or spring-loaded-outrage-outburster or something…. Never read Pride and Prejudice. I’ve seen Bridget Jones’ Diary (the first) and read in high school Persuasion I think for class and wrote a paper on it but cannot for the life of me remember a shred of the story off the top of my head…. perhaps one of these days a stray sharing will make some form of that 2015 dream where Unitarian Panpsychist Prayer goes up to 75,000 views overnight actually happen, or for some other post…. ….

Featured image sources: Photo by Ismaël Jean on Unsplash, Photo by Green Grasshopper on Unsplash, Photo by Rob Griffin on Unsplash, Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash, Photo by 𝕶𝖚𝖒𝖆𝖘 𝕿𝖆𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖓𝖊 on Unsplash, Photo by Johann Walter Bantz on Unsplash, Photo by Jacqui Taggart on Unsplash, Photo by Bjhelyn Igorot Clicker on Unsplash and Unsplash+ contributor Getty Images