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Prayer for You
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Slambook
AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION ALERT!Move your eyes over to the navigation bar on your left, beauty and truth fans, and note the new button that says "BULLETIN BOARD." Then read on below. Did anything good happen to you when you were in seventh grade? Or was your pubescent mind ravaged by a relentless series of worried fantasies about whether you were smart enough, attractive enough, and cool enough? For me, back at Heritage Junior High School in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, there was a single event that made life well worth living during my twelfth year: the arrival of the Slam Book. The Slam Book was a thick spiral-bound notebook converted by my desk companion, Daria Cook, into a freewheeling questionnaire for anyone brave enough to sign up. She had dreamt up scores of sassy queries, one printed neatly at the top of each page. "Which teacher would you most like to see naked?" was the first entry, followed by "What actor or actress would you get to play you in the movie version of your life story?" Page three posed a double question: "What's the last thing you thought about before you fell asleep last night? What's the last thing you want to think about on your death bed?" Page four asked "If you knew Russia was going to drop atom bombs on us next week, what crazy and illegal stuff would you try in the next six days?" One hundred sixty-eight questions later, beneath a drawing of a stick-figure person with a skull and crossbones for a head, was the final question: "How do you feel now that you've made a complete fool of yourself?" Here's how Daria's Slam Book worked. Every blue line on every page was assigned a number from 1 to 27. When you signed in on page 1, you picked the number that would be yours throughout the book. I picked 22, so I wrote my answers on the 22nd line of each page. Daria had clearly articulated the main rule on the slick red cardboard cover: "Don't even start this Slam Book unless you're willing to answer every single question from the bottom of your twisted little heart." I dived into the assignment with a passion I had not previously known I was capable of. Working feverishly, relentlessly, skipping meals and homework, I returned the thing to Daria two days after she first slipped it to me. During the ecstatic blur of those 48 hours, I realized for the first time that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. The Slam Book's questions had freed the genie of my imagination. It is in the spirit of the beloved Slam Book that I present to you a fresh addition to the Free Will Astrology Web site: the Bulletin Board, also know as the Free Will Astrology Personality Test. To get started, click on the "Bulletin Board" button over there to your left on the navigation bar. I invite you to dive in and spill your beautiful guts, my dears. Are there any guidelines on how to proceed? Well, I don't want to make Daria's law mandatory. But I have drawn up the following guidelines. Work with ferocious intensity or gentle reflection or both. Push on until after you're exhausted if necessary, and don't be shy about getting angry at having to think so hard. Be innocently truthful and spontaneously thoughtful, or else gratuitously sarcastic and recklessly flippant. If you find yourself responding with ideas that you used to believe but don't any more, abandon them and start over. Take advantage of this rare opportunity to be creative and authentic for no reason. Don't save yourself for "something better." |
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© 1995-2009 -- Rob Brezsny. All rights reserved
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