Susie Paine - Selected Writings

     One of the many things I did not want to see the day before finals week, was Yoda in my closet. I did not want to deal with this as well as the massive amount of studying I was doing. I knew I had overdone it this year with all the hardest classes my school offered, plus a couple online classes as well. This was a ridiculous amount of classes, and my high school in the California Hills was not willing to compromise with me. I had massive finals in all of my classes, plus a huge orchestra concert and a writing workshop at Berkeley that I was supposed to write a thirty-page paper for. I was in over my head, and Yoda drove me off the edge.

     I regret to say I fainted when I found him. Passed out right on the floor. He was sitting over me when I woke up. "What are you going her, Yoda? Not to seem accusative or anything. Please don't be offended."

:     "Searching for peace you are. Help you I must. Breathe. Sit up. Weak you are not. Act like it." His voice was gravelly but tough. I felt an immediate urge to do what he commanded. So I sat up, and then I stood and made myself some tea. I found myself again resenting the sunny brightness of my suburban California house. Tan clay, red stucco, and whitewashed walls; I could feel the stereotypes beating in on me as I drank my tea. After I finished, I popped in a stick of mint gum and reapplied lip gloss.

     So, Yoda, what do you mean by searching for peace? And how do you know I'm searching for peace if I don't?" I smacked loudly on my gum as he chewed his gimer stick. I could tell he was thinking, so I keyed up my account on my laptop and started typing the Berkeley essay. I had written about two pages by the time he answered.

     "You are very stressed and do not know what to do with your life. You are unsure of who you are, and what you mean. You have a pivotal time in life coming up."

     "Yeah, finals week. I don't have time to deal with Jedi mumbo-jumbo right now. I have to figure out how to survive this week.

     "Breathe. Become one with the Force. When empty your mind is, the clearer things will seem. Think about anything do not. To my voice listen. In tune with your surroundings you must become. What you are writing, flow out of you it will if your subconscious you can access."

     "Are you like some alien psychologist? Is this something my mom came up with?"

     "Think too much, you do. Jedi you could become if you could listen."

     "Listen to what? Why are you just telling me to listen? You know what, get out! I don't need this right now! Bye!"

     "Refusing help with your problems, you are. Deeply insecure, as well. Need to reconnect with the world, you do."

     "I am as connected to the world as I am going to get!"

:    "Listen, you must." reluctantly, I closed my eyes and heard. I could hear my heart beating steadily, my breath moving in and out, I could hear my stomach making small noises as it digested. I could hear the neighbor's dog barking, probably smelling the delivery man or something similar, and the water flowing through the pipes of my house. I could hear someone down the street mowing the lawn, the noise grating, and annoying, and the ice cream truck driving lazily through the next neighborhood over. I could hear the elementary school kids running out of school down the street. Many of them seemed to be excited about eh ice cream truck. I could pick up some faint squeals of pleasure at finding spare dollars in their pockets and the closeness of the ice cream truck. I heard others moaning about having to board the buses and leave the tantalizing ice cream behind. I felt much calmer, listening to the ordinary noises of the neighborhood.

     "Okay, so you might actually be Yoda. What are you doing here?"

     "Help you relax I can. Find your inner peace you must in order to become who you are capable of being."

     "What if I don't want to find my inner peace?"

     "Not a good question."

     "What is a good question?" I almost shouted, a bit ticked now.

     "how? Why? When? Good questions these are." I ignored him and started practicing my cello, the soothing sounds building to the crashing sound of fortissimo. I felt powerful behind the cello, steadily ignoring Yoda, who was chewing his gimer stick in the corner. I was thinking about what he said. It was hard to ignore the little guy. He also scared me. Even if he wasn't Yoda, he was intimidatingly confident in his self and was convinced that what he ways doing was right. His small physical form did nothing to hide his enormous mental and spiritual presence. After I felt satisfied with my practice, I started to translate some Latin and then wrote about another two pages of my essay.

     "Have a panic attack you will soon."

     "How do you know?" I asked curiously.

     "Feel your energy I can."

     "The Force is in this galaxy too?"

     "Everywhere, the Force is."

     "Then how come I can't connect to it?! How come no one here knows about it? why have no scientists detected it? how has it gone so long in this galaxy without anyone noticing it? And why do you keep telling me impossible things? In case you didn't know, I can't just let go of the panic and my problems. It isn't as easy as you seem to think it is!"

    Easy to find, peace never is. To find the peace inside, a struggle, it is. Work for it, you need to. Help you, the Force could. But reach it on your own you must."

     "Can you connect me to it, please?" I choke out, already feeling the dreadful tightness of a panic attack seizing me. I needed the Force now, but I could not talk. I felt the debilitating panic take hold, creeping up into my stomach and my lungs, icy cold fingers clutching at me, and my diaphragm clenched. I threw up on Yoda and reached up to play music on my laptop. The coldness was waving into heat and back into cold. I couldn't move, my organs squishing, trying to pull away from the panic spreading through me. I tried to force myself to breathe, to correct the damage I could feel running through my limbs, but my lungs wouldn't work. They were stuck in their position, too panicked to move. The eerie threads of the Phantom of the Opera issued towards me. I tried to focus on the voices to help me. Christine and Phantom's voices intertwined as the climax of the opera approached. Then, blackness claimed me.

     I woke up with Yoda sitting on my chest, making the Force flow through me to clear my panic. I could hear Masquerade in the background, as the partygoers heard the Phantom's theme. The music was so loud that it held me to the Earth, allowed me to think and breathe, to wait for the relief I knew must be coming. I felt the same panic they felt, but I could feel it seeping from me, out into the world. Into the Force, I silently corrected myself. It felt so calming, like watching water pour out of a sponge. I had been holding in so much pain that I couldn't see it anymore. Yoda only helped me see and let it go. I could feel an immense weight lifted from my chest, as the pain finally flowed out. Yoda was saying something, his gravelly voice washing over me, but I could not remember anything that he just said. I just sat, and then it clicked. I could feel the world rushing through me, and I could hear everything, I could see everything. The spectral circles pulling everything together appeared before my eyes, and my head snapped back out of surprise and its inability to comprehend what was happening.

     Yoda was praying. He was praying to the Force. He was praying over me. At that moment, I thought I was dead. So I opened my eyes. Yoda sat back, surprised. "Survived an experience like that without training no one has. Made history you did. Surprised me you did. And found your inner peace."

      "Why?" I asked, confusion palpable in my voice.

     "Hmmm..." he replied, obviously not knowing that I knew what he was doing.

     "Why did you connect me to the Force? You said I needed to find it on my own."

     "You did," he said simply and went back to his prayers.

     "Why were you praying? What about me is so important?"

"Important every living thing is. Think Jedi do not have a faith, humans do, but the most profound faith, the Force is. To you, connected am I. Need me, you did. Find inner peace on their own, some do. Not need inner peace, most do. Always have inner peace, some do. Without my help, died you would have. Help you I did. Grateful you should be."

     "I am grateful, just confused. Thank you, Yoda. I would be proud to follow the ways of the Jedi."

    "Proud to have you the Jedi would be. But here you belong. Come with me, you may not."

     "I don't need to come with you. I can be a Jedi here, and I can survive finals week. I can be all you wanted me to be, and all that I have the potential for. Thank you. Goodbye." He faded away, his particles blown away by the wind. I was touched with immediate sadness. He had saved me, and I was determined to make that count.