SPINNING WHEEL TALES

Chapter One, "CeyLa"

Ceyla begins her journey, one of heart, one of mind, one of body & soul. Come Away with CeyLa....CeyLa WaOff.

                                                                     Chapter One

CeyLa had been a middle child, emotionally stable, shy, and more than slightly introverted. The child identified better with adults than with children. Whether or not the birth order with siblings impacted a unique way of making others feel totally comfortable in her presence, kids were envious to a degree.  Yet, CeyLa was able to appreciate diverse points of view which came to serve her well.

Social when she wanted to be, flexible and down-to-earth, CeyLa had become an excellent negotiator, was good at promoting the peace when needed, or delivering a sudden directed verbal blow if justified. Ceyla retained self-control and led others not by words but by actions during challenging situations. Later years, as she grew in inner strength and wisdom CeyLa was called upon to assist in resolving conflicts among the peoples populating the wheeled world.

She was sensitive, good-natured, a team player/leader, warm-hearted, friendly even with strangers, and often optimistic where others were not. Ceyla learned early, the life of danger, death, and disasters caused by the shifting MAPS.  CeyLa became adept at controlling negative emotions, panic, feelings of being overwhelmed by difficult uncontrollable odds.   CeyLa's sense of self-control allowed her not only to lead others by example but to funnel intellectual resources when most needed for survival. 

Ceyla was kind and calm by nature. Reared primarily by a remote, quiet, intellectual Father, hardworking and self-sustainable, to the Manor born, CeyLA learned to keep her head while others around were losing theirs, literally. Ceyla did not live in the limelight and often as a child suffered from lack of parental attention unless it was a scolding by her Mother for self-staring willfulness. CeyLa had learned not to mind this so much, as it gave ample time to concentrate on thoughts, daydreams, the future.  CeyLa's parents took this need for quietness and solace as an indication the middle child didn't need attention. The parents doted on the younger needy child who often was ill.  CeyLa didn't mind most of the attention falling on the older sibling, either.

Ceyla was right-brained, creative, imaginative, attuned to nature, forest, field, and pastoral surroundings. She appreciated the subtle nuances of music and often roamed the forests and fields playing her flute. When she played, it was as if the wind in the tree leaves and the grass swaying in the breezes played along.  She saw the orchestrated notes spatially as interspersed with the music in a dance of lyrical sphere.  CeyLa often became encapsulated, trapped as if in a time-bubble,  floated in her dream-laced world.

The growing woman-child easily grasped logic, had a healthy stream of consciousness though sometimes made tangential jumps in reasoning, following her intuition.  Often times finding herself in places others could never have imagined.  Yet, CeyLa was not always alone. Symbolism and abstract reasoning were her friends and they journeyed long and hard roads together. Ceyla was introverted in her solitude but relished it. She was intuitive and sometimes being around people was like a cosmic overload.   It was not until her mid-twenties after learning how to turn off the influx of unwanted data from those who tried to influence her judgment, a sense of peace began to find crevices amidst neuro-overload and inwardly her sanctuary rose out of the recesses.

If one were, to sum up, Ceyla in one word, it would be "Protector". She had a gift for guiding and comforting others often times when others failed or were unwilling to do so.  She thought of those failures by others as nothing more than human frailty. Ceyla was fiercely loyal to those beloved, avoided conflict when possible, meeting it head-on when it became inevitable. Quick in thought, she danced around ungainly antagonists, just enough to hold them at bay.  Over the years, becoming cautious not to make opponents look totally foolish, enough so as to save them from becoming mortal enemies.

People may forget what you say, but they will never, ever forget the way you made them feel. Her Grandmother Annie had told her this once and knew it to be true. Ceyla knew how some of the children had made her feel, long after the words used against her were forgotten. This sharp-edged sword sliced through the subtle ironies of childhood when children were supposedly innocent but capable of such cruelty to each other.

Ceyla was innately curious. Her unconscious mind was driven by curiosity and an inquisitive nature always looking beyond the boundaries to imagine new realms.  Perfectly suited an embracing destiny, solving the "Riddle of the Map-of-the-Day".  CeyLa was thought often to have been given over to flights of fancy.  Her fertile mind followed en suite and grasped an ability to tap into the universal stream of consciousness.  Therefore anyone she imagined would be there for CeyLa. 

As a child, her teachers often sent querulous looks her way, as if to wonder where her mind had wandered.  But always, she was back in-a-snap, with a ready answer or an obtuse way of looking at things which classmates found quite odd. Odd to the point, by the time she was 13, she was practically ostracized from the main contingency classmates, not quite brilliant enough in algebra class to stay at the top of the class (she simply hated sticking to formulas), totally incapable of relating to the loud, noisy groups of newly integrated blackamans, disengaged from the poor pales, at odds with the boys who found her tantalizing. She would casually dismiss them, their crude attempts and overtures. The smarter boys kept their distance lest they be made a fool.

So, in the end, she was quite alone. Alone at school, unless of course, someone needed a brilliant idea to claim as their own, then she would be approached singularly, perhaps in a hallway or in the girl's bathroom, where a problem would be presented, wherein delighted to be queried for ideas, a quick wit for a school jingle, a lead-in on a line of poetry or a story.   The others ask, playing to quiet solitude, aloneness,  "you are good at that"...   CeyLa would eagerly share, thinking perhaps a new friend was to be made. Perhaps someone did like the slender, mere slip of a girl after all.  More often than not,  her ideas and thoughts were kidnapped, showing up in someone else's work as their own.

Sometimes Ceyla would send a strong vibe to the perpetrator, who then would cower behind propriety, after all, she was a country kid, and they often or not were "townies"____ teacher's pets. Children whose Mothers or Fathers were either a friend of teachers or employed in the school system seemed always to get the extra points to tidy up a less than perfect classroom participation and grades. So, at 17, she trusted no one, found herself at odds with the small, quaint place called home.   CeyLa quietly grew up, grew away, and quickly found herself far from home. She simply wished herself away.  INTJ's are unlikely to fit like a spoke in a wheel.  They are the wheel.