Quick!

What is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs?

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Books!

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
Carl Sagan [Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory (1980)]”

Yarn

is a string, a story, or whatever you need it to be when you start writing.

Yarn is a long continuous length of interlocked fibres, suitable for use in the production of textiles, sewing, crocheting, knitting, weaving, embroidery, or ropemaking. Thread is a type of yarn intended for sewing by hand or machine.
Yarn - Wikipedia

Yarn is a verb,

Tell a long or implausible story: they were yarning about local legends and superstitions

The narratives we tell ourselves--about ourselves, about each other--dictate how we live, what we say, and how much good or ill we manage to do.

What Is Narrative Therapy?

The focus of narrative therapy is around stories that we develop within ourselves and carry through our lives. We give meaning to our personal experiences and these meanings that we come up with, or that have been placed on us by others, influence how we see ourselves and the world around us.

There is no "objective reality." People can have different realities of the same experience. What might be true for us may not be true for someone else.

@owasco's Lilylivered, a Weekend Freewrite includes these words of wisdom:
"Honey, the world has a lot of hate in it. Everybody thinks it's the other guy doing the hating. Just be sure you see hate in yourself when it is there, and turn it to love."

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My mission is to transform hate to love,

and that includes the hate others harbor toward me. It's an uphill battle. A daunting challenge. Floor mat! Floor mat! is what I seem to be. I prefer to think of that woodland ephemeral, Violet! Violet!:

---

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

source

Some at Steemit have created a narrative of negative things about freewriting. I'm not posting links here; you can find them if you really have time to squander reading about how freewrites can be unworthy of publication and a "waste" of a reader's time. To suggest that all or most or even many freewrites published at Steemit are a waste of a reader's time, however, indicates that someone hasn't read very many freewrites. Or someone has standards that I do not personally agree with.

This notion of the "problem" with freewriting is a snarled yarn in and of itself, but I don't want to talk about negativity and the judgments of others. If you come to me hating on others, I'll shed it like a duck's feathers roll water off its back.

Pardon me if I sometimes do a few good shakes, dog-like, and splatter whoever is lurking out of my sight.

Yes, there is a point to this particular yarn.

Someone who knows me at Facebook and Steemit stooped to lurking on my freewrites, taking screen shots of my comments to others here, and copy-pasting them to a neighbor of mine, with no other objective than to create more enmity and discord for me in my personal life.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who did this, and how many other places this person has been sowing seeds of discord, apparently to make me look bad, or to punish me for God knows what act of sedition or irreverence. Very few people know which of my various neighbors I might have been talking about, and even fewer people would care. Anyone with half a brain would block this person, lock the door, and throw away the key.

Not me.

Do I retaliate? No. Did I ever wish any harm or embarrassment to this person, ever? No. Do I now? No.

I see this person as damaged. Sick. In need of help.

If the attacks escalate, I might call on legal resources to put an end to it. If I had concrete evidence of someone else's reputation being maligned, I'd fight like a gladiator to stop the sower of the discord.

For now, I continue to hope that the broken will be mended, the sick will be healed, and good will win out over evil.

That's my story. Is it nothing more than a yarn? It's my yarn. My narrative: I believe in forgiveness, redemption, and rehabilitation. I work to see the good in others, even when they're spewing vitriol at me, and only last night, gallons of it came spewing my way, but I don't want to talk about that person (this one is a face-to-face human who entered my life and cannot be extricated without several other amputations).

I couldn't find the source for this image, which I've appropriated from the Facebook page of @crescendoofpeace. But the quote is easy to find all over the internet. Gotta love Carl Sagan!

And #GottaLoveFreeWriteHouse,

where writers come together from across the world, from other cultures, races, education level, social class, occupation, and political persuasions.

This quote, I've appropriated from a freewrite by @whatisnew:
Are you looking for another caring community where your creativity and imagination can run wild? A place where you have the opportunity to win prizes for your participation? Are you looking for support or for a place that you would like to support? Then head on over to the Freewrite House and have some fun.

That Darn Ball of Yarn

I hope you take a minute to read that #freewritepoem. It's endearing and exemplary: look what a daily prompt and five minutes of freewriting can lead to!

DISCLAIMER:
I always take waaaaaaay more than five minutes before I hit 'publish.'

Freewritehouse has been good for me,

and none of our members has had it in for me, nor set out to downvote, disparage, or discourage me.

Thank you @mariannewest and all of you here for your positive contributions, your courage in sharing your freewrites, your good will, and your talent. When the dust settles in the arena--Here, there be dragons--one thing cannot be denied:

Here, there be talent!