Once
upon
a
time,
very
long
ago,
people
protected
themselves
by
constructing
stone
walls
around
their
villages
and
towns.
The
good
townspeople
did
this
for
good
reasons:
to
keep
out
invaders
and
foreigners
and,
in
many
cases,
to
stop
the
exodus
of
their
own
citizens
and
slaves
who
might
feel
the
need
to
search
for
a
better
life
on
the
outside.
But
these
very
protectors
all
eventually
learned
the
same
lesson:
no
border
is
impenetrable;
no
wall
is
high
enough
or
thick
enough
to
keep
the
enemy
out
or
the
malcontent
in.
And
yet,
even
though
generations
of
protectors
have
accepted
this
common
knowledge,
they
still
continue
to
repeat
the
same
defensive
pat-
terns
to
this
very
day.
Some,
however,
in
their
abundant
sagacity,
held
an
alternative
point
of
view.
If
you
can
neither
keep
the
enemy
out
nor
the
malcontent
in,
let
them
all
go
where
they
will.
Perhaps
then
these
invaders,
unde-
sirables
and
pariahs
will
either
go
away
or
find
a
peaceful
place
among
more
accepting
neighbors.
Over
time,
these
peacemakers
noted
some
contradic-
tory
evidence.
Sometimes,
when
the
walls
went
down,
an
intermingling
of
peoples
and
ideas
helped
nurture
the
land
and
people
lived
in
peace.
But
other
times,
foreigners
exploited,
raped,
and
maimed
the
land
and
its
people.
Sometimes,
when
the
walls
went
down,
people
left
to
find
more
desirable
lands
or,
when
faced
with
the
choice
of
leaving,
decided
to
stay
and
make
a
better
life
for
themselves.
But
other
times,
people
left
in
droves,
depleting
the
resources
of
their
native
land
or,
when
confronted
with
a
choice,
stayed
out
of
fear
of
the
unknown
and
grew
old
and
bitter
with
regret.
In
my
profession
as
a
drama
therapist,
I
often
ask
people
to
make
up
stories
and,
if
possible,
to
reflect
upon
them,
drawing
parallels
between
the
fictions
that
arise
spontaneously
and
their
everyday
lives.
I
try
to
help
them
discover
the
nature
of
their
problems
as
embedded
in
characters
and
themes
created
in
their
fictions.
Theoretically,
I
am
not
a
follower
of
Freud,
Jung,
Laing,
Winnicott,
LaGan,
Skinner,
Perls,
Moreno,
Minushin,
Stanislavski,
Artaud,
Brecht
and
countless
others,
even
though
I
have
drawn
suste-
nance
from
all.
My
thinking
is
closest
to
the
early
19th
century
poet
and
illustrator,
William
Blake,
whose
striking
images
can
best
be
described
as
para-
doxical,
as
existing
in
“fearful
symmetry,”
one
to
another.
This
point
of
view
is
well-illustrated
in
the
qualities
of
divine
beauty
and
savage
ferocity
co-
existing
within
the
form
of
the
tiger,
found
in
Blake’s
“Songs
of
Experience.”
And
the
tiger,
itself,
be-
comes
the
antithesis
of
the
lamb,
a
Christ-like
figure
in
Blake’s
“Songs
of
Innocence.”
In
the
opening
story,
I
refer
to
the
protectors,
those
who
defend
the
need
to
construct
borders,
and
the
peacemakers,
those
who
wish
to
remove
boundaries
in
the
hope
of
reconciliation
and
freedom
of
move-
ment.
As
a
parable,
this
story
is
about
the
implica-
