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Much to say about the word “wisp”…..short for “whisper” immediately comes to mind…which brings further to mind the idea that if you want to get someone’s attention, even the attention of an entire audience, don’t yell….whisper. Make THEM come to YOU by the suggestion that what you wish to communicate is a sort of secret….(by the way, the word “wish”, related to “wisp” how? If at all….)

Speak softly, as that old saying goes…and carry a big stick?
But it’s the softly speaking that gets them to focus on you

first…..intrigue them, make them bend your way, then deliver the prize punch, at any volume you choose….make them hear you by being barely audible…seduce them into your private space…..embrace them gently with a soothing whisper…a wisp…a suggestion of what may or may not be coming…..a special invitation.

A wisp of talk…..a wisp on the wind….the very sound of the letter “W” is a sort of breezy wisp all by itself, no?……a wisp of a girl…which brings me to Ariana Grande and WICKED…now there is indeed a wisp of a girl! So very wispy that whenever i see her, I have the urge to force feed her carbohydrates……she hardly needed the bubble to descend into Munchkinland…she herself looked like the insubstantial stuff that bubbles are made of….so very beautifully and delicately defined, so very very pink.

As Galinda, she looks like delicious candy…i had the urge to both feed her some potatoes and lick her like a lolly pop….an insubstantial child’s sugar drop….and yet…..

Both Ariana and her green counterpart are actually both mere wisps, tiny cunning machinery of female-ness, but as the central engine driving the very powerful and heartbreaking story, their diminutiveness is strong as steel and just as unbreakable.

In Oz, a wisp is as good as a word, as strong as the wind that brought the Wizard’s balloon to their Land. AS enormous as the design of the film looks, with ever-moving parts of a school library that could motor an ocean liner, the entire journey to the Land of this popular movie seems as taunting as the dream you just woke up from yet cannot for the life of you remember…..which, cleverly, makes you want to go back and see the entire thing again and again.

So, this is a short essay on the power of the wisp.
And in my old age, realizing that a wisp is the farthest thing ever from what I have ever been, i understand how a little old gray haired lady like me (I’ve never really ever been little) can gently silently make a strapping gorgeous young man get up and give me his seat on the bus!

I can wisp now with the best of them!
One of the perks of aging…..and my sturdy cane doesn’t hurt, either.
The cane is rather like Galinda’s bubble: it gets me where i want to go!