You Were No Angel (Chapter 1)
L. Edgar Otto 26 September, 2013
I had the urge to write this for the imaginary garden's next Open Monday...
Chapter I. Walking with Jubal by Silent Sam
Jubal left the psyche ward at South Wing and faded into the streets of summertime among the stoned hippies in the university's quad by Franklin Street. A casual passer-by the wall along the sidewalk were people would sit and meet would be hard pressed to tell what in Jubal's thoughts and manner was the difference. I could not at first until he started shadowing me and I invited him to sit and talk as I was wont to do anyway that summer sleeping at night under the magnolia tree, by day meeting a wide variety of people. I was waiting another semester to finally be admitted to the school after coming home from the service, yet so free and Southern lazy the pace so many hours to spend in thinking and laying in the sun and grass waiting for my tie dye tee shirt I washed by hand and put on to dry.
We walked through the quad then sat at the base of Silent Sam, a statue in honor of Confederate soldiers with the quote the word 'duty' as the most sublime sentiment, word in the English language, and a note of just how many this one state above its sisters volunteered for the Civil War. The locals called him that for some reason I never found out, yet he was a center of focus for graffiti constantly sand blasted away as some students protested the Asian land war and Nixon spelled with a swastika or Amerika with a 'k'.
"So Jubal, why are you following me around my walks?"
"You are a god sitting on the wall or bench writing. When you shuffle your feet sparks are given off. The streets are filled with empty people, as well some dark demons and others hiding away in hope their evil schemes are not discovered. There are a few other gods also, some come by you, but when you sleep as so many students do in the quad you find the perfect spot in the open not to be disturbed. When that girl threw her kitten on you, you did not startle or lash out but cradled it looking up at her and smiled."
"I am not a guru you know... I am just passing my time trying to make sense of these twelve dimensional equations so I can find good themes in music." I told him thinking he sounds smart and that I might just bore him so that he goes away. He seemed have an effect of keeping my other friends distant save for Sleazy (we all had nicknames back then and few knew he real ones let alone the last ones. I just kept my first name, Olney... then again I missed the drug revolution, and the free love revolution, and he revolution revolution.) After Sleazy sit awhile then left with his air of seeking a brother acting out the theme and philosophy of the series Kung Fu, Jubal said he knew Sleazy was one of the gods too.
He replied to me in a way one cannot really tell how sound someones thoughts are, especially if such confusions may be caused by the confusion in the society, the state environs- the schizophrenic society but as Kikergaard said. to the corkscrew the knife is crooked.
"Well, I understand really, I used to go to school here before the airplane glue burned my throat. I have a whole proof of the four color theorem really, worked on it for years. Now I just sell matchbooks on the streets. Match Scratch! Get it, match scratch..." he said with pride of a poetic grin.
I saw Jubal twice later on after one of my many moves to and from the small village, university town of Apple Chill. My bride and me took up his offer to stay in a trailer with his girl for the night, a redhead he met in south wing we found out later. But she was so angry only his touching her calmed her down but it turned out he would beat her and Jubal's visiting brother told him it was unmanly and called the police. We got a ride from them to city line of the next jurisdiction as Jubal was living just outside the village line.
Much later we lived farther out into the countryside in an old farm house of brown wood our kids called Gingerbread house. One day Jubal is on my porch and wants to come in but he is lighting matches just for fun and says he could not get into his trailer next door. He used to live there when he was still a teen. I had just heard from my black neighbor that a white man had tried to climb into her screen window and scared her little girl. So I told him to sleep on the porch on the hammock until morning. He also asked if he could keep a veterans plastic card trying to sell me insurance that had come in the junk mail and fallen on the porch. I said sure as it calmed him down and seemed to make him happy. These were after the days this new credit card idea was no longer investigated by the city's detectives as theft or fraud with fines worse than for marijuana. I mean all hippies knew where the unmarked cars were, once even Taylor James yelled across the street if a friend needed grass and tossed him a lid. The detectives near by did not seem to know what was going on.
"It is just I am afraid of the snakes." Jubal said as he climbed into the hammock between the back porch poles.
"You will be OK as I have caught all of them. My wife afraid of moths up North is not used to the black snakes climbing up the tree when she is outside crocheting or reading when they rain down from time to time while looking for bird eggs. But whatever you do. do not open that white five gallon bucket full of the snakes I intend to let them go across the highway and river. I just cannot wake up the wife and babies to let you come in." - which I thought must sound to him like just the evasive polite excuse it was as we talked through the window screen.
Of course there was no way I could sleep even after he ran out of matches and asked for more which I of course said I did not have any. Then nodding on and off trying to stay awake in a chair I hear a very large crash, a gasp and the sound of running off the wooden creaking porch. Jubal must have thought I was lying to him about this too so he opened the bucket and let out a dozen and a half of various sized black snakes - I never saw him after that. But apparently in looking back that explains why some of my relatives were called by the deeper mental facility and for a year or so thought it was me a crazy veteran confined to the state's nuthouse.
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Footnote:
I add this as a list of comments for the secret life of bees Sunday mini challenge (my schedule is all mixed up). as it is likey some of the toads may show up here Monday Sept. 30th.
Maybe something like this would be good to include for other hard prompt projects?
Since the imaginary toads evoked so many poetic moods save the prompt sentences I did not at first respond to, I decided to put them in one spot... all the bee stuff, and the back to the earth and good rhythm of life in the fertile soul... Bees can collect pollen for honey over thousands of acres far from the hive... but I have made a lot of candles after all... To all the Toad dreamikins...
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Testing if I could post... Well, this quote has interesting images too. I mean, life is like that running in braids mother to child... or unwinding it with schoolmates...and of course occasionally the boy in the desk behind you dips one in ink and maybe learns to write a poem... To Kay
I once saw a toad, he too on the hunt for small things in the grass and do more than aim for a moving small object... I almost laughed when it rolled its eyes around and blinked them hard... for it had swallowed a bee... I saw another that swallowed a lightning bug and its belly was full of blinking light. Thanks. To Margaret
Wow, I get the sense that this bee prompt for all our stories and your reaction can be seen as starting from the idea of the situation from the flower’s standpoint.
Thoreau in Walden remarked how he was struck by the intimate specific relation between a particular insect and a plant… Even in the dust and time here you have touched the transcendental. To Hannah
I should add, that the sting can sting you long after the bee is dead
I think nothing of grasping the hornets off my child... but bees, they will put up with a lot before they sting and many times
I cupped them in my hands and let them free out the car window... We like them are individuals but then
so is the hive one life that depends on the health of the Queen. To Susan
If I had posted on this I would have singled out that quote too...
But what Mama Zen said... only there would be too much to comment on from inspiring poetry...
I can hardly imagine falling asleep even with a few pages of this book
I suppose if I were a bee I would not say we bees buzz... but drum. To Susie C
No wonder, down home in the South, bittersweet the broken combs and propolis,
candle wax and lingering sunset, the work of a gift of thousands of flowers to heal,
a spoon of sweet with the songs of medicine...drawn out sincere that calls casually or cradling another
Honey or the will awakened to live in a sugar pill...that as one precious bee can sting but once
Alone again and winged, we are and find the sunrise sunlight... to runaway sentence
Wisdom indeed, and enhanced... you rock... To mama zen
Kisses sweeter than strawberry wine, we lived among the reeds and Christine Ressi's, damn rusty tractor. love a compensation as much a distraction that we to build a garden must toil the ground... yes, I recall, but it is hard to when the vision was still not far away though we could not take it all in then deeply- our longing heart held firmly beyond distance. To LaToyna
So true, how much we taking it fore granted that at the end of day we find we have to learn to love again. But the birds sing at sunset as well come morning, and even at high noon when eclipse. Beyond this and far from the city lights not one bee that fills our night…but a thousand thousand suns a swarm of starlight… To CC Champagne
Or the mournful whispers of stars as the rest of the universe flies away from us... To rene foran
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Birds and bees and wall flowers...yeah, songs and audible buzz, But without this there would be no Honey Dew Mellon's. To Herotomost
The stealth of the star covered inner jaguar that knows sometimes it is better to walk away from a fight and that takes as much courage.
The moon drives us Menead crazy but its drag is lagged and O so strong, just out of reach our desire to flow with the streamline dolphin's grain until vanishing into unknowns past cloudy horizons to find our self at naked singularity and the spacious now...
Or I could read it to say it simply in lesser enduring lingering words where at fleeting last we could touch "I am not asking that you love me, I just want to know my friend..." To Fireblossom
I cannot recall as a young child I noticed the stars in the sky had depth and were more than white dots on black... a little later I aimed my telescope to the moon, some trick of chipped lenses that painted its caves and craters with all the hues lost in its stark white. The outline of the bear or Hercules and Leo vanished on the celestial globe come florescent night inked at day... Mystic prism indeed as well from deep within our thought dyed far richer than those stars, my poet friend. To Debi Swim (I had to post comment here)
To bee or not to bee... we still walk around chained to each other in doubts and all that fake honey on the shelves that fool us thinking it is just as sweet... we are still trying to tweak that poem... To Ella
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What an incredible piece of writing. Mixed in with all those who claim to be sane is threads of not so sane.
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