AZOTUSLAND chapter thirty four
Jeremy had Sundays off but still liked hanging around the cafe, saying hi to kids who came in with their parents and flirting where and when he wished.
That morning it was overcast and people hurred upstairs and into the Cafe and the Big Room and the Library was full.
Even though it was dark outside it was warm inside and Renata and Roo had lighted large candles on many of the tables. Sinead O Conner was playing in the background upstairs and Roo had chosen Dead Can Dance for the Big Room. Hans took free samples of a new banana nut bread around and most the regulars were enjoying themselves. Rand was in the corner reading Tolstoy and flirting every now and then at his beautiful red-locked wife. Sex had a morning off with no kids and was enjoying the Times. Simon was not far away talking it up with Whispah who was soaking in every bit of attention. Ian had just come in from an early church service and took up helping behind the bar. Cara was having a nice conversation with Jacob who was trying not to notice Ked Woman.
Most everyone was happy except Ted.
Ted was rarely happy unless he was arguing with someone, preferrably Jim, but Jim was strangely absent that morning. So Ted sat by himself and worked away at editing a long paper he had written on proposotional truth.
He didn't like Jim. In fact it was a bit of a mission of his to try and embarass Jim whenever he could. He saw him as a Communist-Athiest-Liberal-Sentimentalist with no moral values or compass. He found Jim tolerance of other points of view intolerable and wrong even though it had, on more than one occasion, enabled him to speak freely in room where he would not normally be so respected.
To his credit, Ted did hang out with "Unbelievers", Pagans, Astrologers, and even Wiccans, but he did not like them....except Whispah.
Whispah was a self-proclaimed Buddhist and she was also hot. There was no way around it. She exuded an animal sexuality that could have been used for evil if it was not for the fact that she was just not very bright. Exhuberant and playful? Yes, but not very bright and certainly not wise.
Ted often fantasized about her then felt terribly conflicted after pleasing himself with her images being driven in his mind.
He hunkered down to work harder on his paper, which he planned to release just after he saw that Jim had posted his promised paper. He knew exactly where the Pinko-Commie-Fag was headed and by the love of Christ he was gonna trounce and humble the man.
Just then Jeremy walked by and said , "oh Hi Ted...how are you?"
"Great...how's a life of unknowing?"
"Whatever," Jeremy said and went over to sit with Templar and Whispah.
*******
"Well young Jeremy!" Simon exlaimed. And he stood up and bit Jeremy good welcome.
Whispah looked Jeremy over and smiled. Templar almost laughed and said to Whispah "Why my dear, aren't we fickle?" She laughed and Jeremy smiled and they began to trade stories from the week.
Sex came by the table after a few minutes and told Jeremy that she had posted pictuires from the great Mouse-Trap debacle on her personal Blog. He asked that she alert Jim because he would certainly wnat to see them.
Alice sat in the corner with her friend Fred and told him about her last spiritual retreat in Oregon.
One room over Maugham was snoring loudly. One wall over Manfred crawled into bed and dreamed of the yellow mustard fields of Salamanca and of his mother's sweet face.
*******
Jim paced around the room. He had hit a major block.
Jesus taught love and tolerance but also was on a mission to unfold his own unique identity...one which would be offensive to almost anyone. He seemed to hug every extreme at once. It was unnerving to say the least.
Jim knew that Maugham knew where he shook out ultimately. He had made that clear the other night by grossly overstating it ina way that he knew was wrong. Jim laughed. He loved Maugham. He often wished that he was Maug, because Maugham was not troubled like he was.
Maugham was smart but if you caught him in a bad chain of thought, he'd just laugh and say.."Okay...forget all that! I was just kidding!"
He admired his swagger while Jim always felt like Jacob must have felt after wrestling the angel.
*******
What if the whole paradigm of power was a mistake?
He thought of Nietsche and how unnerved he had been by the Christ. Yes, he had named it..."transvaluation" and it had literally freaked Nietsche out. They had found the poor bastard in the snow and in his coat was sown little bits of paper that said "The Crucified One" over and over again.
This from the "Superman".
But what was the alternative? Fundamentalist Christians were not despised because of Jesus. It was because they were mean, judgmental, coercive, crass and often plain stupid. He remembered Martine's words in one discussion in the library on different ways of faith. She had simply slapped open her cell phone, raised her hand and when called on said "Jesus calling...He wants his name back!"
The whole room had busted up at that and even Ted was mildly amused, for about five seconds.
Jim himself was tolerant of just about anything except, ironically, intolerance. He also felt muddy thinking was a mistake and felt much of 20th century philisophy was simply a solipsistic racetrack with fresh race horses brought in and new wagers laid down every few years.
Only a few people knew Jim's past. He kept it guarded mostly because he hated the baggage that people would then attach to him. So he just tried t0 be himself and live in active love. He clung to the Dalai Lama's defiinition that "kindness is my religion".
But he had been a minister..ordained and fully educated, in fact, insanely educated. Down the the belly of Silo 2 was his old library, the one that no one saw because they simply would not understand and it was too long and painful a story. The Azotus Cafe library was just once piece of the overall collection. It was a gift to others, and besides, Jim had read them all and knew them from his late teens and twenties.
When his high school friends were fixing Camaros and chasing girls, Jim was reading Athanasius and Ireneaus and learning to translate Greek. Few suspected because he was so tall, lean and muscular then. He looked every bit the jock. His grades in school were awful and he feigned ignorance on most all topics and kept pretty quiet all the way through.
In college he had gotten a dual degree in Anthropology and Sociology but spent only a few hours a week in class or doing homework. His real draw was theology, hermeneutics and apologetics.
He was going to understand the whole world, write great books himself, and realize the dream of creating a "unified science of man". And he was going to have it all...God, a woman, great friends and his vision was endless.
He sat down and hit he refresh button on the keyboard and scrolled down to a folder and clicked it open, then scanned down and read his own poem:
Most everyone above him (except Ted) was either sleeping or enjoying the day.
He sighed and got back to work.
That morning it was overcast and people hurred upstairs and into the Cafe and the Big Room and the Library was full.
Even though it was dark outside it was warm inside and Renata and Roo had lighted large candles on many of the tables. Sinead O Conner was playing in the background upstairs and Roo had chosen Dead Can Dance for the Big Room. Hans took free samples of a new banana nut bread around and most the regulars were enjoying themselves. Rand was in the corner reading Tolstoy and flirting every now and then at his beautiful red-locked wife. Sex had a morning off with no kids and was enjoying the Times. Simon was not far away talking it up with Whispah who was soaking in every bit of attention. Ian had just come in from an early church service and took up helping behind the bar. Cara was having a nice conversation with Jacob who was trying not to notice Ked Woman.
Most everyone was happy except Ted.
Ted was rarely happy unless he was arguing with someone, preferrably Jim, but Jim was strangely absent that morning. So Ted sat by himself and worked away at editing a long paper he had written on proposotional truth.
He didn't like Jim. In fact it was a bit of a mission of his to try and embarass Jim whenever he could. He saw him as a Communist-Athiest-Liberal-Sentimentalist with no moral values or compass. He found Jim tolerance of other points of view intolerable and wrong even though it had, on more than one occasion, enabled him to speak freely in room where he would not normally be so respected.
To his credit, Ted did hang out with "Unbelievers", Pagans, Astrologers, and even Wiccans, but he did not like them....except Whispah.
Whispah was a self-proclaimed Buddhist and she was also hot. There was no way around it. She exuded an animal sexuality that could have been used for evil if it was not for the fact that she was just not very bright. Exhuberant and playful? Yes, but not very bright and certainly not wise.
Ted often fantasized about her then felt terribly conflicted after pleasing himself with her images being driven in his mind.
He hunkered down to work harder on his paper, which he planned to release just after he saw that Jim had posted his promised paper. He knew exactly where the Pinko-Commie-Fag was headed and by the love of Christ he was gonna trounce and humble the man.
Just then Jeremy walked by and said , "oh Hi Ted...how are you?"
"Great...how's a life of unknowing?"
"Whatever," Jeremy said and went over to sit with Templar and Whispah.
*******
"Well young Jeremy!" Simon exlaimed. And he stood up and bit Jeremy good welcome.
Whispah looked Jeremy over and smiled. Templar almost laughed and said to Whispah "Why my dear, aren't we fickle?" She laughed and Jeremy smiled and they began to trade stories from the week.
Sex came by the table after a few minutes and told Jeremy that she had posted pictuires from the great Mouse-Trap debacle on her personal Blog. He asked that she alert Jim because he would certainly wnat to see them.
Alice sat in the corner with her friend Fred and told him about her last spiritual retreat in Oregon.
One room over Maugham was snoring loudly. One wall over Manfred crawled into bed and dreamed of the yellow mustard fields of Salamanca and of his mother's sweet face.
*******
Jim paced around the room. He had hit a major block.
Jesus taught love and tolerance but also was on a mission to unfold his own unique identity...one which would be offensive to almost anyone. He seemed to hug every extreme at once. It was unnerving to say the least.
Jim knew that Maugham knew where he shook out ultimately. He had made that clear the other night by grossly overstating it ina way that he knew was wrong. Jim laughed. He loved Maugham. He often wished that he was Maug, because Maugham was not troubled like he was.
Maugham was smart but if you caught him in a bad chain of thought, he'd just laugh and say.."Okay...forget all that! I was just kidding!"
He admired his swagger while Jim always felt like Jacob must have felt after wrestling the angel.
*******
What if the whole paradigm of power was a mistake?
He thought of Nietsche and how unnerved he had been by the Christ. Yes, he had named it..."transvaluation" and it had literally freaked Nietsche out. They had found the poor bastard in the snow and in his coat was sown little bits of paper that said "The Crucified One" over and over again.
This from the "Superman".
But what was the alternative? Fundamentalist Christians were not despised because of Jesus. It was because they were mean, judgmental, coercive, crass and often plain stupid. He remembered Martine's words in one discussion in the library on different ways of faith. She had simply slapped open her cell phone, raised her hand and when called on said "Jesus calling...He wants his name back!"
The whole room had busted up at that and even Ted was mildly amused, for about five seconds.
Jim himself was tolerant of just about anything except, ironically, intolerance. He also felt muddy thinking was a mistake and felt much of 20th century philisophy was simply a solipsistic racetrack with fresh race horses brought in and new wagers laid down every few years.
Only a few people knew Jim's past. He kept it guarded mostly because he hated the baggage that people would then attach to him. So he just tried t0 be himself and live in active love. He clung to the Dalai Lama's defiinition that "kindness is my religion".
But he had been a minister..ordained and fully educated, in fact, insanely educated. Down the the belly of Silo 2 was his old library, the one that no one saw because they simply would not understand and it was too long and painful a story. The Azotus Cafe library was just once piece of the overall collection. It was a gift to others, and besides, Jim had read them all and knew them from his late teens and twenties.
When his high school friends were fixing Camaros and chasing girls, Jim was reading Athanasius and Ireneaus and learning to translate Greek. Few suspected because he was so tall, lean and muscular then. He looked every bit the jock. His grades in school were awful and he feigned ignorance on most all topics and kept pretty quiet all the way through.
In college he had gotten a dual degree in Anthropology and Sociology but spent only a few hours a week in class or doing homework. His real draw was theology, hermeneutics and apologetics.
He was going to understand the whole world, write great books himself, and realize the dream of creating a "unified science of man". And he was going to have it all...God, a woman, great friends and his vision was endless.
He sat down and hit he refresh button on the keyboard and scrolled down to a folder and clicked it open, then scanned down and read his own poem:
But not disdainThings had started so wonderfully only to go horribly off course and the trials that came like a fierce storm had drowned him out and now, years later he found himself in the belly of his own whale.
For her alone
The scorn within
His hollow hull
A lonely derision
Erosion division
Quiet loss
Solid pain
Not his first embargo
To be bore as cargo
Now as past
Hard bow and stern
Lost fore and aft
Broke and hollow
Born of sorrow
His ship still sails
And we sadly
Watch him down
Like Jonah
To the whale.
Most everyone above him (except Ted) was either sleeping or enjoying the day.
He sighed and got back to work.
posted by Obi-Mac BakDon | 7:01 AM
2 Comments:
Sheesh i think we all know about Ted.
Hope Jim gets spit out of the whale!
mmm sinead o'connor . .
i feel like i know you a little better after that chapter.
thanks.
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