When you disagree but are asked to work together

A friend offered a query for his creative peers, but you don't need to be in a creative field for this to apply. So many feelings get involved with that process, though, it's kind of the perfect crucible for this type of question. It's a question of ethics and allotting one's reserves, and it goes something like this:

Yep, it's like going into a dark tunnel, sure.
A friend you've known for years offers you a paying gig. It's a solid opportunity. You've known the person like half your life, so it would be cool to expand that through collaboration. It's a freelance job, and you'll be working together in some capacity. But while they're not a vile hate-monger, boy, do you not see eye-to-eye on some political matters. And as everyone knows, Politics has practically replaced Religion in matters of passionate conviction these days, to say nothing of what passes for discussion. So: take the job?

Inspired to reply, and then thinking it might be a cool discussion to pass along, the Be Chill, Cease ill on that count goes thusly:


You can probably do it. Know why? IF said friend understands how you feel differently- and for many of you, it might be hard to call you 'friend' and NOT know...but thinks you've got the chops, are reliable, and an all-right enough guy or gal to offer you a break...that counts for something. Mutual benefit of the doubt on differences. Just entering into evidence that speculation..not judging anyone. :-D If said difference doesn't have to enter the personal space, well awesome, cause it is, agreed, occasionally venomous. And some outlet for two fine, basically ethical friends to have discussions might even be welcome (it's agreeing upon the set of facts, these days, is it not, that is the issue?), but said friend would also probably understand a neat sidestep of "well, I think you're an intelligent, impassioned person, but I'd focus on giving our project our all and skip that exhausting subject, if ya don't mind" (the 'ya' is important, friend:-D)..Maybe flip a coin on it? Good luck.


There's so much upsetting stuff, and I've read we process 5 x the amount of information we did thirty years ago (I'm more than happy to limit my time on the 'Net for various reasons) so it can create quite a trainwreck in our nervous systems. I can dig it if you're concerned said friend will drift too often into that outlet out of a feeling of you becoming more of a confidante from long hours of collaboration. AS a writer, you get the advantage of understanding a bit how people with differing opinions, come to them, without having to embrace those that are stridently against your own ethics. Reason, we're finding, is tied first to feeling, then following that in its character. But my point was, so much BS out there and Anger, I find, is very hard to effuse in proportion once unleashed (kinda Love, too).

Like, when we go off, it's kinda the cumulative effect of all the things that tick us off, and so, embracing it can cause more strident reactions than we might intend. But you're a man of resolve, and if you have the reserves to avoid pressing the RAge button over the occasional annoyance, go for this! And honestly, if not, don't, because your peace counts for something, too. If they know you well at all, they may well have the prudence to realize they should steer away from certain querulous engagements, so, it's a matter of personal trust as well as assesment of and faith in your own reserves and qualities. WE do need unity beyond our differences, but you individually cannot hope to shoulder that burden for ALL- it's a gut-check, rather, of whether we have the strength to lift a given weight before us at a given time. If failure would be too costly, perhaps then we must decline certain challenges. But the willingness to take that chance when it is not a fool's errand but actually has a hope of a positive outcome- that is a sign of strength.

Our fears sometimes keep us from knowing the weight of that which lies before us, and sometimes our boldness makes us reckless. Courage and discernment must make friends and accomplish life together!

Then I'd step back from that equation and ask myself if I'd find the creative assignment engaging enough to warrant the investment.
I'm having a similar situation, with less guarantee it'll be remunerative in any fashion. These are the times that try the souls of folk, but while we might not always win, we can always learn and grow.

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Never Thought You Knew, part four of five

For Barbara Moore, her healing story as promised.



Tanij and Santos’ generous offer of a place to stay a while warms Meaghan’s heart, though her restlessness drives her outside, with intimations of her journey remaining. She stops at a strip mall for a bite; it would give them some space, and, she reasons, the urge to take over the kitchen is great.

Would she take Roderick up on his request to share a place here, as his plans in Texas meant nothing without her? Her restlessness and his grew with unanswered dreams, and when Collin finally spoke up about his attraction, she felt refreshed to consider a world of new possibilities, travel, more energetic plans---and once again, romance, of the sort that seemed to fade every couple of years. A friend, still, fun sometimes...but such sense of destiny: overwhelming. Meaghan feels sometimes as though she is sinking in people she loves.

She calls Daniela, an old carpentry friend she ran into upon visiting her old haunt, the theater; how pleasant, to meet for tea or a curry...to re-visit a time of increasing, steady optimism, maybe bring it again to life. She sees a lingering piece of decoration from the holidays, and thinks of the pig-tailed girl in pink lemonade overalls she saw, excited to go see Santa Claus.

She watches a beige clad woman, almost her mother’s age, keeping a patient pace with a man who almost certainly had to be her father, conversing just out of the range of clarity, moving by like another dream. She thinks of her aunt Willow, accompanying her grandfather Huff to the cemeteries and jotting down notes for the family tree project. “She shared my birthday,” she thinks with a sigh. “She was slaving away without vacation at Mr. Jurley’s, and she breathed her last in the middle of a nap. “For years, she keeps the elderly company...but no old age for her. She never should have listened to that stupid neighbor telling her she’d just gain the diet weight back...never a man, never a family...church three times a week...the most awful singer in the choir, oh, God, haha!”

For all this, the two bring to mind her father, holistic remedies and advice pouring from her over the phone while he spent half his days on oxygen, a word he always pronounced his own way...as he did “optimism.” “Opkimistic...I think that was it.”

The house where he died seemed the worst place to decorate for a holiday that left her bereft, in a town where she could hardly muster energy to care about a job serving sniping, repressed people, where one’s kids and gossip constituted the haunted husk of conversation.

What she’d looked for in her sister was the approach like a therapist: listen, help her through, as Molly had so many times before. This time, her own irritability and frustration seemed to only push Molly’s buttons; was she trying to say this was Meaghan’s fault?

Though she clearly enjoyed his wife Kaya, she had never been too close to her ambitious but amiable brother; Molly had been like a second Mom once, tending her lovingly. Molly had praised Collin to the stars; birthdays and travel plans seemed ready to align, and sure enough her exotic time with him.



A visit to Hallman’s bookstore turns up a happy surprise: her old friend Debra, cheerfully loading up on second hand fantasy novels. She overhears her sing a Native American church song she’d learned in their happier times together. The church had fallen into many troubles with those who refused to understand the sacredness of its medicine. Debra seems like a photograph that lets you time travel, unforgotten overnight teepee sweats. She offers her take on sharing a house with six people, paying to couch surf, and so much, always more to say, taken with life, smitten with three hundred years of books to read. "Here, doll," Debra offers, "I had an extra fortune cookie from lunch. Don't forget to add "in bed" to the end when you read it!"

Debra reminds Meaghan of their trips to the desert, wishes she could join her, tells her of a lead cooking Mediterranean cuisine, gushes over her chihuahua’s impending litter, promises to take her to a movie, hugs her, and barrels away in a battered Buick, all in a whirlwind of life that takes her friend's breath.

How Meaghan longs to dive into activity, without needing to understand. “Think so much of what could happen,” she muses hazily, “what should happen.”


So long as she can afford gas, she commits herself to her surest therapy: she drives. Perhaps the desert can afford her the emptiness she needs to mirror herself, her spiritual wars and searchings laid bare by perspective.

When they began to talk, Meaghan discovered she and Collin both had experienced having to fight for the right to be ourselves, growing up, clicked on so many levels. It seemed an answer for everyone, a romance that drew together so many mutual friends with its sweetness.

That ending seemed so abrupt; awful as it was not to have another chance to
discuss it, the fall-out was worse, as though Molly blamed her. She knew they’d talked it over,

but always, this trapped feeling, languidness, and Molly’s insistence that seemed to discard

Meaghan’s own experience with pulling herself together. Each strike of retaliation seemed to

rip a coat of warm intentions, stitched too small. Ingratitude, self-centeredness---muscles

knot from the flailing of arms. Every time it seemed resolved, blam! Aiee. Temples throbbed

with unholy terror; personal space suffered intrusion, like a capsizing boat; the more she

fought to right it, the colder and wetter the result. Enough.

The need for someone to listen---maybe back her up, too--- made her miss Dad more. He never went far in school, but he’d paid attention in the class of Hard Knocks. Dad eased his wild spirit eventually as she’d first come of age. He was no licensed therapist, but he would listen, and give the most practical advice possible, no matter the hour of night. Strange how much she’d resented them butting in when she lived nearby, stir-crazy visits without warning to the house they’d financed to help her buy when she came to town and found a really good job. Yet whenever her wanderings took her to lost places, Dad would never judge.

She missed his various concocted plans, always to try and go into business for himself again. He always reached for life’s steering wheel, and Mom, ever his partner, seemed kind of rudderless boat without him. How she wished her remedies and advice could’ve spared him his painful ending; his breathless days, his yearning so great he’d take oxygen with him just to escape sitting at home, haunt her as often as his attacks haunted him.

That was the nice thing about being a guest with Ned’s aunt and family over Christmas, work up fresh people skills, give her time to recover self---just not able to be there and play family, while her life continues on hold.
Mother would sit right there and then respond like she hadn’t heard a word, with something she’s repeated twenty times about someone or ask about something she’d just explained an hour before. Mom meant well, but, knowing her family, she never seemed empowered to express herself.

Beneath the crisp California sun, Sarah misses the whale expedition; Molly had waited in the wrong line, holding their place while Sarah got the tickets. Sarah knew she should’ve spoken up, said what she’d been told, but Molly had asked around, and...it would have to wait. They could take the ferry to the island, walk the beach, maybe shop. Compared to the struggle of getting here...! At least Meaghan returns her call.

She’s just turned down Roderick’s suggestion they could find a place together, perhaps with his father. This poor man---who for all their many friendly exchanges had been an s.o.b. to her, knowing he shouldn’t drink--- embodied everything Meaghan felt was out of control in her own life. He’d come back from war with post traumatic stress disorder long before such things were diagnosed. Too scared to kill himself, too scared to live. Perhaps if she had all the best of her serenity of old, she would tap the energy to aid in restoring him. Where had this gone?

This was the liberation of the road, the way from the security she should take towards the uncertain road she wants. She can’t continue, saddened by lack of control using her intelligence and memories to create a kind of quicksand for her spirits.




"Sometimes," Meaghan decides, "going up again is a matter of knowing where the bottom is. From this point in my evolution, I can never go down some of the lost paths again, with sadly addicted people for my company." She turns up the radio for the smooth, driving thrum of a Spoon song; Brett Daniel cooly declares, "I've got nothin' to lose...but darkness and shadow." She likes the serendipity of this soundtrack to her resolve. Far south of the winter storms rocking the American Southwest, a traveler heads back to the library to prepare her resume, with every intention of returning to this desert tomorrow, to surrender to nature and quietude so long as her journey takes. This vision will be her friend as she drifts into the night's sleep.

Trust requires a creative engine

Because I saw often identified certain of my enduring fictional characters with real people (a few since have become very real of their own essence), initially I felt rather neurotic about introducing enemies. I didn't write very much about anyone you could conveniently label as "evil." Life is a work, time is filled with our works; I envisioned ourselves in those stories steady at tasks of discovery, exploring the nature of people and things---adventurous philosophers---able to step into ideas visited in dream.

Stories you can relate to visit problems and struggles upon their protagonists precisely because we are already at odds with our hearts' desires, each and every one of us, whenever we seek to manifest anything at all we want in life. At the time, I considered us as spirits in symbolic, conceptual struggles. I did not want to imagine and envision people in conflict with one another without producing peaceful resolution; I did believe we should forgive everyone, whatever power it takes, and strive for what could be described in morality's metaphorical terms as our higher angels (problematic, when one is simply attempting to describe benevolent humanism, which I found required an endless supply of trust). Concepts and extra-dimensional, existential menace not unlike that we already find when thinking for ourselves, were the opposition; you could say "for we struggle not against flesh, but against principalities" to quote Paul in the Bible.

So, just as stories require a creative, story telling engine, so do relationships.

Now, characters spouting philosophy while they hike weird places with an idealogical cause attached is still bound to be a feature of my writing, but it is the rare individual (and there SHOULD be something for them) who would accept traveling ecologues full of information. There is a reason few people read encyclopedias the way they watch movies (though I highly recommend treating yourself to articles in the spirit of information as a story).

Let's come down to earth, then, where these ideas are needed! I languished and practiced and typed enough to realize I'd learned the hard part and now needed to dig into the part I'd ignored so often: the part of life where all of your feelings happen. ALL of them---not just the untouched mystical planes of our secret identities here in cosmic existence, but something of the world where ideals and expectations generate clashes great and small, the place for where we'd best prepare.

Where each character of mine generates their trust, there we find the fountainhead of their motivations. I learned a great villain or thief may not only hold a fascination or even touch upon some subliminal terror or even longing, but demonstrate for us the verity of a wisdom evident, perhaps in their words---perhaps in our repulsion at their example.

All of this leads to undertaking the groundwork for creating deeply relatable casts where, as in life, situations pit people in opposition. My interest in creating characters that stand up to multiple episodes means finding circumstances that will create stories that explore different facets and flesh out the people involved, and maybe leave me with that deeper sympathy, and hope for others, that we are discouraged to abandon in the fallible somethings of life. Along the way, we'll discover characters to which we can relate, together with us in our struggles.

Love a short story

Love
Troubles left behind swirl, blessed, released, among images of family far from Burkina Faso. Slowly these vanish with a growing sense of morning. Somewhere between dreaming and waking, Mary has a sense of the healing vitality underlying existence, in the improbable corners of states of being. She meant to grasp something from its hold, even while she had little idea what that state is. Something inside that held her cue to being alive...
From her viewpoint beside a few weary-looking stocks of wheat atop the maison soukala, the flat terrace roof connected to the compound below by a ladder, Mary orients herself to the birds She rises from her bedding---she is still trying to achieve restfulness, such as she encountered her very first day here as a reaction to the sheer exhaustion of her one way journey to the place her mother visited before ("when I was near her, in spirit?"): a village lying about one hour away from the one airstrip in this part of the country Burkina Faso, former Upper Volta. Like every village for miles around, they call it "Dano."
The radio---a Panasonic, two decades vintage---plays out of the neighboring hut, African pop music from a station in Ougaoudao. In French---a little attention in high school has taken her a long way---a disc jockey excitedly extols a coming film festival. The golden stallions, she'd deduced, were the awards. There was more talk of horses out here than she'd ever associated with Africa, so at first she couldn't be sure. She'd tuned out commercials before, but tucked away in this village, they seemed to present a fantasy of the city, far down the flat dirt roads past the gum tree grove.
With the relief of curving her torso down to her knees in the darkness of the earthen hut, Mary's heart energies flow over her head, blood enriching her tissue with a warm sense of being. Before long, everyone will rise and share greetings; for now, those who gather water, risen early in the well, must walk with earthen pots, to questions of sweet dreams and stories riverside to tell.
Her mind drifts back to the fleet leopards in the W Nazinga Park, spotted out of her periphery during her visit there with Aaron and Wobogo. "It's strange, how there's no place for romantic love, in the usual 'boy meets girl' sense. But Aaron is so different from the villagers in many ways---and his Dagara people in the Ivory Coast might be more Westernized, and he's been a journalist. Who's to say there's not a spiritual connection everyone will recognize, anyway? At least I've had a strong connection! " She realizes she's gotten very identified with the village ways in this new life; already she anticipates having their opinions, help and acceptance should this become a love.
In light of this being her last hurrah, the very idea of loving someone intimately suggests a faith for days to come. What do you know? I've built confidence for a hope in this life.
She imagines, miles distant, the lions sleeping away the day long, except for these mornings, the time of the hunt. Once, she'd watched a wildlife program, cautioning of their possible extinction; yet before her eyes a pride had emerged, evoking singing within her wild self---the very life force that kept her living. No longer was she here to only die in peace. She gazes upon a green mask with stripes of tiger-like energy, Kourgi Kambire's creation, upon the compound wall of the maison soukala, on the side of his closest male kin. She knows that mask is a call towards understanding, a gentleness, acceptance, and ancestral wisdom concerning friendship. Every piece of art has several meanings, a lesson that evolves with the viewer's immediate situation, the sharing of inner selves—a point of rituals.
In the early morning's faint embers, Kulinah passes a cart of yams, fresh from the labors of the day before. Yams, two feet long! The rains, now patiently awaited in these hottest days, had been kind, swelling the plant life with nourishment. As she and Sapla and two dozen others had tended the harvesting together, Desiree had come outside with the newly finished dress for Osun's wedding. The dress, too, had meaning, in the renewal of her relationship. Aside from the opportunity every five days to freshen their commitment in ash circles, the wedding holds a broader celebration of one another. "Every wedding is a chance for the whole tribe to marry," Sapla had said, many times. "Everyone's spirits are wedded!"
At the moment, she sees Sapla, whose sight makes her as happy as cartoons of childhood.
"What sweet thing came to your dreams, Sapla?" she asks with a broadening smile.
"The comfort of a happy friend," she replies, "who's come to join the beginning of the day." Sapla sometimes wakens a little slowly, remembers Mary, who notes sluggishness in her demeanor.
"And Sisquekwo---all ready, gagner petit?" she says, putting a soothing hand to each of Sapla's sides. "Before the ancestors on the other side, baby Thurisaz parle, 'je demande la route' (I'm on my way home!) She immediately realizes a connection in her question and Sapla's state of mind.
"C'est caillon, "she replies, shaking her head. "Yesterday, we thought the child was coming, as well as many times in the night. But she is having trouble breathing and her dilations are not wide enough." Sapla tears up, looks off to nowhere particular above Mary's strong shoulder. "We are trying to keep hope, be wise and strong…but we were not yet sure what type of ritual we'll need, after all."
They embrace a long moment, eyes closed, sensing the touch and the wafting smell of shea butter.
"Mary Kulinah, you are welcome to pray in our thilde when you get time in your chores."
"Je suis en bouill"---I'll go wherever you like. Sapla loads up her lovely red calabash of water and shambles away, as Mary completes filling her calabashes and pots as well.
"Oh, God, no," says Mary, weeping. "Oh, no, please, no, you can't"---the word pours forth from her quivering lips, dissolving into an impassioned sob. "Oh, please, oh, please," she cries pleadingly, to the source of the world inside herself. She pictures some hazy figure, clad in a kaftans robe, standing over Sisqekwo, holding her baby, for whom she's waited since the day the Dano villagers greeted her, acknowledging her, welcoming her, enfolding her into the embrace of the tribe. "Thur-i-za," Mary would sing, joined in the work of daily life, "little Thuriza…" so happily as a child's heart, when gentleness settles therein. At this moment, many of her fellows come along to collect water as well.
The kindness of people of all ages made Mary celebrate her decision to be here. When she arrived, fresh from the crossroads that took her from incarceration to this village, she'd only sought some way to fill her remaining days with hope. She left behind the betrayal which painted her the "ringleader" of the Robin Hood ploy to cyber swipe money already stolen inside the company---but she could not erase the Crohn's Disease, discovered in her last prison physical. With the 'honeymoon' of culture shock and a friendliness that she considered "down home," she'd begun the great mental distance from fear, captivity.
At first, she'd resisted. Then she watched what belief was doing, how free of unnecessary cares one could become, face to face with cooperation. The fear became her possession through ritual; she began to live from a part of herself beyond disease, beyond death.
Now, at least, she feels better, and someone else feels good. And if sadness is to be, between them all, the separation may not feel so painfully lonesome. In fact, the conditions for a spirit to visit---to be treated as a presence, felt beyond mortal fear---could they be any finer? Everyone would understand. An entire community knows. The character of fear, the bereavement, could be transmuted---is that the word? Still, she watches the visiting Mossi trader parking his motorcycle, detached, with a bubble of sorrow inflating now, and takes a deeper breath with heavier eyes...
Thurisa, she thinks, willing a thread of power between herself and the baby she wishes to comfort. Here is my life. Take my warmth---please don't be afraid.
In the tension, Mary's bowels trouble her. Mary believed she'd quietly side-stepped her death sentence; the diarrhea she feared would dehydrate her body has been absent so long. Wasn't I the fool, believing some place is beyond harm---as though we can be good and wish it away!
She crouches, remaining concealed for privacy as she watches more of the new arrivals fleeing the Congo, passing here in Dano. Their wretchedness state of clothing marks the refugees. If only our neighboring countries weren't so torn with greed and killing, there wouldn't be so many still born children. Or refugees. Sick to her stomach with anger, she realizes she must calm herself, ashamed at her unwelcome towards those proceeding to the water, life preserving, without which the tribe passes away.
So that is what it is like to fear the downtrodden.
An image of her friend Thomas---my gay magician buddy---eases her mind, brings an awareness of the fear itself, like the joy, childlike in equal measure. She blinks back tears, resolving to see him after delivering water to her hut.
Unless someone asks, I'll keep this to myself, I can't spread this feeling! How can I greet everyone 'good morning'? Happy things can be said, even when days begin in unhappy things. What of the birds, singing in the baobob tree on the left hand side of the path? Her evaluations shrink quietly, like one of many obstacles an ant might notice upon the ground.
She continues vacillating between sorrow and solace until she reaches the hut, tears welling in eyes lit by dawn as she kneels with the pots and calabashes. By night only, she shares this earthen hut, always safe, hearing, feeling the breathing of the women and children, even when she'd first arrived, when the thilduu, the hearth shrine, was still enfolded in mystery, brightly colored carvings. In a way, knowing of the ancestors, the closeness of their world, its place in the hearts and imaginations of her precious Dagara only deepens the mystery, though all her alarm over the supernatural---she'd avoided thinking about it 'too much' at first---faded as she saw it naturally incorporated. Life was less sophisticated by a material standard here, yes; did she find, in sophistication's place, an honesty nonpareil, based on love and appreciation? Isn't that worth the hardships we bear?, she implores, to some witness self within. Is it?
She starts the fire for the largest kettle. I can take Sisquekwo warm water. Maybe Wobogo or someone can help me get it there. That's what I love---no one has to do anything alone.
There's a soft tug at her sleeve as she stares into the fire, lofting some hopeful part of her from the ashes, hope that slowly descends, mist-like, her presence comforting Sisqekwo and all her house. She turns from this inner sanctity to find it reflected without, in the face of little Naylan, watching her, awakened by the shoveling of ashes, stirred from dream to hug her unconditionally.
"Mam nanga feom," Naylan Da says.
"Mam nanga feom (I love you!)" replies Mary, stroking his head, shaven for summer.
They speak of their dreams, as Sankanthu Da, who remembers no dreams, arises to play with Naylan and aid in morning chores. They take great delight in Naylan's tale of reptile giants, like crocodiles, shaping the world with new mountains and oceans.
"Maybe you dreamt of the creation of the world," says Sakanthu. "I've never heard it that way!"
Mary dismisses herself from their company and the warming water, departing for Thomas Sankara's hut.
"I think we will go welcome Thurisa today," Naylan says, provoking cooing from Sakanthu. "When she comes, we will all know happiness."
Still sometimes I hurry, Kulinah thinks, grateful to head straightaway to her objective. Early on, she'd beg excuse for the embarrassing irregularities of her condition, only to find no one was particularly bothered, even offering ritualistic health. Her resistance to ritual lessened, and then in time, she found the rituals had replaced the anxieties, even most of the effects!
A quick dismissal doesn't seem appropriate in the presence of Osun, one third of the Hienbe wedding party planned for the next day. They'd first met, chasing the elephants out of the strained rivulets of the cracked riverbed; the elephants tended to keep a trail near water. She'd introduced Mary to "monkey bread," the sweetly, slightly acidic enormous oval sacs, picked off the trees for a delicious jolt.
"Kibari, Kulinah!" says the topless, stately young woman, with the Yoruban first name and Fulani looks. She'd attained baskets of leaves for shea butter from a kerlite tree, doubtlessly to prepare cooking. She puts them down for a hug. Something in Osun's love, thinks Mary, is full of every one's love! She wonders about her, the wedded life ahead. She replies, squeezing Osun tightly as she speaks:
"What joy you must feel, making your vows open to all!" She finds, in the strange language, an eloquence here, after the burdensome clichés piled unthinkingly into most of her life, erased by new talk in this ancient land.
"And you are most welcome, too, my far-away bird!"
"Are you nervous?"
"Oh! Unafraid, but yes, so much attention! What did I ever do to deserve so much, besides follow my path?"
Something deep within Mary-Kulinah stirs, a point of view open between dream and waking, an idea that titillates and comforts simultaneously. Perhaps, she thinks to herself, of something so irrational, yet possibly magical, so long denied.
"Osun, come with me if you want to share conversation. We are going to see our thildar friend."
Osun pauses thoughtfully. "The gateway Thomas?"
"That's the perfect way to say it, yes!" she replies, taking the hand offered, with its aloe scent wafting in the breeze-born rustling.
"Na an bi baro ke (let's hang out)!" Osun says. "Nib'I fe (I like you!) Ed looge (let's go!)"
*Mary listens to Osun's joyous chirping , as she caresses a gaa tree reaching out of sight into the sky. They pad the cool, red earth; a kerlite tree rustles nearby, as Osun hums before speaking.
"Oh, the yolon! My wedding will have a balaphon player! You know, like 'tinka tinka tink-tink'," she says, pantomiming a xylophone, hammering its bars to some danceable rhythm. "I'm sure you didn't know at first how many people have taken on the name Thomas Sankara. That was one rare president! No air conditioner and one refrigerator; an honest, four hundred-fifty dollar a month salary, an all-woman motorcycle honor guard, a guitar, and a mind full of compassion for what all the tribes need."
"He sounds like one of us," says Kulinah. Us.
"He still is one of us," says Osun with cheer. Mary Kulinah contemplates how happiness marks Burkina Faso, is part of its identity as surely as poverty and the danger of malaria. But why doesn't that joy survive the education process more often? Why couldn't a few more tribes people acquire Western-style skills for improving the quality of life? What could anyone now do for Thurisa? Who could save Sisquewo?
"You have a furrow in your brow," says Osun. "With that place to plant your millet, you are already for the rains!"
"Ha ha! You darling," says Kulinah. "Tell me of your wedding some more. I like your thinking."
"You know, Kulinah, the wedding is a happy occasion, but the exciting part is soon, when we gather at the caves, and the three seeds and the four seeds, girl and boy, will be rubbed across my skin, and I will call to the baby we will have!" Osun squeezes Mary's hand as they come to the gnarled little tree beside Thomas' door. "Maybe you will be there, praying with me. All these people, their loves and cares, chose to be here, to do all wrongs and sometimes, in spite of themselves, do right. So much goes right, I suppose we must stay all right with whatever comes our way, so that we may continue receiving also the good that is our due, and continue to attract that, also!"
Did you read my mind? You read my heart.
"If you were fishing and caught an old shoe," Mary responds aloud, "you'd remember there's still fish to be had."
"And if the shoe's still useful," says Osun, vibrantly, "perhaps you'll catch the mate!"
They laugh, they touch each others' arms; each shares energy, as they stand before the antechamber of Thomas Gateway's, the small enclave added to a larger compound, a place to hold a few useful things.
“I wonder if he’s home,” Mary says, “Thomas gads about the village at any time.” Since the entire village is a good place to think, Thomas chooses not to confine himself for his mystical traveling. The village helped him quite incidentally make time for others. He suddenly appears without a knock.
“Osun! Mary Kulinah! Won’t you come inside?” He embraces them, exchanging a few rapid-fire phrases in Fulani with Osun before pear-shaped Maura arrives, excitedly beckoning her elsewhere.
“Yell ka ye’ (no problems)!” says Osun. Behind her retreating figure, Mary observes Raoul and Johmay nearby, closing a conversation for a casual moment of silence, as though the inspiration has quickly occurred to them both to acknowledge a pervasive, quieting force, momentarily exposing the simplicity of being. The silences in being together are an everyday sight throughout the village, indubitably respecting the need for something like solitude without loneliness. Here, I felt, fit to burst, to spill sorrows to a completely receptive friend. Could it just be enough to know I could, and not add to the burdens others carry?
But what I want to ask---about this life, with the chance to catch that other shoe---it’s been---“
“Ooo, come inside, I need you if you please!” says Thomas, already pulling at her wrist.
The horror of what was done to her---the betrayal she felt she’d always feel from the justice system, the terminal reputation of the disease inhabiting her body---none of the things without redress could haunt this shared life for long, and memories of pain became too small and selfish a shell to contain the growth of her new form. If this village could not shelter her from further disappointment, was not proof against all irresolution, still she could not find the fault within herself. She wonders, in the balance of things, if her life doesn’t belong to Thurisa---belong to the dream. In what way?
“I have much to prepare today,” says Thomas, simultaneously plopping on the floor before his handmade wicker chair, suggesting Mary take it. “So if you please, take this shea butter and rub my feet! It is all in the world I need. I will be so very strong for everyone, but I need to be served, too, thank you, that’s soo good! I’m recuperating rapidly! But not too rapidly,” he adds with a cocked grin, “I want you to get all you need from my feet!”
If ever there was a man who was in this world but not of it, my friend qualifies. And where I grew up, you’d only laugh at the idea of a bisexual witch doctor---yet here is the most natural person I know. She reapplies lotion, awakening nerve endings in Thomas’ toes, thinking of these feet, their steps putting his wisdom and healthiness in the ways of those his soul intended. He had showed her how not to keep the raging storms of emotions pinned, nor to allow them to rove the subconscious unacknowledged. When she sat in the ash circle and vented her bitterness---however undeserving she felt about embracing her hurt initially---she lived a new way, open minded and open hearted, as she had been before the Robinhood scam, but with greater self-respect, for choosing to bear the trials with meaning and grace.
“The ancestors share our concerns over beings flowing into their new forms,” says Thomas, returning the favor now on her feet. “Mary Kulinah, dear, take time to love the red clay with your hands as you do with your feet. With each step is a kiss, an agreement to make a way for you, your own. Before you went inside your mother, before you became a part of this world, without earthly expectations, you selected a life of your needs and your service. You decided on this foot rub, and the breakfast you’ve forgotten about, and every friend and every word, even if you didn’t quite know them yet as they are! My namesake was executed at the hands of his best friend, whose justice was taking over the presidency.”
“I never knew that!”
“Yes! But in a fundamental way, they both made that choice—because of a lesson, an example towards which neither realized they were working in life---and then, there it was! And these lessons are worth our lives---even very good lives of forgiveness are laid down---because these choices are for borrowed things.”
“All our time is borrowed,” she replies quietly.
“All time is made for borrowing,” he says, draping his right arm around her shoulders, he, a few inches shorter than she. “All the experience is your own. Well, your water’s ready to share when you arrive home.” Did he mean the water boiling at the compound? A metaphor? He meant to send her on her way, gently, so signified with a kiss atop her head and a light squeeze on her shoulder.
“I’ve borrowed your time enough, Thomas,” she says, “but I’ll repay it everywhere.”
“I’m the one who’s borrowed you,” he replies, as she makes for the doorway. “See you!”

Much of her caar---her matrilineal clan---already had arrived. Many neighbors at rest outside the banco walls of the hut sing or pray or handle stones or light the candle way.
I am that child. I feel as though I am that life.
Gather around me---we’re going to top ourselves!
Traveller, dear---chiekuo or whatever you are, we’re all travelers here---If you find it unnecessary to cause this pain to your mother by leaving, please don’t. You’ve got to understand---you are where all understanding begins, and you know, as you begin your life, you will mean so much to these people. We’re here for you, wherever in the universe you go. With you, I understand how everyone thinks and feels, and love them like Thagba, like Christ loves them. From where you stand, in infinite mercy---from grace---everyone’s someone who is understood, who creates themselve s.


This is a sample of ch. 8 of my novel
Current mood: blissful
Category: Writing and Poetry

Got any Outlaw Theme Music? "TJ & 14"

TJ & 14

The night I’ll remember, when I look back on all the times my friend T.J. stayed over at my house, is the night he didn’t come over at all. Despite that, it was a night that was everything our entire time together was, like this evening, as I write.

His mother thought he was there. T.J. spending the night? Sure. Routine. His 14th birthday was coming up that weekend. She couldn’t do a lot to mark the occasion, but that would be something he liked, in the one place he would probably get in the least trouble. My parents didn’t drink, didn’t even smoke. As for drugs, they drug me to Church, three services a week, where partying was considered “of the devil,” probably even more cartoony in the mind of a bemused scoffer and confirmed non-church goer. It’s right there in St. Paul’s writing: “the world” will not understand.
Make no mistake, they kept me on a tight leash. These were the days when we didn’t carry cell phones, so in lieu of checking up on me, they simply forbade me go very far. Without special permission, I could only walk about a mile away from the house. “Yard dog,” as they used to say when teasing Neal down in Auburn. Even hanging out over at T.J.’s trailer in the park across the old highway over the wooded hillside deserved an informative phone call, at least. At least from there, I had more places to walk and explore, neighborhoods and countryside all along highway 53.
We lived in a trailer, too, on a piece of land my grandpa White sold my parents for a penny, just across the driveway from him, Grandma, and Aunt Linda. That was where we used to plant and pick fresh vegetables, in a garden on the other side of their old driveway, in clean country air of the foothills of Appalachia. Tomatoes, okra, corn, green beans---you name it. Everybody worked at the family hardware store, which you reached by walking across an old 2x4 plank laid over a drainage ditch through a patch of hickory bushes. You could get “switched” with one of those if you didn’t behave. Hickory Tea.

Mom & Dad could finally afford a double wide that year, so the bedroom where I spent that night without T.J. spending the night was different than the one where we spent most of our times hanging out late, continuing the same never-ending conversation we used to carry as far as the ol’ yard dog could walk and still cover myself with my peeps.


We were close because he popped up in my weekly kaliediscope classes, where you had a chance to enjoy a more creative, adult-minded version of school for a sweet while with Amy Langham and wonder Ms. Fountain. So we were two oddballs who made each other laugh.

Oh, and for any true Shannon dwellers from those days, this isn't a story about Fourteen who used to come into Shannon Supply Hardware Store, but he's pretty okay by me, too. I remember him when I was a kid, seven, eight. I used to ask Paw Paw if Fourteen would come in, or had.

Originally, his Mom, step dad, and two sisters rented a house just behind the old Model Elementary school, itself the remaining campus of the 1912 founding of Model School, across from step=dad’s mother’s house.

I envied their freedom “to be worldly.” In other words, there was porn to be sneaked and rock music to be heard. I watched “Porky’s” once when I spent the night there; I think we had to be a little sneaky to manage that one. I loved talking to his mother, without pretense, freely, like an adult, without editing or constricting my precocious and liberalized opinion, and never without laughter.

That was the place where T.J. “taped off” a copy of Born in the U.S.A., my one and only contraband album of rock music. It could’ve just as easily have been Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. Aside from some songs pirated from their abbreviated form on the television show America’s Top Ten with Casey Kasem, I didn’t have my own choice of music until the wonderous clock radio came into my life, so the Boss had a wide open imagination in that savored bedtime audience. He’s inspiring the back of my mind with his hopeful new Workin’ On a Dream as I share this story with you. “Surprise, Surprise, come open your eyes” indeed. I really enjoyed my gift, specially requested of my reprobate buddy, the kid caught with cigarettes his first week on campus, about the time of his eleventh birthday.

He was a bit more able to take care of himself physically, because he was bigger, a bit tougher, and able to project enough cocky confidence, but mostly he was a lot angrier than me.

Funny, the kids who believed in Tough hung out with him anyway when I wasn’t around. I had depth perception problems in the same eye where I also sported a wondrous pea-sized cyst on my eyelid, of the type favored by sorcerers of old. Wonderful for sitting and seeing into daydream worlds, but to catch anything, or hit anything, I needed to be exposed to the Zen approach. Besides, I didn’t have anyone in the family close to me and associating with me who’d stayed in school and done athletics. Fortunately, I didn’t end up totally by myself.

The Holt was the only other guy who expressed interest in spending time with me; he and Kevin had an innocent little gang of smart alecks in Mrs. Atkins class across the hall. I’d stop at their table at lunch when I threw away my stuff from my plate, even though you were forced to sit according to class. The Holt made comic books a fad for a minute in fifth grade, though we were almost eleven and would soon be considered too old to collect Transformers by the next year.

T.J. discovered music in a big way when some of us first joined band in sixth grade. His talent at alto saxophone was becoming apparent by the end of that year. He really amazed people and by eighth grade was making All State and being asked to play with the adults at Sam Baltzer’s North Georgia Wind Ensemble, nights on Shorter College campus. Mr. Shook, our nearly retired band director, could plainly see practicing was what was holding the boy together.

One day T.J. would finally tell me, if I’d never been there, with my strict parents, stuck around the house, hoping for something so exciting as smart, rebellious T.J.’s visits, he doesn’t know how he’d have survived. It was like getting a look at Paula Hill’s ass: something to sustain the emotionally disturbed phenomena of being stuck in a school day with something pleasant to think about. But more serious.

He said, joyously, recently, I’d never have realized the things he saw, the sadness he knew, living in his Mom’s trailer. He says that saxophone talent was nothing less than an escape valve. The world of Duke Ellington & Count Basie that seemed too fine for my palette composed mostly of white Southern Gospel and stolen Top 40 pop, welcomed him in jaunty bar by bar, because that is where he went to escape emotional anguish. Maybe I thought too much of the comparison to allow myself to get much better on the saxophone. But maybe my home was also a place with so many comforts and distractions, one could be lulled into a complacency not to need more, or truly develop one’s self, depending instead on the wild distinction that made school a breeze so long as you paid attention. T.J. told me later he never doubted my parents loved me, no matter how many times I wished someone more to my taste loved me.

I went along for his vandalism sprees with his crew, the same boys who worked with him to build a hazardously toxic still, their eleven year old attempt at moonshining. I never had any taste for hurting anyone or destroying anything; it always made me feel guilty to take anger out on anyone. We did all the wrong we could without actually injuring people, although that stunt we pulled putting cinder blocks up on the train rails to see how far the train would knock them was exactly the kind of thing you hope your local cop or someone picks kids up for doing. For our own sakes, it’s probably best T.J. and I got caught early on in those experiments, even if I couldn’t go to Disney World with the band, candy sales or no. It might be the start of why I still want to tour to this day, in the long view.

We were picked up shoplifting while going to K-Mart with Mom on my 14th birthday. Between Kenny G and David Sanborn, he had a lot of jazz stuffed down his britches. My copy of the Beach Boys didn’t have the foot-long plastic anti-theft casing, but we were stars on store security, anyway. While he was debating on whether to call the police to come get us, the guard gruffly said, to my saddened face, “well, happy birthday!”
Thank God the Holt was just stuck talking on the phone with me. We would get in enough mischief in years to come, the Stupid and Disruptive Risks At Whim Years. He did get to run with us sometimes though!

But you know what? T.J.’s 14th birthday really took the cake. Must have, because there wasn't one. That "birthday celebration that wasn't" was the last time I’d ever aid my buddy in circumventing the rules, unless there’s one about propriety broken by this telling. The Wade Brothers, his enterprising neighbors and hell-raisers, worked with step-brother Shawn in spiriting T.J. to the Greyhound Bus Station. The most believable alibi was that he was spending the weekend with me, even if that would mean Sunday School. So, after all the confessions about girls, and monologues about building one’s emotional state, and harangues against the well-intentioned powers that be, and dirty jokes and well-behaved interactions with the parents, I was left to myself to think it all over, to look back.

I listened to “Desperado” by the Eagles that night, more than once, to capture some sense of life for which there was no song I knew. Tonight, I hear Springsteen’s “Outlaw Pete”, who was found by an enemy who never sought to be his friend. Hearing from your old life is a common theme now among the great song writers in grey haired times.

I wondered how long it’d be before his mother realized he was missing, how long I’d have to hold out; I felt terrible that there was no other way. I can never judge. His grandparents in Coweta County, Oklahoma, had a farm where he was welcome. So he covered himself long enough to make the trip; I don’t think he let her know til she called them. I totally understood the desire to escape, to try to go somewhere and re-invent one’s self, but the reasons for his escape remain a secret for his family. It is a conflict I could never truly know, and here is not the place to try explaining. I wanted to share the exhilaration one finds best at the beginning of a new journey, that ineffable continuous contact with the unknown. That night, while hopeful for my good friend, for a moment I cried to myself, appreciating differently the level of sharing and honesty now ended. The end of sharing, well, at least he'd soon write, and as for the end of honesty, great, because T.J. loved a good compulsive lie as well as anyone. Certified electrician, indeed!

Someday, we’d find each other again. I’d think about writing it all, today, with fourteen years to celebrate, of a different life of two, with a new close friend found seven further years down the way. It’s the second month’s seventh day, the fourteenth anniversary since two others surrendered to one another, to discover as they say, that in the spiritual life, you are always at the beginning—so the happiest celebration of fourteen of all is found at this story’s end.
February 7, 2009

Cecil Disharoon, Spring 2009 Good to Have You Back, B'Joy