"CHOICES" Chapter III

Welcome Visitor and, hopefully, Reader. Please enjoy Chapter III and pass the experience along to your friends. Thanks, see you next time.

III. Tayresa

Tayresa Wellington held Jason’s letter to her breast for a moment, caressing it as if it were Jason himself.

“Sweet man, she thought,” if I leave this play, if I abandon this income how can we be together in San Francisco or anywhere? Don’t you know, like everyone, we must pay the Piper?”

Slowly she folded Jason’s letter and placed it, with the others, in a small wooden box on her dresser. She quickly resumed her makeup routine but couldn’t help thinking of Jason, San Francisco, Golden Gate Park and the Greenies. Especially the Greenies, with whom she had no personal experience and hadn’t even thought about until now.

Routine kept her walking along the back hall to the Green room and the evening’s performance. Certainly it was not enthusiasm nor was it professionalism, just habit---- habit and routine.

We do it without much thought. We do it all day, every day. Make choices I mean. ( did you think I meant something else? ) We feel most are inconsequential and virtually meaningless. We only assign meaning and consequence to those choices which tend to be, as we like to say, life changing; marriage, career, medical treatment, military service. You get the idea. It is as if small choices like eating chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla or going to the market at 5 o'clock instead of 5:30 or writing a check with blue ink instead of black or making a left turn instead of a right are somehow outside the realm of the one inescapable law of the universe, Cause and Effect. Well they aren't. Everything we do, every choice we make causes ripples and bumps in our personal timeline and in all the intersecting timelines we meet along the way. It's just that we don't think about it much. Have you never had an experience that made you say to yourself, " Damn if I had only left home a minute later I wouldn't have been on this stretch of road just when that poor dog decided to cross and I wouldn't have hit him", or something very similar? Of course you have. Yes I admit the scene just sited is a little dramatic but illustrates the point. The fact is our lives are a tapestry of tiny and finely woven choices, the grand design of which may only be discerned at a distance. Simply put we aren't very deliberate. That is to say most of us aren't.

Tayresa Wellington was the most deliberate acting person on planet Earth. She just couldn't do anything without thinking about it first. Thinking it to death Jason would say. In fact he ragged on her about it.

" Dang Tay can you spell spontaneity?", he liked to say. But he would follow with the sweet little smile only he could make and she would smile back, but in her heart it was bothersome and even hurtful. And so, after reading Jason's latest letter she decided to change,

Leave the theater turn right, walk three blocks and open the door to Nickies. What Tayresa did every day at lunch time. She did so because, after a little research and discussion with fellow cast members, she found Nickies to be a pleasant place with good food and newly found good friends.

"Well, Tayresa thought, today will be different. Today I'm awash with spontaneity. Goodbye Nickies, Hello something yet to be discovered."

Tayresa left the theater, turned left and started walking into something new.

"I hope this will be a grand and great adventure", she thought.

To Be Continued

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"CHOICES" Chapter II

Welcome Visitor. I hope you have enjoyed my story so far. Here, as promised is Chapter II


II Jason


Some people feel as though they have never been nor can ever be part of the drama that is life.They must view it as from behind thick and smokey glass; always on the outside looking in, never quite sure what they’re seeing. Jason Dante was such a person, possessing a thoroughly artistic soul but one imprisoned in the entirely non-dexterous body of a blue ribbon klutz. He had the spirit of Leonardo and the hands of Quasimodo. He couldn’t touch anything without first touching someone not similarly afflicted. As a result, it was a sad, depressed and somewhat gloomy person who sat at a cluttered kitchen table, with hot tea ( never coffee ) to compose a pointed and not altogether spontaneous letter to his long absent girlfriend, lover, companion and , yes, meal ticket. Before beginning he glanced about the tiny apartment which was home to his tiny life. His latest work of fiction, all five pages, sat crumpled and discarded on the living room couch like the mocking bit of failure that it was. He looked at it and wondered why he had been treated with such indifference by all the Muses. Indifference! He had not been abandoned, discarded, deserted or even hated by the Muses. No, just ignored. He couldn’t pray to one, invoke or beg one. Indifference, he knew, was the worst thing. Worse even than being intensely hated. Being hated requires, at least, that one’s existence be acknowledged. Why would God, or whatever, give him the desire to create but leave him as bereft of talent as a tree is absent of leaves in the winter? Life, he thought, was simply not understandable. It clearly had no meaning or purpose beyond, perhaps, the torture of poor souls such as himself.

Leaving self pity behind for the moment, jason thought of Tayresa and began to write:




July 12, 2041

Dear Tay,

As you might imagine San Francisco is in full bloom now. Life is popping up ( just like burnt toast in a skid row diner ) everywhere, in every way. There are people on the streets today who were virtually at death’s door six weeks ago. Funny what a little light and warmth can do for the human spirit. It is now difficult to escape the BART without catching the eye of an eager stranger intent on dragging someone into a heavy duty discussion of some weighty thing. You know, like the death of God or the right of personal freedom in a crime and terror infested world. Of course if one is civilized (and aren’t we both?) one must appear interested and say something provocative so the poor fellow can feel as though he has been “truly alive” on that day. But poor me, try as I may, I can not dredge up enough love of my fellow man to care much for the Frisco awakening. Again, it’s all that light and warmth. We desperately need a few clouds to restore a proper measure of gloom and solitude. I enjoyed the solitude of the winter and wish for it now more and more because you are not here. My own human spirit has been grounded since you left. The sun may have risen for San Francisco but not for me. I cannot escape the shadow of your absence. Were you here I too would welcome the light and warmth. I would embrace all those heavy conversations with the passion of a true believer. I would do it just to hear words tumble from your sweet mouth and have them fall upon me like cool and soothing rain . Why are you not here? Don’t you love me enough? Am I not important? Surely you know that in the history of Me the moments that have just passed have passed forever. None may return, none may be relived. All belong now to the ages. Do I sound pitiful enough? Have I touched your heart? More importantly, have I made you feel guilty? Good. I suppose I should feel some pity for you, stuck as you are in New York in that awful play. How do you do it every night? It’s of little value, love, give it up and come home. I will not blossom without you and God knows I need to flower. Enough? OK, how about some news then?

Speaking of sun light, the Greenies were in town this past weekend. You know what a joke they have always been, well I think they have gotten past that and are now a genuine pain in the ass if not a very real threat. I attended one of their rallies on Saturday and went home frightened. They have become a Saturday afternoon B grade movie monster, only the footage doesn’t stop and no one says The End. Expecting a good laugh to pull me out of my funk, I got, instead, a chill that has yet to leave me. Really Tay, they are scary.

I didn’t know there were as many of them as there apparently are. Certainly I didn’t know Frisco was home to so many. Then, you can’t really tell a Greenie from anyone else unless you look very closely. When you do you notice a slightly greenish tint to their skin. In fact, in that regard, they look sickly. Speak to one and you are likely to walk away feeling you have encountered a genuine dullard. Not stupid, mind you, just dull, boorish, uninteresting and bland. A person you would rather not be around for fear that ever after life world have the taste and feel of cardboard and paper glue. That is the initial impression. It doesn’t last long. It vanishes like summer snow once you have seen and heard Edward.

Edward, what a poor choice of names for this guy. Ice cream vendors are named Edward. School teachers, librarians, shoe salesman and insurance brokers are all Edwards. All wandering about in silent crowds, perfectly invisible and totally forgotten at the end of the day. Hell, he might just as well have been named Bruce! Sure we could talk about the old “ what’s in a name, a rose by any other name would smell......etc.” but is it just an accident that other conquerers, bringers of change and smartly dressed leader types (make no mistake, that is what he wants to be) have had names like Attila, Caesar, Alexander, Gengis and Moses? You know, it would be difficult to look those guys in the eye. The sound, alone, of those names makes a person jump and salute or cower in the corner. On the other hand, the sound Edward makes most often prompts one to waive a hand at a passing figure and ask for another quiche. Shakespeare (now there’s a name), as you know, has Cassius ask Brutus this very question but his argument is not very convincing and in the end is of no avail. No, Brutus could never have uttered “Veni, Vedi, Veci”. It took a Caesar to do that. Might there be a god somewhere who properly assigns the right name to the right person? If there is he has a strange sense of humor these days. Well it doesn’t matter, Edward is here and about to take center stage. I think the world will listen to him.

You know me, I usually walk around Golden Gate park hoping some bit of life will reach out and force me into usefulness. This time though I intentionally ( with real purpose ! ) went in search of Edward and his Greenies. I wanted to hear him speak.Actually I felt strangely compelled to hear him. Oh God help me. Surely I ‘m not a party to some weird cosmic connection. Not that I’m opposed to cosmic connections mind you. At least not in general. I wouldn’t mind being connected with something promethean like the farthest quasars, the black hole at the center of the Milkyway galaxy or the initial Big Bang process for the creation of elemental hydrogen; but with a fat green little man who would just as soon be a dandelion? I couldn’t handle that. It would be a new low for me. For Me! For the man to whom the bottom of a crushed coke can at the bottom of a dumpster at the lowest point in Death Valley is UP! Some creatures get to be angels, some don’t. Where is the justice?

Before I begin to sound too pitiful, suffice it to say I eventually found the spot where the Greenies were setting up a small stage for Edward to stand upon and address his faithful. The stage had a podium in the center and a huge banner at the back. The banner was done with large green letters on a white background and read, “ Back to the beginning, to the time before terror, to the time of sanity and stand alone life. “ By the time I arrived a large crowd had already assembled. Most of them were Greenies who had seated themselves on the ground without blankets or any other picnic like accouterments. These folks weren’t there for fun and games. I then witnessed the most bizarre scene as some of them began to ‘feed.’ I suppose as the need hit them, various Greenies, in no particular place or discernible pattern, would suddenly stretch out on the grass and begin to roll about. As they did so their bodies ( didn’t I tell you, they striped their clothes off first? ) shone with the most vivid green. This ‘feeding’ would last five minutes or so after which each of them eagerly sought out one of the many vendors in attendance who sold them large bottles of water which they immediately gulped down, to the last drop, on the spot. While they were feeding, the Greenies appeared to be utterly impervious to anything and everything around them. To say they were in a stupor would simply not tell the tale. They were in something quite apart from and beyond that. I found it disturbing, chilling, unhuman. Perhaps they had been temporarily shuffled off to some vegetable Nirvana. Who knows? I do know this though, I don’t wish to witness it again.

As I watched and waited for Edward, I felt a creeping sense of unease as those around me seemed less and less like fellow creatures and more and more like alien beings. Aliens for whom I felt no kinship, no affinity, no connection. Of course being the rational person ( as you know ) that I am, I walked up to a man standing near me and looked directly into his eyes. No, he did not have scary shark eyes, soulless and dead. I saw a spark there, a definable essence. I peered through those windows of his and glimpsed a terror. I would have preferred the shark eyes. I can understand sharks. I can even pity them their savage existence and, so, fear them less. What looked back at me from behind those eyes was not human and not something I could understand. Fear began to grow in me. It continues to do so.

I decided to leave; to return to my small apartment and continue missing you when the everyday all around us sounds suddenly ceased. A quiet, like nothing I’ve experienced, descended and enveloped us all. As if by a single command, I and all the Greenies turned to focus on the assembled stage. Edward was coming. I could sense it. We all could. A small murmuring began; barely perceptible at first but growing steadily, becoming, at last, a great sound of prayerlike exultation. “ Edward, Edward, they chanted, welcome Son of the Sun and Father.” I stared unashamedly and noticeably, frightened to the core but too fascinated to leave. There he was, Edward, the first Greenie, struggling mightily to carry his great bulk to the dais and podium. I couldn’t move; I needed to hear him speak.

“ Do not fear your gift, he began, “ grasp it, sense it, feel it, experience it, revel in it and give thanks for it. You are the true children of the Creator, His Holy Chosen Ones. Do not believe the lies you hear all about you. Creation was not set in motion only to fall prey to the second law of thermal dynamics. The Creator’s plan was to bless his children with ever increasing amounts of energy; energy needed for the continuing creation and imminent Salvation. In His great plan first will come awareness, then experience, then knowledge, then wisdom, then truth followed by the Blessed Reuniting. But only when His children can participate in His divine love. A love which will smash this universe and begin the timeless Kingdom of Infinity. So it was meant to be. But, Blessed Ones, a demon has crept into the Garden and has fashioned Man in his own perverted image. He has made of him a beast who must murder and consume the flesh of his fellow creatures simply to maintain existence in a darkness of misunderstanding, where he remains hopelessly lost. Now the Creator has been moved to action. He has chosen you,His true children. He has declared a Holy War to restore stand alone life and sanity to His creation. His pain calls upon us to stop the murder and other foul deeds of omnivorous mankind, with a Holy Crusade. We are, all of us, His warriors, His champions. Follow me to the shining truth of photosynthetic life. Help me deliver this Earth from evil and return it to the Creator, pure and sanctified. Do not shrink from this task. It is not a duty but a joy! Blessed be the Green, Blessed be the Light, Blessed be the Sugar and the nonviolent life. Blessed be the serum I have given you and Blessed be those who have been chosen to accept it. Follow me now. Salvation is at hand.’” Edward continued this ranting for an hour or so, saying many things of a similar ilk but you get the idea. When he had finished, he waddled to a small table where he eagerly emptied a large bottle of water. For a short moment I didn’t notice Edward’s obesity and remarkably ugly countenance, so taken was I by his call to Holy Arms. Eventually, however, my natural abhorrence of all things groupie shocked me back to reality. I was stunned, then angry, then giddy with bemused laughter but, finally, as I have said, simply frightened.

Edward, love , is a cartoon. A real looney tune, emphasis on looney. And my God the way he thinks! What a photosynthetic rush to judgment. What a nightmarish scene from the Grand Gingnol. All of us straight and evil humans being vigorously pursued by a wavering and easily blown about army of multicolored pansies root toot tooting at us with vine like AR-15’s and shouting, in beautiful and harmonious tones, indignant homilies of righteous anger.

Tay, I hope I can still laugh about this in the coming weeks. Please come home. I need to hold your hand.
Love, Jason




To Be Continued













T

CHOICES

Welcome Visitor! Here, as promised, the first Tale from Tarsisius.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.”
Genesis Chapter 1, verse 26

I.Edward

Sometimes life is perfectly understandable. Sometimes everything is crystal clear. Sometimes God really is on your side and sometimes there are satisfying answers to all your questions. At such times can it really matter what you look like? Edward didn’t think so and simply didn’t care that, as he moved toward the small hill at the center of the meadow, he looked very much like a flopping fish out of water. He was fat. He was ugly. He didn’t walk so much as he waddled. His neglected muscles ached. His ligaments and tendons screamed. His enormous lungs rose and fell like an overworked smithy’s bellows and his heart, his fat encumbered heart, obliged by the pace of the moment, beat no less fiercely than a war drum. None of which mattered. Edward lived in his mind and his mind, as strong and single purposed as a piece of rebar, allowed for no complaining. It accepted no pain. It would not think of stopping. Edward was nothing if not acutely attuned to the individual moment. Now he was sublimely aware of this moment. He knew it was his. He knew it would make him free; free as no man before had ever been. How wonderful, he thought, to be the first; the new Adam. Sometimes things are just crystal clear and, at this moment, Edward clearly knew he had been chosen to personally sign the New Covenant.

Edward carefully pulled a small syringe from the black leather pouch attached at his waist. He held it up, caressing it as it glinted in the sunlight. He felt a trembling pride and an arrogant satisfaction, very like a new parent regarding his just born child. He grabbed his left arm and searched for the spot where he knew a vein was waiting. He had long ago lost count of the many times he had pierced that vein, but he had done so over and over again until the chemistry and the biology were perfect, in short, until now. The experiments had been physically painful; the science so much more than merely difficult. Now as he stood atop this little hill ready for change, ready for the New World, he had no second thoughts, only resolve, as he pushed the needle to its mark.

The solution in the small syringe raced through Edward’s blood stream to the cells in the outer layers of his skin. He could almost feel it’s molecules make the final connection with those waiting there from previous injections. The result was a large protein; a little construction machine that assembled discrete packets from various compounds, mostly Chlorophyll, which it gathered from the prodigious amounts Edward had ingested over the past five years. The resulting assemblage was, for Edward, joyous, triumphant and evolutionary. Had Edward been a plant, any common schoolboy would have recognized them as the tiny sugar making factories botanists call chloroplasts. Of course Edward was not a plant and chloroplasts were not a part of his body’s original design. It simply wasn’t natural for them to be there. Edward, like all men, had a body that wished to remain fully human. But he didn’t care, he was willing, indeed eager, to wage war on himself.

Just as before, the pain came immediately after the injection. Once again Edward’s body engaged in a desperate, if futile, battle of liberation, despite the demands and desires of his iron willed mind. Always before, though, the pain had been intense but short-lived. Now it was more than he thought he could bare and vastly prolonged. He began to think that perhaps his plan had not been divinely inspired when the pain suddenly ceased and all around him there was only quiet. Edward stood on the green grass and waited for what would happen next.

Along with being flabby, Edward’s skin had always been as white as grammar school paper. Now, as he lay in a sweat, he noticed that his skin was glowing; not with health but with the color green. Green like the grass of the meadow. In addition, his skin felt very warm, not a fever and sickness warm but a soothing and nurturing warm. Something like he used to feel after eating a bowl of his doting mother’s chicken soup panacea. He took off his shirt and stared at his green chest. Quickly removing the rest of his clothes, Edward saw that his entire body was glowing green. He felt strange. He felt a need to act, to do something. That something pushed Edward to the grass and caused him to move about like a person making angels in the snow. As he did so, He felt a surge of strength and a sharply defined sense of well being. Edward savagely bit the little finger of his left hand until the blood flowed. He put his damaged finger to his mouth and experienced the taste of sweet success. Self-made sugar was now surging through the arteries and veins of his body to all of the cells of his living tissues. Sugar to sustain his life; sugar to allow for growth and creativity; the purest of glucose delivered to his millions of waiting mitochondria, without the need for ingesting any of his fellow creatures, plant or animal. At that moment Edward knew what the various and many plants of planet Earth already knew-that the Sun is God. It also occurred to him how silly life can be as he abruptly remembered a little child’s song , “It’s hard to be green.” And he felt important, even biblical. Edward felt like Moses about to cross Sinai, like Joshua before the walls of Jericho, like Jesus entering Jerusalem and like Jehovah on the sixth day of creation.

“ Shall I be fruitful and multiply,” he asked himself?

“Yes, he answered, and as much as possible.”
Suddenly Edward felt thirsty, very thirsty. His first priority, find some water.

To be Continued

Blog Welcome

Hi! Welcome to my Blog. This being my first attempt, I'm a little anxious that my Blog will be of use and enjoyment for any interested visitors. In short I hope it is good, not embarassing.

The main purpose of my blog is to introduce my good friend, Tarsisius, a delightful fellow, who has been elevated, by past glories, to the most honored of all positions which bespeak the Human Condition;that of Story Teller. Exactly who Tarsisius is I dare not reveal. Certain unspeakable events would befall me were I to do so. Suffice it to say Tarsisius has a most ancient knowledge of and intimate relationship with all the Muses.

Tarsisius requests that you peruse this month's offering; a bizarre yet essentially human drama of things that have never been but could be, given the right mix of folly and fate. Invest a little time and pleasure will follow. Time, by the way, is both slave and master, choose wisely. Again, Welcome and enjoy!