Relationships.
Another Search for Unity.

By D. Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles
CornDancer & Company

Charles, the driver of big rigs, handsome in the denuded style of the highwayman, loved his Jasmine so dearly that he would hang 'round her door despite the most blatant of indignations.

Jasmine's impatient materialism roused in her a fierce torrent of condemnation toward all things desired but unattainable. Hers was a hot and merciless torrent, spewed toward Charles to retaliate for the money he didn't earn. Not enough of it, never, you good-for-nuthin ner-do-well. That's one version of the story. It's what Charles told anyone who might listen. We could never hear Jasmine attack him. She was busy laboring for the man.

I realize your battle is the most important battle - if you are fighting one. I'm speaking of the self now, psyche and mind, emotion and identity. The other guys can shoot and be shot, wound and be wounded, spill their guts and die. That's their problem, the bitter legacy they are furiously begetting to their children. I live in a land of milk and honey.

Is it a correct metaphor, to call it a battle, this internal set of worries and concerns that may have befallen a few of you? Perhaps the idea is too violent. What would you call it to make it better?

A Dozen Roses on the White Pacific Sand.

"Not me, not I," the Major of the Infantry said. "I don't care what you call it, and I'm not calling it anything. I'm not worried about your belligerent imagery. I've fought my battles. I'm retired to the breezy beach, the white sand beneath me, pacific waves brushing the shore, a tall drink in my hand. I've a dozen roses from the boutique to smell."

I've been told to walk in the shoes of another, urged to find a reason to break away from the mirror and look directly at someone else. A wandering goddess stops at my open window, tells me to find a way to realize I'm not alone.

"You are alone, fool!" a cynic from the heartland interjected. "Don't fool yourself, much less try to fool me. You are unbearably alone. Turn away from the mirror and alls you'll find is an empty room, the barren horizon."

Beatrieve the Earth Daughter, blonde and lush and nurturing, whispered another point of view: "You are not alone, alone only so much as you choose to be alone. Sharers abound. Check your bitterness at the watchtower gate. What matters is the fruit of union and reunion. Whenever any two of you come together, perhaps now on the plain of a shared narrative, you must find a common ground, where none can hold the upper hand. I will sing to you, echo to echo, sing whilst you stand, eye-to-eye and heart-to-heart, in the passionate psychic embrace of mutually reflective ideals."

"Right, sure, get real," the dusty traveller exhorted. "I've learned how to remember. I learned it all at once. It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it, right? And this bag was like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever."

The Minefield of Eggshells in Tuscaloosa.

Pleasance from Tuscaloosa wished she'd known about the dancing bags in the electric winds of a golden desert, known the good reason not to be afraid. She is trying to be tentative, to tip toe and deflect, to go 'round the barriers. Everywhere she steps, her man has laid a minefield of eggshells. Trying isn't doing. He's naturally direct.

What can we create, you and I and the dancers? That's the whole reason I came to this moment, to ask the question: What have we created here? How can we escape these private prisons to share certain transmogrified moments, the certain moments of transcendence that are necessary for unity?

"Unity? Who cares about unity," the production manager, lieutenant of industry, said before the outburst. In the other rooms of his inherited plant, the electric intensity of his rude dominion was busy producing an inventory of misery. "I just want to make money. Who the hell's in a private prison?"

Told otherwise, he slammed his fist on the conference room table, then shouted goddamgoddam, hissed like the serpent he bore on his soul, and said: "I hate my life. I hate my life. I need a new goddam life." He broke his sorry little right hand on the oak of the table, broke it on the right hand of the Father.

"Too many people have been killed, too many houses have been destroyed, and nobody can stop it," the voice from the radio said. Should I worry? The streets close-by Cricket Song are quiet, empty of tanks, snipers, and boys chucking rocks. Why should I care about their war?

"Give me boredom," she beseeched him. "Raise a thick curtain to block-out the gloom and the frenzy." He would try, he supposed, knowing that despite his best effort, the curtain would be rent when the Master died.

Does the Corporate Body Deign to Consume Me?

If I am the ugly thing known as the consumer, should I regard the corporation as my archenemy? I think so. The consumer, the dictionary claims, is the "heterotrophic organism that ingests other organisms or organic matter in a food chain." The corporation is simply a benign group of people acting as one body. Am I the body the one corporate body deigns to consume?

"It's too much trouble to create a new definition," Greta, the retro-manic artist of immense talent and unbearable potential, told her significant second other. "I'll use yours instead. If you can't make one, borrow the spare definition on the mantle. Your lover left it here yesterday when she departed for the roaring Lewes. Come on, baby child, define me, delouse me, spank my wayward conjecture. Let me create your logo, inspire you to do whatever it takes to delist her name from your haggard database."

"The view here is divided," the voice of the announcer said.

I'm not. I'm merely a forlorn realist. Some of the time. Half full, half empty: It remains a cup that doth not runneth over. The series of Missives, the website, the communiqués and bulletins, the Dispatches and Epistles, are one method of taking the fight to the streets. The method is marginalized. The voices fall like trees in the forest without ears to hear the crash and the cracking. What's worth fighting for beyond the sanctity of one's front door when there's so much milk and honey to satiate us all? Why fight, anyway, when peace should rule the realm.

WATCH FOR MISSIVE THE TWENTY-EIGHTH
in your mailbox sometime 'round midnight
on Friday, October 20, 2000.
If you don't want any of my missives, let me know.
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On the other hand, if you want to add a friend or associate to the list,
please forward their name and email address to
ebenezer@corndancer.com

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