October 16, 2004
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Lost and Found and Lost and Found Melody Fragment
In a happenstance that seems like it came out of an episode, Kathy actually used rough copy of some Melody that had never been published as packing material for some rocks. I found it, decided to blog it, then it got lost in the clutter in my cabin. Then I found it. Here goes:
We had come to the fourth day of the cookout. Greysox and Josephine were still getting along swimmingly, Naomi and I were mostly over our respective hissy fits, Kathy Clonehead packed up and left in a Snit (a small Yugoslavian sedan built on a lawn-chair chassis), Greyface had pretty much gotten over his overdose of amanita baklava, and Dingo JuJu was just getting ready to start her presentation on Flatcatomancy, the art of divination by reading roadkilled polecats and other more or less moribund feline quadrupeds. Suddenly we saw a band of folks moving in our general direction singing “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s saving souls we go. . . .”
The apparent leader was a tiny wrinkled figure in a nun’s habit (as they all were) who looked like a cross between Yoda and the Lucky Stars leprachaun in drag. She proceeded to march up to the unsuspecting Naomi, the closest one to her, pulled out a water pistol with a crucifix handgrip and squirted her three times square in the mush whilst intoning beatifically “Begone oh evil one, I conjure you in the name of the One Lord.”
Holy water pistol, Batman! It was Mother Charisma, the redundanrt noun, er renouned nun, from Smellbadda, India, known for her work with lepers, AIDS patients, and people who park in handicapped spaces. But what was she doing here?
Greyface strode up to her, squared his jaw, hitched up his .44 magnum, played with his beard, tugged at his right earring and said “See here, madam. While we are honored, nonplussed, and peregrinated at your presence, I must ask you to kas-pplb blap plahh. . . .”
He, too, had gotten the old holy water in the kazoo treatment.
Dingo JuJu came to the rescue. “Mother Charisma, I am honored to splut blechhh pootooey. . . .”
Old Mother C was three for three. She smiled beatifically and whacked Greyface in the cojones with her cane.
“I am here to bring peace,” she said beatifically. “It has come to my attention that there is even as I speak going on a convocation of Satanists going on here, those who would mock Our Lord.”
“No way, dudette,” said Greysox, with so much conviction (or at least a couple of indictments) that Mother Charisma was at once convinced of the unforked nature of his furry tongue.
“But how can this be,” she wailed beatifically. “I was told this by an emissary of His Selfimportantness, the Holy Poop of Schroom.”
“Hey lady, you can’t believe all the poop you hear,” riposted Greysox.
“You mean I’m not among a den of nasties,” she asked disappointedly.
“‘Fraid not,” said Greyface, having wrung the holy water out of his beard. “Now let me be straight with you. I am no Christian. Fundies have threatened me and harassed my clients, not to mention all my kinsmen wiped out, tortured, or brainwashed by missionaries. However, I want to say that, number one, some of my best friends are. . . no, never mind, NONE of my friends are Christians. But regarding the Nazz himself, he is a cool dude in my book.”
“I, too, respect the supremacy of the Master,” said Dingo JuJu.
“You mean our Master, Jesus of Nazareth?”
“More or less. . . .To be specific, I mean Michael of Nabadon, who incarnated as Yeshua bar Joseph, known to some as Jesus Christ.”
I have no idea how she did it, but Mother C managed to look both beatific and chagrined at the same time. Smiting her forehead with her tiny fist, she exclaimed “Oy vey maria!”
“See, it’s like this, mumsy,” Greysox chimed in. “What we got here is a bunch of more or less spiritual-minded people, folks who like to heal, and wake up the machine, and chop wood and carry water, and all that good stuff. Some of us might be called pagans, some animists, some gnostic Christians, some wiccans, whatever.
“We try to be more interested in the food than what’s printed on the menu, you dig? We’re collectively tired of arguing over maps and never getting to see any of the territory. We are, perhaps, united in our desire to obtain spiritual perfection. But not by singing ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’ We wish to experience Spirit by and for ourselves, to transcend fear and manifest unconditional love. We do not think we are God, or even little gods, but human beings who each carry within ourselves a bit of god, which some of us call the Tao.
“None of us has, I think, any quarrel with you or anyone else as long as you stay out of our faces. So you can either stay here and share our love, and teach, and maybe even learn something, or you can get behind my Hummer and suck on the tailpipe!”
Mother Charisma looked totally dumbfounded and abashed while the Denial Center gang burst into a chorus of “Yes! Yes!” and Greyface got misty as he realized that his evil twin was not a total asshole and creep after all, and Melody and Naomi realized that Josephine had not become irretrievably deranged after all (and Josephine was not a little relieved to realize it herself), and the other cookout people realized that they had already gotten their money’s worth and the thigng wasn’t over yet, and Dingo JuJu missed half of it, havong ducked out for ice cream.
Beatific, indeed, I thought. Beatific! The world needs more tifics!
Having come mostly back to earth, Namoi said quietly,”You know, this might just solve that huge problem that the Sorority of the Sows was dealing with when we called you. Remember the Witch Wars?–all the pagans and New Agers and some of the other most enlightened beings on this poor planet at each others throats, because they could not agree what to put on the menu while they were all eating the same food.
“All we have to do to defeat our enemy is to love him, and then he is no longer our enemy.”
Comments (1)
Yeah, I see what you meant about getting misty as you read this again after all these years. Some inspired writing there, Grey Socks… er, I mean Grayface… uhhhh… just who are you anyway, Jim?