Nanowrimo - 6

The day is growing becoming a busier, picking up momentum as the sun races to its zenith. I feel the business and moving about of people far and near. I hurriedly pen down some of the last lines that have come to me from my meditation. I’m not sure how to work it in and phrase it for Sunday, just yet.

“People are capable of much greater good than we perform and we each know this. What holds us back is the constant suspicion that we haven’t the energy, time or resources to carry that good out. It’s easier to not try and not to risk being the one with your hand stretched forth. But in holding back our goodness, in withholding our love we only guarantee that we are not fully loved and fail to enjoy goodness.”

The pictures I have to accompany such a statement and build an identification are faded, old, and inappropriate to a gathering such as I see each week. I can’t tell them about a thirty year partnership when they believe they see a woman in her 40’s. What do I talk about? Covered wagons? Living with native Americans? Juvenile delinquency during World War II? It’s a fine line between inspiring the folks and getting laughed off the speaker’s platform. I close the bound book I where I collect meditations and discernments and push it to the corner of my desk. I work at a wooden roll-top desk with lots of little wooden drawers to tuck things into and a warm, aged, wood surface. Eileen has badgered me a few times to get a computer and move in more modern furnishings. She’s told me that I need the internet or a television for news of the day. How can I guide the flock if I don’t know about the economy? Or politics? But I’m not accustomed to using anything that is not written or printed on paper to mediate with the outside world. If ever there was a creature of old habits in this county, it’s me.

What she doesn’t realize is that when one is still enough, you don’t need to know what is happening on the outside to tend what is going on with the inside. All you need is heart. And if I can fill a room in a place like this saying what I have to say, well I’m doing just right.

Absent mindedly my hand reaches out to open one of the many small drawers in front of me. My fingers fumble a bit in the dark box before they find the cold, smooth metal and pull out two gold rings; one small one, the other a bit thicker. I play with them between my fingers, standing them on their sides and rolling them around for a bit before picking up the thicker band and starting to read part of the engraving on the inside, “Gabriel~”. For a minute I clench it into my palm. Why do I play this game with myself? The rings are returned to their hiding place with only a plunking sound to protest being banished to the tiny drawer. I shut it with a slam that hopes to silence an old question floating back to the front of my mind. How is it that mortal men do manage to turn their hearts on and off like a spigot? Their lives are so needlessly short to be wasted on anything that is less than grand. But they do it. They do it often, and with great gusto.

In my guts I suddenly have the sense of a storm coming on. Quickly close and lock the roll top, drop the keys into my pocket and try to breathe deep. It’s the urge to drink switching on like an inner radar homing in on some nearby, viable prey. It pounds in my head until it drums out any other thoughts that might be a lifeline to sanity. My mind is entirely consumed with drinking. The smell of a pierced body, the taste of blood, the rushing, warm sensation of having freshly fed; I want it all. I’m falling. The longer I resist the urge the stronger it grows in those moments when it comes on. The beast awakens in my belly. I had foolishly thought that I had somehow managed to assuage this monster in me, trained it to sit in a corner and play in a coloring book, but it has stolen the steering wheel again and it’s riding loose.

I can feel her coming near, my prey. I can feel the unsuspecting mind full of its own ideas of what they might achieve by passing by this way. I can smell her. I can smell the bacon and eggs with a slice of toast and some coffee that she had for breakfast. These are being taken up as a rich aroma in her blood. Ahhh it’s the smell that does it to me every time. It’s the smell that draws me back to that old, familiar place. It’s the stench of comfort. Just think of how nice it would be to really feed again. My body would instantly heal of at least 20 years of aging. I would be strong and vibrant. I would be light and free. I feel the rage of a thirsty person beholding a mirage of a lake.

Downstairs, I hear footfalls on my porch, the clop – clop of shoes on wood and that last step dragged a bit as the walker reaches up for the…

“RING!” Doorbell.

Go down and see, just go down and take a look. It can’t hurt to take a look. My feet have a mind of their own and head for the stairs with alacrity. With a twinge like a pin prick, the teeth start coming down. The voice of reason insisting that this is foolish, that I should stay put upstairs until the knocker goes away, that I had a very good reason for not drinking, has become infinitely small. I can barely hear that person, that sane self, in the wild, loud rush of glee pulling me toward the front door. I’m feverish. My hands are shaking with greedy excitement as I reach for the door and yank it open.

“Good morning ma’am!” There stands a small round woman, plain clothed and even plainer in appearance, holding out a copy of “The Watch Tower”. A Jehovah’s Witness!! No doubt she’s canvassing a long way from her home. And NO ONE will ever miss one of these! It’s like ordering in pizza for vampires!

I swing the door wide and hold my arm out, bidding her to enter. “Welcome to my parlor!” I announce. “Said the spider to the fly” I think to myself.

“Oh! Why thank you! But I can stay right here if that’s ok, ma’am. We’re not supposed to go inside people’s houses.” In her simple, flat little Midwestern accent she launches into the prescribed monologue designed to convert my soul. I’m just reaching out to grab her and yank her through the door when over her shoulder I spot Eileen walking purposefully down my driveway. She’s on-time for once. DAMN! My teeth retract with a yank. A sudden cold fills me like my intestines have just been blasted with a fire hose. The urge makes a speady retreat. The urge, once trained, is very good at making sure one does not get caught in the act.

“I’m sorry, I have to interrupt you.” I say, raising a hand to stop the sermon. “My assistant is here and we have much work to do.” Bacon and eggs looks very disappointed.

“Why ma’am I could talk to both you and your friend if you don’t mind.”

“NO! No, we have private business to discuss.” And then some voice uses my mouth to say “But come back next week.”

Eileen gives the woman a lecture and shoos her off my stoop before slamming the door in bacon’s face. “Why on earth would you talk to one of them! Were you looking for advice or something?” She’s incredulous. I wonder, sometimes, if she ever hears a word I say on Sunday.

“God expresses equally on all paths. Mine is not to judge. You know, no belief system is more right than any other. I was just trying to honor her path…” into my stomach.

“They believe that they’re living in the end times and in all that salvation mumbo jumbo!”

“They also don’t believe in Hell and are pacifists. They’ve been conscientious objectors in wars all over the world, much to their detriment I might add, and believe in civil liberties for all.”

“Now you’re reaching. That little piggy didn’t believe in your civil liberties. She thought that her way is the right way and that you are wrong. Plain and simple.”

“Kind of the way you’re thinking now? It’s a new religion in the grand scheme of things. Give them time.”

“We’re a new religion, too and we don’t run around…”

I have to stop her right there. “We are NOT a religion! We are not a monument to something that some prophet or holy man said or did X amount of years ago! We are a movement! For growth! For exploration! Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Ok! Ok! Jees!”

And besides, I think, Miss Bacon & Eggs be back again next week. Hopefully without interruption.

“But I still say,” she just has to get in the last word, “that she would have you and our whole gathering destroyed. That woman doesn’t come to have one of your intellectual discussions!”

Good, then she won’t mind when I have her for brunch.

I’m disgusted that I’ve entertained such thoughts this long. Where are these ideas and voices coming from? This is not the person I’ve been trying to cultivate. Perhaps if I just wait it will settle down again and go away. I will smother it again with reminders of why it must not be fed.

Astonishingly, it is not out of a desire to not commit murder. I have a yard full of chickens one of whom routinely finds its way to the chopping block so that the minister can take some food to a shut in or have folks over for Sunday dinner. One animal dying is no less a death than any other. So one beast clucks and pecks for worms while the other speaks in sentences and has an opposable thumb. So what. All nutrition is some polite form of murder and I’ve always been quite polite to my meals.

I do wonder how many years of not feeding, of pushing against the urge and suppressing hunger it will take before my body dies and I can be done with this life.

“That’s SO pathetic!”

The comment makes me jump and I look at Eileen, “what do you mean? Why the devil did you say that?”

She just looks back at me and shakes her head. “Didn’t say nothing.”

“You said ‘that’s pathetic’. What did you mean?”

“I didn’t say anything. Although it is pathetic that you don’t have a coffee maker or a radio. Why do you have to do everything so old fashioned?”

“Oh, hm. It just seems simpler to me.” She grumps on about the hassles of cooking a proper coffee on my stove. Who said that? That wasn’t in my head. Where did that come from?

Is he back?