INTO MYTH

 Just before I turn in, I look at my autographed, OLD ABE, CIVIL WAR MASCOT. on my entertainment center

https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Old-Abe-Legends-Folktales/dp/1585362328/

Wondering how long I will be able to stay in my apartment in this uncertain time.

And I recall a tale I told of another uncertain time:

Actual photograph of OLD ABE 

(in public domain)

INTO MYTH



It was April 21^st 1865.

Ahgamahwegezhig looked at me huddled behind the mound of rubble.  He had been my father's best Ojibwe student.

I called him Chief Sky because every time I tried to pronounce his Ojibwe name, I sounded like I was a cat heaving up a furball.

He grunted, 

“They also serve who only stand and wait, 

but the pay is shit.”

He, Corporal Danvers, and I were all that was left of the Wisconsin 8^th Infantry.

Well, there was Old Abe, the eagle mascot, of the company.  Captain Perkins named him after the President.

Who am I? 

 I’m Lt. Jim McGinnis, the last of a long line of teachers, and the idiot who volunteered to take care of Old Abe.

In August 1861, John C. Perkins, assisted by Seth Pierce, Frank McGuire, and Victor Wolf recruited a company of volunteers 

from Eau Claire and Chippewa Counties.

This company was called 

the "Eau Claire Badgers.”

Chief Sky had come along to make war on whites and because Old Abe belonged to him.  

Why didn’t he take care of Old Abe? 

The eagle liked to ride on my leather-shod shoulder.

And his talons hurt like hell.

On March 25^th, the Claywater Meteorite

exploded over the area. 

At least, folks thought it had exploded. 

 

Then, the huge Tripods started walking about, killing everything living in their paths. 

The remnants of the Eau Claire Badgers were called back from Mansura, Louisiana to help fight 

the Star Fallers.

We didn’t fare too well.  But then, I had taken an oath.  

I meant to live up to it.

And to repay the debt of the dead … with interest.

I peeked over the mound.  The giant Tripod was still too close even though it was clanking along to the east.

Danvers licked his dry lips.  

“Lieutenant, we got to get us some water soon.  We’ve been three days without it.”

I said low, “If I were a creek, where would I be?”

Chief Sky looked at me.  

“If I were a creek, I would be 

where the ground slopes.”

“Riiiight.”  

Sometimes it was good to have an Indian scout.

Old Abe was where I told him to go.  Up high in that cottonwood.  The tripod finally noticed him and swiveled slowly, its turret aiming at him.

From the bloody past, we had learned those Star-Fallers took three seconds to blow something apart. 

Up until then, they had some sort of invisible barrier around them.  I raised my already loaded Sharpes rifle.

The smooth, steady movement of my arms raised a shiver of panic in the rational man whose advice I was ignoring.

I aimed down that turret’s barrel, counted to two, and fired.

All of us flew to the ground, even Old Abe.

Bits of smoking metal rained down all around us.  

They were sizzling hot.  

Old Abe squawked as he flew down beside me. 

Chief Sky wasn’t any happier with me.

“Just like a white man to kill himself along with his enemy.”

“We’re still alive,” I said.

“Not for much longer if you follow this way of attack.”

Danvers ran his fingers through his red hair.  

“We ain’t gonna make it home, are we, sir?”

I said low, “There’s still a chance.  We’ll get there.”

Danvers looked to Chief Sky.  “What do you think?”

The last of the Ojibwe shrugged his shoulders and smiled crooked at me. 

 “As your trusted Indian scout, I must warn you that you are now on very thin ice.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“Hope.  You will starve to death 

if you insist on living on it.”

Danvers looked on his last nerve.  I glared at Chief Sky who flicked flat black eyes at the Corporal.  

He grunted a laugh.

“I will tell you a secret, Danvers.”

“What?” the Corporal asked, his voice sounding like a too-stretched skin on a drum.

“I believe that the heart is stronger than knowledge. 

That myth wins over history. 

That dreams beat facts.

That hope triumphs over experience. 

That laughter is the only cure for grief. 

And I believe that love is stronger than death.”

I sometimes forgot about how spiritual 

Chief Sky was. 

I had been raised as a Methodist where the highest sacrament was the bake sale.

He turned amused eyes to me.  

“I would also say the depths of the lieutenant’s stupidity have yet to be plumbed,

and ours is coming up fast for we follow him.”

Danvers made a face.  

“I was feeling better until that last.”

Chief Sky smiled like a wolf.  “Come, Danvers.  

As Eagle Walker says: 

‘We have oaths to keep and debts to repay.’”

And so with Old Abe flying overhead, 

did the last of the "Eau Claire Badgers”

 walk into myth.

TRAGEDY HAS STRUCK ... FOR WHAT IS THERE TO BE THANKFUL?

 

Life is laced with the fault-lines of unpredictability. 

At the drop of a hat, disaster can strike. 

Everyone encounters death, heartbreak, devastating illnesses, job instability, and financial crisis. 

Perhaps it’s a personal situation that arises and then knocks you down. 

Maybe it’s the stress of your job that keeps you up too late at night.

Maybe it is the loss of that job to a company that has grown callous. 

Whatever it may be, we all experience the whirlwind of unpredictability at times.

I will not give you the litany of my own griefs.  

When your heart has been cut out of you, someone counting off their own woes is just salt in an open wound.

But when it happens to you, you may feel:

            Consumed
            Shattered
            Lost
            A Total Mess 
            Devastated
            Like a Failure
 
And when our lives feel like they are spinning out of control, 

it’s not always easy to think of what may be secretly waiting for us on the other side of our Valley of the Shadow. 
 

It’s difficult to feel hope or see the bigger picture.

At those times some talk of the Silence of Heaven ... as if.

 

Pain never whispers or is silent.  

It shouts.  

And sometimes what we think of as a Silence to our pleas to Heaven is but a silent nod 

that there are Paths of Blood we must walk to go where ...


We learn the lessons we would learn no other way.

We teach those lessons to those who observe how we respond to what they will later encounter themselves.

We have hurtful walls we have erected around our hearts demolished by pain, anguish, doubt, and despair. 

We learn humility in an area where we thought we were healthy ... but were anything but.

 

Prosperity is a window to a bright world.  

Tragedy is a mirror showing us who we really are.

What we have lost, we have lost.  

What we gain from the tragedy is up to us and our responses to the pain we wish would just go away.

No matter how tough you are, it is very easy to feel vulnerable, confused, or lost.

When things go terribly wrong, 

it is hard to feel anything but the chains of grief on your shoulders with no prison bars between which you can see the light of day.

REMEMBER:

1.) EVERYTHING HAPPENS TO US  FOR A REASON

I do not mean this as a cliche.  

It happens for the reason we assign it in our thoughts.  

In my World View, we are never alone.  

We have the Father guiding us down needful, and sometimes bloody, paths.

But that may not be your take on Life.

 Still, it is up to you to make what has happened in your life empowering or dis-empowering.  

Your thoughts can either help you or hinder you further.  

Your thoughts can either fan the flames of courage 

or stamp down whatever embers of it still remain.  

Your mind, your choice.

 

2.) PAIN IS INEVITABLE; SUFFERING IS OPTIONAL

No season lasts forever ... not uplifting spring nor bitter winter.

Focus on pain and your concentration acts as a prism increasing its flames.  

Focus on a task outside of yourself no matter how simple, and the pain ebbs a bit.

There are always others worse off: focus on some small way to help them.  

Not up to helping out at a food kitchen? Phone for donations to it or another good charity. 

Your tragedy is not your whole story:

 try to make this but a small chapter of your story, headed to a healing ending.

3.) "IS" -- THE ONLY VERB YOU LIVE

This one moment is all you have.  

Is it full of pain?  

Each throb of pain is but a link in the bicycle chain of your life bringing you to healing -- 

if not of your body, then of your heart.

Are you still breathing? Of course you are. 

Then, great, you’ve just handled that moment. 

Are you ready for the next one that will bring you one step closer to engaging in your life again?

I do not have all the questions, much less all the answers to them.  

I merely hope that this has helped in some small way not to make the very thought of "Thanksgiving" a mockery.

 All of you are in my thoughts and prayers.  Roland

FALLEN WORLD, BROKEN SOULS

 

FALLEN WORLD, BROKEN SOULS

“If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes.”

 – Helen Mayfair

 

I frowned. “I am unfamiliar with this street, Sister Ameal.”

She grimaced, “That is because this street can be found only at night. It is Rue la Mort … where Meilori’s is located.”

“Is that where we are going?”

Mrs. Adams shook her head. “No, McCord has closed his jazz club for the duration of this world conflict.”

I frowned again. “The movie and radio mogul?”

She huffed, “That One is many things, chief of which is hated by me.”

Sister Ameal smiled thin as a paper cut. “Then, he must be doing something right.”

“Not in my ledger.”

Sister Ameal raised an eyebrow. “Your accounts are notoriously … in the red.”

Mrs. Adams arched her back. “How low brow of you.”

The nun retorted, “Speaks a low brow herself.”

“What nonsense are you spewing?”

“One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, 

ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.”

“Coming from a former paid assassin that is rich.”

“True, I killed for a price, but I never deluded myself or others into thinking I was doing it for the ‘greater good’ … which is merely a synonym for self-interest.”

I shushed both of them. “Hush. You are ruining a perfectly good girls’ night out.”

Mrs. Adams curled her perfect lips.

 “When I could rightly have been called a ‘girl,’ the term had not yet been coined.”

Sister Ameal bristled. 

“We are not out for an evening’s entertainment, Seraph. We are in search of an abomination to put it down.”

Madame President growled, “Over my undead body.”

“That could happily be arranged.”

In an attempt to forestall violence, I asked, “So where are you taking us, Sister?”

“Club Oblivion.”

Adams shook her head. “I have never heard of it.”

“It just opened up. My Nightcrawlers recently told me of it.”

“Nightcrawlers?” Adams made a face.

“Sherlock Holmes had his Baker Street Irregulars. I have my French Quarter Nightcrawlers.”

I sighed, my hopes of a colorful outing dashed. 

“Will the customers of this club tell us the whereabouts of this missing child-revenant, do you think?”

Sister Ameal snorted, 

“In Hell, you would be foolish to count on people displaying high standards of honesty. The same goes for those destined for that locale.”

It was my turn to make a face.

“If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves. 

Perhaps, there are a few souls in this club who have, as yet, not mutilated their better selves.”

“Then, they would not be in such a place as to where we are headed, Seraph."

And with those words we were standing in front of the lace-iron gates of the very place. 

Gleaming gold letters were etched over the fanged gate:

“Damned be the dark ends of the earth where old horrors live again.”

"Charming," said Mrs. Adams in a droll, making of the word three syllables.

I looked at the stone steps leading down and past the open gate. I grimaced.

‘Here the earth devours itself,’ I told myself. 

I didn't imagine a fissure at the bottom of the steps, I imagined a mouth. I deluded myself.

There were many mouths.

I started to go down the stairs when, knowing better than to physically touch one such as I, Sister Ameal held up a single palm.

“Hold.”

I stopped and turned to her as she whispered, “You do not think of yourself as arrogant and naïve, but you are.”

“Do tell me.”

As Mrs. Adams watched bemused, the nun did just that.

 “Your nature made you faster, stronger, smarter than any assailant enemies of your step-father set against you.”

I nodded. “I have taken no pleasure in taking those lives.”

Sister Ameal shook her head. 

“Such will not be the case with those you face down there. They take much pleasure in the agonies they inflict upon their victims.”

She breathed in deep, though I knew that, like the revenant beside me, she did not need to breathe to live … for she only appeared human.

“They have had centuries to perfect forms of martial arts I have, as yet, even had an opportunity to instruct you.”

She glared at the revenant queen. 

“This one had a twofold plan in approaching you tonight: one you know – to retrieve her pet. The other was to lure you here to your death, removing a threat to herself.”

I nodded. “I deduced as much.”

Adams frowned, “Then, why did you come?”

I sighed, “All around me see what they expect to see, while I see ... so many things.”

I reached out to touch her arm but pulled back as she flinched. “I see your soul.”

“Wh-What?”

“It still exists deep within you, though calling it ‘alive’ would not be quite true. I see it quivering, dew drops of blood glistening along the many mortal wounds you have inflicted upon it.”

I cocked my head towards Sister Ameal. 

“I will not reveal the existential loneliness of a cosmic creature that I view within you to our common enemy here.”

Her thin lips curled. “I believe you just have.”

I shook my head.

 “She knows the tip of the iceberg but not the majestic immensity that lies beneath.”

I drew myself up slowly. 

“As for myself, I am not the naïve doe you imagine me to be. I am … Other.”

I fought a shiver. 

“None like me no matter what that Scaramouche Darael believes. 

No other of my kind was created as a babe to grow as mortals grow in stature and awareness … away from the glories of the Gateless Realm.”

I lost to the shiver. 

“Even now, I grow. I now hear the death-bleats from the tortured soul waiting at the foot of these steps. It protests what its diseased host intends upon inflicting on me.”

I prepared myself to race down these cracked steps when I remembered the kind voice of Richard, who unknowingly spoke healing balm to my darkness. 

He had thought me but merely depressed, not contemplating suicide those day past.

“There are flecks of gold in the gravel of each moment, Miss Mayfair, if you but look close enough. 

Take that moment, be in that moment, live in that moment … not beyond that moment. It won’t be much, mind you. 

But it may prove enough to go onto the next one with a lighter step.”

With a restored sense of peace, I started down the steps. Mrs. Adams placed a restraining hand on my arm.

“Do not. That travesty I would ensnare again is not worth it. I … am not worth it.”

I smiled sadly. “But you are … now. See? You did not burst into flames at my touch.”

She hushed in a breath. “How?”

“You unselfishly thought of another over your own well-being.”

I withdrew a glistening rose from beneath my cloak. “From the lushness of Eden. Take it. You will not suffer from its touch.”

I watched her gingerly take it, not caring if I lied.

“Keep it high upon a wall in your bedchambers, Mrs. Adams. Mayhap its fragrance will remind you that your soul still lives … 

still fights to remain true to the love you once shared with your husband.”

Abigail Adams hunched over and walked slowly into the utter darkness.

I heard her whisper. “Gently are you revenged against me, Seraph.”

Sister Ameal frowned as I turned to go. “We are not going into Club Oblivion?”

“No need. I see that in those environs, the poor thing begins to age. Even now, she appears a teenager. Oh, I misspoke: she has crumbled into dust.”

I smiled of salt. “Sometimes, it is a fearsome thing to gain that for which we wish.”

I saw a flash of what lay in store for Richard … and myself and knew what I said to be true.

“Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires.”