Caliban's Saga Chapter 1 Sir Greenwald and the Orange Man Ruse I learned years ago that all of human wisdom reverberates constantly in some old song lyric or another, weaving magic webs of spells in our hearts, to try to bind us to the our long and painfully earned legacy of human wisdom. At one point in my life, (many years ago), long before In grew into this strange creature Caliban, I foolishly tried to 'preach' through juke boxes, in many a saloon, among many desperate sad revelers, from many walks of life, in many places, in many cities and towns. It didn't seem to work so well. Most folks, I think, just thought I was 'crazy'. (Yea...Well...Maybe they had a point. LOL). I carried two books into those saloons. I didn't read them there, or from them. I only carried them, as a kind of conceit, I suppose, to mark me out, like Caesar wore his scarlet flowing cape to mark himself out in action on the field. I kept the feather the Crow had given me, (I'll tell that story another time), in an old King James Bible I had found in an abandoned 'crack house', across the border, on the side of town where all my Black friends lived, on Kansas City's poor Black side of town. I carried that Bible, (and another book), curled in one arm at my side, as I dropped quarters into so many juke boxes, always preaching through the music, always hoping others would hear the message in the songs that I heard. In Westport, Missouri, (now a neighborhood of Kansas City, but once an outpost town, miles from old KC, which was itself back then no more than a small trading outpost on the mighty, swift-flowing, deep and wide, Muddy Mo, the Missouri River), in the very self-same building that once housed a general store where covered wagons setting out on the Oregon Trail once provisioned, loading up sacks of flour and beans, on floors where old Jim Bridger himself had walked and spat tobacco juice, (his aim for the spittoons hampered by the good beer), and where runaway slaves were once hidden in the basement, beneath my feet, beneath the same dirty black pine planks on which ole Jim had walked and spat, as those brave and frightened people rode the Underground 'Freedom' Railroad; on those same dirty black pine planks, in a corner that afforded just a little space from the crush of sweaty throbbing young bodies, right beside an exit, (where I felt safe), there was a good jukebox, lot's of GREAT songs, with a picture of a brave malt liquor bull on its front. That stout brave bull became my brother. I called him "Tauruus", and he shared his courage when I touched his neck, as I stood and so stupidly tried to 'preach' through my cherished songs. "O yes, I'm the Great Pretender. Too real when I feel what my heart can't conceal. I'm wearing my heart like a crown".  One day a foolish young bartender threw me out of Kelly's Westport Inn, telling me to never come back. Young stupid bull I was. Not NEAR yet Caliban. Suddenly and unexpectedly 86ed from my most cherished haunt, by a stupid foolish boy I could have laid on the floor with hardly an effort at all. From the modest lowly pulpit where my friend Tauruus and I could commune in spirit, I was siddenly on the sidewalk, in the pleasant warm night air. Not NEAR yet Caliban,I was indeed ENRAGED, (like my brave brute brother, Tauruus, had taught me to be). Well ... A bit of a 'war' ensued. (I should NOT have gotten so angry, but this was some 25-30 years ago, and I was much more foolish then, even if so stupidly brave. I'm still pretty foolish, I hope still brave, but I've tried to learn not to get SO dang ANGRY). Well ... Remember where I got that Bible? Just a few years before all that happened at Kelly's, I had met a man in jail, who became perhaps the most important mentor that ever visited me and taught me. Thaddeus. Thaddeus Bethel. I was still fuming in the aftermath of my arrest at the moment we met. The slamming of my cell door, hard ruthless cold steel on steel, woke Thaddeus up as he slept off last night's no-doubt drunken reveries. "How old are you?", I asked him. I'd never actually known too many older people in such intimate circumstances, other than my parents. He was in his mid-50s that day we met. I was 20 or so years younger. 30 something. Just starting the transition from boyhood to being a man. "I didn't think you looked that old, but I couldn't tell", I said.  "Yea...Black don't crack", he said back with a curiously mirthful smile, his eyes looking into mine quizzically, like intensely purposeful lasers. "Hell...You could be my Dad", I said Thaddeus smiled the broadest brightest smile any man could smile, teeth gleaming white from his full dark brown lips, and his slightly lighter dark chocolate skin. He had Central African features. Broad nose. Full lips. Kind of Sonny Liston types features. He even had that same thin 'stache lining his upper lip. "Man...That's BEAUTIFUL!", he answered. We were friends from that very moment until he died, some 13-15 years laters. Hell...I feel his spirit every damn day. Thaddeus and I are friends still. He was not quite a 'father', not quite an older wiser brother. He was neither and both. He was something I had never known, nor ever would again, (thus far). He took me all around, introducing me into his community, where everyone seemed to know him. "Don't be scared", he told me. "You never got nuthin' t' worry 'bout when you're with me. You come 'round with me, and all the folks will come to know you. Then you go anywhere. You'll never have a problem". He was proud that Harry Truman, while out on his morning 'constitutionals', addressed him by name, when he was a boy shining shoes on the sidewalk ole 'Give 'em Hell' Harry used to walk. Never shined his shoes, Harry walked fast, striding strong. Ole Harry dipped his head just slightly, as he passed by young master Thaddeus, and touched his swagger stick, a cane with a heavy solid brass tip, just slightly to the brim of his mid-western farm gentleman's hat. It waasn't boasting exactly. It was more just a kind of curious pride, that he had actually known Harry Truman, such that they greeted each other frequently by name.  A bad landing as a paratrooper had permanently crippled one ankle. He walked leaning heavily on a cane. (He treasured the better cane I later gave him). He had a harem of women, but was homeless, and sometimes slept in abandoned houses. (When one woman kicked him out, it might take a few days to honey up to another). I saw him maybe once a week or so. I'd find a way to sneak away, but my long suffering wife always seemed to know. That harem social pattern was common in that community. Plainer nerdy women, who had paid attention in school, now had cubicle jobs in some government or low end corporate bureaucracy. They had meager paychecks, and bought or rented meager houses. They were lonely. The men had no jobs. The men cycled through their harems. When things went crossways with the current one, they saw which next one might be free. (The women had 'rotations', too). Three women or so, three changes, might take a year, and then you call and sweet talk the first one again. It might have been the smell of poverty on my clothes that always gave me away when I got back to my 'meat and potatoes' suburban home. Women's noses grow keen when their returns home. For those who don't know, in towns like KC, with many run down old houses comprising much of the 'ghetto' housing, mold is the characteristic smell of poverty. Slumlords are slow to fix leaky roofs. I had maybe sat on a moldy couch or living room chair too long. Or Thaddeus had brought that smell, on his clothes, into my car, as I chauffeured him around town. We went here and there. He introduced me to so many people. We spent so many now cherished afternoons, on into evenings, and sometimes late into the nights, sitting on a front porch, on a glider swing, or a moldy chair, or in a living room, or behind a stone wall, sitting on an abandoned moldy flowered couch, around the corner from Ben's Liquors, drinking beer, passing around a bottle for swigs, smoking, talking, boasting, lying, laughing, as the crickets chirped in season, and the cicadas often sang, clinging to the grass that grew tall on the other side of the wall, searching for mates, singing a hypnotic thrumming rhythm, in the soft background.  Thaddeus was my friend from that moment we had met in jail. He taught me SO much. He tried to make me 'see myself'. He led me toward wisdom, and hoped that I would drink. He sometimes scared me a little. I think he did it on purpose, even teaching a lesson through the very fear he purposefully produced. So many stories I could tell. If I have time, I hope to tell them, but not now. Caliban will save them for another time and place. (Tell me if you were an eagle, you would not fly toward the sweet beauty of this song? Even if you were among the gods on high, could you resist such simple heart-rending beauty?). Anyway.....There I was, on the sidewalk, 86ed from my beloved, revered like a church, (which served cheap beer), Kelly's Westport Inn. Still young and dumb and fulla' cum I was then, but getting a bit grizzled around the edges, the grey beginning to show more, the wrinkles deeper, the prettiest young girls smiling at younger swains, and like the brave beast Tauruus, I raged to sink my horns. I stalked along the high brick east wall of Kelly's, reputed to be THE oldest brick work standing in all of Kansas City. I stalked that public sidewalk claiming it as a free citizen, as MY territory, sucking lugies hard, and spitting them on the wall in raging defiance, daring any of those Kelly boys to come and argue the point. (They didn't. They called guys with guns and badges to argue the point, and a guy's always gonna come out on the short end of that).  Well....My friends from 'across the border' rallied 'round. I didn't even ask 'em. Had nuthin' t' do with me. Westport had long been exclusively white, a 'singles scene' for white middle class youth doing what all young people do, but the border of 'the ghetto' was so close, (maybe two miles?), and suddenly thousands of African Americans jammed Westport, and they soon established themselves there, fortified a beachhead, (to the chagrin of many club owners), and pretty soon some Black folks ran their own clubs. No violence. No rioting. No burning. No looting. They just went and hung out, in a pretty safe place, (with all of them there together), just having a good time, being sensible citizens, flirting, winking, smiling, doing what young humans are biologically compelled to do, sneaking furtive glances, to see if she is doing the same, and you see that you think she is. The wink in a young girl's eye. Glory days. They clogged the sidewalks shoulder to shoulder. Accidental elbow to breast. They did not go in the clubs at first. They didn't spend their money like the prosperous and horny young white singles did. They brought their own. I had NOTHING, nothing whatsoever, to do with all that, of course. I 'promise'. (Cue the batting lashes). I was just a 'crazy old man'. That's what the tall punk bouncer at Kelly's called me, not knowing, with not one clue, that like Caesar before the temple's treasure, it would have been easier, and much quicker, for me to kill him than to waste time threatening the same. I always had this innate power. I never sought it. It was a burden laid on me. I commanded no legions. I commanded no one at ALL. I was just a 'crazy old man' who liked to drink a beer, and listen to some music, trying to have others hear what I heard in the magic of those tunes. I had nothing whatsoever to do with 'the Blacks invading Westport'..... although there WAS a standing "arrest on sight" order issued on me, which the KC Police exercised more than once. (Stubborn and dumb as my brave brother Tuaruus, I was, and the bartender in the basement joint across the way liked me, and liked the Johnny Cash I played on their juke box. I kept to the shadows, as I have always been inclined to do, slinking around Westport, with folks looking at me out of the corners of their eyes, not knowing whether to be afraid, amused, or horrified, or even perhaps relieved. The other book I carried was Durant's 'Caesar and Christ'. I had learned so much from those pages. The thought always haunted me. "Caesar came, with his transcendent wisdom, and we killed him. Then Christ came, with his transcendent love, and we killed him. Who or what comes next? "What terrible beast, its hour come 'round at last, now slouches toward Bethlehem to be born", (apologies to Yeats).   Yea ... Well ... LOL ... My erstwhile preaching was not well received in Westport. I rode a magic carpet, (a 727 I think it was). I was still adventurous then. I walked the streets of Manhattan, from Harlem to the Bowery, and along the waterfront, spreading my juke box preaching there. (singing it out loud). Singing ole Woody's old tune. "Come all of you cowboys, all over this land, and I'll sing you the law of the Ranger's Command". Well, you do attract some attention walking so many miles like that through so many neigborhoods. I met capos and hoods. Some VERY 'serious guys. I had the strategic good sense to simply walk away, to simply not look back, (in respect or fear, the other will never know). Aye, but then I did meet a one-eyed assassin in Washington Square Park. When he stood up as if to greet me, by the statue of Garibaldi, with one eye all gone milky, and the other glaring into mine with calm focused intent, and calm bemused smile, I saw the dagger tucked behind his forearm, to flip, to do the deed quickly. I knew that very instant that he meant to do me harm. (Like Duhhh...LOL). I picked up a bottle and I broke it right there on the asphalt, and crouched, fully prepared, snarling like all beasts do when they prepare to fight for life itself. His one good eye went wide with surprise and fear. He walked away. I threw the jagged point of the bottle's neck into the cultivated dirt of a shrubbery bed, looked up at old Garibaldi, who smiled back his calm smile, so casual on his back foot, inviting his opponent to escape or quickly die, I walked on. I walked on. Brownie McGhee has those Sonny Liston type Central African features, like Thaddeus. "My mind gets worried when my soul (sic) gets thin, I don't know where I'm goin' but I do know where I been. Walk on".  Yea well... I had tried my clumsy brave dumb bull's hand at the preacher game. LOL. Many only thought I was a crazy man. Isn't that what they said about John? He was a preacher too, remember? Did they not say he was crazy? Ahh...but did not Salome, the vengeful step-daughter, not demand his head? One can only wonder what she felt when she had it on a platter?  Yea...Many thought I was 'crazy'. (Many still do). Well ... Maybe they had a point. LOL. The thing is, if I was crazy then, so I am still now. We ALL have burdens we must carry. This one is mine.  I have heard a dire prophecy that I hereby pass on. From where? If I told it, none would believe. Maybe from the Crow who gave me that feather, on that grassy hill in Kansas City, all those years ago. Maybe from the pair of Bald Eagles who are nested somewhere up by North Pond, and come to visit me, to say hello, flying low over my head, as low as the tops of the trees, looking as large as airborne wolves, their heads cocking first one way, and then the other, as they regard me first with one sharply focused eye, and then with the other. It is the music that draws them. Other than the magic in the music, from on high, even with their high resolution vision, I'm just another human in a white Jeep. They somehow seem to feel and know the 'preaching' in this music. When I hold up an open palm in greeting, they rock their wings in reply, then make a turn for another close pass, to study me from the other direction, with the other sharply focused eye. Such do the mysteries of these ancient waters near my home amuse old Caliban, as I sit and listen to my cherished music, weeping over its wisdom, in my 'spot', on the shore of South Pond. 'Quabog' Pond is the indigenous name for North Pond. The Quabogs were a large clan of the Nimpuc, who once claimed this territory where Bent Birch Farm now provides an old man the solace of home fires burning. The word is an abbreviation of m'squ'boag meaning "bloody pond", or just "red pond". Mystery always surrounds us. Unseen spirits smile at us as we move about so blissfully, or so clouded in misery, or just so foolishly, and aimlessly, unaware. What events happened on the shores of Quabog that lent these waters that name? 'Quacumquasit' is the native name for South Pond, on whose shores I like to sit, revisiting so much human wisdom in all that cherished song. Quacumquasit was a great and wise chief of the Nimpuc. So many stories so few of us know. The terrain around these ponds provided haven for those Nimpuc clans. Bad blood inevitably arose, as it always would and will between human clans and tribes, over disputed territory. The local English settlers planned a raid, but the Nimpuc knew the terrain so much better, and laid an ambush, and there was a great slaughter, and English blood nurtured the grassy fields that I now look upon so pleasantly as I revel in all the ancient sung wisdom in my music. It's 'universal' wisdom. The eagles enjoy it. The spirits gather round to hear. I'm sure the Nimpuc would have as well. Ole Jim Bridger walked among the Sioux as a friend. He spoke their language. He tried to warn Custer. I have no way to know, but I pray that had I found myself born into this territory, among the Nimpuc, through no choice of my own, (as Bridger had found himself born into where he was), these people would have accepted me as a brother, as many did ole Jim. Spirits do truly still haunt these fields. Few can 'see' them as Caliban does. Any who would make the effort could 'see' them perfectly well. But so few do. Busy with so many things that they foolishly think are more important, so few care to 'see' what Caliban 'sees'. Caliban 'sees' those spirits. Caliban hears these voices echo from wherever it is they dwell. Caliban converses with crows and eagles and other beasts, and Caliban listens intently to hear when spirits speak. And they speak of death foreboding, and they plead with Caliban, reluctant as I am, to carry the mantle of their hopes. And I have heard a dire warning. So many prophets have preached this warning. But its fatal promise has always been so far away. Now it is very close at hand. Our ancestors were able to ignore it, and many yet lived on. But now the time has come. Now we all must choose our fate, and if we choose poorly, our own grandchildren, our own beloved progeny, upon whose foreheads we lay our own kisses, our own beloved flesh and blood, will not live to raise children of their own. THAT is the fatal prophesy that Caliban has heard. List' now when spirits sing to us, or ELSE all ears will be buried in rubble, or burnt to cinders, or drowned in floods, or ground under one another's iron heels. We ALL sense that this is true. But Caliban has heard it from 'the spirits' own mouths. Even they are frightened, for they depend on us. They are not independent beings. That is not their nature. They only can live in human hearts. If all die they will not live on. If all die, there will be only lonely silence. Not even spirits will stir, (and even the eagles in the air love the beautiful Maria). Shall we throw it all away?  I do now warn thee. The spirits themselves have sung me these songs. List' while I sing these songs to you, that I have learned so well. It is a TERRIBLE prophecy that is now so soon upon us, but it need NOT come to pass. The old Papa Caliban, father of daughters, husband and grandfather, with my tired old simian scowl, easy weeping tears, and quick laugh, part wild beast, part spirit, and even part human, my heart weary and torn from a lifetime of seeking and failure, bears a crystal vision of Humanity's Fatal Choice, a vision as clear as ole Gandalf must have seen in Palantir, in Sauron's own evil face, and as Galadriel surely saw her own doom in that fatal Ring of Power. It is a vision as clear and sharply defined as the finest rainbow crystal lens. It is organically whole. It encompasses everything I have learned over a long lifetime. It crosses every line. It erases all divisions. It unifies Humanity into a single 'Family'. It encompasses Race and Gender, and every tribal hatred, every human rivalry. It focuses like an angry vengeful laser on Imperial Lust for wealth and power. This vision is accompanied by a haunting song, more seductive, more powerful, by FAR, than that which the deadly beautiful Sirens sang to Odysseus. It is a vision that is hewn from all the tired centuries, from all the long sad saga of our Human Tragedy. It is a vision of the long sadly drawn out story of war and death, with only the briefest interludes of human happiness, and love, justice, and peace, occasionally interspersed.  Caliban's once-hot loins have cooled, at least enough to 'see' the eternal 'battle of the sexes' from a higher viewpoint. Caliban 'sees' the lonely sadness of compulsive wild bestial lust that burns white hot, commanding us, and then wanes to blue cold iron chill, and then leaves us where we started, lonely again and empty, and longing still, yearning to fill our hearts with true love, yearning to fulfill our deepest biological human mandate, to take our lust and build from it a sacred enduring family, to have and nurture and teach children of our own. It is the beast in us, the wild primitive beast, that knows no conscience. The tiger feels no guilt when it tears into the living lamb, still bleating, and tastes the warm living life blood. The bestial lust that drives all our deadly rivalries, that drives us to even fully embrace evil itself, is a cruel deadly joke, our legacy of Nature's mocking, daring us to rise, daring us to be more, daring us to finally fulfill Humanity's destiny, daring us to be more than mere stinking rutting beasts, daring us to be HUMAN, daring us to seize the legacy of Human Dignity, our legacy of Human Desire brought under the yoke of Reason, not crushed, not broken, but merely agreeing to be ridden, and wanting to take her or his friend for a ride. Ahh ... But how Caliban does 'see' the exalting love between woman and man, (and every natural human variation thereof), that transcends every tragedy with its enduring sacred bond of Sacred Human Family, with the sacred miracle of new life, the awe-striking miracle of new spirits born to love and nurture as our own flesh. Caliban 'sees' the very real threat of death to ALL, the end of all Humanity, even as I 'see' Peace and Justice enticing us, even as I 'see' a happier future for our lonely species, gifted as we are with Reason, burdened with beastly Desire, hurtling through mysterious space on our tiny blue marble, glowing with burgeoning life, and God's hope. (I'm not 'religious', per se. But I do have some sort of weird relationship with the mystery so many of us call "God")  Caliban dreams a dream that the prophets themselves taught me. A dream that so many prophets have dreamed, of a happier future for Humanity. A dream of EVERY child on Earth born into her or his birthright of loving nurture, freely offered the open opportunity that Humankind can easily build from Reason. I have dreamed a fevered happy dream...A dream of men and women, fathers and mothers, strong citizens all, who love ALL children just as they love their OWN. Yea...Dreams are dreams...I have also thrashed for hours in hellish nightmares, seeing the horrors of The End, that for all these tragic 100 Centuries have tortured the sleep of all our human prophets.  Poor lonely old broken down Caliban, under furrowed simian brow, can 'see' it all. But how to get others to 'see'? Who will hear my voice as I cry out, "List' while I sing!"? It is a vision that can save us. It is rooted deep in Human Love. "Love is all you need", the tortured prophet Lennon sang to us so sweetly. "There's no one we can save that can't be saved. It's so easy.". Ahh ... 'Tis true ... How simple, yet how true. And how solitary. Not merely true, but the ONLY truth. Love is ALL we need, and love alone can save us. We all love our families. We all love our friends. As ole Jack said, (he was a 'friend' of mine, he died on the road) "We ALL inhabit this small planet. We ALL breathe the same air. We ALL cherish our children's future. And we are ALL mortal." What wiser words could any mortal human beast possibly speak? It's the exact self-same message that every human prophet has preached for 10,000 years. Well well well. God said fire not the flood next time. We all can surely hear the Demon Nuclear Fire rattling its horrible cage with increasing fury. The seas are rising. Fire and flood BOTH threaten us. Caliban has a vision of horror, and a vision of our release from same. Any day now, one or the other may visit us. Which shall be released? Our Demons? Or our Better Angels, (as ole Abe called them)? Caliban is going 'round taking names. I did not ask to sit upon this horrid 'throne'. I never wanted it. I never expected it. But Caliban has, indeed, unwittingly become the 'king of names'. Evil people have us imprisoned in their unholy grip. Many are starving and dying under their tortures. Teeming millions of our own citizens are these evil people's victims, forced to live their lives in hellish inhuman conditions, in the Colonies of Misery our society intentionally maintains in every large urban area. These people face real danger, there's always some immediate threat to life itself lurking near, any time they go out their doors. Caliban KNOWS their names, the names of those who sit at the controls, hiding, like the wizard behind the curtain, torturing their fellow humans' lives so horribly, with not one infinitesimal trace of human conscience, simply to get richer, to fulfill their greed, to slake their lust for power, to feed their primitive bestial lust itself. I know their names. We ALL know their names. I will not say them aloud here, but I KNOW them. If we must destroy these evil people, then destroy them we will. But remember, and list' well while I sing, (and even the most evil will hear my words), there is another way. What did the prophet SAY? "There is no one we can save that can't be saved". We must save ourselves. We must save our children. We must save each other. We must save Humanity. We must EACH fall in humility and ask for forgiveness. Self-awareness is the ONLY path to the wisdom we must find. NONE are innocent. The time is upon us. ALL must fall in humility, or ALL will die. We must find the love that dwells somewhere in even the most evil human hearts. As we beg forgiveness we must forgive each other. If the most evil ask forgiveness from us, we must comply. But if they do not, we don't have more time to wait. Time has run out. If they do not fall and beg forgiveness, we then will have no choice. We must then, sadly, destroy them, asking for forgiveness even as we do. A brave knight yet rides across the landscape. Caliban was hoping, but I was not sure Sir Greenwald would have it in him. But he has resisted all temptations that he desist to easier paths. He continues to show the honor and dignity that is his well-tempered mettle. Once a brave young lad was he. Now a full grown man, brave and strong and proud, in the full glory of his prime and power, head held high with dignity and courage, seeking out the Dragon. Thus does he yet ride, this braved lad who rides among us, and knowing that this brave knight rides, gives a tired old ape-man sudden new courage, and new energy always follows. Sir Greenwald rides the landscape. Bloodied, but undaunted, and most certainly unbowed.   But the Dragon he dares to approach is a horrible beast, breathing hell's own fire. The Demon rides free, and flies when he chooses, and sends out the Nazgul to do his evil bidding. ********* And thus ends Chapter 1. Sir Greenwald rides. And Caliban's own heart thus grows stronger. But I am an old man. My old brother, Thomas Wolfe, from whom I stole my simian alter ego, (he stole it from Shakespeare), could often write 10,000 words in a single sitting. But he was young. (He died at 38). I am old, and I now grow weary from all these hewn words. The hens must be fed and watered. The eggs gathered, carried in, and washed. The dogs fed. Tomorrow is another day. And if the energy comes, that is when I will sing the song of the brave Sir Greenwald, and of the evil Nazgul, of which in his courageous heart, the brave knight Greenwald has shown no fear. That is all the words I can sing today. Papa Caliban R Zwarich 63 Webber Rd Brookfield, MA 01506 774 449-8030 rzwarich@gmail (etc) This, and subsequent chapters of Caliban's Saga are published into the public domain. Anyone may please feel free to republish them wherever you please. I set my words 'free'. I expect no reward in return, wherever they may fly.   |
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