The Parson Speaks: In a Crepe For a Nightshade

     I had a nest egg so I started getting enlightened.  In pursuit of this goal, I found myself at Crab Park.  I was in a field of nut trees and crabgrass bounded by a ring of hemlock on the city's northwest side all amid chirping of some feisty blue jays (I believe someone must have been feeding them). I had driven myself there carefully in the morning mist in early May 2008 to meet the guru of an old forgotten friend, Frater Tom, who had found enlightenment in this very park.

     Frater Tom offered to share his gift with me (even though I am a freelance woman) with an introduction to his guide Parson Penistone. The Parson and I arranged to meet over a period of 3 months, finally we were able to make time in our busy schedules to arrive at an appointment. As that time arrived, I couldn’t help feel nervous and excited all at the same time. The wind picked up a little.

     Parson Penistone, a European-extracted 84, has a shallow face and piercing eyes jutting from sharpened cheekbones with the fierce pursed lips of a cattle driver who hates nomadic peoples. His suit, gray and tattered slightly around the edges made him seem that morning like he was here to be a civilian in a Civil War reenactment. His suit flaps and threads flew with the wind. When the old man spoke, his face turned red and his hat blew off.

     "If I said that this poor devil died on the cross, did not come back, passed on as any other man, I believe it gives him too much credit. He very likely never existed at all, was created by illiterate demagogues in the first century, probably much later. As if those that far back could tell us anything it all, it boggles the mind to think anyone would be consulting these people about what to do in America in this age. This is the pepper that eats!"

     “What about the argument,” I began, jumping right into it, thinking a master wants his students, even his female students, to be bold from the word go, “posed by scholars, that Yehoshua must have been a living person in Palestine at the time because the people who told the tale had to make him born in Bethlehem for his story to fit the prophecy? So if they just made him up out of thin air, he would not have been made to be from Nazareth. The entire Roman census cannot be corroborated outside the new testament. A story that was written down between 25 and 89 years after it happened must have evolved as other oral traditions are known to change with the times. In other words, if this anti-Roman Palestinian revolutionary was just made up from thin air, the imagination of an un-reviewed not to mention lazy author, why would biblical scribes have to make him be from Nazareth at all? Most scholars of the history of the time posit that the reason for the discrepancy is that the stories were based on a real person, who was from Nazareth, so they had to stick him born in Bethlehem to make their agenda-laden prophecies line up like ducks in a row. How can you answer that theory?”

     Parson Penistone ignored every word I said rolled up a pant leg and began scratching his knee furiously.

     “Ants,” he said then sat on the floor of the park and bowed his head in apparent disappointment.

     The fear of man drove the blue jays to the wind for now, still the sparrows entered the scene one by careful one, close to the trees. Next came the wave of doves, dropping in as big as pigeons, like Nazis with white wings as they drove away competition by shear fatness combined sharply with unconscious, micro-aggressive conflict.

     Parson Penistone waved a hot pepper in the air. While I pondered a list of obvious questions to ask in response to his previous statement, a careful blue jay perched in a nearby oak issued the call to arms and her family answered in rigid chirps:

     "Okay, we understand now is the time to be careful because the tall monsters are in our midst", they said but to me it sounded like more chirp-informed whistling.

     "What are you saying, that God doesn’t exist?" I asked, ever-ready to turn around and run away but fast.

     "No. I am saying that hero stories are often fabricated to give the populace something to dream about while they do the shoveling of their own graves. It is a monetized mirage of thought. In fact, the word Messiah is actually a gerund."

     One dove looked up, freezing its wing in the upward position.  Suddenly, the tight pack of six dozen doves all stopped and waited. The reason they paused on alert was not obvious. Everything was forgotten next with the thundering echo. The roaring exit left an impression on the squirrel, who furiously dashed up the tree to her lookout branch. Turning around, she watched with terror the long hairless faces of doom. Rank-and-file birds filled the trees, to wait for a safe re-entry.

     "You are saying that religion is a ‘perfected’ system,” I ran on, “and I mean too ‘perfected’, with a narcissistic answer for everything (they don’t care if they are right so long as they convince you they are), whenever they do not have an answer, they say, faith, look to faith and mysterious motives, that when people believe in it from an early age they have a hard time rejecting it because they have invested so much already, sacrificed their lives for this nothing, the long con… Further, imagine if someone spends their life converting other people to this nowhere cult. They can’t just up and turn against it, even though they must know it is all fake," I said, trailing off. Penistone finished for me.

     "That church is congruent with the lowest circus, an entertainment spectacle without substance, a drawing den to wet the mouth, from the public for ecumenical vampires to suck from, zombies, all of them, all of their society nothing but lies from Buddha to Peter Paul."

     Now a redbird lit the scene, quickly chased off a woodpecker, and finally secured in her beak a whole peanut while a camouflaged family of rock doves, as hidden as the sparrows, put away their millet in calculated craning pecks.

     "That is a strike upon the very foundations of religion! Are you prepared for lightning bolts yet?" I asked, taking a step from the deranged parson.

     "I've seen a few come close. Anyway, the burning bush was nothing more than a lying man with a bong on the other side. That lecherous old man smoked it, chiseled on some stones, came upon a dry river bed and told everyone he split it. All of lying sums up to this: an old story told a different way by people who know why the story is told in that particular way the same way we know parody of our own time without being told: it is in the subtext. They do it to guard their secrets. That was then, might have been okay, who am I to judge that far back? Now, they cannot be trusted anymore," said the Parson.

     "Who are they?" I asked.

     The squirrel, now across the expanse carried on flicking and turning in beats, buried an acorn and carefully patted it down with his hands. A bee nearby swooped onto a sunflower.

     "You bumbling sophist!" said the Parson stomping his foot, "if I did indeed know who they were, I would not tell you for fear that you might be one of them and the punishment for knowing who they are must be depravity on a very high scale. I know this because they are so secretive even I am unaware who they are."

     "I am not one of them," I confessed.

     "Then," said Parson Penistone, "you’re a woman, how do you know?"

     "I’ve never been one," I said.

     "One what?" the Parson asked, then answered himself, "One of the hidden fiends that know everything and keep it from us? One of the secret friends that keep a diary with everything you do written there and if you step one foot over the arbitrary line, or if they one day move that line arbitrarily, all the same, they come stalking for to kill you anytime and anywhere they feel the desire to throw you in slave prison? Indeed, they are one of those chosen birthright dodgers that cannot see or hear the world at all. The dead men, I call them. The ones who ruin innocent lives. Ha ha ha on them if their crimes were not sky-high. It is my turn to mock! If you were one of them, I believe I would sense your crime, and believe me, you’d have been dead from the word go."

     "I never said go," I said, swatting a fly in my vicinity, while a frustrated blue jay issued shrieks of protest as it watched a companion take off packing two peanuts at a time.

     "You never will, with that attitude," said the Parson, now the unflinching host of a generous gathering of curious flies jubilantly exploring the surface of his shrugged face, "listen up my student, one day, we will be free from this yoke and web of sickness that bites away every piece of your life. Come together over me comb. A biblical draft of hell here on earth is all they seek. This culture is psychopathic fuel! We are chess pieces, and they have billions. Why should they care if they lose a few million? Even a billion of us are as expendable as church bells. They know there’s nothing to impede the death march because if there were something else, above or below, they just assume they would know it. They assume to know everything. Everything there is to know. Everything that matters, everything that is important."

     "Plus, it’s a total piece of everything, and the combination is different than the components comprising, it feeds on itself, offers perpetual motion for a wink of space time. This knowledge is nothing at all to them, everything to them, and just in between nothing and everything, mundane, obvious, ubiquitous ether surrounding without a second thought. But to the common fray, it is invisible entirely.

Our prison guards are like a regiment that knows exactly what the enemy is planning to do next. They are like a price monger that studies the human frailties of empathic consumers to gain a market advantage. They are like a politician who knows what the opponent is going to say because he is bugging phones at campaign headquarters, or worse, because the two candidates got together and are working from a script. They rigged life, ruined it for everyone, and now, we have to kill them all."

     "Sir," I began, "I beg... I must protest. This tirade of yours is positively unorthodox! Not to mention, terribly illegal these days. I get what you are saying, but please, do be careful, I… this is a family park."

     "Family, yes. I’ve heard it all before. Atheist, heretic, blasphemer, tax evader, deadbeat, criminal, conspirator, pathetic man who roams Crab Park. Look, I’m in no mind to split hairs. Doctors have declared me dead. I’ve got special things on my mind for a zombie. Of course, the lying cheater thieves slander me, scapegoat my name. They reneged on the social contract. They have deceived the masses, but at what cost? The absolute end of all civilization, perhaps? Is that it?"

     "I think you’ve gone mad," I said, "You are saying that my bank account does not exist and that renders my bankcard by extension utterly worthless? I hear of a hospital just for people in your condition. I believe they accept Medicaid, but you will have to ask at the desk..."

     "Maybe I am insane," said Parson Penistone, and bit off the end of a jalapeño pepper, that Mexican vegetable herb, "Or… maybe I’ve gone pure. Maybe I’ve unhinged the shackles that even this pepper is as yet unaware of."

     "And it leaves a sour taste," I added.

     "But it is savory," said Parson Penistone, "it is savable. It is salvation. This pepper is salivation, in a crepe for a nightshade. I’ve seen mountains and valleys, untold minutes watching the night sky for to see one crater fall, and as yet, nothing grows as honest as just one seed from inside this womb."

     Then, the man, Parson Penistone, produced one pepper seed from the corner of his mouth, dried it off meekly, and spoke.

     "Take out your hand," said the parson.

     "I don’t want the seed," I said as a woodpecker inched its way down the great oak toward the bath, “it has been near your mouth, sir. Please respect my boundaries.”

     "Come on," said the parson, more urgently, ignoring my valid issues, "show me the palm of your hand, outstretched, open, for to take my gift to you."

     "I don’t want the pepper seed," I protested. The woodpecker, now in the water, promptly laid down certain rules to the other birds around him: I am not afraid to chase and peck your face. The response was a 16-inch safe-space surrounding the aggrevated woodpecker.

     "I won’t give you this seed," said the parson, holding up the pod, "I promise. I swear to gods. Now, humor me, honor me, hold out your hand in acceptance. It is important to the ritual we are embarking."

     I reluctantly produced my hand and the parson laid the seed on me.

     "Uh... Okay. No. I... don't... I said... I don't want… You said… I said… What is…", I stammered.

     "I want you to plant that seed in the Spring, in a clever spot," said the parson (at that point I interjected ‘this’, holding the seed up for display), "not in the ground but in your head. Sow the seed there, tend it, feed it, and keep the bugs and the weeds from it. Then, the peppers will ripen, in the crown, and will bring forth a shiny new pepper, whole, complete, where it counts the most. Recognize the change, the transformation, then repeat it in as many ways and conditions as possible. Manifest the rendering of a new universe one atom at a time and you will generate the mystery. Unshackle the bonds of eternal slavery that pulls every society into depravity."

     "What," I joked, "you want me to stick it in my ear, or what?"

     "You’re lucky because a hot pepper does not attract many bugs. The juices eat their insides I hear."

     "You hear!?" I was now exacerbated, "What do you mean you just hear? Tell me what you know!"

     "Exactly," said Parson Penistone who promptly disappeared and that was ten years ago today. I planted the seed in the ground, watered it. At some point after that, I forgot about the seed and started a new business. I remembered later and went back to the spot where I planted it and there was no trace of a pepper plant, just a clump of crabgrass. Just then, I got an email with the subject line: “we are pleased to inform that your business has just failed due to sharp financial downturns”.

     However, as I was walking away feeling terribly overjoyed, I noticed that jalapeños were peppering the landscape now and even the birds were starting to take Parson Penistone's advice in spreading the vegetable. Suddenly, I understood and was enlightened. I woke up in a certain hospital that, I learned the hard way, does not accept medicaid.

     After I lied to cover up all my other lies, I was allowed to leave the facility with only my signature along with the rest of my nest egg. I took the bus directly to Crab Park. The blue jays, always happy to see me, indulged me in performing their shrieking song of fear and alarm while the squirrels marched the field for stray nuts. As I searched around for more ripe peppers, I found a stone placard off in an odd corner of the park, where the red birds never stray.

     "Here Lies Parson Penistone 1776-1860," was the simple inscription on green craggy marble.

     I scraped away some branches and moss to find the epitaph near the very bottom of the stone:

     "BE a pepper in the eye of your doctor’s lies."