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issue 6
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| Near Conversion |
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|by Eric Stepp-Bolling
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"Have you ever thought of becoming a cloud?"
I didn't like the metaphysical tone of his voice. The tightly curled, black hair, styled in a Mohawk, combined awkwardly with the heavy lensed, traditional black glasses, the thin face and the cheeky smile. Still, there was something strangely alluring about Henry. And how did I know his name was Henry? Likely he just looked like a Henry. I cleared my throat as a precursor to what I hoped would be an authoritative statement, if indeed one could be authoritative in these matters.
"Are you speaking metaphorically. . . Henry?"
Henry wrinkled his nose so that his glasses slipped down. Naturally he adjusted them with his right index finger. "No," he said simply.
That took me off guard. As a matter of course, I could speak with some degree of expertise on the use of clouds as a metaphor, " I floated lonely as a cloud," "every cloud has a silver lining," cottoncandy clouds, clouds like sheep, clouds like flying saucers, and even mushroom clouds, but people as clouds, that stopped me cold.
"Do you mean as an after-death experience?" And now I could imagine the cartoon shorts of my youth with dead cats, mice and even people floating on small billowy puffs of white with harps in hand and halos hanging overhead.
He wrinkled or squinted and again the glasses slid a notch, and again he adjusted them with his right index finger. "No," he said.
I wanted to confront him then. I wanted to put my index finger into his face and say something irrational, something threatening. Instead, all I could do was stare at this. . . Henry. . . and imagine him as a cloud. I saw him changing, metamorphosing into misty water vapor, his hard human features becoming vague and well, watery. Then I saw him dissolve all together--the fine points of color which when consolidated created a Henry, had become disrupted and colorless, separating slowly outward like the creation of some miniature universe. When he began to rise in that majestic cloud like form, I could see how becoming a cloud really was an expression of beauty: the perfect blend of form and content. The willful act of becoming a cloud belonged on the same plane as the singular beauty of the cloud itself. It was not an after-death experience, for that would connote a cessation of living will, what "is" would necessarily become what "was" and, as a result, would lose the potential to be something more. Death meant an end to life, to creation, and Henry, well Henry seemed to be in the process of creating: a willful, conscious creation which, I assumed, could become the human Henry again when he so desired, or when my hallucinating concluded. It was this supernatural state into which Henry had translated himself that reminded me of an event which happened long, long ago. I thought of it as an event because I don't really know how else to describe my near conversion.
During a particularly stormy love affair just after college when life seemed lifeless, I was given the gift of potential renaissance with a trip to Europe. I came to England armed with a little knowledge and a great deal of heartache. A feisty blonde with a penchant for Jesus had made my scholarly pursuit for the England of Shakespeare into a lonely walk with self-pity.
Beardless, with sun-bleached hair and a tan from California beaches, I wandered the English countryside feeling out of place in a land of milk-skinned, skinny-tied, oh-so-reserved people. I felt even less fellowship with the arrogant, flaunt-it-in-your-face tourists from home, so I searched rural England hoping the natural beauty of the place would somehow replace what I had lost inside and whatever ugliness I carried with me. So it was on a homeless Monday, I entered a two hundred year old stone church some forty miles outside of London. The heavy wooden doors stood ajar, but the church itself was deserted. The polished and worn pews rode rough seas floors, buckled and warped, from the years of damp, cold English weather. The priest's pulpit, like a ship's crow's nest, rose above pews to one side, where, I imagined, the priest cajoled , threatened and pleaded with his flock of sleeping sheep. Through a small rose-colored window, I could see into the church cemetery. Beside a newly dug grave rested a simple, unadorned coffin. There was no one else in the cemetery or the church, only the corpse early for his own funeral.
I turned to leave when out of the corner my eye I spotted a small card someone had left on the rear pew. In small, bold print it said: " Knock and Jesus will answer." On the opposite side, a picture of Jesus wearing a white robe and a neatly trimmed beard could be seen standing in an open doorway. I slipped the card into my shirt pocket and headed for the door. On the way out, I snagged my trousers on a rusty nail, tearing my pants and opening a nasty leg wound. Eventually, out of my own neglect, the wound became infected and I nearly died of blood poisoning. I have always thought that that nail was the one which had nearly done Jesus in, and He had tried to snag me the same way.
In a peculiar way, that same picture of Jesus beckoning in the doorway with the bright eyes and bleached white robe now stood before me in the form of Henry the cloudmaker. It wasn't Henry's physical appearance nor his actual attire which made the connection. Rather, it was Henry's ability to ask the uncomfortable questions; the ones you knew were tricks because once asked, you were never sure what the answers should be, but you were sure they needed answers.
A mountainous purple woman dragging two androgynous children on a leash bumped into my clouded vision putting both Henry and myself on the ground. The woman, with a look of complete satisfaction, tightened her hold on the children, who, like clumsy dogs, had taken to sniffing and exploring everything on the sidewalk in front of them. They continued in this manner until all I could see was a purple mass dividing the human waters down the street.
I helped Henry to his feet, brushing off the accumulated footprints which make up the history of this sidewalk and which Henry and I now wore like an encyclopedia of dust. Then he turned toward me, somewhat confused, and offered his hand.
"Thank you, sir. You are most kind."
With that he made his way through the morning foot traffic and out of my life. I wanted to shout after him, "But what of this cloud business?" I wanted to run and catch him by the shoulder and turn him so that his eyes and mine met, so that I could see the fantasy, the sincerity, the madness which danced behind that stoic face. I wanted to envision his vision--make it mine, or at least borrow it for a moment or even a lifetime and then hand it down to my children and they to their children. What I did instead was stare after the funny man who could have changed my life, occasionally blinking back the tears of regret.
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