A.G.E's Joint

  Paisley pattern carpet Stonecraft from another time Another place In the beginning, there was ground And trees Yesterday?  What about it? It's in the fog Like we all will be Soon enough.   No matter how many edifices  We build in rebellion. 

  He'd always been spiritual, constantly stopping to   reflect on his life and where he was going. Twenty years in L.A. had taught him a couple of things. Controlling all the events in your life just wasn't possible and misery couldn't be wished away. It crept up when he least expected it to. The business had often made him feel alone and afraid. Every project teetered on the edge of failing and there was little he could do about it. There was no family to support or to support him and he accepted that. But he plugged on. He was back in the mountains he visited so often in his youth, working as a script consultant for a project. The funding had been only approved in the last week and the Production team needed someone with experience in the area to reconcile plot inconsistencies. The director put him up in a house on Lake Chatuge not a quarter mile down the road from the church. On a whim, he decided to see it.  Memories of Homecomings past rushed forth. Stilted gree...

I had a dream the other night. It was not unlike other dreams. Light fog backlit with the sun stretched across a verdant field, a pasture really. But no horses or cattle grazed amongst the grass. Instead, the landscape was dotted with churches. Not small chapels these, but great huge behemoths. Alternating buildings of brick, clapboard and glass with steeples spreading upward toward the sun hoping for favor from above. Congregations of bees flowed to and fro between the churches. They held the pollen and nectar, but they could never decide which was right.                                         Curiosity is lust for the mind, so I floated over scene this much like the bees of the congregation. I entered the first church, with its stone edifice standing proudly, with trepidation.   I am ...

  The church hadn't changed much, perched over Highway 288 like a Monopoly piece.The white picket fence shone with its annual paint job. Portable gazebos donated by the local funeral home dotted the lawn, protecting the dinner on the grounds. The trays of potato salad and sliced ham protected from stray pine needles.  Memories of Homecoming past rushed forth. Stilted greetings, Praise the Lord's and too much food, all to draw the backsliders to the flock. Mom would give him a pill to keep him from getting sick on the road home to Atlanta before they left. But, the medicine never worked. Mountain twists caused cold sweat to issue out from the edges of his crew cut. Brother would make sure he moved from side to side until he would puke harder than a shook Coke can. The car would stop with two cussing parents holding paper sacks to his mouth and wet paper towels to his head. That was long ago. After Mom died, Dad didn't want to have anything to do with the church, moun...