Up ahead, a car in the breakdown lane. A Volkswagen bus. Blue. Like a piece of the sky. Or the sea. I didn’t feel like playing Good Samaritan. I was wasted. Maryland license plate. Tires looked fine. Good. Didn’t think I’d have the strength to change a tire. I walked along the passenger side. Window is open. A woman.

“You need any help?” I asked her.

“You need a ride? Didn’t you hear me honk when I passed?”

“No. Yes, I do. You stopped for me? You’re kidding.”

“Yes. No, I’m not.”

“How’d you know—?”

Her face lit with a smile. She motioned with her body like a horse would bid you follow. “Come on in.”

I opened the side door; no seats: layers of carpet surrounded by oversized khaki-colored duffle bags and diving gear—tanks, flippers, masks, a wetsuit. I climbed in and collapsed on the carpet, using one of the duffle bags for a pillow.

“Thanks for stopping it’s burning out there thank you thank—”

“Are you okay?”

I raised up on one elbow and took her in. Her thin face was framed with dark, frizzy hair that triangled to her shoulders. A gust of wind caught a kinky strand and wisped it across her face. She tucked it back behind her ear. Bare feet in blue jeans, she wore a gauzy blouse of unbleached cotton, but the cuffs and collar had bouquets of brightly colored flowers. Sunlight streaming through the windows outlined the shadow of her breasts, the copper coins of her nipples.

“Yes. No. I’m exhausted. Damn Road.”

Her forehead wrinkled worry lines, drew thick, dark brows together. She reached to the passenger seat. A jug of water and a paper bag came back with her. She climbed over and sat beside me.

“Here—drink.”

I let her tip the water to my open mouth. I steadied the jug with my free hand. It grazed her wrist and my arm tingled. “Thank you…thank you.”

She sat back down and crossed her legs. She drew an orange from the bag; scored it round with her thumbnail, and peeled back the rind, setting the orange cups beside her. Fragrance of citrus filled the shared space. She broke in half the pithy globe and the wet flesh was like a living thing. She pulled apart each half into segments and didn’t lick the juice dripping from her fingers. She offered me a wedge and I ate it greedily. The juice dribbled down my chin; I wiped it with the back of my hand. She fed me one-by-one and I ate them, and she saved the last one for herself, which she ate thoughtfully, as if a meditation. She lifted an orange cup and lipped in the seeds. She gave me the other half to do the same.

“Fucking road,” I whispered. “Fucking road,” wiping my chin.

“Hey, it’s okay. Where you going?”

“Wherever. Please. Just go. Please. Get me out of here.” I lay back down on the duffle bags. The orange soda. Now the oranges.

“Drink some more. You need it. You’re dehydrated.”

I chugged some down; splashed my face.

“Take a deep breath and lie back down.”

“Huh?”

“Just do.”

She began to unlace my sneakers, her nimble fingers like gentle animals curious upon a task. Her hair fell forward and veiled her face. She brushed it back and there she was again. I let out a long breath and beheld her. She sensed my eyes and stilled her body. She returned my gaze with a warmth, and I opened, like she was standing at the threshold of my heart and I welcomed her in.

“You’re—”

“Shhhh. Rest. Just keep breathing.”

She slipped off my sneakers, then the socks. “Ooou—that’s nasty!” She rolled up each pant leg. “Hand me the water.”

She poured over the cut, and pulled it back to let the water seep in. She pressed around the wound to bleed it clean. My eyes leaked pain but it felt good. Now she poured water over both my feet. I thought of the stream in Port Jervis. I wanted her in my arms. I wanted her. She took the good foot in her hands and massaged it, pressing her thumbs into the ankle bone while her fingers dug deep in the sole.

“Ow—Oh. Wow.”

Bolts of energy shot up my hips, groin, spine, shoulder blades, temples—pleasure-pain sparks all over me—mini-explosions letting loose a torrent of rage dammed up—flotsam and jetsam of the road rivers out of me—cars, people, candy bars, trucks, dead animals, convenience stores, cigarette butts—the whole wild ride rages through me, up to my crown, then back down through the soles of my feet.

“Fucking Road!”

“Breathe!”

“Who are you?”

“Leah. And you?”

“Richard. Thank you, Leah. I needed this. Sorry—my language. I’m so angry.”

She worked the other foot, careful around the wound, giving it the same deep massage; then rocked my legs gently, side-to-side.

The walls of the van cradled me, and for the first time since I had left Boston I felt comforted. Painted on the ceiling of the van, two dolphins twirled around each other, trails of bubbles in their wake spiraling up into the Milky Way and becoming an ocean of stars.

“Did you paint this?”

“Yes.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s my work.”

“You’re a fine artist.”

“I mean the dolphins—I work with dolphins in a marina in San Diego. Actually it’s more like play for me. I communicate with them and the scientists record my brain waves, and the brain waves of the dolphins. We’re trying to find a common language. I swim with them, even ride them. All my life, even as a little girl, I dreamed of them.”

“Really?”

“I grew up on a horse farm in Kentucky—my parents wanted me to ride for show—but I kept having dreams of dolphins. My seahorses, I call them. What about you?”

“I don’t know anymore. I mean—I know what I love to do. I am—I was hitching to Asheville for a poetry gig—maybe I still am—I don’t know. The closer I get the harder it gets. I don’t get it. Why I just can’t get there. I’m sorry. I’m repeating myself. I’m not making any sense.”

“Why don’t you rest? Take a nap. I’ve got another 40 miles before my exit. I can wake you when we get there.”

“Thanks, Leah, but I still don’t get it. Why did you stop?”

“Sleep!” she said, smiling.

* * *

O lovely dolphins!

What are the coordinates of my soul?

I just want to get there—Why is it so hard to get there?

I float in a sea of stars.

* * *

Leah’s face floating above me.

Pressure on my temples.

Her fingers pressing into my temples.

“Breathe!”

I do.

She comes around and sits beside me, taking each hand palm side up, pressing into my wrists until I can feel the beat of my pulse.

“Close your eyes. Keep breathing.”

Now at my feet, she takes each one, pressing deep, in the center of the sole. It hurts, but I keep it to myself.

“Okay. You can open your eyes. I’ve lined up your meridians, your body’s north-south compass points. But it also lines you up to the earth’s poles, and vertically to the heavens. It will help you get to where you’re going.”

“Thank you, I… Who are you?”

“Leah. I’ve told you”

“No—Who are you?”

“Just me.” She turned her head, shyly.

“But why did you stop?”

“Because you weren’t asking for a ride.”

“O—a Zen thing,” I smiled.

“You could say that.” She returned a smile.

“Where are we?”

“Just south of Carlisle.”

“I’ll never forget this.”

“Come here,” she said, taking my hand. “You’ll need this, too.”

I sat up into her open arms, and a warm embrace. I wanted to slip my hands under her gauzy blouse and cup her breasts. I took a deep breath and her scent filled me. Goodness. I let my hands slip to her waist, and held her back and gazed into her eyes. Green. Blue-Green. The sea.

“Do you have a number—How can I reach you?”

“I don’t have a phone. The San Diego Marina. Where I work. And live.”

I lifted her hands to my lips and kissed each palm, then gently folded her fingers into a fist and lowered them to her lap. She held my eyes, then closed hers; opened them, and looked down at her closed hands, opening them, smiling, as if she could see the kisses my lips planted there.

“That was kind,” she said, still looking at her palms.

Lines from a poem came to me. “Keep these flowers to remember me by. Fold them where you never forget. Then come back to a sure remembering.”

She looked up with question marks in her eyes. “That’s beautiful! Did you write that??

“No. Carl Sandburg did. High Moments, it’s called. ‘I have kept high moments. They go round and round in me,’ is how it ends. That’s how I feel right now. What you’ve given me….”

“Is what you could receive. And that was your gift to me. I don’t often get a chance to do what I did—it gets complicated—especially with men. That’s why I work with dolphins. But you—you have some dolphin spirit in you. I’m glad I stopped.”

I’m glad you did, too. “Where are you heading?”

“To visit my family; my dad’s sick. I haven’t been home in quite a while, although it’s not really home anymore. I’ll be back at the marina next month. Come out sometime….”

“I will.”

She took one of my hands and squeezed it, and with the other, touched my cheek, and searched my eyes like she was looking for something, and then a broad smile as if she had found it. I noticed for the first time she wore no jewelry: not on her fingers, not around her neck. I didn’t even see pinpricks in her earlobes. But she was radiant.

“Take good care,” she said, and climbed back to the driver’s seat. A slant of light haloed her hair. I yearned for her.

“You, too,” I said as I slid open the side door and stepped onto the road. The engine kicked over, and I impulsively walked to the passenger window for one last look.

She turned and smiled and shifted into first and I was looking at the road. I followed her down the highway, and she pulled into the passing lane, then into the grassy divide that separated the south and northbound lanes, making a wide, curving arc—the baddest U-Turn I had ever witnessed—coming up to the northbound lane which she entered without breaking speed, and continued on her way.

I walked down the exit ramp to look for a convenience store. I had to pee, and my belly was rumbling. The splash of water on my face and Leah’s foot washing made me realize just how grimy I was. I stank. I could use a cowboy shower. And I wanted to check the map to see just where I was, and how far I still had to go. It was 7 o’clock. I had twenty-four hours.

# # #

RIDE

Literary/Popular Fiction

60K words

Adult

Richard Cambridge

RIDE is a coming of age story, set in the Nineties, — an odyssey through fifty years of American culture. Think “My Generation” with a radical twist.

Two days before a scheduled reading more than a thousand miles away, a poet’s car breaks down. Instead of calling it quits, he decides to hitchhike from Massachusetts to North Carolina for the event. It’s a clock-racing trip involving 15 separate rides where the poet meets an assortment of quirky characters, all willing to pick up an unusual-looking man, three decades after anyone in their right mind thought about hitchhiking—or daring to stop for a stranger.

The poet meets a musician, a stoner, a cowboy (or is he a Native American shaman?) with a mysterious pair of boots, a carpenter, a gentle giant who digs Fidel Castro, a gypsy welder, a lovely woman who talks with dolphins, a fundamentalist preacher, a cocaine caravan of truckers, a terrifying trooper who brutalizes and robs him, a wounded vet, an Andy Griffith and Barney Fife, and finally his own Dark Self who keeps appearing in the reflected surface of things.

RIDE will appeal to everyone from new adults to baby boomers, although it will be of special interest to fans of On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. Although this is a commercial story, I write with the eye of a poet and employ subtext after Denis Johnson. My style is flexible, sinewy, sonorous, and terse. Elizabeth Hand (one of my teachers at Stonecoast) likened my paragraphs to arias

My writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Solstice Literary Magazine, About Place Journal, The Paterson Literary Review, Asheville Poetry Review, and many others. Hanover Press published PULSA, my collection of poetry, which former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky praised “Full of heart and sincere ambition and a genuine devotion to the mysteries of language.”

My awards include the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize, the Cambridge Peace and Justice Award for the contribution of my art and activism, the Masters Slam at the National Poetry Slam, and I was a finalist for a residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.

I am a Fellow Emeritus at the Black Earth Institute, a think tank that encourages awareness of the arts as a means of promoting a progressive, inclusively spiritual, and environmentally aware society. I was a guest editor for the institute’s online literary journal About Place, Volume II, Issue IV: 1963—2013: A Civil Rights Retrospective. https://aboutplacejournal.org/issues/civil-rights/

https://blackearthinstitute.org/

In addition to earning my MFA in Fiction from Stonecoast, I studied choreography and drama for four years at the prestigious Omega Theater. I’ve performed at major conferences and events in the United States, Canada, Cuba, and Ireland. The Boston Globe called my one-person theater piece, The Cigarette Papers—A Spiritual Journey from Addiction, “a tour-de-force”. I’m a natural storyteller, engage and delight audiences, and welcome the opportunity to tour and share my novel, a great asset for my publisher-to-be.

Authors who will help me promote RIDE include Elizabeth Hand, Nebula, and Mythopoeia award-winning author of Curious Toys and The Haunting on the Hill; Richard Hoffman, author of the ground-breaking memoir, Half the House; Michael Kimball, author of mystery and suspense thrillers Undone and Mouth; and Sven Birkerts, essayist and critic, author of The Gutenberg Elegies. See below.

I am currently working on my next novel titled 1970, an alternate history of that year in which a band of activists led by the Black Panthers bring revolution to the U.S.

I am also collaborating as lyricist for Swiss musician George Hennig. Our first album, Songs From The Crossing was released in 2022 to critical acclaim.

https://georgehennig.com/portfolio/songs-from-the-crossing/

We are currently working on our next album. See our websites for details:

georgehennig.com and richardcambridge.org.

For additional information see my website: richardcambridge.org

Richard Cambridge

PO Box 380811

Cambridge, MA 02238

857.928.5557

richardcambridge1970@gmail.com

richardcambridge.org

@richardcambridge1970

SYNOPSIS

A poet’s car breaks down two days before a scheduled poetry reading a thousand miles away. Instead of taking a bus or plane, he decides to hitchhike from Boston, Massachusetts to Asheville, North Carolina for the event. A clock-racing trip involving 15 rides, he meets quirky characters willing to pick him up decades after anyone in their right mind thought about hitchhiking—or daring to stop for a stranger.

He plans the logical route: south on Interstate 95 to Winston-Salem, then west to Asheville. He expects to transport himself by “thumb power” as he and his generation did two decades ago, but instead, people rarely stop, and the ones who do are heading west. He takes the rides: better to be moving, than standing still, he reasons.

He meets a musician; a stoner; a cowboy (or is he a Native American shaman?) with a mysterious pair of boots; a carpenter; a fundamentalist preacher who tries to convert him; a trooper who brutalizes and robs him; a gypsy welder who offers him a job on a pipeline; a gentle giant who digs Fidel Castro; a lovely woman who talks with dolphins; a cocaine caravan of truckers; a wounded veteran; and finally his own Dark Self—his Duende—who keeps appearing in the reflected surface of things.

“A mysterious force that everyone feels and no philosopher can explain, seeking the Duende, there is neither map nor discipline,” said the poet, Garcia Lorca. How apt for a hitchhiker mapping a route to a destination and getting rides taking him in the wrong direction. Richard’s Duende fuels RIDE, and is embodied in the characters that encourage him in his desperate moments:

Danny, his Mexican poet-friend, warns him to be wary of his epiphany to hitchhike. “You talk like my grandma, a bruja. You mess with spirits they trick you sometimes.”

The cowboy (or Native American shaman?) who breaks his vow of secrecy and tells him the story of the Mapmaker who carved his life-path on his boots, and suggests the “wrong-way” rides may be the force of his destiny taking him west to Boulder, Colorado—to the Mapmaker who will carve his own pair of boots.

The rides continue west into Pennsylvania until he reaches Interstate 81—the last route that will take him south to Asheville. Sleep deprived and famished, he stops at a café decorated with poster-size Tarot cards, sits at a table with the Magician looking down at him. He falls into a trance and asks the Magician what to do. “Every step you take is the right path,” the Oracle says.

Paralleling this wrong-way journey is the landscape of the poet’s reflections that leap back and forth in time in an attempt to find meaning. In On the Road, Kerouac is off to discover America. In RIDE, the poet is in search of where America went—what happened to the idealistic cultural values embodied by his generation that no longer seem to be evident.

It is also a novel of loss and grief. Richard’s wife has died recently, and although he doesn’t know it when he begins his journey, getting away gives him the opportunity to reflect on the volatile circumstances of the antiwar demonstrations that brought them together, and to grieve her passing.

When he finally makes it to Asheville, barely two hours before his reading, his friend, Ginger, picks him up. She’s relieved to see him, but she’s angry, too:

“No one hitches anymore. What were you thinking?”

“Yeah, I sort of figured that out. Something good has gone out of this country and I

don’t know if it’s ever coming back.”

In the Green Room of the bar where he waits to be called to the stage, someone has placed on the table a bowl of fresh-cut Black-eyed Susans. He asks his friend Allan, who hosts the gig, if he has a secret admirer. “You never know,” Allan replies. Richard picks a flower from the vase, twirls it, and muses: Eyes dark and beautiful. Eyes now blackened. “Yeah, you never know,” he says.

The poet has processed his grief, and when he hits the stage, instead of a rehearsed poem, he “improvises something new from the road” that he has gleaned from his experience and hard-won wisdom.

* * *

BLURBS

Richard Cambridge’s RIDE comes out of the gate with velocity and does not let up. Here is a road book for our turbulent times, a reminder, too, that against the vast conformity of systems idiosyncrasy does still survive. Clear sharp writing creates a steady pulse, and the mystery of arrivals pull the reader forward.

— Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age.

America is the road.

The road is America. And Richard Cambridge is on it, his thumb out like a question. A picaresque masterpiece, destined to become a classic in the vein of On the Road, Blue Highways, or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, RIDE is a bumpy, frightful, and exhilarating journey that becomes an esoteric quest for a mysterious figure called "the Mapmaker." Cambridge, "like that dude from Pilgrim's Progress" has enacted for us an allegory filled with fantasy, poetry, and magic, that reveals the restless soul of our earnest and anxious country.

— Richard Hoffman, author of Half the House and Love & Fury

Richard Cambridge’s riveting account of his hitchhiker journey down the East Coast is an arrow that pierces the American heartland. Frightening, funny, exhilarating and transcendent, RIDE takes you places you’ve never been, even as it underscores how we all, ultimately, call the same country home.

— Elizabeth Hand, author of Curious Toys and The Haunting on the Hill

RIDE is lyrical, magical, brisk and brilliant. A poet ponys his hair and hits the highway with a duffle and his thumb. Fifteen chapters, fifteen rides on an obsessive, thousand-mile trek to a 30-minute poetry event, ferried along by a progression of strangers, devils to saints, grievers, stoners, drunks, evangelists, and sadists. The further he journeys into this strange new America, the deeper he’s driven into the lost regions of his own damned and blessed self. It’s a true searcher’s odyssey through Wonder and Fear, Faith and Doubt, Grief and Longing, Shame, Hope, and Redemption; a moving meditation on finding oneself in the ashes of all we’ve lost.

— Michael Kimball, author of Undone and Mouth to Mouth

Well-Being I won

And Wisdom, too.

I grew and took joy in my growth:

From a word to a word

I was led to the word,

From one deed to another deed.

—The Poetic Edda, (circa 1200 AD)

In the Beginning

1 It was hard at first, but the lessons God taught him.

Like a warrior without a sword, he was

without words. There was nothing he could do.

He was a young man—a boy really—who

wanted, more than anything, to be a poet.

God said, That’s fine: give me back the talent.

This is the way it is if you love me.

Give it back. No Questions. Faith it.

The young man gave back the talent. God said,

Good. I’ll make you a living epistle.

Isn’t this the way God is, always lifting things

to metaphor? The kid wanted to be a poet

but a living epistle sounded neat. He liked

the way God talked—like a poet!—so he

agreed. He didn’t know what he was in for.

The Twenties were the worst. The Teachable

Twenties, God called it. That’s when God beat

the shit out of you for ten years. Then the Tireless

Thirties when you put into practice what you

learned; then the Fiery Forties when the passion

kicks in; and so on God went, naming the decades

in simple terms like the way God does when

in Teacher mode. But The Twenties were

the worst. God went on about Potters

and Clay and the kid wound up in pieces,

his mind here, his heart there, his soul a pile

of shards on God’s floor. God saw it was Good,

swept up the kid, put him in a bowl of tears

until he dissolved into mud. From the kid’s

point of view, it was horrible. His mind was mush.

It was worse than his worst trip on acid.

All he wanted was chocolate bars, the pain

was so bad. Then the shaping began—God’s

Hands all over him, around his heart, between

his legs, painful and sweet, so...intimate,

God’s hands on his body—molding, shaping.

Then came The Fire. We won’t even talk

about The Fire. Some things are Mysteries.

God has a reputation to maintain.

When it was over God breathed into him

seven times. Seven because that’s the way

God does it when it has to be perfect.

The boy woke up, a young man. He spoke of

many things in parables and rhymes. He

was just beginning to learn his lessons.

2 Blank. Empty. Clean. That's what he felt like:

Blank Slate. Empty Vessel. A Clean Whistle

for God to blow through—a wind instrument

for God to play on—a vessel to fill—

a slate to write on—it was exhausting

going back and forth between images

without sinking—like walking on water—

like Jesus—vessel-wine , slate-word—STOP, STOP!—

he shouted—you're making me crazy!

Isn't this the way it is‚ being pushed

to the edge—then over the edge—

then the spill, the stain, the vessel broken,

the tears. God likes it when the soul leaks out:

it softens things into shaping, and molding.

As they say in the trade, God has Good Hands.

But the vessel broken says, NO WAY!

Put me back together the way I was

Go get some Crazy Glue! God laughs, cries, waits

and waits. God's good at waiting. And guess what?

God never uses Crazy Glue; never

puts things back the way they were. Never.

3 Back to the young man. (God has a way of

taking center stage.) He's running around

with his head cut off, so his friends say.

They can't understand him. It's like he says

the word Grapefruit but they hear Armadillo.

They make circular motions with their index

fingers just beyond their ears to indicate

the mental state that they think he is in.

Damn! they say. What's got hold of you? Shit! Fuck!

He looks up expecting a lightning bolt.

God is not offended by the language.

This is the first lesson he learns.

4 God rolls up the sleeves, gets right into him.

The clay is fine, spanking new. But the mind—

there's all this bad software to delete. God!

God says (not in vain), What have they done! Who

fucked with my programming? Shit! Damn!

(God gets into language when pissed.) Meanwhile...

Church, State, School, and Home run

for cover. They know who's responsible.

God's looking up the appropriate verses:

I will whet my glittering sword. I will

make mine arrows drunk with blood—God's so pissed—

can't decide which weapon. There's Hell to pay.

The young man is temporarily insane

with God's Fingers in his cerebral

cortex trying to set it straight again.

This takes seven months. For God, it's a blink.

For the young man, it's eternity. He's

in agony. There's hell to pay.

He looks in the mirror: sees a stranger.

He walks in front of traffic: an angel

intervenes. He doesn't know where Home is.

He doesn't know his left from his right. He

doesn't know how to go out or come in.

He mixes them up backwards.

He goes in the Out doors: tuO, they say.

He comes out the In doors: nI, they say.

He buys many chocolate bars.

5 He doesn't know it but he's having what

mystics call Epiphanies. (Too bad he

can't enjoy them. All those pictures of saints

in ecstasy? Not untrue; just not the

whole picture. Good editing on God's part—

Good PR for recruiting purposes.)

He sees spirits everywhere: inside in

the woodwork, wallpaper, linoleum;

outside in trees, pavement, sides of buildings.

They look frozen, trapped. They don't look happy.

Their eyes bug out. He wonders, Can they see him?

Their mouths are open wide as if screaming.

He wonders how they got there.

Is he next?

These aren't the visions he expected.

6 It's around this time The Elders come.

They are dressed in funny clothing—the style

is wrong—off a generation or two.

He entertains them: they might be angels

lost in Time. He feels sorry for them

because of the clothing: it blows their cover.

He's having fun.

These elders are not like his elders

(parents, teachers, authority figures)

who keep telling him not to waste his mind.

These elders say a mind is a good thing

to waste. Who needs it? Put on God's Mind.

The kid does—puts on God's Mind like a hat,

(this is in the days before virtual

reality) and hears all sorts of things

that confirm his wildest dreams:

Leave the church. Quit your job. Drop out of school.

Simple moral imperatives.

These orders were easy. Not like his elders:

Cut your hair, Go to school, Get a job, and

if you didn't, the big one: I WANT YOU!

He wondered about them—his elders, that is—

why they always spoke in three syllables:

Don't jerk off, Wash your hands, Go to church.

Were they mentally challenged?

Did God make them that way to test him?

7 But where to go? What to do? That was easy:

God's Hat told him: clean out your bank account,

buy reefer, distribute it to the poor

college students. (Parable updated.)

God said they were in the worst shape:

they were Dead. They needed Awakening.

Just as they were getting high on reefer,

God calls in the police. (God is always

calling on the shadiest characters

to do the dirty work. Can't let on who's

responsible—can't blow the cover:

God has a reputation to maintain.)

8 They bust the students and bust their heads.

It's great—Blood is everywhere! The students

wake up vomiting Descartes, fists clenching

the air, shouting: I BLEED—THEREFORE, I AM!

God loves Blood. It Speaks. There's nothing like it.

I BLEED—THEREFORE, I AM: Nice touch, God says.

Good. Very Good. God rolls up the sleeves and

fires the Kiln. They were ready for shaping,

molding. I'll have them burning in no time,

God says, thinking biblical thoughts like Burn!—

Babylon, Burn; poetical thoughts like

And righteousness will come down like the rain;

revolutionary thoughts like, I will

overturn overturn overturn them.

God is so excited—things haven't been

this fun in many a generation.

There are all these old scores to settle and

these kids seem like just the ones to do it.

They have Faith—they leap to conclusions.

They have Visions—they eat their mushrooms.

They are Holy—they even wear Levi's.

They tell their rulers, Fuck Off! Eat Shit!

without prompting. God really likes that.

The Old Prophets were sure hard to work with—

had to be scared by angels, whales, lions

before they would do the right thing, and they

always required a sign from heaven.

Not these kids. They jump right in the gap. BAMN!

they chant—BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!

BAMN, God laughs. They even mis-spell right.

9 It's about this time the fasting kicks in.

Things get serious. The party's over.

Where do I go from here? he asks.

No Answer. He asks again. No Answer.

The Journey

10 Where do you go when the bridges are burned?

Church, School, Friends, Home—

His past a husk—an empty shell; his wings

too wet to fly though fly he must—

he wings it on faith—

Falls.

How do you take back words? How do you break a vow?

Words. Words! In the beginning

so sweet to taste, now so bitter to digest—

he was having to eat his words,

Walk his Talk. No rest.

No Rest.

Home—he couldn't go there. Home

is where when you have to go there. . .

Home is where the heart. . .

Homecoming. . .

Alone. Ravaged. A wilderness,

inside. He wanders

where he wills, though not his will,

he laughs, bitterly.

God is an acquired taste, he laughs—

Bitterly.

Walking, he finds himself Everywhere

at once. And No Where. Now Here.

At Once. Everywhere.

You wanted Home? This was Home. This was Crazy.

This was The Center where God hung out,

hanging Everything on Nothing

with nothing but Words and

Spit—

Caught in the cleft of the rock

when the rock was struck

the rod came down again

and he became water—a stain on God's carpet.

Or was he a shard of rock on God's floor?

One metaphor was as good as another.

There was no ending or beginning. There was

No Escape.

The Bridge

11 He saw everything: not a detail

was missed. Events bleeding

and blending into each other in almost

but not quite the same circumstances.

He was like an ambassador between dimensions;

like being in many plays at once, happening

at the same time in different spaces—sets, if you will—

and he would Be-There, leaving to Faith the timing

of the entry, his lines to read, the reaction,

the response of the other characters

and his response to them.

It took a lot of Grace to make decisions.

Sometimes he didn't know what to do

or did, but changed his mind.

This caused much grumbling among the angels,

and often, this is when Accidents Happened

that shouldn't have: a car wreck; a fire;

the inevitable souls that needed re-orienting

or re-occidenting, depending on where they came from,

or more to the point, their destination.

The cries from loved ones, How could you do this!

Why did it happen?

The spirits sent out to make it work out in Time

which sometimes took decades.

From Eternity all Timelines were happening at once.

Letter from God's Country

12 What I'm going through cuts the heart's core:

It's opposite the verse about home being the place

when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

It's the place when you find yourself there,

you know you've been abandoned.

It's where Faith flees and Doubt, an occasional visitor,

announces it's moving in with all its baggage.

But this is nothing compared to the real

Terror. That's when your soul knocks down Heaven's

Door in a last desperate attempt for

Clarity, Sanity, Mercy—anything

but this place where you are where Nothing is—

and there's God having tea with the devil,

discussing You.

You see, you really weren't expected

to make it this far, this close, but you did.

Now you Know. This is what it means,

Then shall we know, even as we are known.

We are God's kids: the ones filled with crazylove.

We're like those wind-up toys that, when set down,

go straight for the edges, cliffs and borders

where the action is; where the danger is.

And God, being God, can't resist showing

us off to whomever stops by for a chat.

God is a proud MamaPapa. Watch this—

Your car is stolen; the check never arrives;

You lose your job; your lover leaves; your pet dies.

Time to pray. But God's on holiday

in the master suite of a swank hotel

sipping Free Will, watching you on cable,

not knowing—really not knowing—the outcome.

Abandonment is the surest sign God loves you.

— Richard Cambridge

Author’s note. “The Book of Psalms” is the first chapter in PULSA—A Book of Books, (Hanover Press, 2006).

Well-Being I won

And Wisdom, too.

I grew and took joy in my growth:

From a word to a word

I was led to the word,

From a deed to another deed.

—The Poetic Edda, (circa 1200 AD)

In the Beginning

1 It was hard at first, the lessons God taught him.

Like a warrior without a sword, he was

without words. There was nothing he could do.

He was a young man—a boy really—who

wanted, more than anything, to be a poet.

God said, That’s fine: give me back the talent.

This is the way it is if you love me.

Give it back. No Questions. Faith it.

The young man gave back the talent. God said,

Good. I’ll make you a living epistle.

Isn’t this the way God is, always lifting things

to metaphor. The kid wanted to be a poet

but a living epistle sounded neat. He liked

the way God talked—like a poet!—so he

agreed. He didn’t know what he was in for.

The Twenties were the worst. The Teachable

Twenties, God called it. That’s when God beat

the shit out of you for ten years. Then the Tireless

Thirties when you put into practice what you

learned; then the Fiery Forties when the passion

kicks in; and so on God went, naming the decades

in simple terms like the way God does when

in Teacher mode. But The Twenties were

the worst. God went on about Potters

and Clay and the kid wound up in pieces,

his mind here, his heart there, his soul a pile

of shards on God’s floor. God saw it was Good,

swept up the kid, put him in a bowl of tears

until he dissolved into mud. From the kid’s

point of view, it was horrible. His mind was mush.

It was worse than his worst trip on acid.

All he wanted was chocolate bars, the pain

was so bad. Then the shaping began—God’s

Hands all over him, around his heart, between

his legs, painful and sweet, so...intimate,

God’s hands on his body—molding, shaping.

Then came The Fire. We won’t even talk

about The Fire. Some things are Mysteries.

God has a reputation to maintain.

When it was over God breathed into him

seven times. Seven because that’s the way

God does it when it has to be perfect.

The boy woke up, a young man. He spoke of

many things in parables and rhymes. He

was just beginning to learn his lessons.

2 Blank. Empty. Clean. That's what he felt like:

Blank Slate. Empty Vessel. A Clean Whistle

for God to blow through—a wind instrument

for God to play on—a vessel to fill—

a slate to write on—it was exhausting

going back and forth between images

without sinking—like walking on water—

like Jesus—vessel-wine , slate-word—STOP, STOP!—

he shouted—you're making me crazy!

Isn't this the way it is‚ being pushed

to the edge—then over the edge—

then the spill, the stain, the vessel broken,

the tears. God likes it when the soul leaks out:

it softens things into shaping, and molding.

As they say in the trade, God has Good Hands.

But the vessel broken says, NO WAY!

Put me back together the way I was

Go get some Crazy Glue! God laughs, cries, waits

and waits. God's good at waiting. And guess what?

God never uses Crazy Glue; never

puts things back the way they were. Never.

3 Back to the young man. (God has a way of

taking center stage.) He's running around

with his head cut off, so his friends say.

They can't understand him. It's like he says

the word Grapefruit but they hear Armadillo.

They make circular motions with their index

fingers just beyond their ears to indicate

the mental state that they think he is in.

Damn! they say. What's got hold of you? Shit! Fuck!

He looks up expecting a lightning bolt.

God is not offended by the language.

This is the first lesson he learns.

4 God rolls up the sleeves, gets right into him.

The clay is fine, spanking new. But the mind—

there's all this bad software to delete. God!

God says (not in vain), What have they done! Who

fucked with my programming? Shit! Damn!

(God gets into language when pissed.) Meanwhile...

Church, State, School, and Home run

for cover. They know who's responsible.

God's looking up the appropriate verses:

I will whet my glittering sword. I will

make mine arrows drunk with blood—God's so pissed—

can't decide which weapon. There's Hell to pay.

The young man is temporarily insane

with God's Fingers in his cerebral

cortex trying to set it straight again.

This takes seven months. For God, it's a blink.

For the young man, it's eternity. He's

in agony. There's hell to pay.

He looks in the mirror: sees a stranger.

He walks in front of traffic: an angel

intervenes. He doesn't know where Home is.

He doesn't know his left from his right. He

doesn't know how to go out or come in.

He mixes them up backwards.

He goes in the Out doors: tuO, they say.

He comes out the In doors: nI, they say.

He buys many chocolate bars.

5 He doesn't know it but he's having what

mystics call Epiphanies. (Too bad he

can't enjoy them. All those pictures of saints

in ecstasy? Not untrue; just not the

whole picture. Good editing on God's part—

Good PR for recruiting purposes.)

He sees spirits everywhere: inside in

the woodwork, wallpaper, linoleum;

outside in trees, pavement, sides of buildings.

They look frozen, trapped. They don't look happy.

Their eyes bug out. He wonders, Can they see him?

Their mouths are open wide as if screaming.

He wonders how they got there.

Is he next?

These aren't the visions he expected.

6 It's around this time The Elders come.

They are dressed in funny clothing—the style

is wrong—off a generation or two.

He entertains them: they might be angels

lost in Time. He feels sorry for them

because of the clothing: it blows their cover.

He's having fun.

These elders are not like his elders

(parents, teachers, authority figures)

who keep telling him not to waste his mind.

These elders say a mind is a good thing

to waste. Who needs it? Put on God's Mind.

The kid does—puts on God's Mind like a hat,

(this is in the days before virtual

reality) and hears all sorts of things

that confirm his wildest dreams:

Leave the church. Quit your job. Drop out of school.

Simple moral imperatives.

These orders were easy. Not like his elders:

Cut your hair, Go to school, Get a job, and

if you didn't, the big one: I WANT YOU!

He wondered about them—his elders, that is—

why they always spoke in three syllables:

Don't jerk off, Wash your hands, Go to church.

Were they mentally challenged?

Did God make them that way to test him?

7 But where to go? What to do? That was easy:

God's Hat told him: clean out your bank account,

buy reefer, distribute it to the poor

college students. (Parable updated.)

God said they were in the worst shape:

they were Dead. They needed Awakening.

Just as they were getting high on reefer,

God calls in the police. (God is always

calling on the shadiest characters

to do the dirty work. Can't let on who's

responsible—can't blow the cover:

God has a reputation to maintain.)

8 They bust the students and bust their heads.

It's great—Blood is everywhere! The students

wake up vomiting Descartes, fists clenching

the air, shouting: I BLEED—THEREFORE, I AM!

God loves Blood. It Speaks. There's nothing like it.

I BLEED—THEREFORE, I AM: Nice touch, God says.

Good. Very Good. God rolls up the sleeves and

fires the Kiln. They were ready for shaping,

molding. I'll have them burning in no time,

God says, thinking biblical thoughts like Burn!—

Babylon, Burn; poetical thoughts like

And righteousness will come down like the rain;

revolutionary thoughts like, I will

overturn overturn overturn them.

God is so excited—things haven't been

this fun in many a generation.

There are all these old scores to settle and

these kids seem like just the ones to do it.

They have Faith—they leap to conclusions.

They have Visions—they eat their mushrooms.

They are Holy—they even wear Levi's.

They tell their rulers, Fuck Off! Eat Shit!

without prompting. God really likes that.

The Old Prophets were sure hard to work with—

had to be scared by angels, whales, lions

before they would do the right thing, and they

always required a sign from heaven.

Not these kids. They jump right in the gap. BAMN!

they chant—BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!

BAMN, God laughs. They even mis-spell right.

9 It's about this time the fasting kicks in.

Things get serious. The party's over.

Where do I go from here? he asks.

No Answer. He asks again. No Answer.

The Journey

10 Where do you go when the bridges are burned?

Church, School, Friends, Home—

His past a husk—an empty shell; his wings

too wet to fly though fly he must—

he wings it on faith—

Falls.

How do you take back words? How do you break a vow?

Words. Words! In the beginning

so sweet to taste, now so bitter to digest—

he was having to eat his words,

Walk his Talk. No rest.

No Rest.

Home—he couldn't go there. Home

is where when you have to go there. . .

Home is where the heart. . .

Homecoming. . .

Alone. Ravaged. A wilderness,

inside. He wanders

where he wills, though not his will,

he laughs, bitterly.

God is an acquired taste, he laughs—

Bitterly.

Walking, he finds himself Everywhere

at once. And No Where. Now Here.

At Once. Everywhere.

You wanted Home? This was Home. This was Crazy.

This was The Center where God hung out,

hanging Everything on Nothing

with nothing but Words and

Spit—

Caught in the cleft of the rock

when the rock was struck

the rod came down again

and he became water—a stain on God's carpet.

Or was he a shard of rock on God's floor?

One metaphor was as good as another.

There was no ending or beginning. There was

No Escape.

The Bridge

11 He saw everything: not a detail

was missed. Events bleeding

and blending into each other in almost

but not quite the same circumstances.

He was like an ambassador between dimensions;

like being in many plays at once, happening

at the same time in different spaces—sets, if you will—

and he would Be-There, leaving to Faith the timing

of the entry, his lines to read, the reaction,

the response of the other characters

and his response to them.

It took a lot of Grace to make decisions.

Sometimes he didn't know what to do

or did, but changed his mind.

This caused much grumbling among the angels,

and often, this is when Accidents Happened

that shouldn't have: a car wreck; a fire;

the inevitable souls that needed re-orienting

or re-occidenting, depending on where they came from,

or more to the point, their destination.

The cries from loved ones, How could you do this!

Why did it happen?

The spirits sent out to make it work out in Time

which sometimes took decades.

From Eternity all Timelines were happening at once.

Letter from God's Country

12 What I'm going through cuts the heart's core:

It's opposite the verse about home being the place

when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

It's the place when you find yourself there,

you know you've been abandoned.

It's where Faith flees and Doubt, an occasional visitor,

announces it's moving in with all its baggage.

But this is nothing compared to the real

Terror. That's when your soul knocks down Heaven's

Door in a last desperate attempt for

Clarity, Sanity, Mercy—anything

but this place where you are where Nothing is—

and there's God having tea with the devil,

discussing You.

You see, you really weren't expected

to make it this far, this close, but you did.

Now you Know. This is what it means,

Then shall we know, even as we are known.

We are God's kids: the ones filled with crazylove.

We're like those wind-up toys that, when set down,

go straight for the edges, cliffs and borders

where the action is; where the danger is.

And God, being God, can't resist showing

us off to whomever stops by for a chat.

God is a proud MamaPapa. Watch this—

Your car is stolen; the check never arrives;

You lose your job; your lover leaves; your pet dies.

Time to pray. But God's on holiday

in the master suite of a swank hotel

sipping Free Will, watching you on cable,

not knowing—really not knowing—the outcome.

Abandonment is the surest sign God loves you.

— Richard Cambridge

Author’s note. “The Book of Psalms” is the first chapter in PULSA—A Book of Books, (Hanover Press, 2006).