From: sabbott@nmsu.edu (SDA)
Subject: Recollections of Lady Liberty and the Joy of Being an American IX
Organization: WHorshipers of Lady LibertY (WHoLLY)
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 01:35:11 GMT



Scorched Earth Spiritualism seemed just a passing fad, doomed to
go the same way as the Dodo, hullah hoops and the Republican Party,
until that fateful evening when Jud was out blowing-up toaster
ovens and praying over the ashes.  He had gone out alone that
evening for a bit of relief from the workaday world:  a little
wanton destruction to take his mind off the project he was
involved with.  He had recently gotten involved with the Danish
Zero Group out of CalTec, a group dedicated to launching delicate
pastries into orbit as a signal to any aliens in the near system
that Earth was indeed inhabited by intelligent life.  Jud had
initially been enthusiastic about the project, but lately the
dynamical calculations involved in pastry-launch were proving
difficult.  And so he thought quite reasonably that a few
packed C4 charges inside a Westinghouse and the associated
flat roar might help him regain his confidence.

Jud was right about that, in a way, but on that amazing evening,
fey slivers of shrapnel whizzing by his head, he found things turning
in a new direction.

The 16-cubic-foot Westinghouse had been discarded beneath a giant
saguaro cactus which stood many-armed and thick-bodied on an isolated
mesa, which itself was well and goodly shaken when the C4 blew itself
to smithereens. The noise from the blast was deafening, even at the
distance from which he had been waiting, watching. He winced at the
flash of light, and felt the slightest touch on his forehead. His own
warm blood began flowing liberally down his face.

He tore his t-shirt off, wadded it up and plastered it to his
forehead. He saw a lot of blood, but knew that the particular
tightness of the skin stretched across the skull tended to make a
bigger deal out of little cuts than was really necessary to get the
skull's particular owner to attend to it. Nonetheless, he counted
himself lucky that the chunk of refrigerator only exacted the singular
toll it did, rather than demand a more substantial penance for blowing
it up.

Jud looked back to where the explosion had been, and opened his eyes
wide in dumb amazement. The self-same shower of shrapnel which had
only recently carved his forehead had sculpted a miracle. What had
only minutes ago been a formidable giant saguaro had been
refrigeratored into the perfect likeness of Lady Liberty.

'Twas a miracle indeed.

Several of the saguaro's arms had been severed nearly intact, and lay
strewn around the base of the figure like so many severed saguaro
arms. The other arms were thoroughly macerated by the shrapnel, and
carpeted the mesa with a pale-green pulp along with the rest of the
flesh that had been cleaved from the cactus.

Shaken, Jud began a slow walk to the Lady. He was overwhelmed at the
surreal beauty of the scene, the sublime smile on the face of Lady
Liberty. By the time he had immersed both of his running shoes in the
sticky pulp he had hit upon the first truly original idea of his
heretofore mediocre life. He would build a shrine to Lady Liberty on
this spot. On this holy ground. A shrine, and a gift shop. And a
motel. Yes. A shrine, a gift shop, and a motel. Each built for the
greater glory of Lady Liberty. Taken together, they would constitute
the machinery he needed to amass his fortune. For the greater glory of
Jud.

Walking, running, laughing, frolicking back to his car, Jud imbued
with purpose was a transformed Jud.  

But the car wouldn't start.  

After cranking the engine until battery melted in protest, Jud set out
across the vast desert.  Back to civilization, to tell the world about
The Miracle.  

By the third day Jud was in bad shape, or at least that was the consensus
opinion of the five drivers who'd happened by and ignored his jutting
thumb.  Sometimes they looked back through the back window, vaguely
motioning towards the gun rack.  Almost delirious, he longed for the
bitter taste of saguaro flesh.  

The Suburban kicked up a long plume of dust, rolled to a stop ten feet
from his prone form, and a woman like 100 miles of the bad road ahead
approached him, hand on holster. 

"What are you doing on my ranch?" she asked clearly expecting an answer
she'd heard before.  "I'm lost.  Can I get a drink, please?" asked Jud,
voice cracking in the heat.  She returned to the truck and pulled a warm
Pepsi from a 6-pack, and watched him drink it.  "Lost, my ass." 

"I got the mineral rights here, and I don't appreciate trespassers who
got the gall to start their own mine on my land.  Two hundred dollars
gets your car back.  If you don't have it, you can work it off picking
up the goddam pop-tarts started growing on the mesquite before the cows
get to them.  Lost three to bloat already."  "I do have experience with
pastries, ma'am," he volunteereed.

                        * * *

Jud worked hard and time flew by.  The skin on his neck grew leathery,
the strong coffee seemed just right and the baskets of pop-tarts
rose towards the ceiling of the old barn.  And, what's more, the
deep longing to go back out to the mesa, to wallow in the sight of
the miracle, was gradually being replaced by something new:  love for
the hard woman who had rescued him when no one else would.  He found
himself going out of his way to be near her tough, weathered form.
He would stop gathering the pastries to lovingly observe her
castrating sheep, or herding termites down an arroyo, or shooting
at teenagers four-wheeling near the creek, and his mind would
drift to thoughts of her as he went about his chores.  But they
were worlds apart:  she a world-weary and somewhat grisly old
ranch mother, and he a pale Bear-claw dynamics specialist with
his mind on the lofty, so far removed from the day to day pragmatics
of ranch life.

It happened late one afternoon when Jud went down to the creek to
dredge some silt for the afternoon lunch.  After it was over, Jud
would remark about the awkwardness of it all.  She was there,
so sexy in her canary-yellow Oshkosh Bib Overalls, scraping the
thin layer of latex she had sprayed on the stream's rocks the week
before.  She had claimed then that the rocks were getting soggy
like so many wheat flakes in a bowl of whole milk, and that the
latex would serve in much the same way the coating did on the
dog.  Jud loved her more than words could say at moments like
that.  

Jud looked directly into her hazel eyes. "Sometimes in my darkest
moments," he stammered, "I feel as soggy as the soggiest of wheat
flakes. And I think right now might be one of those times." He
swallowed hard and looked down. In the blink of an eye she had dropped
trowel and trou. Scooping up the latex sprayer she moved toward him,
gaze level, hips hypnotically swaying.

She undressed him then, and he marveled at the softness of this hard
woman whenever serendipity permitted him to feel it. When he was
completely naked, she pumped the handle of the latex sprayer with her
tanned, corded arms, and began to coat him in brilliant white latex.
The sensation on his skin as the latex dried in the warm afternoon sun
was exhilarating. When she was finished, he gently took the sprayer
from her and began covering her with the thinnest layer of latex.

"I believe in practicing safe sex," she purred when he had finished.

"Yet another parallel," he replied.

"Parallel *this*."  

She was only inches from him now.  They coupled, swathed in the
vinyl that absorbed their sogginess.  The sprayer hummed merrily behind
them, forgotten.
  
He helped her to her feet.  "You're done," she whispered.  She reached
behind him and ran her nails down his spine.  The latex parted and,
tugging gently, she removed it.  

"Good Gooley," she stuttered.

"I have presidential candidates to visit and no time for you, wench,"  
the chalk white being intoned.  "And I'll need every one of those
fruit-filled messages back."

-- we zoom in from beyond deepest dark, cold so cold, light so
muted, towards the eye, the spears of chalk-white, areoles of blue.
and down through the peering tube we are in a grainy brown world
and a head with hair like a forest, then a city of shafts, then into
a caldera pore and a microscopic flea gigantic and then a cell,
and a sea of mushy bright pulsing alive, and a mitochrondria with
rivulets of his mother-code, harkening back to whole phalanxes of
mothers, then granny and cracks in their faces and then the oldest
world and the pulse of placenta and swish as sperm glide by into
the gaps between the atoms of the crystal shard and the quantum
waves are virtual particles then not, and such goes in and through
the non-gaps and through the backsides of the image fields --

<mark:ted:jenny:sean>

--

"Life is like a big C program with no documentation"  - Ted Slater

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