Pack Back Better
I decided to try something new - go to bed early, like normal old people do. I climbed into the sack, missing music or a podcast to get me to fall asleep, but was left with listening to the noise of the forest instead. And self talk - lists and memories. To-to’s and stuff to bring next time, like ketchup, Mayo, etc.
Pasta is not potable in 94° weather so it looks like a haul back home from Loaves & Fishes, (i.e. I’m bringing back more than I came with, (metaphorically, and all the pasta, literally)).
[Bible lesson]
Don’t skip, this one is good. Jesus calls the masses to his Sermon on the Mount speech. Probably even better than MLK’s I Have a Dream speech. And they both predicted they’d be in heaven before their time.
- Well, it was Jesus’ time, and dozens of false prophets before him had perished recently, as scriptures prophesied countless times. (A finite number of times but I forgot how many, so I’m spit-balling here).
- Actually, at the same time of Jesus “triumphant” tiny-ass-ride (“...he rode in on the foal of an ass), (Where was P.E.T.A. back then?)) into Jerusalem, there was another man claiming he was the messiah. WTF? #BiblicalManiaMuch?
So, He calls 10,000 to hear him. In Biblical times, crowds were counted by only counting the men. (We’ve come a long way, baby. #BiblicalWomenMatter.
Visualize this - they (probably the women), carried a wicker basket, like a backpack, (not on their heads, like Africans, (or maybe they did, there was a lot of North African cross-breeding, (I know, crude term, but they raped and pillaged literally to spread their seed. (And because they could)), And, the Jews were slaves for generations to the Egyptians, (and they are dark!))).
So, the basket was about 3-5 gallons, depending on how big the family was, (especially boys), how far the journey, if they were camping, the weather, etc. (and they didn’t have the medical-body all figured out but I’m willing to bet that dehydration was a known issue back then).
Imagine how that conversation went:
“Bartholomew, did you catch any fish today?”
“I only fish for men, now, Ziva.”
“That’ll put food on the table,” she laughed, as she filled the sheepskins with water and a secret stash of Mogen-David wine, (He made good wine in the day), (Google it)), wine for herself.
“He’ll feed us, Zee, he always knows a way.”
“Bring some extra loaves, we can trade it for fish.” Bartholomew said. “Bring some of that unleavened bread, and some wine, you know, we shall have the sacrament of eating His body and drinking His blood?”
“Fishing for men, huh?” she said, loading up the basket with all sorts of Jewish deli pastries and bread. “I’m seeing a pattern here.” She turned and mumbled, “Those Nazarenes are cannibals.”
“Say what, now?”
“Don’t forget the crucibles.”
“You will learn, he’ll teach you how to live forever in the New Jerusalem in the sky.”
“Say what, now?” she said, half listening to the same stories, passed down for generations to come. If they are such important stories, what will happen? Is everybody going to wait 50 years until they write it down?”
“Maybe after you learn to read, (only the men got schooling), you can write it down.”
“The drunk version, or the hangover version?” she said. “ Lift your feet, I’m bringing the placemat.”
Bart drank a lot of wine, and I can’t back this up with facts, but if they ran out of wine, while scrounging for men instead of fishing, who could make more wine, the M/D good stuff, at the blink of an eye? (Hint - he could also walk on water.)
“Grab that extra sheepskin of wine, I can’t carry it, I have a huge staff.”
“Plan on meeting some of your man-bait (fishing for men?), on the way?”
“Judas likes to party like it’s 1999,” he said. “But if you want to keep a secret, don’t tell Judas, he’d sellout his Gramma for 20 pieces of silver.”
“In your dreams,” she said.
“No, Zee, in the Nazarene’s dreams, he tells great stories.”
“And you believe all this?”
“I fish all day, I got lots of time to think,” he retorted. “And I watched him walk across the water.”
“Yeah, blah blah, get more water, some of the Roman soldiers might show up and they always mooch our water.”
Some walked for miles, stopping to drink, pee, poop, change the moss-diaper on baby Simon, and just rest cuz the slippers they called shoes? Walk a mile in those shoes while balancing 30 pounds on your head, while your four-year-old is trying to get some boob-milk as she’s walking, and you’d rest too. Plus, the gossip!
Jesus starts to move forward, and does the handshake thing, (much like the president on his way to the State of the Union address, (only Jesus is healing them with the touch of his hand). People he touches on the forehead fall down in a trance, (or dehydration, remember?)
And, I don’t know about you, but if Jesus cured that guy of a raging case of blepharitis, and blinding cataracts, by spitting on the mud-clod in His own hands, then rubbing it in hard, (author’s embellishment), thereby curing that “allegedly” blind guy, (or grifter, with a future mud-cure-salve business) {Treatment} In the fine print, lost on papaya, he was told he could see in 2 to 6 weeks, if he kept his head propped up on, what they called, a pillow...
So, anyway, if he could get rid of my jock-itch, with the touch of his hand, (his hand on my hand, not my groin), would I be a bit assertive to get to the aisle, standing room only?
#LadiesAndChildrenNotFirst was my game plan. Sure, some women could use a hygienic touch. [FYI] I’m referencing living downwind from the David’s house of 11 menstruating daughters, (that’s a rough week, every month, in 108° weather. And before Aunt Flo is in town, the bickering! #CacklingPMSHens. I got within inches, then some tall, dark drink of water, holding a baby with a hair-lip, offered me some magic beans to give his son a chance to kiss a girl, or a Palestinian boy, (they dress like girls, remember? On a hot, sweaty day, when the robes are revealing, but not too revealing... )
Now where was I?
Then Jesus jumps up and down on Bart’s, or whoever brought it, sturdy, very empty soapbox, (“Please wash your hands before dinner, Irving, and don’t dry them on your sister.)
And when Jesus quiets the crowd, even the babies stop crying, (he’s a magician, duh).
[visualize this]
- Imagine 100,000 drenched hippies at Woodstock, and the acoustic requirements for all of them to hear Jimmy do the Star Spangled Banner, all the way in the back, (where the satellites would have been if somebody could have predicted the turnout).
- Now, divide that Woodstock number, (I know it’s higher, but I’m making a point), by 10, (10,000 attended Jesus’ #SOTM), add the countless, (literally) women, and they’re all spread out on their hides, (or for those whose husbands are dead or bad with the slingshot, itchy wool blankets). But it’s like Woodstock would have been if it was sunny, (Jesus could control the weather).
- Plus, it’s been rumored far and wide for days and months, (the wells are lousy with rumors, and it’s always the women who get the water so willingly. #CacklingHens...
I broke the flow...
- Anyway, it was rumored that Jesus was verbose, and also talked in tongues, with parables instead of just spelling it out in Laymen’s terms, you know, for the women’s sake, who couldn’t even read, let alone do long division.
- He rambles on and on, (nobody is taking notes on papaya, so it’s not clear how long), and then it’s time to eat.
Loaves & Fishes, The Logical Version
“You hungry?” The King of the Jews hollers, (and his voice carries miraculously).
“YES!”
“I can’t hear you! Who’s hungry?”
“We are!”
“And who are we?”
“Cross-bearers!”
“And who’s cross will bear us all?”
Peter, His right hand man, whispers in Jesus’ ear, “You should have stopped on a high note, or levitated. You’re losing them, let them eat.”
He starts out with a half dozen fish, a baker’s dozen (give or take) of loaves of leaven bread, (the unleavened bread recently started to taste like divine flesh), and commands them all to pass it around, with the inter-tribal-universal sign language for “around.”
Imagine how that went down:
“Bart, did you eat all the kbaflafals? The Schwartz’s are trying to Jew me down on their fish-boots for this unleavened crap you fishermen now call bread.”
“Don’t blasphemy Jesus’s flesh.”
“Try not to use that sales pitch on the next schmuck who wants to pawn some shoe-leather-dry codfish,” she said, maternally. “Simon is teething something fierce and I only brought one chamois bib, he needs a new chew toy.”
Bart was feeling no pain, and when he got down off the soapbox, the very same one Jesus used, (A merchant could have sold it for a premium if Jesus hadn’t ransacked the market in the outer court of The Temple. What now? )
“Did your (air-quotes) friends get enough in-bread, Honey?”
“Oh, that reminds me, the Lebanese over yonder have honey, milk and honey...”
“Did they get enough to eat?” she said. “Can’t live on honey alone.”
“Judas chowed down like it was his last supper,” Bart said, half drunk on watered-down wine, (Jesus was too busy to make more), “And He told some of my good stories, huh? Even better than me...”
“Whose stories?”
“Jesus said they were ours to spread after he’s gone.”
“Where’s He going, again?” She asked. “Oh yeah, the New Kingdom in the sky, right? Zee hears the important Jesus-stuff.”
“Christ, woman,”
“What’s wrong, Barty-pooh?”
“No, Jesus Christ, woman.”
“WHAT NOW? You sound just like your father.”
Bartholomew took a well deserved swig of sheep-skin wine. (When it gets really hot, it all tastes like sheep), because Zee could be a handful, and her abrasive behavior was currently expounded upon by hand gestures and sexy hair tossing in the Viking’s general direction. And, and to impress the Bethlehummers (Inside joke).
“Shit up, woman,” he said.
“Sit up or shut-up, my dear sir.”
“Shut up.”
“I wasn’t saying nothing, Bumpkin,” she said.
“I can read your thoughts, Jesus Christ taught us some cool tricks”, he said.
“Whatever, Leonard (slam-nickname at his deceased father’s expense, (God rest his soul... (in Hell, apparently)).
“Just say what you gotta say,” Carl (no idea where that nickname came from), we got a long way to walk, and the wolves are hungry at dusk.”
“I can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Bart said, herding the kids outside.
“... No kids, it’s a saying... We will live out the prophesy of my years of abuse, accusations, bee stings, (flogging actually), and hanging. Gotta make sure us Born-agains aren’t spreading any bastardized version around.”
“Interesting choice of word, bastardized, after the (air quotes) Virgin Mary got pregnant, by another man.”
“God!”
“What now, Carl? (Still no clue about the nickname).
“You cannot spread rumors!”
“Who am I gonna tell anyway?”
She let out a guffaw, thinking about the torrid of rumors at the well, after all these organic-smelling bodies crammed in at the SOTM showdown, and the journey back, which is every single step of the way back, as it is in the way to the show.
That gave her a long time to practice her, “So, did you hear about Richard Finedog’s oldest boy? He’s a beast. Literally!”
“Did you see who Peter was cavorting with?”
“Was it that whore, Mary Magdalene?”
“Who names their whores, Mary, anyway?”
“Maybe she wasn’t a whore at birth, ever think of that?” Piped in the woman with a nose so mangled, it would take a lot of mud, spit, and clay, to make her beautiful from the front, (she had great hips and could do things with her hips... but the nose. Some just can’t get past her nose...
“I love the smock, by the way.”
“She was a Phoenician,” Zee said.
“Who, the smock-maker?”
“No, Mary, they’re all whores.”
“Poor Peter,”
“Not what I heard,” the queen of well-gossip said...
[Historical perspective]
Even though the uneducated women got them no schooling, they had to do short division - like half the food to go somewhere, anywhere, in this never-ending blessed summer heat, {try complaining of the heat to those of our ilk who roamed the dessert for forty years and forty nights to get to this place (air quotes) flowing with milk and honey #JewishSarcasm), and you’ll hear them humming, (cuz most of them have only a tooth or two left dangling, (old Jewish proverb said to let them fall out on their own, don’t yank it.} (TMI?). If you did venture the path few men, (women don’t count, remember?) take unscathed, and stupidly lament to your ancestors, (relative term, ancestors, but Noah lived 600-900 years, give or take a dozen generations. (Talk about crèpe skin. In the desert for centuries, no less?))
“Knowledge is power” but poisoning the well has two meanings - the last meaning having to do with literal poison, and/or poop, (never a shortage of poop, ever since Eve made Adam eat the apple and the first poop was introduced as a scourge on mankind, (cuz women didn’t count).
But the first, other way to poison the well is to get your news from the town’s domesticated foxes, (soon to be a News Fox in all the gullibly stupid towns across the land, and probably Fox will be stow-aways, bringing their mental bile up into the New Jerusalem in the sky, (like the sly and sexy Foxes they are, until they start to move their lips, (metaphorical political joke), and then you just hear blabbing - incoherent babbling, (metaphorically, if foxes could talk), spewing what the Fox News Foxes have done since Lake Erie was just a puddle.
The News Fox(es), soon to replace the well-gossiping well-hags, (because, along with being inundated with the news, you get a deal on a Persian Pillow, (called Persian Pillow, duh), half price.
Furthermore, after going to India for a pilgrimage, (the unwritten years of Jesus’ life), (mimicked by the Beatles three Noah-life-spans later)), they came back with gorgeous silk and French silk stockings, to which the news hounds, used expeditiously to spread their pig’s ear in a silk purse... their foxes.
So tired of this analogy.... moving on...
These foxes later distributed the news wearing his cute, little, blonde satchel, and matching monkey-grinder hat, (monkeys stole the idea for the NewsFox), with their flowing tail, so as to appeal to the gullible men who will believe anything with a Fox logo behind it...
Now moving on... the good part’s bar had been raised significantly, or lowered.
Anyway, if you complain about the heat, the desert walkers will hum #CryMeARiver, because some anciently past guy, with historians clamoring to record their irrefutable knowledge of hanky-panky amidst the royals, (incest) and history making was just a pen, ink, and paper away from Page 6, biblical times edition.
Anyway, Zeva’s return load would be less, both physically and spiritually, even as she had to conquer the heat that could have been diverted if Jesus had just thought to extend the 70°, no humidity, and a cool breeze off the Dead Sea, weather some say he can alter, with the same hand that cured eyesight with mud-balls.
“Half food to, half food from, plus/minus (glass half full guy here), Bart’s 11 hang-on-Jesus’-every-word-disciplely-devoted friends, who feel entitled to whatever they can put in there now empty boats, (where the fish once were). In other words, going back with a lighter load, but Bart got himself a new mahogany staff that has this head on it that looks like a bull’s manliness - bull, strong bull. So he would be of no help in transporting other sundries.
So Bart and Ziva got to rehashing the days events, while it was still fresh in their minds, like it would have to be until somebody taught a woman, with good penmanship, (who can press down hard on two layers of papaya parchment, (making copies). It’d be awhile.
“Some parts did drag, like all the people hollering, I mean, I get, ‘ save me, and ‘where’d I leave my ass, I was drunk, Lord.”
He ignored her insubordination, (but nobody can ignore the vitriolic diatribes of a middle-eastern woman scorned), (or with sore feet and an ungrateful husband), so he carried on, to anybody who would listen, hyping the Hell, (quite literally) out of the non-violent insurrection, (There is a fluid definition of that term nowadays).
“He openly instigated all this future carnage, my sheeple, divine orders espoused by such authority, as if by the Son of God Himself...”
“As IF by?” Zee interrupted. “He sounded pretty convincing to me, but I could only just hear part of it, because you made us sit in front of those illegal aliens and their interpreters. Blah blah, gimka, beluga, yashiharwha, blah blah...”
Bart was ready to strike her, right there in public, (#MenArePigs), but instead, he suckled a couple more huge swigs, including belligerently “Egyptian-lipping” the bone-wine-nipple, so nobody else would want it
“Who said to storm the castle?” Bart hollered to the crowd.
Nobody answered. [tough crowd]
“Who wants more lutefisk?” (Huge laugh!) He would warm up the crowd, (on this 102° day), with some ethnic jokes. His number 2 contingency warm up act, (weather dependent, had a ton of flood jokes, at Noah’s expense.)
Not one to be able to quote God, or his Son, Bart took to scripting his monologues by having shorthand written on the backs of smooth-skinned prepubescent Palestinian boys, (until all the Palestinian boys ran from Bart.)
The warm-up act was gonna be a hit, or lit, if his note-boy didn’t sweat and smear the goat blood scratched upon his back. (Those Palestinians got no respect. Ever!)
“He built to a crescendo. “And-my mighty sheeple - who should unleash His new commands to the Romans, Jews, and the man/girl/women, (who disguise themselves as men, (clothing was pretty gender-fluid back then)
Bart was all hyped up, (He got her moldy bread, maybe? Zee was not about to be caught bringing her best bread to a potluck, As she said, and I quote, “let them eat cake.”
Bart got on his soap box, (Jews are an hygienic bunch, bringing lots of soap everywhere, crates of it, so after they use the lye soap, they can rinse their hands on what, drinking water? Water-turned-to-wine?
So anyway, hygienic Jews even use a sword to hack off the end of all Jewish male baby’s (redundancy is not lost on me), penises, (and it was small, like chestnut small, but the swords were really sharp, (Mohels liked to put on a show - fire, dancing girls, and the crème, de la crème, a honking big, jewel-encrusted, sharp sword to slice and dice). They do this for hygiene. Yes, they wash their hands.
The smart Jews inflicted all that pain just so the baby Jews don’t get the original case of head-cheese, (Google it)
Bart addressed the crowd, who weren’t talking now, with their mouths full, (another jewish first, passed down for generations). “Was he good or what, Jews and Judases?” (foreshadowing)
Bart motions the crowd to resolve the grumbling from the drunk Viking (they wandered far in their boats, even back then.) Olaf stood out in the crowd - tall, blonde, built like a brick (they had bricks back then) shit-house, and the horns were a pretty good give-away from across the amphitheater. (Those bloody Vikes and their horns).
Don’t get me started on them Viking babes-in-the-woods, suffice it to say, “blonde, by cracky,” (they go commando too.)
And, speaking as a flaming heterosexual, these gentlemen, they were/are hung, leaving endless fodder for well-talkers. I mean, long, hard, conversions - and Viking men with the biggest horns were not afraid to show whats below their skirt.
Norwegians, (and the Scottish to a lesser degree), are a gender-fluid wardrobe malfunctioning group of men who must have learned to dress from their mommies, duh. Can’t swear by it, but this might be the first reference to “going commando” ever mentioned in the Bible, (Google “kilts at sermon on the mount”, or “why did men wear skirts to speaking engagements in biblical times, other than to bend over and please the crowd?”
He concluded. “Jesus said to share, if you have extra, put it in one of the red baskets going around. Avoid the blue one, bad juju. If you need some, take some.”
More skirmishing...
“Okay, who is trying to trade lutefisk for haddock and some bread? (Nobody brought spoons, and lutefisk smelled like the satellites would have smelled at Woodstock, if they’d had satellites).
“Don’t put that swill back in the baskets. Men with horns will gather the leftovers. Look for men with horns. Do not put the L word back in the baskets, it will leak and Nana’s Christmas sweater will get a stain that won’t come out until the first Easter.”
“If you need some, take some. If you have extra, share it.”
“... He started with a few baskets but when it got back around, there was enough left over to fill an empty fishing boat cuz, Lord knows, men-fishing-boats are pretty empty.
But a woman in my mom’s Bible study’s class disagreed vehemently. “I believe it just appeared out of nowhere,” she said. This, from the same woman who passed around her daughter’s first ultra-sound, saying she was a new gramma.
“Do you believe it was share and share alike, Pastor? Or this blasphemous poppy-cock idea. Be honest.”
“Well,” he said, I guess you’ll just have to put it on the list of things to ask when you get to heaven.”
“Like, were there 14 foot tall giants in the 15 foot long sarcophagus(es),” I said, to Mom’s smile. But I don’t know when to stop, and was getting ready for the not too infrequent kick in my shins.”
“Or, is a zebra white with black stripes, and black with white stripes?”
An artist must suffer for his art, I was artistic in Bible class.
