Kill the dove!

by Francis Kroncke

  Chapter 49: Epilogue—We’re here to sing!—1981

  Shifting Amanda Rose to his right arm, Jared knee-bends slightly to turn up the TV’s volume. A voice, mellifluous, strong and confident speaks. Although melodious, it clearly seeks to inspire. More, with artful pacing it rises to oratory and hammers home its message—“An iron fist in a velvet glove!”

  From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by and of all the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then, who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?

  “Is that the president?” Joey asks, taking a momentary break from his latest obsession, “Frogger.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jared responds while waving away his son’s question, dismissing this moment of potential parental education so that he doesn’t miss a word of this ardent Revolutionary leader’s vision.

  The face is handsome, star quality. The voice attracts, engages, allures, even tempts. Truly a sirenic power.

  It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams...We have every right to dream heroic dreams...And as we renew ourselves here in our land, we will be seen as having greater strength throughout the world. We will again be the exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope for those who do not now have freedom.

  What’s more to hear? Jared assesses as he turns down the volume, shifts Amanda, this time to his left arm, turns and totes her with him to the memorial on the mantelpiece. The large, shiny black ribbons that frame the picture of the “Imagine!” Revolutionary are festooned with twists of white, yellow, red, blue, even purple flowerets. Rainbow people! they shout out to Jared. For the shortest of seconds the irony of having both these Revolutionaries present in his living room, both here seeking to inspire the minds of his young son and daughter, this irony cuts him deeply. Who has won?

  “Did you hear that crock of shit?!” Aaren almost snarls as she enters the adjoining kitchen, arms filled with grocery bags, head shaking disapproval.

  “Mommy! Mommy!” Joey jumps up and runs towards her. She reflexively deposits the bags and automatically opens her arms, picks him up—it’s more like Swoop!—undeterred from continuing her venting.

  Jared knows his wife is an “MPR junkie.” She has public radio on all day, everywhere: bedroom, kitchen, car, even in the garage. So he knows she’s been listening to the Inaugural Address.

  “Those guys just have no shame!” By “guys” she indicts all Reagan Revolutionaries, all Republicans, throw in all Democrats, Christ! all men, males, patriarchs … “guys” swoops up everything she and Jared dreamslip against.

  “Won’t they ever get it?” is thrown out not for an answer but as her way of engaging their dreamslipping quest. “They’re still making someone the enemy.”

  Aaren kisses Joey on the forehead, puts him down, steps towards her approaching husband-with-daughter, hugs and kisses them both. Jared sets Amanda down. Says, “Joey, play with your sister for awhile.”

  At nine, Joey is proud to be a big brother. He takes his little sister by the hand and they cross the room to settle into their favorite reading spot—the pillowed corner of an old sofa in front of the fireplace. “Cat in the hat. Okay?” he asks, although he already knows she’ll squeal and shout, “Cat in the hat! Cat in the hat!” Joey loves his little sister’s wild abandon. From her first steps—Amanda actually didn’t step as much as run: She a scooter, this one!—everyone’s been trying to keep up with her, Joey, especially.

  Temperamentally, Joey’s more like his other mommy, Char. He’s a bit introverted, gentle, even uncharacteristically—in respect to his father’s side—slightly taciturn. “You’re lucky, you have two mommies who love you!” is all that he’s ever heard. As have several of his playmates whose mothers also live at The Sisters as he’s come to know his other home is called. “You’re very special. You’re all children of a great big family.” It’s a family with many aunts as the Sister’s call themselves, three sets of grandparents, and numerous cousins as every other child is called, except of course for Amanda. And just yesterday, with both mommies present, he learned that this is all about to change, as his dad said, “You’re going to be a big brother, again.” Not unexpectedly, he wasn’t sure which mommy until Char takes his hand and says, “Place your hand here,” as she indicates Aaren’s belly button. “Our baby is growing inside, here.” His quizzical look draws forth Aaren’s sweetest of laughs. “Just wait! In no time, I’ll be as big as uncle Eddie’s belly! Then, you’ll even feel the baby kick.”

  Family. That’s what they’ve been building ever since their first dreamslip. It’s been a rough road, replete with lots of breathtaking walks, runs and treks, but worth it, all in all. The first great fork in the road had been the simultaneously eruption—Jared considers this the only proper word—of their marriage and the Sisters’ divorce. Marriage of Aaren and Jared, August 15, 1975. Divorce of the Sisters, just about the same day.

  Char had worked hard to prevent the blow-up, but the recently revived chapter of SCUM —Society for Cutting-up Men—prevailed. They stormed the wedding, marched in from all sides, raucously waving banners, whooping and hollering. Aaren and Jared had chosen Excedra—Como Park’s most exquisite outdoor garden—for its floral beauty and nature symbolism, and also because its spacious front-lawn provided easy access for and readily served the several hundred guests. Unintentionally, for SCUM’s raiders, its rim of striking firs and pines provided unguarded access and ample opportunity to rampage and desecrate both human and mother nature. “Marriage is evil! It is the rape of our Mother!” was shouted, screamed as Frog Pond’s sighful waterfall ran red with blood! Or, obvious to all, with red dye.

  In concert, a dozen or so hideous butterflies burst forth from the adjoined Enchanted Garden, which is widely acclaimed for its majestic lepidopterous display. These were wing-damaged, beheaded, squashed and uglied creatures who flitted around the crowd with the intent of unsettling everyone, notably the men. They pushed their bodies and faces lip close and twittered, “Kill all the males! Kill all the males!” These butterflies were not in any manner the Enchanted Garden’s “magical creatures of transformation” as described in their wedding invitation. For Aaren and Jared, the humble, hairy, squishy and unremarkable caterpillar symbolized all that they, this day, came to proclaim as the core meaning of their marrying. “We seek to transform and be transformed,” they wrote, “To marry rightly by honoring and making present through our everyday embracing the heart and spirit of the divine male and holy goddess. We do this as two separate, autonomous individuals who intentionally seek to create family—at once civil, holy and mythic.”

  While at first shocked and dismayed by the uglies, most in the crowd—surprisingly, even Jared’s siblings—quickly adapted and took it all in stride. Some even thought that it was a planned guerilla theatre routine, as was so common back during anti-war rallies. In fact, the butterfly raid was quite quickly defused as Jared shouted to the crowd, “The raiders get raided! Rich, ain’t it! There’s a humorous justice here!” Amused laughter softly rippled throughout the garden. Booming, Eddie rejoined, “All’s fair in love and war!” Just the fact that Eddie spoke and joked eased many a more moderate heart. Aaren responded with a sincere plea, “Please, welcome our Sisters. We need them. I do not deny their truth!” Stepping up next to her, taking her hand, Char, in a flaming red Matron of Honor sheath set off by a headdress wreath of violet blossoms, settled everything by sweetly voicing, “These are our Sisters. Bring them into our family. Welcome them. Embrace them. Come Sisters, mine!”

  Family. It had actually and truly begun with the wedding. Which was a day filled with amazing rounds of singing, dancing and unfettered camaraderie. Even two of the butterflies stayed until the end—Converts? Spies? Yet, as the raiders intended, the dark, shadow side of family was also made present, conjured. At d
ay’s end, Jared’s heart was heavy. Intentionally or not, the butterflies made manifest the evil touch of prison, of its evil truth that so many humans still need an enemy. Here were these radical women still hating men, still needing to approach the male as enemy. Intimate enemies. How can we move forward unless women accept men who seek them with humble hearts and emboldened spirits? Emboldened to dreamslip together?

  Aaren and Jared took all the joys and sorrows of their wedding day into their honeymoon dreamslipping meditation. They honored all. Blessed all. And for the first time ever dreamslipped as husband and wife—divine spouses creating a holy family. Chanting: I love you. I am not your enemy. I want to be here. I am your dreamer. In turn, “You are my beloved!”

  “Small dreams…heroic dreams. You know he’s right. He is a Revolutionary.”

  “Really. You believe that? A month ago they killed John Lennon. I bet that was part of his heroic dream.”

  “You know what I mean, Sweetheart. He’s also calling people to dream. If they cop to that truth, then they’ll have to see that to change everything means we need to dream differently, as we are, do. You know, dreamslipping.”

  Dreamslipping family. He comes to her. Kneels before her. He remembers the Bright Cloud: “Don’t love me, worship me!” How majestic the female body! How touchable is the divine goddess! How majestic the male body! How touchable is the divine god! These thoughts transmute into feelings as their hands clasp, the warmth of their lips turn into souls speaking one to the other, his hand upon her womb receives the blessing of the being-born, for they are themselves being born, this they have often shared during the last decade, “Two as One so that the Third appears.” Magical. Mystical. More, mythic. This is the message they’ve shared, time and again, with other folk who they found were also seeking an intimate revolution. They use new words, images, call themselves Earthfolk, discuss intending, analyze the lack of embrace between Adam and Eve, and practice as Aaren and Jared do.

  Aaren, with a passion only intensified by age and travails: “This is our Revolutionary witness—that as myth grounds conscious reality, so a new mythos emerges as we realign, re-word, re-feel, totally re-sense our conscious ways through intimate embracing, embracing as divine spouses. As god/goddess, as male/female, as caterpillar/butterfly, we couple and so make present the Revolutionary fire of dreamslipping.”

  Outlaws: From the start they quickly learned that they remained outlaws. Out of the moral, spiritual, political and sexual laws held sacred by family, friends and those who still see them as dangerous radicals. It is this new mythos of sensual intimacy, based upon “loving as if I am no one’s enemy,” that so many of their friends, family, even other radical activists—believe it, one of The Four!— angrily reject or cannot discern or simply refuse to believe is possible to create. While at the wedding it was SCUM—whose actions were deemed “heroic” by more Sisters than Char had time to weep over—at large there are also just too many others to count. So many Lefties, radicals, hippies and liberals who took a dramatically divergent path, going either farther Left into ultra-violence or wildly Right and joining Reagan’s narcissistic navel gazers.

  “J, are you still wasting your time with that crap?” Bart keeps talking as he sips his umpteenth Cutty Sark. “Look around you”—his sweep includes the resplendent although somewhat overdone opulence of Dreamtime, the Twin Cities most upscale disco—“This is the dream. Money. Women. Good booze. I should’ve named this place Garden of Eden when I bought it,” pauses, exaggerates a wink, speaks louder, “Guess, I’m still a bit too much a half-breed Lutheran for that much blasphemy!” Bart roundly laughs at his own joke, and all the groupies around the table do likewise.

  Jared doesn’t want to go over the same old bullshit with Bart. However Bart doesn’t wait for him to politely excuse himself and exit. He rolls a high price Cuban cigar towards him and snaps his fingers, indicating to the buxom Bunny waitress to bring a new round. “What more do you need? I got you a great paying job with Control Data, didn’t I?—after you soured on grad school. Hell, I bet you royally pissed-off old Professor Noble! He thought you were going to carry his torch – all that Civil Religion and American exceptionalism crap you’ve been spewing, just like your Uncle Sam.” Bart sips, sucks a smoke, blows out, “Hee, hee,”—he’s drunk as a skunk!—“You pissed off both your Uncle Sams, what a joke!” He thumb-nose salutes, mocking each Uncle Sam. “You pissed off the archbishop, too!” Smirking, he goofily blesses himself. “Bad boy, J, very bad boy. Hey!” finger-pointing at a young under-twenty boob across the table, “You think my boy here needs a good fuck? Why don’t you fuck him? Right now. Here!” Bart forearm-sweeps the table: dishes fly, glasses spill, people jump. Then he palm-slaps the table—once, twice—indicating, Right here! Fuck him right here! Jared bolts up from his chair. “Enough! Simply enough, good buddy. I’m leaving.”

  As Aaren sleeps that same night, Jared wonders again, Who won? Reagan is president. He’s an idiot, but he won. Bart’s a millionaire. Did he win? He has his East River Road mansion, three yachts, former Miss Minnesota trophy wife, and a small army of bimbo mistresses. Uncle Sam, Did you win? A total recluse now: Is that winning? Solitary confinement in your own hermitage? Then, without invitation, a rogues gallery of faces fly up from the darkest pits of his memory and flit through his mind. Fucking-A, no way! Jared really doesn’t want to revisit these guys’ fates. So in an attempt to ignore them, he gets out of bed and ambles downstairs into the kitchen. Stealthily, he opens the fridge and grabs a diet coke, a hunk of Swiss cheese. Then, with practiced parental expertise, he tip-toes back upstairs to peek in on the kids.

  Joey sleeps like an angel. God, just like Char. So beautiful. Jared’s heart begins to bleed—it’s the old wound of the visiting room, of her first hoisting the L-word banner. Deep within him, her words cut him, again and again. So deep that he doesn’t hear his own mournful, What if? With a sigh he glances across to Amanda’s crib. God, just like Aaren! There’s a red glow around her, even as she sleeps. Blessed be! With a heart brimming with fatherly love, he turns about ever so silently and makes towards their bedroom. With skillful movements, he slips back under the covers without disturbing Aaren. Crap! a half-hour later, he still can’t fall asleep. His mind’s just racing. He can’t stop them!

  They come; they all come. Parade before him. Cray—was it really true? How sad. Murdered. Killed by an inmate. Then, the word, the rumor—could it be true? Sexual molestation? Boy, is that mythic justice! Then, they jump on him, he feels mugged. Fights them off. Shouts, “No way, motherfuckers!” to Bruiser, Dikbar, Burston and “Witson. Stevie boy! Fuck you, man. Never again!” Jared shifts to blessing them, his way of exorcizing them. He prays, he implores, “Okay. I love you guys. Hate to admit it. But, please—Please!—go away once and for all!” He intones and opens his heart, “I am not your enemy. You are not my enemy. You are me. I am you. Amen.”

  Pssst! Hey. It’s me, Arnold. You didn’t invite me but here I am! Think you could not dream me? Fool! Of course all this crap is true. Cray was a pervert, man. But what’s more true, why I’m visiting you me-boy, is to kick your stupid ass. I mean, fella, why are you still just an old burned out whack job? Did you miss everything that goes on in this here Attica paradise? It’s still going on. Say, you’re not going to listen to me, are you? Just like you, yeah, you’re going to try and undream me. Good luck with that. Oh—Fuck you!—there, always wanted to say that. Wonder why? Because you’re still Inside, stupid motherfucker! There, said it again. Ta ta!

  Jared works hard to get out of this looping prison reverie. Matt. That’s a good story. Running a natural foods cooperative. What a guy! Hmm. Corey. Where’d he disappear to? He rolls over, lightly punches, bunches the pillow, but they’re not done with him yet. Maybe only Ho Chi Minh won? At least he believed in the people. Always liked him. Though he should’ve read Gandhi more, less Machiavelli. Then, the table is turned: What about you, Jared? What have you won? No prize from the Church. No prize f
rom the State. No honors from Academia. Nothing but your freaking sales awards. Can you believe yourself? National sales manager of the year—three year’s running? Are you insane? Making “must feed the children” excuses? Maybe one of these new companies Bart keeps getting you to invest in will win? This vaunted Computer Revolution, get the joke? Like Apple—God, back in the Garden! Aaren wouldn’t mind. Would she? Does she? Does she think you’ve won? Does she look at you and say, “I’ve won!” Are you a prize?

  Fuck! I don’t know who’s won. Maybe nobody’s won? ejects him from the bed one more time. Christ! How he hates these nights when he can’t sleep. When the question nags and rags on him all night. Dogs him. Bites his psychic ass. It’s at times like this that he almost envies his nights back in the joint where—drugged by fear?—he at least slept, didn’t dream, at least any he remembers. Without disturbing his love, he slips, once again, out of the bedroom and goes downstairs.

  With a glass of warmed up milk stirred with honey, he realizes that John had the answer, still has it. John, do you? Who better to ask? So Jared settles down on the fireplace couch and sits quietly waiting. Soon the appropriate moment comes. Jared slips on a headset and clicks the remote to start the tape. This is his song; Jared’s anthem. Fittingly, it soars and swells on Joan Baez’s intensely passionate, clear voice. She offers to John the song that, for Jared, sums up the Sixties. The song that raises that generation’s unanswered question, Who won?

  Why all these bugles cry

  These squads of young men drill

  To kill and to be killed

  Stood waiting by the train

  Why the orders loud and hoarse

  Why the engine's groaning cough

  As it strains to drag us all

  Into the holocaust

  Why crowds who sing and cry

  And shout and fling us flowers

  And trade their rights for ours

  To murder and to die

  CHORUS

  The dove has torn her wing

  So no more songs of love

  We are not here to sing

  We're here to kill the dove

  Why must this moment come

  When childhood has to die

  When hope shrinks to a sigh

  And speech into a drum

  Why are they pale and still

  Young boys trained over night

  Conscripts payed to kill

  And dressed in gray to fight

  These rainclouds massing tight

  This train load battle bound

  This moving burial ground

  Goes thundering to the night

  CHORUS

  The dove has torn her wing

  So no more songs of love

  We are not here to sing

  We're here to kill the dove

  —Jacques Brel, La Colombe (The Dove)

  Jared pauses the tape. Asks out loud, “What do you say, John?”

  It’s not over. That’s only the question.

  “Gimme a break, John, I know. I know. I know the answer. We’re here to sing, right? We’re here to free the dove? All that symbolism. I get it. You’re a fucking genius. I love you, man.”

  Jared leans back, remotely clicks on the next tape selection.

  In the morning, Aaren, half-awake, sneaks her hand under the blankets to stir her beloved spouse—Again?!—all she feels are cool sheets. She throws on her robe and as expected finds him—her lover, her husband, her divine spouse—snoring on the couch, earphones askew. Gently, she lifts them off his head. She doesn’t have to ask. She knows the question. Looking up at John, she also knows the answer. Aaren knows. She knows. “Imagine!” she whispers to her dreaming beloved intimate Revolutionary. “Keep imagining!”

  As Aaren turns and goes into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee and set out the bowls for the kids’ cereal that portion of their wedding vow that they sang to one another, that launched their own coupled Revolution hums through her head and becomes the day’s heartbeat.

  You may say that I'm a dreamer

  But I'm not the only one

  I hope someday you'll join us

  And the world will live as one.

  END

  Links:

  The “Minnesota 8”

  “Peace and War in the Heartland”

  “Earthfolk”

  Outlaw Visions