Stu's 7th Pie Piece Core Crew
The Year's Half Through
Today is a Sum Day, as many of you recognize. 6 + 20 = 26. In keeping with Bug Stu’s numerology, that means there’s supposed to be something bold or meaningful said. It wasn’t until Thursday that I realized today would be a Sum Day.
But all I needed to do was start the poem Thursday, apparently, then the rest would take care of itself, the writing of the story that is, which it did, starting later that day.
It was what I call a full spectrum day, meaning my connections and conversations wove through dense patterns of the most-to-least transcendent, then back again at the very end of the day. Like, spiritual, then not at all, then back again. What a vague but interesting word, spiritual.
Anyway, after having many more conversations than normal on Thursday, in The Greater Star City Area, ending with one on the Fruit Bats, particularly their song “A Lingering Love,” I drove north to Ade Country to see my friend Wes in Brook (where George Ade built his country estate).
Unrecollected by me, it was Wes’s mother’s birthday. She, Betty Kessler, a widely beloved elementary teacher, my fourth-grade teacher, has been mentioned here many times over the years, partly because of my own rendition of The Story of Stu and involving my touching a mummy’s hand at the George Ade Estate she took us to. But that’s not the relevant aspect here, so I won’t digress.
The relevant aspect is that Mrs. Kessler was well-known for her love of the town of Morocco. There is even a (rather ironically placed) Betty Kessler Park in Morocco.
This Project was initially inspired by her and dedicated to her memory, and I’ve always regretted that I couldn’t get much of anything to happen before she died, which was ten years ago this summer, the same year I envisioned Bug Stu. She was 99. She and my Grandma Storey, life-long friends, were the same age and died the same year.
I believe it was Betty’s father that was serving as the pastor of the Methodist Church in 1916 when the current building was opened. We talked a lot the ten years prior to her passing. Somewhere I have a notebook with some of the stories. She did love Morocco. Her music was much more Big Band than country or folk or however she’d categorize the Fruit Bats, but on my way home from Wes’s shed I played “A Lingering Love” in her honor and for my own memory of how this all started.
It’s a fairly short song, and here’s the link for you : ).
Many of the small towns around here established their enduring cores between 1880 and 1920, after railroads were well in place and just in time for automobiles and highways were making them more accessible, even for visitors. This year is the 100th anniversary for many of those highways, and in the poem below you might notice how a couple of themes are coming together, at least in Grandma Dorie’s mind, and prayers.
Grandma Dorie is a generation younger than Mrs. Kessler, and she would have had her as a teacher, as Dorie’s daughters did. Dorie so wanted Rhettie’s mom to visit Campus House when she was at Purdue in the 1970s. Dorie remembers one of the songs her daughter shared with her from Electric Light Orchestra back then, and it’s mentioned in this poem. Fair warning, if you listened to “A Lingering Love” above, this ELO song will seem to be from an entirely different world. (So I’ll save the link until the end of the poem.)
Rhettie’s mom shared the song with Dorie because she knew it would make her happy, being at least vaguely spiritual combined with the recognition of hard lives, hard life, especially in the city in this case. If you listen closely you’ll understand why Rhettie uses it in one of the “Musicals” that she and Wally have planned (pertaining to the Stralfs). Anyway, Rhettie’s parents soon moved to an affluent part of Chicago after college, which is where Rhettie grew up, except for the summers when she stayed with Dorie on the farm near Morocco.
Rhettie did visit Campus House quite a bit, having discovered it while briefly seeing a guy from FarmHouse (she was originally in Ag Education after all). Both of those original buildings that Rhettie knew are gone now. It has made her feel like she’s getting old. It has made Grandma Dorie feel like she herself is getting very old.
Dorie wrote this poem to Rhettie recently. She didn’t give it to Rhettie and she won’t until it’s time. Dorie will turn eighty-six this year. Some of the references are from Rhettie herself. Dorie is sure that Rhettie is ready to make her vision become real. So she’s written this to encourage her, but she hasn’t shared it with her, waiting until it won’t seem to be pressuring her, maybe when things have moved on a little further. It was a way for Dorie to help herself be comfortable I think, with time.
Dorie very much believes in “Stu’s 7th Pie Piece Core Crew” that we’ve talked about many times here, as a great upcycling of the less complete idea from her era.
I should just mention that when Rhettie realized years ago that she didn’t want to take the time to teach when she had a hunch there was something different to do, she’d walked back to a woods with a small pond and rare (there) artesian well to sort out her thoughts. That’s when she fell asleep and had her first dream in which Bug Stu was speaking to her.
Maybe I should also mention that the idea of there being three maps for three realms, under the ground, under the sun, and between the sun and the stars, has been mentioned in recent newsletters. That’s where Dorie starts. I’ll let you read it. How it connects everything from the Arts and Crafts Movement to war and concepts of spiritual is too much for one day, just like the ELO song referenced contains a story of its own about the Stralfs, but it’s better for another time.
Porous To The Vine
The maps get sketched but never seen.
The plans get stretched to fit.
The scenes and plays not praised or panned,
as Rhettie chases “It.”
The year’s half through.
Where’s Stu’s recruit?
It’s seven years.
Repair still suits
The Mission of the…Sacred Heart
since where you wished
and made your start.
You saw the pasture, woods, and trees,
and lightning bugs at night.
You heard the whisper, “…such as these…”
and lacewings, bees, took flight.
The scene was just a metaphor,
like many things,
and painting more than insects
in their flowers and trees.
You’ve heard the whisper, “…such as these…”
Kintsugi too, would seem to suit,
as simile, one more recruit
for caring to repair the whole
with gold and silver, if that’s the goal.
It’s not the goal.
You’ve thought it through.
You’d make those seams
so tight you can forget that
there’s the smallest scar.
Just one knows what and who you are.
Who are you, and who am I?
I’ve heard that song,
each time I cry and think
what fifty years can do.
I think of me, but I see you,
and watching all the days roll by.
What’s keeping you?
But I know why.
When life’s half through...
Where’s Stu’s recruit?
Not in the vine?
A substitute for cosmically connected Life?
A hydroponic wine for strife,
that’s guaranteed to come their way,
those “…such as these…” that verse would say?
Is it such a giant leap?
Armstrong or Kierkegaard?
A fork comes in the road
and either way the bumps, and hard.
A bent rim, broken axle, spring
that won’t spring right again.
Either way you see things break.
And time erodes. Ruin.
The fix lies in the healing way.
There’s hope in that old vine
that…reconnects us, in another day,
through bigger breaks than mine.
My grandma showed me World War I
and wounds that never healed.
She too though showed me ones that did
and taught what it revealed.
The hope is in the highest map.
The portals have their spires.
Some took them down or mocked them
in their wounds and blind desires.
But there above the highest waves,
there above the storms,
is a real realm called the Star Eyes’,
and it’s ours in all our forms.
And it does no good to deny
the strange way Romans
changed their minds,
Sophia back from different times,
the Sacred Heart for different kinds.
The Whys are down below but not
the strange way Romans
changed their plot
and used their roads
through Vandals, Goths
in different modes to plant Brightspots.
You have your sight, IndStead-a-vision.
You see the roads fanned out
to carry people from the cities
hoping Brightspots are about
a kind of portal to beyond their towers,
beyond the signs’ transfixing powers,
beyond the disappointing pain
of disbelief for someone’s gain.
The other portals, to underground,
beneath what sees the sun,
the vine’s there too, patient, found
to weave through more than one.
They lead to understanding
all these forces in our skin
and in our sight and how it’s
driven by machinery within.
You’ve grasped the vine.
You won’t let go.
You’re grafted for the fruit,
you know.
And if no fruit then no decision.
No value in a pretty vision.
And if a branch can bear no fruit,
the leaves and flowers no substitute…
What became of Stu’s recruit?
Who are you, and who am I?
I’ve heard that song,
each time I cry and think
what fifty years can do.
I think of me, but I see you,
and watching all the days roll by.
What’s keeping you?
But I know why.
See the vine ascend up to
that realm above the sun.
It helps to watch it underground,
but know when that time’s done.
Know when it can carry you
above to where the Star Eyes view
what fruits are ventured from the vine.
Its roots see they will turn out fine.
The vine seeks light beyond the sun,
the portals show the way,
and though its branches can be slow,
it’s there for you, and here to stay.
Thanks for reading : ).
Tim