gui xmas in downtown gastonia

At loose ends I wandered with my new camera in downtown gastonia. I saw the woman and asked her to let me shoot her picture. Seeing that she had a little camera of her own, I added, "You can take my picture."

She did not say anything just smiled as if she had done this many times and went into a pose.

She spoke, "You like me?"

I said, "Sure."

She said, "The preacher he say you will be here."

"Is there a meeting?"

"Yes."

"Where are the people?"

"You see those three men, one he riding a bicycle and the other two just walking."

I had seen them from a distance, "Yes."

"They - and me - we are them,"

"Is the preacher here?"

"No he never come here. But he tell me if I see you to ask if you got a what you call it - poem for him."

I thought about the thing I had written when I first got up. This was all I could remember,

self pity is unseemly
but one gets sick of putting on a front
how one got here is immaterial
many must

She walked off. Here are the other pictures.

church of GUI and sad woman

When the preacher called to correct me about Camus and Sartre he said I needed to talk to the Sad Woman. I don't  how he knew. That was the name Allie and I gave to the woman we sometimes saw on our way to Piedmont Charter School. Most of the time the Sad Woman was walking. Once she was riding a little 49cc moped - the kind that people who've gotten a DUI can operate without a license. I think she was a waitress at Miles. We called her the Sad Woman because that's how she always looked. And we only saw her in the winter when it was cold.

Today I found her downtown, sitting on a bench in the little park beside the wall where the GUI church members are said to pray. It was unseasonably warm. Maybe that is why she didn't seem sad.

I stood before her and said, "Are you the Sad Woman?

She smiled and motioned for me to sit, "Do I look sad?"

"No."

She patted my hand. Her fingers were callused. "I'll call you the Sad Man. What can I do for you Sad Man?"

"A man - not a sad man - said I should talk to you. I don't know why. I think he is pastor or something at the Church of the Utterly Indifferent God. He might be crazy."

"You talked to the preacher. He surely is crazy. But all the best ones are. He wants me to tell you something and then for you to put it in a blog that you will create for the church."

"What blog?"

"That's where you will put these posts. He doesn't care what the blog looks like just that the title has the words 'Church of GUI (God the Utterly Indifferent).'"

"How do you people know me? Who are you?"

"The preacher gets around - although I've never seen him you understand.  You are one of us - and many of your acquaintance's - Knauth, Moore, Wolpert, Yancie, Randy, Susan, Rita, Henry, and Carolyn. Maybe Karen, Alice, and Julia. A lot of people here in Gastonia - maybe Ella - ask her. Most of the people you see on the streets."

"How do you know all this - how did you remember?"

She stood up. "It was a trick I learned as a waitress."

"Well what am I supposed to say about today?"

"Let's see. What did he tell me.., yes  And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws. "

"It's a Christmas thing. Merry Christmas Sad Man."

Then she kissed me on the cheek and left.

correction - camus not sartre

Got a call from a man with a low whispering voice. He said, "Get your facts right kid. Camus wrote The Stranger not Sartre." 

 

Shamed, I said, "I knew better I was in a hurry."  

 

He said, "OK. And by the way I am not depressed, Far from it. But you need to talk to the "Sad Woman." 

 

"The one Allie and I used to see walking when I took her to school." 

 

But he had hung up.

church of GUI and chistmas parade

The preacher has been reading some Sartre.

Walking in downtown Gastonia before the parade started the next block over on Franklin...

I found this stuck in the door of Ella's coffee shop...

Then going back to Franklin where the parade had already started...

I found another flyer impalled on a wrought iron fence...

I asked Allie and Evan (squinting into the sun) to hold it up...

I worry about the preacher. He seems a little depressed. Perhaps it is the season. If case you can't read it here is the last line from Sartre's The Stranger - the line the preacher quoted...

"For everything to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration."

Also in case you missed it, he asks his congregation to meet at Shoney's after the parade. There hasn't been a Shoney's around here in decades. Maybe the old boy is trying to return to the past. I suspect that this guy is one of the flock.

church of GUI and man with bear head

This time, the notice was posted Saturday instead of Sunday - near the crack in the window of Miles Cafeteria and Restaurant. I did not have a camera (old picture above) but here is what it said...

He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man.

We'll meet at 6:00 at Miles then go see Lincoln.

I had to look this quote up. It is from the last paragraph of Crane's Red Badge of Courage.

I went into Miles. The little man whom I thought had a bear's head was sitting at a table near the window. Twisting his bent neck my way he said in a soft baritone, "Join me."

Maybe this was the preacher. I sat down.

"So," he said, "How are you?"

"I'm OK. And you?"

"The head of Ursus is not so heavy today." He laughed, "I read blogs too."


He looked at me for several seconds. The waitress came over; he waved her away. "Have you ever heard that alliteration soothes a mad man's soul?"

"Ah..."

He commanded, "Alliterate for me."

The silly thing I wrote 50 years ago popped into my head. By now thoroughly outside of myself, I intoned, "Heap high the horse shit Harry, the hounds of hell are howling."

The man made a child's clapping gesture. "Very good, Are you soothed?"

Before I could answer, he straightened his head and said in a serious manner, "Remember when you screw up it might not be your age, you might be nervous - it accumulates - or you could simply be incompetent."

"Are you...?"

Putting a dollar beside his half empty plate of hamburger steak he got up, lightly like a younger man. It struck me that he might be dangerous. Nodding to the note taped crookedly to the window, "The preacher? Nope - but I belong to the church."

Walking out the door his head was bent forward, once again a man with the head of a bear. .

church of GUI and dead doane

Walking through uptown Gastonia on the way here...

I saw this on the window of the door leading down the stairs to the cave-like room where Ella has her coffee shop.

Looks like someone has been reading Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan.

Then glancing across the street to the Lawyer's Building I saw an image in the top left window.

I swear to God (not the indifferent one) it was Dead Doane. We grew up to together in Shelby. Most of his life he was a reporter for the Providence Rhode Island Journal. He died a couple of weeks ago.

We had lots of adventures which I have written about in various books and blogs.

Of course I know that I didn't see Doane in the Lawyers' Building. It was probably more like the time after taking Allie to school I saw a man with a bear's head crossing the street in the dark

Anyway - here's one of our adventures from The Life and Times of Professor Ennui Pidawee.

Doane and I tried camping in the woods behind my house. The first part of the evening went well; we ate a can of Campbells Pork and Beans and toasted marshmallows. But about 3:00 AM it rained and water washed over the trench we had dug around my old army pup tent. We left the tent and wandered around the dark neighborhood like adolescent ghosts.

We walked down Lee Street past Suttle’s store where during the day we sometimes got Nehi sodas and Baby Ruth candy bars but which was now empty and gray. Across the street we sat for a few minutes on the SCO fertilizer bench in front of the potato house where Mr. Suttle stored sweet and irish potatoes for sale in the winter.

Coming back, gingerly crossing the muddy parking lot, I stepped on a dead cat. It felt soft and squishy under my foot. I jumped and said, “Oh.”

Doane laughed and said, “Meow”.