This Cain experiment has been interesting. I've learned that the only appropriate comment you can give to a friend regarding something that they create seems to be "It's good. I like it." My wife is the only one who wants to shoot me straight.

Regardless, I am still as determined as ever to write Cain, but I'm becoming more hesitant about the blog as an appropriate vehicle for people to read it. For this "reason" as well as some even more intangible emotive reasons, I will no longer post the content of Cain here. I have set up a way for people to still access it online, but you're going to have to email me to get the URL if you're really that interested in reading it. I will instead post "stubs" on the blog basically saying that a new vignette is complete. This provides for the accountability writing Cain on my blog was originally intended to provide.

The first such stub: Cain III is done and posted. A new character is introduced (enticing, eh?).

I wrote these during a rather disappointing class I'm taking here. Shakespeare seems like it would be an inherently engaging topic. My professor somehow proves this wrong. Regardless, it makes a good hour and fifteen minutes to doodle, or in my case, scribble. Here are a couple of those scribbles:

Declaration of Independence

though shaken, i am not stirred
i have not tried to come undone
but there are two birds in this bush
standing in the way of rolling stones
so the moss keeps growing
and the devil works in my idle mind
my right hand knows what my left is doing
so i'll bite it off so that it can feed me
but they'll never trust a one-armed man
they won't believe so they'll never see me
good cowboys can only fade
and it's 100 degrees in the shade
so i'll stand up for my good country
and promise i won't ask what it can do for me
uncle sam wants YOU not me
i'll paint my wrist red -- i'm already White and blue
i've been all that i can be
i've never left home without it
i DO believe in magic
so be quiet -- i'll have it my way


Madonna

Clouds descend like ink in water
And the scraggly earth is dim
Darkness shines; the light does falter
The verdant things are turning in

She sits among Acacia blossoms
Becomes the light with which to see
And though it's dire she does not hasten
Just rests her form against the tree

Midnight falls as sky is sprayed
With stars who cast their mocking light
Around the tree the wolves do play
Yet still she sits alone at night

The prince of wolves does saunter near
His hungry teeth are flashing grim
Her steady gaze bereft of fear
Does coldly now examine him

Be gone small hound! Your breath does stink
Go roll in streams and take your bath
Small and weak of me you think
Unknown to you is woman's wrath!

The prince does snarl and gnash his jaw
Yet quicker still her arm does thrust
He yelps in pain and stares in awe
A bloom now spreads across his chest

Growing tired at last she stirs
She shakes her dress and wipes it clean
The dust falls on unmoving fur
And she leaves his form against the tree

Cain has been the story squirreling around in the amniotic fluids of my brain for way too long. It has to get out of my head; it's like a tent that needs to be staked down by words. Anyhoo, I'm excited to inform you of the greatest thing to grace my blog ever: sketchings by one of the dearest friends of the Tarpleys, Sunny Hudkins. Her work is amazing and you must take your little mouse, scroll down a bit to the first Cain post, and admire the work of someone else who is trying to give Cain a face. Sunny and her husband Brady are truly genius artists whose humility would never let them admit it. We met them at Harding and they changed our lives. They are rare Christians who do not let mediocrity creep into their work. Sometimes I feel like the phrase Christian artist is an oxymoron. They slap that feeling in the face.

If you want to feel like you've fallen off of the cliff of reality while smoking pot and rolling in sewage, pick up a copy of Linda Hucheon's Poetics of Postmodernism and read chapter 7 about historiographic metafiction. She rips to pieces the idea of historical "fact" and removes the last Jenga block by saying there is no such thing as verifiable telos; ie, we can never actually prove that one historic event led to another. Reminds me a lot of chaos theory and quantum physics. I wrote the poem below awhile back about those very things, marveling at the fact that no matter how big science's microscope gets, we will never actually "see" God, but we inevitably see the eerie footprints of his work. For instance, neuroscientists understand a lot now about the I/O of the brain, but they still have no clue whatsoever how consciousness works.

at play in the fields of the Lord

the unbreaking bounds
of shaking sounds
which quake and drown
two leagues down
which breaks us down
into manageable beats
at measurable octaves
at unmentionable speeds
all dancing
all gluing
us together
nothing better
than cellular symphonies
crashing headlong
into cellular symphonies
which chaotically intertwine
in chemical wine
they branch
they mesh
collide and stretch
dilute and gel
resembling
hell,
picasso techno
breakbeating at unprecedented
tempo,
electric kempo.
and like magic 3d
you strain to see
seeming forms
and harmony
elusive symmetry
and terrifyingly:
for in the threshing mix
the lightning soup
the patterns shyly yield
and hidden in the field
there is some Will
at play

The trail is not treacherous, nor is it distant from the camp they have made at the foot of the hill. Though inclined, it is not steep, and though the morning has been cool, the sun is beginning to spread its warmth lithely over their bodies. Nonetheless, Cain dreads every step as he follows his father and brother. This is to be Abel’s first time, and his effulgent strides and beaming face grate on Cain. No matter. After this, he will never want to come back. Cain remembers his first time clearly, and has never since acquired the steady ease his father commands of the task.

The hill crests at last and they herd the sheep they have brought under the shade of a grove of fig trees. Perhaps his father was projecting more calm than usual on the herd, for they seem eerily asleep. Even Abel is suddenly quieted by the solemnity. After picking a ewe lamb, his father begins to lead it away from the grove, around a stand of bushes, and into a clearing where a dark flat stone lies monolithically. Deep rumblings begin to emanate from his father’s chest as he offers a mournful chant to The God of the Hills. He runs his hand gently through the animal’s fur, and looks her in the eye, as though the song is addressed to her.

The serenity is shattered in one violent motion as Adam’s arm lances out and strikes the back of the ewe’s head with a stone. The lamb sputters one unnatural bleat and drops silent to the earth. Cain sees Abel’s sharp inhalation and makes an effort to seem unaffected, even though his heart beats wildly in his chest. Adam drags the lamb to the stone and lays her on her back. After removing a second stone from his skin pouch, he uses its sharpened edge to make a quick incision across her throat, which brings an immediate outpouring of blood. Adam empties the lamb of her steaming fluid all over the stone, and then lays her gingerly back onto the grass.

Adam holds the stone out in Cain’s direction. “Come and prepare this one as I have shown you before.”

Cain shudders involuntarily, and then remembering his brother’s presence, makes a brave show of taking the stone and getting down on his knees, straddling the sheep. He places the stone just above the bottom of her ribcage and begins to cut downwards with trembling hands, trying to ignore the glazed eyes of his victim.

“He is about to cut open the belly in order to remove the parts improper for the sacrifice.” Adam says to Abel.

Blood rushes to Cain’s head as he attempts to cut lower. His hands become too sweaty to hold onto the fur, and in a frustrated surge of strength, the stone slips and nicks his left shin. He yells, falls backward, and rolls away from the ewe, tears already filling his eyes. “I can’t do this!” He shouts. He drops the stone to the ground and begins to limp back to the fig grove, too embarrassed to see his father’s reaction.

“Cain! Are you badly hurt?” His father calls.

“Fine. I’m going to look after the herd now.” He is sure Abel is grinning behind his back. Somehow, Cain knows that Abel’s hand would have been steady, and that father would have been proud of him. Proud of Abel, and not ashamed.

The Earth trembles under the weight of the still new sun – orange light spills superfluously over the horizon. The crickets, however, have long ceased their lullabies, held in silence by the groans escaping the lips of a woman, drenched in sweat, squatting against the back of a crooked olive tree.

Pains unwarranted and unnatural rack her body as she feels rent by the contractions. Her husband watches wide-eyed and does what he can; terrified yet numb. Suddenly, she lifts her head and expels a cry, and an impossible shape emerges from beneath her. Shocked into action, Adam reaches down and removes his child -- bloody, smashed, but somehow living; more alive than him. Adam clears the mouth of his son, and is rewarded by gasping and crying. Eve’s groans are now relieved and breathy as she delivers the afterbirth. Adam ties the cord and cuts it with a sharpened stone. He pours water from a gourd over the child’s body, wraps him in sheepskin, and hands him to his mother.

“Abel,” Eve whispers. “He comes with the mist.”

Adam nods as he wipes her forehead with the side of his hand, smiling as broad as the morning. “Abel,” he says.

Cain watches as his parents look wondrously at the trembling thing at his mother’s breast. Did he look so corpulent, so weak when he was born? He too felt drawn to his new brother. He wanted to hold Abel. More strongly, he felt the urge to be held, to be at his mother’s breast, to be the immovable object of his father’s attentions.

The grass in front of him is disturbed by a wandering cricket. Cain summons it to his palm, and bids it to sing. The cricket lifts its wings and casts his chirp into the air. His parents, however, pay no mind to this concert. Cain closes his fist in embarrassment, silencing his soloist. He rubs his hands and rises.

“Abel,” he says, and at this his father looks.

“Get some rest,” Adam says. “There will be tending to do when you wake.”

Cain bows in obedience, and finds a tree by the river, where the morning mist is thick.