Echoes of Turtles
Story Highlights brought directly from the Author. (Charlotte Henley Babb)
Welcome back word wanderers, we are more than happy to have come back from the other side of the pond and all around blazing with joy to bring along new words. Sent to us from the ever-radiant
.“Zen of Cool,” toes the line between fantasy and lived reality. A short piece of writing with an opening line that I can’t help but fall in love with, and a flow that sells the experience we live through. So without further ado—
SUB TO
I have seen the Devil, and He is beautiful.
Why is it that the Devil never goes to Montana to play the Tuba against some gifted soul? Never graces Palm Beach with a golden golf club? Never toots a flute in Beijing? No, He always heads towards Georgia with his fiddle.
Catgut and Horsehair, Wood torturously shaped into the most moving of instruments, the one most capable of the range of feeling in the human voice, a range envied of mere singers: the instrument of the wild gypsy, the nine-fingered hillbilly and the elegant classicist. The instrument that has no frets, that changes tuning with any butterfly’s flapping, even as it is played—it takes magic to play a violin. Wizards know that white magic is poetry, and black magic is anything that works.
I was nearly in Georgia, in the nearby Carolina Mountains, in a frosty midnight with the requisite full moon, a time of manifestation, of immanence, as we gathered to hear him play: hippies and skas, vixen blondes and doofus boyfriends, elders and children, and me, sober and cold, having left my hungover buddies behind and walked alone to see the fiddle player. Who knew?
I was late—time being different on a festival weekend, and I expected to be unable to push through the crowd to get close enough to see the famous man, hoping to hear at least the ending flourish of the concert. But then, time and space are a continuum, not linear, and the bodies parted, allowing me to slide to the foot of the stage just as the set began.
You would know the artist, but to make the story more universal, I won’t tell—it is his secret anyway, not mine. And he played, not the solo artist, but as side man with the band, backing them up. Music is magic, and we all danced and clapped, brothers and sisters, lovers and friends together in the music. The chill of the night became heat. We shed our jackets and flowed with the music. They were HOT. The Devil had come to town.
Cool is Good. Everybody’s Cool—Cool is the Rule! But to play really Cool, you gotta be Hot! Hot is Good. The girl in the crowd is Hot. The Mind is Cool, and the Body is Hot. But is that a Good thing or a Bad thing?
I watched him play, his fingers dancing, his music flowing from his body through the instrument. It was a beautiful thing, its head carved in the image of an old man with a flowing beard, and its sides marked with…with something. Striations of the wood? Runes? Latin, maybe. And I danced and clapped and studied the violin with Latin on the sides….Viva B…but the letters disappeared behind the neck and ran to his neck, his throat chakra, a spell not for the audience, but for the performer.
The set ended, and they left the stage. It was late, after two am, and we all were tired. We were quiet, having got our money’s worth, and we knew they would not come back out. They were tired too. Yet as we milled around, quietly, our eyes connected. We wanted them back.
Now at a concert, two minutes of quiet is a long time, but we tried. We clapped and yelled and stomped our feet. We hollered and screamed. We chanted, we invoked, we prayed, we conjured.
They came back. A miracle materialized! They played three more songs, and we experienced ecstasy.
Light to Dark, Male to Female, One and Zero, Yin and Yang. DEVIL is LIVED backwards, coming In and going Out, can’t have One without the other. LIE is LIVE with the V taken out, the Viva, the Life.
Polarity is a lie—infinite points lie along any line segment in a two dimensional universe, which is only a shot in the dark through a slice of All That Is. And as above, so below, on the Earth which is round, though it may appear flat, a straight line is but a segment of the Great Circle, and the three dimensional universe is but a Slinky walking through the dimensions of All That Is. How do I know?
I have seen the Devil, and He is beautiful.
At the very end, in the cool of the hot October night, we crowded up to the stage to shake the hands of the great men of music: the kids, the old fans, those who had never known, and those who had come just for this. We reached up to be touched, to be blessed.
Now I am an old hand at concerts, and I don’t put myself forward. But this time I was in the Spirit of the Moment, and I raised my hand as well. To each one He made a comment, “Thanks for coming,” “Glad you enjoyed it,” “Thank you.”
But He looked at me, deep into my eyes, and I felt all the music I had ever played or heard in that look.
He said, “And I am glad to see you here.”
The Devil has seen me, and I am beautiful. That is a good thing.
The Line That Stopped Time
“Catgut and Horsehair, Wood torturously shaped into the most moving of instruments, the one most capable of the range of feeling in the human voice, a range envied of mere singers: the instrument of the wild gypsy, the nine-fingered hillbilly and the elegant classicist.”
The description of the fiddle itself kills me as writer and floors me as a reader. Love the nastiness that moves into a harmonic flow of what this object means.
A line that stopped my heart for a moment, much less time.
Echoes from the Author
Which line or moment are you most proud of?
(Is there a sentence that still echoes for you?)
Polarity is a lie—infinite points lie along any line segment in a two dimensional universe, which is only a shot in the dark through a slice of All That Is.
What’s one strange or lovely habit you have when writing? (Tea rituals? Chaotic playlists? Writing by candlelight?)
Word by word by word by word, sometime accompanied by chocolate.
If your story whispered a secret to the reader, what would it be?
(Something hidden between the lines.)
It is important to be seen
What type of turtle would carry this story on its back—and where would it take it?
(Desert wanderer? Librarian turtle? Chaos goblin with a monocle?)
a moonlight slider
E.M.R’s Moment of Reflection
Are we lucid dreaming? This is what the “Zen of Cool,” shakes off on the reader. Memories backed with prose that elevates and sometimes even dances and flows through.
Everything is framed directly from the opening line and does not let up until the very end. You feel the aura of energy from the description mentioned above and what has to come. The dance and encore. A display of feverous joy that comes from the source of the devil themselves. Whoever it may be… to you.
Again, this piece dragged me in and I was blown away. A lovely reliving all around.
The Fading Echoes
For eternity, thank you for being here and sticking with the half-shells. We appreciate your presence and want to keep it flowing. Let’s give a huge thank you to
for the words and allowing us to go inward.You can find more righthere: Charlotte Henley Babb Writes