Do You Believe in Angels?

[Lightning Rod]

I was seventeen and on a road trip to South Texas with two of my friends. We had been to Brownsville and San Antone and we were driving back up I-35 to Austin. I had never been to Austin before. We drove down Guadalupe and noticed some commotion. Seems that some nut was on the tower shooting people with a high powered rifle. You know the day that I'm talking about. I saw the windshields splash as people (me included) were dodging behind the cars parked on the street. Then I came upon a girl on the sidewalk. She was bleeding from the side. I held her hand until the paramedics arrived. She appeared to be pregnant.

Roll forward two years. I'm sitting in Lee Park in Dallas. I was having a little rough spell in the LSD trip I was taking and I was trying to calm down, just sitting by myself. Then from across the green i noticed a pretty girl walking toward me holding one of those massive white magnolia flowers. She came straight to me and placed the flower in my lap. She said her name was Claire. We began talking. In the course of the conversation, she mentioned that she had been shot by Whitman from the tower and had lost her unborn child as a result. That's when it all came crashing down on me that this was the girl that I had helped on Guadalupe St. in Austin.

I didn't see her again for several months. One day I was tripping again (ok, I know in those days it was not uncommon to find me tripping) and I was downtown reading poetry to a small crowd at Stone Mall. Stoney Burns was there selling his first underground rag called Notes from the Underground. He got arrested. I took up a collection and went down to bail him out. All the shuffle and having to go into the cop station as high as I was upset my trip and I was freaking a bit on the sidewalk at Main and Ervay when Claire appeared again out of nowhere. She took me by the hand and led me into the Library across the street where it was quiet and then she gently talked me down. She saved me again like I had saved her in Austin. (Oh, I don't know if I saved her, but I was there for her in her moment of need and she was there for me twice in my moments of need.) Never saw her again.

Funny how this universe works. Do you believe in angels?

[izeveryboyin]

once when I was on the train, I saw this tiny woman. She had think, long, kinky hair that almost completly hid her face, and she had her dirty gymshoes pulled up on the seat as she hugged her knees. She was peaking over the divide and smiling at me. The funny thing is, she was such a physically unremarkable specimen, which is probably what drew me to her. I wrote a short story about it that I posted on litkicks about a year ago. If I find it, I'll post it here and letcha see it. Anyway, if there are angels, she was defiently one of them. She looked like a slightly less remarkable version of Yoko Ono, but she just beamed at me. She glowed in that way that your partner does after mind-blowing sex, or the way children do when they're doing amusingly cute things. Angels. More believable than a lot of things.

--k

p.s the story was short, but lovely LRod. Enjoyed it.

[jimboloco]

Thanks about sharing your experience with the woman shot in Austin. I can see you there holding her hand.
They say that synchronicity is a sign.

Glad you were there.
You know how to be a friend.

I posted a trip on litkicks that I can't get back, the writing workshop, and erased it from my puter when it jammed and rebooted the whole system.....

saw scaring angels one night in late winter bivouacked against a stone wall in the woods in New Hampshire, oh yeah,

i do believe that if i wanted to i could concoct up some visions with enough inner spaciousness.
right now. spacy.

gonna take a walk down the bike trail.
flat tire.
bike shop.

but i agree. manifested beings. wings of desire.
wm wenders film, just great


http://www.dga.org/news/v28_4/images/cr ... 2-full.jpg

[Whitebird Sings]

LRod,

I think
that
we are each other's angels
if we choose to be.
...LRod for Claire
...Claire for LRod
I hope
that
you meet again.
This time, just to hold hands.

WB