the Wakefield Doctrine

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Denise is the host.

For this week’s Six, we invite Readers to join us as we return to the London chapter of the Order of Lilith. Located in the city’s Whitechapel neighborhood, the headquarters was missionary outpost and a node in a network of those committed to keeping Mankind from straying too far from the path before wisdom might tame appetite, c. 1885. To re-establish that wonderful Victorian vibe, here’s a link to Chapter 24 

The prompt word is:

SIN

LOVE / SACRIFICE / SIN

I pretended not to notice the dusting of yellow on the back of my hand standing in front of my first class as principle instructor of moral philosophy; first day nerves tricked me into mistaking the piece of chalk as the Adversary, as I wrote the three words with letters as bold and clumsy as a young man’s first night with a woman.

The backgrounds of the seventeen young men and six young women was as varied as always, acceptance as a novitiate in the Order being as non-specific as were the criteria for continuing beyond the first year; among them was a group of young men, heirs to a common advantage of name and social ranking and there were one or two students who hid their way through admissions and watched everyone else; I’d been such a student myself not that long ago.

“Who can tell the class how these three very human attributes are not merely related, but might actually be interdependent?”

“Clearly the prima facie evidence can be found in the New Testament, with God sacrificing his Son, condemning Jesus to die on the cross to atone for the sins of Mankind,” Nestor Beckwith, the son of a cousin of an earl with an estate on the outskirts of Cambridge, threw a smile around the classroom like a wreath of fig leaves and poison apples.

“Seth, you look to have another view,” I addressed a young man beginning to frown as soon as Nestor ceased holding forth; he was clearly focused on something not in the room and said,

“Could there be a love so pure to not only accept a person with their sins, but accept the sins themselves?”

A hungry laughter, fed by whispers in the air between the more self-assured students, like the tentacles of a Portuguese Man ‘O War, grew passively though quite deliberately; I raised my eyebrows in encouragement and, deciding to not leave experience the only teacher in the most personal of martial arts, restated,

“A love not merely strong enough to acknowledge the sins of another but to incorporate them, the pride and fear, the avarice and envy and, in doing so create a truly shared humanity.”

 

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Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Wakefield Doctrines’ contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop

Denise is the host.

The prompt word:

SPACE

Alone in the kitchen, the shapeless reflections of the overhead fluorescent lights on the stainless steel surface gamely stepping up as urban sunsets, the tall, thin man untied the string securing the two slightly-glossy pastry boxes and arrayed their contents on a pair of glass platters; kiffles in a short, very orderly row were offset by the glaze-shiny elephant ears flanked by white-dusted bear claws; the second platter was reserved for the rank-and-file pastries, three cup cakes, four filled donuts and two lemon squares.

Keying off the self-important rumblings of the coffee urn, the Proprietor backed out through the double-swinging doors, Fred sans Ginger, in three ‘Roll Aways To A Half Sashay’ until everything was laidout on the end of the bar farthest from the Café’s entrance, the exterior of the door currently sporting a ‘Closed for Inventory’ sign.

Setting a china mug, SSC&B in gold leaf along its top edge, in front of Mimi, he nodded acknowledgement of her raising the cup in thanks, turned slightly to his left and looked down the room towards the focal point of the main room.

Nick and Denise were standing at the front edge of the stage, a brief flash of light from the ride cymbal brought Ford into view; knowing that Chris was still in Nepal, the man wearing an apron and an expression of being at peace for the moment, glanced towards a dark alcove set into the street-side wall, like travel through interstellar space he trusted his sense of where Jenne’s eyes would be once his smile reached her.

Calling out, in a voice both hesitant and excited, “Nick, perhaps you could put that fine-looking ’57 Precision to some use and conjure up something with a classical feel without putting a body to sleep?”

Putting his cigar down on the long edge of the 2×12 Bassman bottom, the bearded man nodded to Denise who, somehow, had a flute in her hands and played a series of notes that transported the tall, thin man back at least forty years in time.

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Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Wakefield Doctrines’ contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop

Denise is the host.

The prompt word:

PATH

“Look at you, walking all by yourself,” the child, waving play-doh hands in tempo with feet just getting acquainted, turned towards the voice, a flower to the morning sun, and sat abruptly, for a timeless moment, the world was perfect.

“Your father will be so proud when he sees that report card,” pride, as slippery a concept as ‘Good taste’ and ‘The truth’, added a grace note to the third-grader’s smile; the value of effort to measure up to standards beyond the world of parents and siblings claimed a place in his view of a world that seemed to change each day.

“Come on, you know I love you,” old words, somehow new, offered a connection as powerful as they were unsuspected, she sensed a challenge, not in the very personal cost of one path over another, rather the risk of letting something come at the price of the familiar.

“I do,” nearly-silent, the collective approval of the gathered friends and family strained against the constraints of social ritual, up until the wedding party broke free of the enforced silence of the church and stood outside it’s doors; both searched the faces of well-wishers, and each other’s, for the assurance of, if not a new life, one that allowed the other to become more.

“We’re here,” the hospice room was sparsely crowded with people who were close as family can be and as distant as the living from the dying; the soon-to-be widow/widower stood at the side of the hospital bed, vows long past, remembered now, offering the only handhold.

To insist the path of life is inherently twisted and serpentine is human, to accept that, at its heart, is the straightest of paths is divine; while tempting to hold the complexity of the journey as proof of value, it is the end that justifies the beginning.

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Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop

Denise is the host.

The prompt word:

BOOKMARK

The bandstand at the Six Sentence Café & Bistro on this particular Thursday evening was a dim square surrounded on all but one side by round tables embedded in smoke-cirrus clouds, marked with sporadic flashes of cigarette lighters. The center of the stage was occupied by a microphone atop a chrome diaphysis and the tall, thin man; the sole light was an invisible sun that created a three-quarters profile penumbra, skewed towards the audience.

“Bookmarks”

the voice of the man spread into the dark club with a weightless density, descending on the faceless audience like waves on a shoreline; some obliterated by water-resistant rocks, much of it absorbed by the shifting sand, all, eventually returning to the source.

“Our lives are a book with chapters;

many a bookmark for the long and epic, or single title page, brief and pure, providing no details while accepting no limitations.

We write our sins and failures in ink;

we note, in the margins, our dreams and hopes in pencil.

The completed volume itself is an artifact of eternity;

reviews and accolades incomplete, as the final two words are invisible to the author.”

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

It is hosted by Denise.

ed. This is one of those blog posts, more common to the earlier years of the Doctrine, prompted by a song on the radio. While one is tempted to derisively note, “A very old song,” it would be at peril of overlooking the power of the memory.

Prompt word:

COFFEE

It was still light when he woke up, a not-yet-painful glowing sunburn the only memory of the first two-thirds of a hot July day.

The kitchen table in the apartment was demonstrating it’s primary function and sole value: to serve as both a desk and, if Campbell’s Vegetable Beef soup, direct from the can qualified, food prep counter. While living on unemployment benefits can, if one has the capacity to resist the crushing weight of family expectations, peer pressure and the demands of society, be perceived as retirement-before-career, there was not an evening to lose. The nightclubs and bars, clinging to the summer shoreline like seaweed at low tide, were a thirty-minute drive, so his second stop was at a Dunkin Donuts; the first being the local package store.

‘Man does not move on caffeine alone,’ the young man smiled away the random thought that perhaps he might better spend the evening working on his writing, if not his actual resumé.

The girl, with her bare feet on the dashboard of the ’65 Bel Air wagon, interrupted his ambition with one of her own; he soon forgot all about the pain of corduroy against sunburned skin pressing against a driver’s side vinyl seat-back.

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