Poem: "Sadness Like a Battle Flag"
This poem is spillover from the August 6, 2024 Poetry Fishbowl It was inspired and sponsored by Dreamwidth user Goatgodschild. It also fills the "Soul Music" square in my 8-1-24 card for the Discworld Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the Rutledge thread of the Polychrome Heroics series, although it happens earlier than most other poems in that thread. It is backstory for the other Johan poems, "The Continuous Thread of Revelation" and "Your Own Blissful Path."
"Sadness Like a Battle Flag"
[May 2008]
For the most part,
Johan loved his life.
Emerald Mountain Glen
was a jewel in the forests of
Vermont, rich with sugarbush
and fields full of various crops.
The people were good, quirky
without being too flaky to function.
Johan enjoyed the homeschooling
that meant he didn't have to stuff
himself into "presentable" clothes
and then pretend to pay attention to
mainstream ideas five days a week.
Instead he could wander around
the farm and ask questions and
learn by observing, or request
a lesson from just about anyone
based on their areas of expertise.
He particularly liked the hodgepodge
of educational toys and tools from
Montessori, Waldorf, Waldenkinder,
Circle System, Reflétant l’école,
and other alternative schools.
Of course there were textbooks
for the usual stuff like math and
history, but he could go through
those titles at his own pace.
Johan had plenty of friends
along with his relatives who
lived in the commune.
He liked running wild
through woods with
the other hippie teens.
Johan loved his life ...
for the most part.
The problem was
both internal and
external, and it just
wasn't going away.
He had done all
of his homework
on mindfulness, so
he wasn't slacking.
Johan just ... had
a hard time keeping
people out of his head.
It wasn't quite the kind of
superpower nonsense
that outsiders were
so obsessed with.
It was just a mess
of vague feelings that
got worse when he was
around other people,
and worse still around
hippies because of how
they resonated together.
Oddly enough, going into
town wasn't nearly as bad.
Johan figured it was because
most folks didn't meditate, so
their thoughts and feelings just
scattered instead of refining
into a sharp focus like hippies.
The townies also didn't tend
to live in each other's pockets
the way the hippies liked to do.
Johan enjoyed the company, but
sometimes it weighed on him.
It wasn't teenage rebellion;
he merely needed to relax
inside his own headspace.
It wasn't anyone's fault, not
really. He couldn't ask others
to change what they were
doing because of him.
It was just ... distracting.
He had tried all the lessons
he could think of, and some
of it helped a little bit, but
none of it helped enough --
or at least, not as much
as going into town did.
Eventually Johan came
to a conclusion that
he really didn't like.
He would have to leave.
Here he was getting lost
in other people. Out in
the world, he could get
lost in a crowd instead,
and maybe find himself.
So Johan went to talk
with his aunt Verdite.
She listened to him,
and nodded, and then
helped him work through
an explanation that would
make sense to his parents
and not freak them out.
In the end, they weren't
too upset, because it was
pretty common for hippie kids
to fly the nest and take off on
the Peace Trail or whatever.
Maybe Johan's journey
wasn't so odd after all.
That made him feel
a little less lonely as
he loaded himself and
his backpack on a bus.
The ride took a day
and a half, but it left
Johan in Easy City.
There he figured that
he could blend into
the crowds and enjoy
somewhere new that
would not scrape
his memories raw.
Just as Johan walked
out of the bus station,
he heard a sound --
soul music, maybe,
or something like it.
Several black men
stood on the sidewalk
busking for tips from
the curious tourists.
One held an accordion,
another had a washboard
slung over his chest, one
played guitar, and the last
drew long notes from
an old saxophone.
It was sad music, but
it waved its sadness
like a battle flag.
It said the universe
had done all it could,
but you were still alive.
Johan could grok that.
* * *
Notes:
Name: Johan Tyz
Description: He is short, at 5 foot one inch, broad in all respects. White, skin with red splotches and a tendency to tan and pimple. Eyes are blue-gray with a yellow ring. American (Bavarian X Welsh). Hair is a shade of blonde that might better be described as bronze in hue, and in texture is thick and fine. It's also very puffy, with strong curls. Johan does not have a very expressive face, although when he smiles, his eyes seem to disappear into his laugh lines and round cheeks. He is very fussy with his hands, preferring small objects, jewelry, drawing/writing material, fabrics or tools -- not stim toys. He was homeschooled in a medium-size co-op with a very strong indigenous perspective. Johan left home at 18 in 2008, and is 25 in 2015.
Origin: (to be determined)
Uniform: (to be determined)
Qualities: Good (+2) First Aid, Good (+2) Fixing Things, Good (+2) Making Conversation, Good (+2) Organization Skills
Poor (-2) Keeping Secrets
Powers: Good (+2) Animal Powers, Good (+2) Land Connection, Good (+2) Psychic Powers
His Animal Powers come with particularly strong resonance in horses, goats, pigs, cats, and seals. His most practiced Psychic Powers include Astral Projection and Psychic Healing of spiritual injuries or illnesses.
Vulnerability: Johan senses other creatures' physical or emotional pain (about 50/50 on knowing how to fix it), which is distracting enough to make it hard to figure out what to do next. Damage to a landscape, such as a clearcut, is similarly debilitating.
Danger: Cold wrath ("when the cold-drake comes")
Verdite (Vera Dellwood) -- She has fair skin, green eyes, and long wavy red hair. Her heritage includes American, French, and Irish. She speaks English and French. She is 42 years old in 2015.
Verdite is the older sister of Amethyst (Amy Saint James) (46). They grew up in Emerald Mountain Glen near Rutledge, Vermont. Currently Verdite lives in Rutledge. She works at Pyramid Holistic Wellness Center. There she offers a variety of New Age services such as plant healing, nature healing, and forest bathing. She does some work at the building in town, but she spends more of her time at their meditation park outside of town.
Although Verdite is a nature healer, she doesn't really believe in superpowers as something that people either have or don't. Like many hippies, she believes that everyone can develop their inner gifts if they devote the time and effort to do so. She can heal plants of illnesses or injuries, as well as healing people of some physical or psychological complaints through the use of nature. She has some regular clients, and the meditation park is popular with tourists.
As a hobby, Verdite enjoys nature crafts like woodcarving and making flower crowns. She is no good with machines, and mechanical or electronic things break more often around her.
Origin: She gained her superpowers by pursuing enlightenment and personal growth through New Age practices.
Uniform: Verdite likes practical women's wear. Her base colors are brown, khaki, and ivory accented with other earth tones like olive and rust.
Qualities: Expert (+2) Naturalistic Intelligence, Good (+2) Hippie, Good (+2) Nature Crafts, Good (+2) Wilderness Skills
Poor (-2) Mechanical Intelligence
Powers: Good (+2) Nature Healer
Motivation: To protect and promote nature.
Verdite is a green semi-precious gemstone use in healing practices.
* * *
"It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive."
-- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
Sugarbush refers to maple trees tapped to make maple syrup or sugar. It can range in size from a handful of trees in a yard to a forest dominated by tappable species like sugar maple and black maple. Much of Vermont is covered by sugarbush.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_bush
Are there other tree species besides sugar maples in our sugarbush? Yes. We have American beech, white ash, black birch, bitternut hickory, and red oak. (Red oak is particularly valuable because lots of native insects like it, so lots of insect-eating birds like it, too.)
Several parcels of former clearcut have been treated with restoration plantings of half sugar maple and half a mix of American beech, white ash, black birch, bitternut hickory, red oak, and other native sugarbush species. Terramagne-Vermont sells sugarbush packages in sizes ranging from 10 to 1000 trees with combinations such as this. You can also get a half-oak (black oak, bur oak, chinkapin oak, pin oak, red oak, scarlet oak, white oak, etc.) mix, or a mix of half sugar maple and half assorted native nut trees (American beech, black walnut, bitternut hickory, butternut, American chestnut, oak, shagbark hickory, etc.), to make a mast forest. For areas with mixed deciduous-evergreen habitat, a mix of sugar maple and native evergreens (white pine, red pine, red spruce, balsam fir, etc.) is available.
Alternative education in Terramagne spans a variety of school systems like Montessori and other programs like Peace Trail.
The best way to get from Vermont to New Orleans without a car is to bus which takes 38 hours 24 minutes and costs $160 - $440.
Zydeco is a genre of music from rural Southwest Louisiana with African-American and Creole roots. Particular instruments include French accordion and a Creole washboard instrument called the frottoir, along with guitar, saxophone, and others.
Soul music is an African-American genre of music related to rhythm and blues, jazz, and gospel.
popular music genre that originated in the African-American community throughout the United States in the late 1950s and
"Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed-to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science-and it means as little to us as a color means to a blind man."
-- Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
"Sadness Like a Battle Flag"
[May 2008]
For the most part,
Johan loved his life.
Emerald Mountain Glen
was a jewel in the forests of
Vermont, rich with sugarbush
and fields full of various crops.
The people were good, quirky
without being too flaky to function.
Johan enjoyed the homeschooling
that meant he didn't have to stuff
himself into "presentable" clothes
and then pretend to pay attention to
mainstream ideas five days a week.
Instead he could wander around
the farm and ask questions and
learn by observing, or request
a lesson from just about anyone
based on their areas of expertise.
He particularly liked the hodgepodge
of educational toys and tools from
Montessori, Waldorf, Waldenkinder,
Circle System, Reflétant l’école,
and other alternative schools.
Of course there were textbooks
for the usual stuff like math and
history, but he could go through
those titles at his own pace.
Johan had plenty of friends
along with his relatives who
lived in the commune.
He liked running wild
through woods with
the other hippie teens.
Johan loved his life ...
for the most part.
The problem was
both internal and
external, and it just
wasn't going away.
He had done all
of his homework
on mindfulness, so
he wasn't slacking.
Johan just ... had
a hard time keeping
people out of his head.
It wasn't quite the kind of
superpower nonsense
that outsiders were
so obsessed with.
It was just a mess
of vague feelings that
got worse when he was
around other people,
and worse still around
hippies because of how
they resonated together.
Oddly enough, going into
town wasn't nearly as bad.
Johan figured it was because
most folks didn't meditate, so
their thoughts and feelings just
scattered instead of refining
into a sharp focus like hippies.
The townies also didn't tend
to live in each other's pockets
the way the hippies liked to do.
Johan enjoyed the company, but
sometimes it weighed on him.
It wasn't teenage rebellion;
he merely needed to relax
inside his own headspace.
It wasn't anyone's fault, not
really. He couldn't ask others
to change what they were
doing because of him.
It was just ... distracting.
He had tried all the lessons
he could think of, and some
of it helped a little bit, but
none of it helped enough --
or at least, not as much
as going into town did.
Eventually Johan came
to a conclusion that
he really didn't like.
He would have to leave.
Here he was getting lost
in other people. Out in
the world, he could get
lost in a crowd instead,
and maybe find himself.
So Johan went to talk
with his aunt Verdite.
She listened to him,
and nodded, and then
helped him work through
an explanation that would
make sense to his parents
and not freak them out.
In the end, they weren't
too upset, because it was
pretty common for hippie kids
to fly the nest and take off on
the Peace Trail or whatever.
Maybe Johan's journey
wasn't so odd after all.
That made him feel
a little less lonely as
he loaded himself and
his backpack on a bus.
The ride took a day
and a half, but it left
Johan in Easy City.
There he figured that
he could blend into
the crowds and enjoy
somewhere new that
would not scrape
his memories raw.
Just as Johan walked
out of the bus station,
he heard a sound --
soul music, maybe,
or something like it.
Several black men
stood on the sidewalk
busking for tips from
the curious tourists.
One held an accordion,
another had a washboard
slung over his chest, one
played guitar, and the last
drew long notes from
an old saxophone.
It was sad music, but
it waved its sadness
like a battle flag.
It said the universe
had done all it could,
but you were still alive.
Johan could grok that.
* * *
Notes:
Name: Johan Tyz
Description: He is short, at 5 foot one inch, broad in all respects. White, skin with red splotches and a tendency to tan and pimple. Eyes are blue-gray with a yellow ring. American (Bavarian X Welsh). Hair is a shade of blonde that might better be described as bronze in hue, and in texture is thick and fine. It's also very puffy, with strong curls. Johan does not have a very expressive face, although when he smiles, his eyes seem to disappear into his laugh lines and round cheeks. He is very fussy with his hands, preferring small objects, jewelry, drawing/writing material, fabrics or tools -- not stim toys. He was homeschooled in a medium-size co-op with a very strong indigenous perspective. Johan left home at 18 in 2008, and is 25 in 2015.
Origin: (to be determined)
Uniform: (to be determined)
Qualities: Good (+2) First Aid, Good (+2) Fixing Things, Good (+2) Making Conversation, Good (+2) Organization Skills
Poor (-2) Keeping Secrets
Powers: Good (+2) Animal Powers, Good (+2) Land Connection, Good (+2) Psychic Powers
His Animal Powers come with particularly strong resonance in horses, goats, pigs, cats, and seals. His most practiced Psychic Powers include Astral Projection and Psychic Healing of spiritual injuries or illnesses.
Vulnerability: Johan senses other creatures' physical or emotional pain (about 50/50 on knowing how to fix it), which is distracting enough to make it hard to figure out what to do next. Damage to a landscape, such as a clearcut, is similarly debilitating.
Danger: Cold wrath ("when the cold-drake comes")
Verdite (Vera Dellwood) -- She has fair skin, green eyes, and long wavy red hair. Her heritage includes American, French, and Irish. She speaks English and French. She is 42 years old in 2015.
Verdite is the older sister of Amethyst (Amy Saint James) (46). They grew up in Emerald Mountain Glen near Rutledge, Vermont. Currently Verdite lives in Rutledge. She works at Pyramid Holistic Wellness Center. There she offers a variety of New Age services such as plant healing, nature healing, and forest bathing. She does some work at the building in town, but she spends more of her time at their meditation park outside of town.
Although Verdite is a nature healer, she doesn't really believe in superpowers as something that people either have or don't. Like many hippies, she believes that everyone can develop their inner gifts if they devote the time and effort to do so. She can heal plants of illnesses or injuries, as well as healing people of some physical or psychological complaints through the use of nature. She has some regular clients, and the meditation park is popular with tourists.
As a hobby, Verdite enjoys nature crafts like woodcarving and making flower crowns. She is no good with machines, and mechanical or electronic things break more often around her.
Origin: She gained her superpowers by pursuing enlightenment and personal growth through New Age practices.
Uniform: Verdite likes practical women's wear. Her base colors are brown, khaki, and ivory accented with other earth tones like olive and rust.
Qualities: Expert (+2) Naturalistic Intelligence, Good (+2) Hippie, Good (+2) Nature Crafts, Good (+2) Wilderness Skills
Poor (-2) Mechanical Intelligence
Powers: Good (+2) Nature Healer
Motivation: To protect and promote nature.
Verdite is a green semi-precious gemstone use in healing practices.
* * *
"It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive."
-- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
Sugarbush refers to maple trees tapped to make maple syrup or sugar. It can range in size from a handful of trees in a yard to a forest dominated by tappable species like sugar maple and black maple. Much of Vermont is covered by sugarbush.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_bush
Are there other tree species besides sugar maples in our sugarbush? Yes. We have American beech, white ash, black birch, bitternut hickory, and red oak. (Red oak is particularly valuable because lots of native insects like it, so lots of insect-eating birds like it, too.)
Several parcels of former clearcut have been treated with restoration plantings of half sugar maple and half a mix of American beech, white ash, black birch, bitternut hickory, red oak, and other native sugarbush species. Terramagne-Vermont sells sugarbush packages in sizes ranging from 10 to 1000 trees with combinations such as this. You can also get a half-oak (black oak, bur oak, chinkapin oak, pin oak, red oak, scarlet oak, white oak, etc.) mix, or a mix of half sugar maple and half assorted native nut trees (American beech, black walnut, bitternut hickory, butternut, American chestnut, oak, shagbark hickory, etc.), to make a mast forest. For areas with mixed deciduous-evergreen habitat, a mix of sugar maple and native evergreens (white pine, red pine, red spruce, balsam fir, etc.) is available.
Alternative education in Terramagne spans a variety of school systems like Montessori and other programs like Peace Trail.
The best way to get from Vermont to New Orleans without a car is to bus which takes 38 hours 24 minutes and costs $160 - $440.
Zydeco is a genre of music from rural Southwest Louisiana with African-American and Creole roots. Particular instruments include French accordion and a Creole washboard instrument called the frottoir, along with guitar, saxophone, and others.
Soul music is an African-American genre of music related to rhythm and blues, jazz, and gospel.
popular music genre that originated in the African-American community throughout the United States in the late 1950s and
"Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed-to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science-and it means as little to us as a color means to a blind man."
-- Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land