Apocalypse of Jude

“For all this weird weather, we’re getting we’re getting extraordinary sunsets.”

Jude takes a seat alongside Caul on the veranda’s couch, staring at the sun diffusing in constancy its burning death through the cloud over the ocean. The sea is white. Their silence is still awkward. Caul flickers a cold glance at Jude.

“Can I have a cigarette?”

Jude just smiles.

“I was just about to offer you one. That must mean I’m beginning to read when you want a cigarette.”

Jude’s loops his box over to Caul, then holds out his arm, the clink of the lighter igniting the burning fluid, the subsequent flame dancing lazily as Caul lights up.

Caul grimaces placidly, not really enjoying the smoke going in and out of his lungs. He watches the smoke drift a non-committal path through the still air.

“One names a wind from whence it comes right?”

Jude just gives a short chuckle.

“Now that takes me back to school geography. Yes. I believe you are right. Why?”

Caul rolls the cigarette in his fingers and stares at the burnt end melt the filter paper.

“It’s just interesting that we name a wind from where it comes, not to where it goes.”

His head laid back on the couch, Jude lights his own fag, staring at the mottled, fibreglass awning.

“Thus is laid premise number one. Go on. Take my mind from this heat.”

Caul drags.

“So, I guess it follows that by setting course to the wind, you will never know where you will land up except somewhere opposite to the direction from where you started from.”

A smoke ring escapes Jude’s mouth.

“Well deduced monsieur professor. And it was just his argument that led to the invention of the rudder.”

He turns his head lazily sideways and queries.

“Caul, what are you getting at?”

Caul looks blankly at Jude for a few moments. “No. Nothing. Just a thought I suddenly had.”

Not moving his head, sucking on his cigarette, Jude returns the gaze.

“Caul, what is it you are going to do with all those half-baked ideas and flashes of unfinished inspiration that you’ve entertained me with these past three years? Where are you going?”

“What do you mean?”

“Okay, for instance,…”

Jude’s hands go up in gesticulation along with his body, cigarette clasped between fore and middle of the right hand, smoke curling towards Caul.

“…if we’re chatting, we inevitably land up in a stream of consciousness about whatever issue, but rarely will you actually commit yourself to a point of view. To extend your own metaphor, it’s like you’ve set sail but you haven’t rationalised the conclusion of a rudder yet.”

Caul steers Jude’s hand away from him.

“No, its not that. I have a rudder. I just don’t want to use it anymore.”

Jude drags and then ashes over the couches edge with his left hand.

“Not even to get yourself somewhere?”

The melting filter paper transfixes Caul for a moment.

“All it did was steer my life into a storm that tore me apart, leaving me to drift at the mercy of what ever wind prevailed. And since nobody else seemed to have a replacement rudder, and all my past maps had become defunct, I decided I’d rather just float out there and simply allow what ever cosmic power that is out there to find me.”

“But the likelihood of being sunk or grounded is just the same.”

“Exactly. And look where I’ve run aground. Like you insinuated yesterday, I think I’ve stumbled on God’s wind. Now I guess, I want the rudder to steer me in that wind so I can get off this island of purgatory I’m stuck on.”

Caul stubs his firmly into the tray that lies between them.

Jude has neither smiled or shown astonishment at Caul’s remarks, but rather looks hard out over the shining milky mass of cloud stretching over the sea swallowing the land.

“Even if you have found God’s wind Caul, there is no rudder, because when it comes to God, everyone’s rudder is just as screwed up as yours. Anyhow, who cares what I insinuate? For what random reason do you think you’ve found God’s wind? Like you say Caul, you have no map. You’re lost. Along with all of us here.”

Staring out into the white haze, Caul pauses a long time.

“What if it’s the same wind that has blown itself through a multitude of lives over the entire course of human history, running them aground on this wasteland I now am, in order to find God? That’s what your church would claim right? Spirit, Bible and Church. Wind, map and rudder?”

A silence settles on Jude. In it he becomes aware of the battered rudder of Church Tradition underneath him still trying to hold its course over his life. Its stubborn resilience in spite of all that he has done to rid himself of it, plummets his soul’s barometer further down the spiral.

“Well the pope would put Church first in that sequence.”

The cynicism of Jude’s retort churns to the centre of Caul’s heart, filling him with a desperate but nauseating yearning for knowledge of events last night.

“Why do you hold onto your virginity then?”

The words almost spit themselves from Caul’s mouth. He pushes forth accusingly.

“For all your cynicism you’re still holding onto the hope that God exists and is coming for you. Like some unrequited love.”

The sudden triumphalism arising from Caul’s charge, sets the storm in Jude’s heart to thunder loudly against that last hold Tradition has on his mind. His voice barks out a triumphant DA!

“There is nothing left to be requited anymore Caul. Christ’s not coming anymore to marry me.”

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 103