Divine Providence (or when all else fails, be lucky)

By Ian C. Dawkins Moore

True Love - poem
Keep Alive Your Dream - poem (by Howard Thurman)
A Clear Spot - short story about finding a clear peaceful space during a busy day.
Changes - poem
The Look of Love - short story about a man who learned all the words and sang all the notes, but he never quite learned the song (ISB music)
Happy New Day - poem
Let them Eat Cake - poem
Socrates in America - short story/joke/riddle
When We become our Dreams - poem (by Howard Thurman)
Chance - short story about a gambling addict and redemption for those who try to help
It’s a Mystery - poem
The Stack - short story about a million dollar stack of money
The Color of Jazz - poem
MoneyBalls - short story about Brad Pitt and Angelica Jolie
I Will Survive - poem
Rent-A-Doctor - short story about a doctor who thinks he's god
The Direction - poem
Fake it ‘til you make it - a career criminal recounts his life work
Summer in December - poem
The Man Who Wasn’t There - poem
Beer, Beef & the Bible - short story set in the back country of California's Sierra foothills where men are men and all change is blasphemy
The Bachelor’s Soliloquy - poem ( by anonymous)
How Good it is to Center Down - poem (by Howard Thurman)
No Sound More - poem
Flies - short story about a man obsessed with flies as he waits to interview a prospective custodian
The Vanities of Desire - porm
Mother -poem
Maili Beach - short story, a man returns for the funeral of his father in Hawaii and gets sucked into the families criminal activities
The Lodgment - poem
Discipline - short story, how punishment is administer in boys boarding school and the fear and retribution when it all goes wrong.
Blue Skies - poem
Guilt - short story, about how guilt and fear control our thoughts and feelings
The Heaven of Hope - poem
Dog Town - short story about the adventures of an infamous area in Oakland, California
The News is Bad - poem
Invitation to a Journey - poem
Mr. Pete - short story, the adventures of a acting extra
The Poverty of Plenty - poem
The Safe Cracker - short story, four people meet and discuss their lives while waiting for a safe to be opened which they all have interest in.
Cellaphobia - poem
The Prince of Poultry - short story; a man who runs a large chicken farm is suddenly struck with a conscience about the lives of the chickens.
It was the Wine - poem
Thief - short story, the adventures and the making of a thief
Knowledge is the Cancer - poem
Cockpit Country - poem
Fitzroy-Nice Chap - poem
The Cop Out - short story, the clashing life experiences between a young American man and an Anglo Caribbean man as they travel across the Sahara desert
One-Eyed Jacks - poem
No Good Deed - short story, the perils of helping your family when they don't want to help you.
Die Cheney Die - poem
Racism -poem
Ruin or Progress - poem (By Charles Baudelaire)
The Dove’s Lament - poem
A Writer - short story musing on Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gelhorn's relationship and what it means to be a writer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian C. Dawkins Moore
• Release date: Aug 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370312535

Ian C. Dawkins Moore

Ian C. Dawkins Moore was born under the sign of Aries in the year of the Tiger. He survived a British boarding school, the jock world of football hooliganism, hitch-hiking across the Sahara desert, and the two-tone culture of American racism. He is the published author of over 20 books, and he can still see the funny side of life- Be Well & Enjoy!

Book preview

it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Thank you also

For taking the time to read ‘Divine Providence’ which is one of the stories from my collection, from

Smashwords.com/icmoore

Be well

Ian C. Dawkins Moore

In Memory

of

Iris Daisy Moore

CONTENT

True Love

Keep Alive Your Dream

A Clear Spot

Changes

So You Wanna Be a Writer

The Look of Love

Happy New Day

Socrates in America

When We become our Dreams

Chance

It’s a Mystery

The Stack

The Color of Jazz

MoneyBalls

I Will Survive

Rent-A-Doctor

The Direction

Fake it ‘til you make it

Sumer in December

The Man Who Wasn’t There

Beer, Beef & the Bible

The Bachelor’s Soliloquy

How Good it is to Center Down

No Sound More

Flies

The Vanities of Desire

Mother

Maili Beach

The Lodgment

Discipline

Blue Skies

Guilt

The Heaven of Hope

Dog Town

The News is Bad

Invitation to a Journey

Mr. Pete

The Poverty of Plenty

The Safe Cracker

Cellaphobia

The Prince of Poultry

It was the Wine

Thief

Knowledge is the Cancer

Cockpit Country

Fitzroy-Nice Chap

The Cop Out

One-Eyed Jacks

No Good Deed

Die Cheney Die

Racism

Ruin or Progress

The Dove’s Lament

A Writer

Acknowledgements

About the Author: Ian C. Dawkins Moore

Other Books by Ian C. Dawkins Moore

FOREWORD

Now is the time to understand that all your ideas of right

& wrong were just a child’s training wheels to be laid aside so, you can finally live with veracity and love.

-Hafiz

Man is free the moment he chooses to be,

-Voltaire

TRUE LOVE

There’s the wonderful love of a beautiful maid,

and the love of a staunch true man,

and the love of a baby that’s unafraid –

all have existed since time began.

But the most wonderful love, the love of all loves,

even great than the love for Mother;

is the infinite, passionate, tenderly love

of one dead drunk for another.

KEEP ALIVE YOUR DREAM

We cannot long live if the dream in our

hearts is gone. Our dream is the outlet to

the living spirit welling up in the

spring of our very beings nourishing

and sustaining all life. Where there is no

dream life is a swamp – a dreary dead place.

Your dream is the quiet persistence in

the heart that allows us to ride out the

storms of our churning experiences.

It’s the excited whisper rustling through

our souls answering the monotony

of limitless days and our dull routines.

Your dreams highlight an ordinary life -

lifting to acts of joy and importance.

A CLEAR SPOT

Stepping into his city truck to begin his daily tours of construction sites, Terrence always felt a surge of pride flush through him. For an African American male from Oakland, in the 1980’s, to have a position as a construction inspector was a rarity that was not lost on his friends and family. He had scramble out of the barrel!

The fact that the mayor of the city was and American African had played no part in it. The mayor had his own people to reward and advance, his benevolence did not stretch to the rest of his race. That was left to the religious ministers of the various denominations who lined up at the City’s trough for payouts to keep the natives quiet with perfunctory youth programs and health alerts.

However, none of the abysmal politics of the city was on Terrence’s mind, as he pulled out of the city garage on 10th street, ready to explore the beauty of his hometown. With its scenic rolling hills, that looked down on the San Francisco Bay, a crucible of Mediterranean pleasures, Terrence longed to be up there soaking up the sun’s rays, but first he had to deal with his work. His job involved answering a daily inquisitional list of complaints from the public. From eight in the morning Terrence was daily engulfed in an incessant drone of phone calls, repetitive expletives, city codes, cultural clashes, civic ignorance’s, and triumphant stupidities.

The pervading fear of a lawsuit against the city hung like Damocles’ sword, ready to drop at any moment. It was curious, thought Terrence, that in a city that makes the effort to protect its citizens from themselves, the city should suffer the most from being blamed by their citizens for their injuries; whereas in cities around world who do not attempt to protect the citizens from themselves, self-preservation and common sense prevail?

Terrence’s major concern, as a construction inspector, was the maintenance and repair of the city streets and public-right-of ways. These included sidewalks, sewers, storm drains and roadways. But his real job was constantly putting out public works fires, racing from one crisis to another, dousing the worst and trying to convince the public to take better precautions: all to no avail. ‘Giving advice is a useless exercise,’ claimed Oscar Wilde, ‘and giving good advice is fatal’! Such are the realities of working with the public because public business is a high stress business. People will say anything while you are with them, yet few will follow-up their words with responsible actions.

However, as a paid Government employee the art of service is to look as if you are busy. Terrence’s colleagues had no pretensions to civic accountability, it was just a job, and the higher up the pay scale they went the less responsibility was accountable by the individual. It is the dichotomy of the working life; that in government service, without incentives people become indolent, and in private business with incentives, people become mercenary. Many years of Government inertia and the faithlessness of supervisors have ingrained only the instinct for survival. It is thus no surprise when not a week goes by without a quarter of the staff seeking relief with sick days, vacations, and floating holidays. The burn-out rate is high, but few people have any other options being locked in by age, seniority and lack of imagination.

Terrence however, found the situation a challenge. Meeting and dealing with people were always of great interest to him. Perhaps as someone born and raised in Oakland, he wanted to present his town in a positive light, or perhaps it was his pleasant disposition that saw every situation as a learning experience. Whatever it was, it put him outside of the norm in the office, and he had to hurry out of that hive of petrified vermin each morning before he was infected with the virus of defeat. In fact, it was the main challenge of his job - to keep a positive attitude during such hopelessness and to hold onto every shred of sanity his happy disposition could muster.

It was in search of a clear spot, away from the madness of his office that Terrence drove up to the Oakland hills. His five permit inspections for the day were quickly completed, and as it was the early spring, with no major capital projects having started. He decided he was free to search for his muse.

A property owner had placed a fence across the end of the street, which was on public property, stopping people entering the open public land. She claimed that people were allowing their horses to foul-up the street in front of her home without cleaning up afterwards. As an enforcer of sorts, it was Terrence’s job to explain the law and have the homeowner remove the fence, despite his sympathy for her position.

This homeowner lived off Malcolm drive, behind Knowland Park. The drive there took Terrence higher and higher on a twisting vein-like road, piercing through the thick hues of evergreen. After concluding his business, Terrence strolled onto the open public land, which skirted the area and was immediately sucked up into the stillness and quietude of the surrounding countryside.

Terrence’s view spread for a distance of twenty miles, a one-hundred-eighty degree angle of silent restful chaparral. To his left in the distance between two colossal fir trees Terrence could see Oakland’s City Hall shrouded in smog against the backdrop of the glittering city of San Francisco. Ahead was a bold scarp hill striped of all vegetation, skinless, awaiting the advance of the uncompromising city dwellers to fill it with habitat boxes? The yellows, light browns and bruising blues seemed to suggest great discomfort and soreness suffered by the landscape. In the far distance ahead, Terrence could see a ridge of redwoods, proud sentinels of the high ground. This land used to be completely covered with these beautiful specimens until the demand for lumber, in 1908, after the great fire and earthquake in San Francisco.

As his gaze moved around to the right, he could see ravines and rivulets that scored the hillside, rising in unison to a plateau whereon rested several ranch-style homes. Fern covered hills further to Terrence’s right led onto a series of terraced town houses with bright Spanish red roofs and white stucco frames. Next to this was an emerald, green golf course beautifully manicured but completely out of place in the surrounding moorlands. The valley before him was inundated with small homesteads each peering out onto its own precious little view, riding on undulating outcrops of vegetation. All this was soaked in rays of sunshine overseen by a glorious blue sky. It was indeed a vista of sublime beauty and tranquility.

As Terrence reclined back onto the crackling dry grasses that formed a natural amphitheater, he began to muse on the natural world that surrounded him, and how we have all let it slip beneath our appreciation and gratitude, as we substitute our inner need for nourishment with external material comforts. In particular, he was reminded of a few lines of poetry from the French poet, Baudelaire:

"The natural world is a spiritual house, where the pillars, that are alive, let slip at times some strangely garbled words. Man walks there through forests of physical things that are also spiritual things, that watch him with affectionate looks…."

We all come from the same life force and the tapping of that wellspring of energy and consciousness would, it seemed to Terrence, help free us all from the many fears and uncertainties that plague our modern age. The natural world contains an abundance of creative energy, and as Terrence sat during that magical garden, he tried to imbibe its essence by holding his breath and sensing its vibrancy flowing through him. He was not concerned to hold or direct this energy but rather to be a vehicle through which these natural forces moved. For Terrence, this was the true joy of the natural world - to immerse oneself in the oneness of creation and find one’s place in the great scheme of things.

The twittering birds in the nearby trees broke the spell of Terrence’s reveries. The sky, which only moments before blushed with sunshine, was now being eaten into by the insidious smog spreading from the city center. The droning echo of a passing plane interrupted the moment of magic as far off sirens punctuated the air. It was time to go. Terrence took his last look at the tranquil setting breathing in deeply the pine fragrances filling the air and headed back to his truck. He had had to run so far to find a clear spot, but those moments of bliss renewed and refreshed his vision for the future. He moved on with his daily demands in the full knowledge and assurance that he would always have a refuge from the wild and maddening crowds.

Changes

You rise this morning

a new human being. Your feet on the

mat – one is shorter. On the

other corns have grown.

The dry flakes on the heels have spread. The nails

are longer. You assault

the mirror. The face

looking back has changed? You search your memory

for today’s face. The catalog

is getting longer.

You fix on one. You purse the lips, sparkle

the eyes. The memory locks in.

-ah there it is.

Yesterday’s face to murder and pretend.

Your commute removes

years from your feet, knees, legs, arms, shoulders, and hips.

Hanging from straps tied down to a seat,

or flaps in lines of traffic

barreling down darken underground holes

to meet your fate, shared in cubicles

spitefully segregated

like rodents on treadmills.

The drone of authority booms out

across the partitions

scattering emotional cells of fear

from under the skin

flushing

the face red with tears

torn from the remains of coffee and tea.

You die each moment

silently and resigning with each breath.

Growing anew each moment

as being human

plays out its miracle pattern of life

-movement personified!

Yes, the body is ‘live’

- freed from outside manipulation!

‘Live’ to unique sensations

body preservations

volitions and minds connecting

the living and the dying

fibers of breathing,

hearing, smelling, seeing, tasting, touching,

your human be-ing-ness.

So You Wanna Be a Writer?

So, you wanna be a writer?

Well, yes

You do know that writing is a business.

I understand that if I write what is wanted, I’ll get paid for it, which makes it a business

No. I said. Do you know the business of writing?

"You mean, do I know the genre I’m writing in, my target market; the magazines that will take my work; the agents that I can pitch too?

"No, I mean the failure rate, the departments set up just to reject the overflow of words piled up in the corners of every publisher’s office.

They actually have rejection departments?

No, I made that part up. They have a big sign in their lobby which says, we only published celebrities or people who know celebrities. It’s written in Braille, so only blind people ask for it and get to read it.

Are you serious?

Yes, not about the Braille thing, but certainly about the inscription which is branded into the hearts of all the editors and agents of publishing conglomerates.

Well, I don’t care ‘cause I’ve got something to say and I wanna say it.

So, you still wanna be a writer, good! Then just write. Because the act itself is the only true experience you will ever have in your writing life. Treasure the moments at the typewriter, or in your handwritten notebooks, because once you release your work onto the undiscerning public, it will no longer be yours no matter how much money you do or do not make. You art/work will take on the patina of the leaches, parasites, and prostitutes who handle your work and who will make more money out of your efforts than you can ever image. But you will always know, unlike them, that you have created something of value that will transcend your time of earthly existence. And no amount of celebrity pandering will every erase a word or the spirit of your achievement. So, write, my friend, write; because a writer always writes!

THE LOOK OF LOVE

Oh, he knew all the words, and he sung all the notes,

but he never quite learned the song, she said.

I can tell by the sadness in your eyes,

that you never quite learned the song.

The Incredible String Band-The Hedgehog Song

Joe Sully lived in a two-room attic apartment over-looking the Coit Tower in San Francisco. Although the place was small and uninviting – parking was impossible, and the climb up the stairs fatigued everyone who attempted to visit him – it was neat.

From the bathroom window facing west one could see the Pyramid building in the financial district and the grey blocks of the Embarcadero Center. His bedroom window looked out towards the Oakland hills and the cool calm waters of the Bay.

He had bought every piece of furniture in his apartment, a futon with a purple mattress pushed against a wall under a small mantel on which rested a Christ figurine holding his hands up in supplication and incense burners.

There were two rooms off the main room, a small poky bathroom that he couldn’t turn around in and a slither of a space where a miniature stove and freezer fought for room.

In the main space of the apartment, books covered the facing wall in floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Joe’s primary interest was poetry and was dominated by the works of the poet T.S. Eliot. A pine table had hand-written sheets of paper piled loosely on top of books, fighting for space with pens and staplers and clocks and an ornate desk lamp with a green shade and gold pull-down string. Squeezed behind the door to the bathroom was a chair tucked under the table to save space.

Joe hated anything that looked like physical or mental disorder, and he was quick to see any hint of it in others. His face, which held the story of his years, was ashen white and contrasted sharply with his black fluffy beard.

He was not an unattractive man, but he made no effort to appeal to others. There was a twinkle in his eyes when he recited poetry, but it was soon extinguished once he’d put down the book. He lived in constant attention to his need to be rational but struggled every moment with the haunting emotions of an abused childhood.

It had been many years since the incidents, which his sisters denied and his mother scoffed at, leaving him trapped in a world of duplicitous realities. Time had only added to the dichotomy of his imagined and real pain. Years had cemented a personality that clung to his real fears as much as his perceived threats, while therapy had become a way of life, resigning him to his acute aloneness.

He had been, for many years, a teacher, but because of the Byzantium structure of the school districts, and his pedantic scorn for officialdom, he’d not been tenured.

Consequently, his assigned teaching positions were in San Jose, Oakland, and Concord but never in San Francisco, where he lived. This required him to travel by public transportation to all his assignments so that travel time took up much of the time before and after each class. He refused to learn to drive, or god-forbid, buy a car, reasoning that there was enough disorder in the world without him adding to it on the highways.

Every evening he would struggle up the stairs to his rooms and collapse exhausted on his bed. Revived somewhat after thirty minutes, he would unpack his bag and attempt to mark homework. His heart was never in it; instead, he spent his travel time imagining poems for his book.

His relationship with his publisher had expanded over ten years to that of co-conspirator in an agreement that to publish required perfection and nothing should be published before perfection had been reached. Consequently, his poems became stagnated blots of inky stains on crumpled papers.

Once a week, at the Zen Center, Joe allowed himself to open up and try to be at peace with his inner conflicts. But it was hard for Joe to push out of his mind the teasing threat he felt from female members who gathered at the center. His earlier experiences with women were of dominating manipulating adults.

He had been educated in a Catholic school that was run by nuns. His response had been to be passive. He neither agreed nor disagreed with orders unless they were directed at him specifically. He did his best to stay out of the line of fire.

He found the overbearing unimaginative blandness of his teachers, with their black habits and cornstarch white head gear, intolerable. Out of their mouths came stringent staccato orders, which reduced him to trembling fits of fear even years after he’d left school.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like women; it was that he didn’t