Pearls and Swine

By JaQuan Readus

In this what is called life, there will be good and bad. For some, life's lows seem to outnumber the highs.

My story is a great example of that premise. Physical and sexual, as well as rejection, in my childhood left me with the perspective that life's lows were what life was. With very little instruction on life and what to do with it, I lived for the day, not really caring to see the next, not caring for my own life. I felt nothing for the lives of others, that carelessness put me in a place where I realized. Not only my physical person was imprisoned but the spiritual also. I knew that I couldn't escape this prison on my own. I needed something greater than myself. I sought to teach myself self-discipline and tried to enlighten myself studying religious text. But there was still a hole where I knew something should be. In my search, my eyes were really opened to evils of man, which enlarged the whole that I was trying to fill. As I was reading in my cell, one night, a wave of understanding washed over me. And I knew what I was missing: love. Here I was reading the story of a man who I didn't believe in demonstrate something that I've been missing and looking for without really knowing was missing in my life for so long. So I decided to obtain it by imitating who literally is it. And as I attempt this imitation, I see the highs and lows of life in a different light. I lived a life without hope. But there is always hope. Sometimes we just have to look for it, and sometimes we have to let it find us. And as for the highs and lows of life, I've learned to separate the pearls from the swine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781684980383

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Reflections

Journal No. 1

Journal No. 2

About the Author

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Pearls and Swine

JaQuan Readus

Copyright © 2022 JaQuan Readus

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-68498-037-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68498-038-3 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

The past has the power to shape the present and affect the future. My life was driven by a past that held the present hostage and my future seemed hopeless. A past that was painful and dark. I felt as if I somehow deserved what I was going through. It was all my fault, and there was no other explanation. (That was far from the truth.) I found myself imprisoned physically and spiritually.

I found freedom and saw for the first time that I wasn't alone and that I have the ability to help someone else to find the same freedom.

This is the hope of my story—to help someone else to find true freedom.

Reflections

Journal No. 1

Maybe if I learned to love, my heart wouldn't beat so slow. In gardens, flowers grow with life's seeds; but my life seeds are outgrown and strangled out by my own personal weeds.

Though it's dark, I know I live; and live I will, even if I always will feel winter's chill. Cold grows inside of me, but I won't look for the sun for heat. I just wait in the shadow for the frost. Everywhere there's directions, but yet I remain lost.

Give it all, give in, give it up; I just can't give anymore. I've lost the knowledge of try and the hunger of way. How can I be stronger than the strength that I have when I see my future being destroyed by my past?

There are reasons of what, who, when, and why; but there's no blame. Maybe if I knew how to love, maybe my heart wouldn't beat so slow; and if someone tended the garden, maybe my seeds would grow.

If I could remember warmth, maybe I could leave the shadows at night for the sunlight.

Maybe if I am strong at my weakest, I could use that strength to overcome my meekest moments and push through the winter's cold, grow bold and love.

But as the light glows bright, my sight grows dim and the cold settles in.

To know love is not my lot; though love is part of life, it is not a part of me.

*****

I'm uncertain that it's better than to have had love than never to have loved at all when I'm haunted by lost love calls.

I'm uncertain that this pain is real because my whole being is numb. My mind drifts from one moment in time to the next. Perplexed by the webs and wonders that love conceived to deceive me with.

I'm uncertain of the truth, when within love lies I was truly blind, and could see only what it chose for me to see, take the paths it wanted me to take, make the decisions it wanted me to make.

I'm certain—if uncertain if I should close love's doors and never fall for its lures again.

*****

Today I witnessed the death of a beautiful soul.

It faded slowly as everyone watched and no one paid attention.

As colorful as it may have been there, it was void of light, lifeless, and limp with life's breath still within it.

Cold and carelessly it stared at a world it longed for so long to be part of. I watched as it became part of that same cold and carelessness.

Each breath was one less breath that it would ever take and as each breath is labored less to pass the next.

I heard its cry, I saw its tears, I felt its pain; yet I just sat and watched the death of a beautiful soul.

*****

How it feels to make love I can only imagine.

Soft touches, sensuous looks, the rhythmic breathing, the wanting and being in the desire of the moment.

Silent songs play in our eyes, lost in time as I interpret yours and as you embrace mine. With every thud of my heart, I hear every word of your body's lyrics. Though we're lost, we make music at our every chance, and with no music at all we dance.

If I was an actor taught how to make love, I would eagerly learn my every lesson. I will remember, recite, and reenact every unspoken word written by your mind, performed by our bodies. After every scene, not a single fiber of you would sit, but they all will give a standing ovation. Right before the final curtain, I will bow to you as a grateful page, for you would have taught me the art of the show.

If I knew when to make love, my timing would be perfect, no second wasted, no moment spoiled. Hours and minutes would not matter; the hands of time would obey my will. I, the supreme master of this moment, will have your heart racing and your pleasure drawn out as long as you could imagine and beyond then frozen. Suspended there for my pleasure, for as long as I need. And the world will sit still, paused until our release.

But I was never taught, for I never bought into that brand of love. So in turn, no one ever invested that same love in me, and though there may be more time to come then, that has passed. But I fear my chance for that particular brand has gone.

*****

A cry with no tears or sound. No cut or wound, the blood in his body seems to seep into the barren ground. Life draining into nothing and the blood spreads that nothing. Life suppressed by life nothing grows where the blood runs. No evidence of the living, not even decay, just a hard surface covered in blood. The blood flows slowly, but it consumes quickly. No one knew that one man could bleed so much, but no one ever noticed him bleed or the nothing the blood left. In its ebbing flow, he only felt the slow drain. He hears an empty void calling, but to him, it's not a void, it's a doorway away from the drain. But the