JB Pravda

Published: November 12th, 2015

Born Brooklyn, NY, US Government Attorney during Watergate, when he 'Felt' uneasy about governments, and laws; later, public company CEO, lobbyist, now, multimedia artist, published produced playwright (paid royalties), columnist for leading magazines; a cancer survivor, he retired, on doctors orders, from business & lobbying; self-taught in visual arts, his paintings have been published & exhibited as well as included in a national touring exhibition as well as several multimedia exhibitions in NY and other venues. Published diversity author via major university, winning Finalist in Stymie Magazine's 1st annual collector cards edition. Invitee, 2nd & 3rd Annual 'Slice' magazine Literary Writers Conference; Lifetime Guest Artist @ Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts via 2006 Playwriting Intensives (invitation only). In short, his work's been....paged, framed, screened & staged .>))

http://www.jbpravda.com

Goddess of the Garden
....an imagined open letter to those polluting our world

Blooms bloomed just across the creek---a creek that used to be a river where my friends and I would swim when it was hot summer; now, it is Spring, soon to become Summer, but no children swim there anymore. I remember smelling the fragrance of those flowers---it smelt so sweet, like the incense breath of the goddess at the nearby Chou Lin monk’s shrine. Funny, but since the Party closed down the monastery, the people around there say that she has died, the goddess; I don’t believe it and, yet, the smell is different, it is somehow less sweet.

An older monk, from that time, when the monastery was still full of monks and their calm prayers and their blossoming cultivated gardens, sometimes begs near our company’s cafeteria and I give him what I am able to, which is not very much. He told me that the flowers mourn the demise of the goddess and that they weep sour tears----‘lachrymosa’, he called it, a word he learned as a boy from a Christian missionary and, although he did not then understand its meaning, he liked its sound; when he learnt of its meaning, he himself wept for the worthy dying god of the missionary.

Strange how he carries with him a bag of seeds he says he will plant once those who pray to this god ask him for forgiveness for what has become of the sweet Earth, given to us all by all gods. This is what keeps him alive, he says; he is now 108 years old.

I have seen him some days ago, and he is smiling, saying that rest is near for him; he explains that since factories like mine have come, the people no longer starve. But, with their fuller bellies, they have lost the touch and smell of the Earth in their nostrils and, with it, the need to care for it as the renewer of life. Now, the people have time to think about this and this is because of the factories and this good they have brought. He says that wisdom always comes with such ‘irony’, another word he likes that he learned from missionaries. They taught him that when the great Roman conquerors feared his gentle powers, they killed him, or so they thought.

But, these missionaries, taught him that this great one could not die, only disappear for a while until redemption time. This, they said, was the very soul of this ‘irony’---killing that which may not die.

And, so, the Earth, his goddess, has not died; only it has changed, waiting for wisdom to return to men. He is ready to plant his seeds, he says, grinning, because of my factory which makes hoes, for the gardens of people in America to buy at Walmart, founded by a man who himself admired missionaries. Is it time seeds of these blooms, the flowers that smell so heavenly? I pray to all gods……..[he bows] that it is so; that my old friend may rest, just where he will plant these seeds. He told me that his hands would become the roots and his heart the loving incense of their odor. Here is all he left me……[he pulls a note from his pocket]…."remember the wisdom of Confucius: When a man’s knowledge is sufficient to attain but his virtue is not sufficient to enable him to hold whatever he may have gained he will lose again. Goodbye, my young hoe maker; bury me with these seeds and welcome the returning goddess of the Earth."