March 6, 2012
Dear Reader,
The title of page 47 is "Hunger Of All Kinds". You will find a transcript of this page at the end of this letter. Make sure you zoom in to see the lettering and/or read the transcript, below. I will post page 48 on Tuesday, March 13th.
Remember, if you don't dream any other day of the week, dream with me on Tuesdays.
You can now link to the Table of Contents on every page. Click here to start at the beginning of this webcomic. Have a great week and remember that Goatwater is updated every Tuesday. Email any questions or comments to bassacards(at) yahoo.com.
If this is your first time visiting this site, or you are a regular reader, email me at the address above if you want me to add you to my mailing list so that I can send you an email reminder, every Tuesday, when I’ve added the new page. No spam, and I will not share your email with anybody else, just the link to the new page and some update information, if I have any. And feel free to let me know, at any time, if you want to stop receiving the weekly emails. Thank you for your support!
Goatwater - Page 47 - Transcript - Hunger Of All Kinds
Ruthie
Before we reach our final destination, Octaroon, I’d like to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone. Listen: It was the Ninety-seventh season of poverty on the island. No, that’s incorrect. It was the Ninety-eighth. Hunger of all kinds kept us light-headed, heavy-hearted and haunted by history and hallucination. And we, like our ancestors, were still poor and practicing our provincial beliefs. To visitors, we appeared uncouth, ignorant and lacking in the proper spiritual perspective that would gain us the riches of the world followed by eternal life. Our most valuable resource to these visitors was the land we stood on, and, after a life of poverty, disillusionment and disease, were buried in.
As a child, I often spent evenings with my Pappy, walking for miles along the country roads until we reached the potter’s fields. We’d wander those fields pausing here and there to leave bountiful offerings of food and drink on random, unmarked graves. “Everyone I ever loved and everybody I’ve ever despised is buried here,” Pappy told me one night, as our bellies howled with hunger. “This is our duty,” he said, taking a piece of bread with fish from my filthy hands and placing it with a little cup of whiskey on a stranger’s grave.
The grave diggers, always drinking and digging holes nearby, did not care for the intrusion and tried to scare us off with stories of a destructive spirit named Cholera. Swinging their shovels at us, they called us half-breed pickaninnies, paper bag ghosts and open sores. They feared us. Pappy wasn’t friendly with the grave diggers, either. He looked at them as though they had not just buried our ancestors – as they did everyone else on that island – in a rank ditch, after they were good and dead, but killed them as well.
It was on one such excursion that a grave digger handed me a map. While my Pappy was honoring our ancestors with offerings of food that I longed to eat, a grave digger appeared in front of me where I sat on the ground and waited. Before I could scream he placed a heavy piece of paper in my lap and walked away. I studied the document without touching it. Its markings indicated a ripe, fertile, curvaceous, yet uninhabited island called Ruthie. I looked at that name for a long time until I understood what it was. Horrified and hungry, I tried to eat the offensive paper, but it wouldn’t tear. I called out to Pappy in anger, demanding to know why, in the name of hunger, he never once told me that I had yet to be born.
Octaroon
What’s that, Ruthie? I didn’t hear a word you said. But you were right. Missus is not pleased. So tell that carnival animal to march with haste. Why have we stopped? Is he drunk? Has he found the other wheel? I’d use two condoms with that one, if I were you. Girl, I can’t wait to get the hell outta here. Any of that saltfish and whiskey left?
Dear Reader,
The title of page 47 is "Hunger Of All Kinds". You will find a transcript of this page at the end of this letter. Make sure you zoom in to see the lettering and/or read the transcript, below. I will post page 48 on Tuesday, March 13th.
Remember, if you don't dream any other day of the week, dream with me on Tuesdays.
You can now link to the Table of Contents on every page. Click here to start at the beginning of this webcomic. Have a great week and remember that Goatwater is updated every Tuesday. Email any questions or comments to bassacards(at) yahoo.com.
If this is your first time visiting this site, or you are a regular reader, email me at the address above if you want me to add you to my mailing list so that I can send you an email reminder, every Tuesday, when I’ve added the new page. No spam, and I will not share your email with anybody else, just the link to the new page and some update information, if I have any. And feel free to let me know, at any time, if you want to stop receiving the weekly emails. Thank you for your support!
Goatwater - Page 47 - Transcript - Hunger Of All Kinds
Ruthie
Before we reach our final destination, Octaroon, I’d like to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone. Listen: It was the Ninety-seventh season of poverty on the island. No, that’s incorrect. It was the Ninety-eighth. Hunger of all kinds kept us light-headed, heavy-hearted and haunted by history and hallucination. And we, like our ancestors, were still poor and practicing our provincial beliefs. To visitors, we appeared uncouth, ignorant and lacking in the proper spiritual perspective that would gain us the riches of the world followed by eternal life. Our most valuable resource to these visitors was the land we stood on, and, after a life of poverty, disillusionment and disease, were buried in.
As a child, I often spent evenings with my Pappy, walking for miles along the country roads until we reached the potter’s fields. We’d wander those fields pausing here and there to leave bountiful offerings of food and drink on random, unmarked graves. “Everyone I ever loved and everybody I’ve ever despised is buried here,” Pappy told me one night, as our bellies howled with hunger. “This is our duty,” he said, taking a piece of bread with fish from my filthy hands and placing it with a little cup of whiskey on a stranger’s grave.
The grave diggers, always drinking and digging holes nearby, did not care for the intrusion and tried to scare us off with stories of a destructive spirit named Cholera. Swinging their shovels at us, they called us half-breed pickaninnies, paper bag ghosts and open sores. They feared us. Pappy wasn’t friendly with the grave diggers, either. He looked at them as though they had not just buried our ancestors – as they did everyone else on that island – in a rank ditch, after they were good and dead, but killed them as well.
It was on one such excursion that a grave digger handed me a map. While my Pappy was honoring our ancestors with offerings of food that I longed to eat, a grave digger appeared in front of me where I sat on the ground and waited. Before I could scream he placed a heavy piece of paper in my lap and walked away. I studied the document without touching it. Its markings indicated a ripe, fertile, curvaceous, yet uninhabited island called Ruthie. I looked at that name for a long time until I understood what it was. Horrified and hungry, I tried to eat the offensive paper, but it wouldn’t tear. I called out to Pappy in anger, demanding to know why, in the name of hunger, he never once told me that I had yet to be born.
Octaroon
What’s that, Ruthie? I didn’t hear a word you said. But you were right. Missus is not pleased. So tell that carnival animal to march with haste. Why have we stopped? Is he drunk? Has he found the other wheel? I’d use two condoms with that one, if I were you. Girl, I can’t wait to get the hell outta here. Any of that saltfish and whiskey left?
Goatwater
Copyright 2011-2012
words and images by:
Tiffany Osedra Miller
all rights reserved.
Copyright 2011-2012
words and images by:
Tiffany Osedra Miller
all rights reserved.
**scroll down to read the transcript to page 47**
