We had a lot of fun out there on Mill tonight.
But, to begin this story, I have to hearken back to the entire week that I spent on ASU campus. The most I’ve spent there in the past few years since I’ve started splitting my time between Michigan and Arizona. I don’t take classes there right now, but I wish that I still was, I love the academic atmosphere and I still have a lot of distance to go honing my discipline at English. Perhaps it’s time for me to actually put real time into studying the ancient masters.
This week on ASU I went to watch and study Brother Jed: a scary, fearmongering evangelical preacher who moves nomadically from campus to campus inciting anger and mockery with his abrasive, vitriolic campaign for the doctrine of his god, Jesus Christ. Of course, being the creature that I am, I brought with me a posse of atheists (mostly because one of them is who gives me rides places) and gleefully snowballed every theater major and interesting person that I could to help add to the carnival atmosphere of his visit – if for no other reason than to increase my own enjoyment or perhaps to make him more palatable while I sat.
News of this event was posted to the Mill Avenue Vexations news blog.
Mill last night certainly was a circus. I didn’t stay long to play with the preachers any more than usual, because I’m not out there to engage in the rabble with them – I’m there to study their effect on Mill Ave and I’d like to know them as people. Of course, the group gathered through the presence of Brother Jed also came.
Omar and his bullhorn created a lot of loud repartee. I got some notes on the subject, but was repeatedly forced to flee from the volume and the noise. Fortunately, there are numerous other regions of the Ave that interest me and need attention.
So, to escape the new confusion, I repaired to the drum circle, where I ended up settling to see people like Amish, Josh, Osiris, and others. A new group has been showing up on Mill of a few young people who named themselves after the Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Of course, there are less than seven of them so they happen to share names between the two groups from what I discovered – since I met, and chatted with Envy / Horseman Death for a little while.
I think that I’m going to be avoiding the preachers from now on; the rasping fête that is generated between the two groups is a little too much for me. Kazz and the troupe of atheists have them rather roughly handled, I think, and the dialogue there I am sure that I can study through their fliers and interviews will be more than enough.
There also have been some rumblings of potentially setting up a live debate between the two groups. I will probably attend that.
Here’s an excerpt from my notes from last night:
“The armies are marshalling, building on both sides. Handshakes and cordial greetings light up their faces—they prepare to take their places. The theists bow their heads in prayer and the atheists stand up proud. Voices are waiting in expectation and the thunder is gathering in watchful gazes.”
And to wrap it all up: one of the street preachers gave me a rose—which now lies on my desk right now.
I love roses.
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