Addewid - An Afterlife Speculative Mythology

Caradog Welsh Pub

A place somewhere in the dark, cold alleys of Minneapolis

by
James Oliver Smith, Jr.
josjr69@gmail.com
josjr.com
Fractured Paradise / Addweid

My name is James Oliver Smith, Jr. Yes, that is my real name, and, yes, my father has the same name. For years I wasn't sure how to present myself because using a name like "Jim Smith" comes with many associations with banality, like generic medications, white bread and duct tape. I am the son of a father who wanted to be a handyman and a mother who wanted desperately to save Mexicans from Catholics. She aspired to be a missionary wife, build fundamentalist churches and prevent any form of expressed sexuality. I grew up believing that babies just happened spontaneously, just as "God" intended it.

But ignorance and naïveté does not prevent life from happening and suddenly I found myself adrift. It occurred to me that I had either become lost or I had never found the path in the first place. After all, one has be on a path in order to get lost.

I pulled out my pen and notebooks with which I had been writing desperate poetry for decades, albeit clandestinely (without a poetic license, mind you). I started writing openly, in direct defiance of the norms of suburban behavior, without apology. MadamX and the twins started to distance themselves from this strange man metamorphosing within the house, like the larva of a giant blowfly. It was only a matter of time before I set out for my first open microphone back in the nineties. First it was Kieran's Irish Pub, then the Artist Quarter, followed by the Ginko Coffee Shop, The Aster Cafe, the Border's in Uptown and countless other venues.

It was time for the Shoreview doormat to dropout out of his futile effort to assimilate and just accept the everyman nature of someone named James Oliver Smith, Jr. For a while, it was me and the open microphones, almost every night.

Then the slams came, bringing a kind of competitive, aggressive capitalism into the fray and the open microphones began to die. At the same time, I met the Contessa, my jobs started to become more intense. My long battle with glaucoma pulled me into its increasingly darkening haze. Then I became ballast for the University of Minnesota where I worked for eight years. I found myself in the midst of a perfect storm: a new Great Depression, more eye surgery, worsing eyesight and turning 60. "The Universe has painted you in a corner," said the Contessa, "you have to write now. No excuses. There is no alternative. You have to write."

And this was when the real story began.

I started to explore the dark corners of Minneapolis. Bus routes became adventures and the canyons of downtown became wonderlands. Many of the places I frequented ten years before were gone, or moved. Nothing was the same. But one night, I was walking semewhere between the Open Book and the E block after getting off of the 7 bus and I was taken by the flashing brilliance of a neon sign illuminating an otherwise dark alley. The cross streets seemed familiar from my days of walking from Uptown to downtown, past the money and miniskirts slipping into Shieks and the poets finding their way into Kieran's Irish club on Monday nights. But I don't see well enough now to know for sure. I can't see street signs anymore. So, like a moth drawn to luminescence, I walked into the alley and approached the sign that gleamed with large letters even I could see within my new vision of mystery.

It said "Caradog Welsh Pub", and in psychedelic green within the grimy window by the door, there glowed the phrase, "all lost souls welcome here."

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