Anthem to the Invisible Audiobook: Sample

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

You're listening to the Sage Hill podcast. In this episode, we share with you an excerpt from the recently released audiobook, Anthem to the Invisible by Doctor. Chip Dott. 12. I arose at 02:30AM, like many a night, unless sheer exhaustion or weather made hunting too dangerous or impossible. It was Saturday night, really Sunday morning, the last hunt of the week, or first, I guess. Some things will always be decided by clocks and culture, which can mark and cultivate us, or control and cult create in us, regulate or possess. Beatrice slept soundly this night through my early movements. I preferred that she remain asleep. I needed time to sit and pray. I had learned the child pose of prayer from Beatrice years ago. Her place of prayer and mine had become the same. I drank coffee and gas water as I sat before prayers, read paragraphs mainly from the most ancient book, and prepared for war. I gathered up my clothing and headed out on a light stomach, giving more room in my lungs for air and the feeling of lightness. It was an old habit from high school when I would run early mornings when training for the decathlon in late spring. Didn't last in college. My zeal for mental obstacles took over for what had been competitive physical zeal. Now they were both united, held together by my willingness to feel my own heart's longings that were covered in paragraphs. It smelled like rain. I could see lightning off in the distance in the direction I was headed. I estimated it was two or three hours from us. The storm quickened my steps. I walked the familiar paths before starting the jog. My senses had developed so far beyond the first night I was introduced to my destiny with the near loss of my life. The spiritual emotional development from the limbic outwards had worked all the way through my system to the use of my senses, like a bat can see with its ears and an owl can hear with its eyes in the dark. My triune brain had integrated finally to my own amazement like a storybook character who could do amazing things that we assumed were fictional. The metaphor and imagination had become literal in the substance of the spiritual and emotional world. The meta was truer than the literal. Truth had overtaken reality, and yet there were two responses to this fact, integration or deeper denial to ward off the vulnerability that truth brings. I never believed until seven years ago that these capacities could exist. The whole hunt and rescue mission brought everywhere I had been in my life and everything that I had done into a focused desire and an active point. Even the ugliness of my egotism had become mercy for the creatives. I understood how it happened, but for grace go I. As I jogged onward, I thought of the loneliness I still carried within that I registered as post existential reality. I still knew so little, so I focused again on where I headed at the moment. I ran the paths that I had been going out on for seven years, all like spokes from a hub. The dirt paths and stones, I navigated easily, entering woods west of our place, a half mile from our back porch. A slight climb of five degrees or so for another half mile then descended to a level surface of grasses with sporadic thickets that stretched for miles. When I came to the level, I slowed and smelled, listened, and saw with my intuition. Entering a thicket I had yet to explore, I felt about the roots of the thickest trunks of trees first before moving to smaller and smaller growth, occasional lightning giving me quick pictures. The search was all about the root and water source. The creatures took just enough sap from the trees to keep their symbiotic survival extended by feeding the creatids on pure instinct. They fed off the creatids all safe and sound underground, avoiding any threat. Everything about the weather, humidity, the soft rhythm of the crickets, even an early mockingbird song reminded me of so many summer evenings or early mornings of our past. Plopped down in a chair in our courtyard after a day of working on our place, our sons coming in from somewhere or jogging in from a workout on the mountain, the grill lit and ready for fish or steaks, a night hawk swooshing by at dusk and then the moon rising, I would always notice the crickets. The moss underneath my boots cushioned every move I made as I entered the next thicket, still thinking of those days. I remembered Beatrice and me lying on the soft moss one afternoon in a thicket near our home. The past and what I was doing at this moment ripped inside of me. I turned to go to the next tree, heard a thunderpeel echo in the distance, and then bumped into a creature above ground just as lightning flashed to outline its grotesque form. My heart rate overtook my whole system as the memory of being slashed up in the hole seven years ago flashed before my eyes. Pulling my dagger before I could form another thought, I slit the passageway of the creature. It didn't move, stood paralyzed, and was dead. I heard its breath come out when I bumped it and then nothing when I slit its throat. I could see its arms in the next flash of lightning stretched out towards me, claws out, its gut jutted out like a giant mole on its hind legs as thunder banged closer to the thicket. It had no eyes. I kicked it over, breathing hard in my fear. I would swear its razor sharp paws were in a pose of pleading, prepared for termination, if it could even think of such things, before I slit its throat. The sewage stench of its inner rot met my nostrils as it dropped to the ground. I thought I heard a sigh when it hit, like a human finding relief of rest rather than a hissing sound a compressor makes letting out air. I quickly gathered myself, found a hole that had to be nearby, and dropped quickly into the hole beside the carcass. There was little phosphorescent glow from the dead creature, which confused me as I dropped in. My breathing was coming much too fast, adrenaline flowing in, meeting the unexpected and the insanity that had become normal. I needed to stop and listen, but before I could, lightning struck again, illuminating the entrance for a second and where I was standing. I faced six creatures with claws out towards me as I started slashing wildly at the throats I could place from the seconds of lightning, protecting myself and wondering what was happening. I hit six quickly and moved towards the seventh as lightning flashed again. I moved towards it fast, suddenly seeing a set of eyes flash light, changed my knife on sheer history and gutted it, not knowing if I cut the heart or not. I could hardly fathom the fact that I had not slit its throat. I broke protocol, which tested to see how much life was left in the created and birthed it in the tunnel, not caring what would happen next or if I would be attacked from the side or back. I just didn't care. I carried its limp and emaciated body toward the opening in my arms, the stench making me vomit on the created in my tunic. It glowed with the burning phosphorus. Before I climbed out, I slid the greasy form into the pouch on my back, seeing its eyes open slightly as its face passed mine when lightning struck again. The sigh I heard sounded so low and painful. I was sure the night would be no more than a slaughter and another mercy death for one of our own. As I reached the surface of the earth, I heard another sigh, what would have been a grunt of pain had there been enough energy. I could hear either breath or whispering for its life, all of it running together in the broken groaning. Because I was groaning too and breathing hard as lightning hit again and thunder close behind. The wind picked up, and I started running. Running from the rain, I knew, would catch us and the grief I could never get away from. I ran hard and raised my face to the sky, all the reveries of the moss a thousand miles away. I bellowed my hatred of everything dark and cruel, everything I had become a part of. The rain came hard, blowing against my back. I ran harder, screaming for the creator to live. You live. You hear me. You live. You've got to live as my feet hit the ground hard and quick, fighting to get home. I felt its head bounce back and forth as I cut left and right on the trail home. It was so light. I reached one time to make sure I wasn't in a nightmare. It had no hold on my back, its feet not in the stirrups, legs bumping against my thighs. I ran like my life depended on it. All I could think was live over and over again. An animal growl rolled up out of me again. I wanted to stop and start crying, fall on the ground, and stay. You live. You've got to live, I cried as I saw the lights of home in the distance. Somehow, I picked up speed, hearing the rain pelting against my helmet and tunic, Water washing over the created, no telling how long it had been since it had felt rain. My lungs burned as I neared the cleansing area, legs heavy like lead as I collapsed at Beatrice's waiting hands and feet. I didn't even see her face as I fell forward. Nothing left. I could feel her work that created out of the pouch on my back. The rain beat on the tin roof, the lantern on the ground near my face. I started weeping when my breath came back to me, exhausted at all the love lost. I was slowly pulling up on all fours trying to stay on course when I heard Bee gasp. I raised my head slowly towards her voice and looked straight into the starved face of my brother. I crawled towards the tank, two feet and ten years from the last time I'd seen him. Reaching out an exhausted shaking hand, I touched the side of his face and then placed my forehead against his ashen cheek. I gently pulled him softly to my shoulder and wept and wept. So tired. So damn tired. He could not speak, and I didn't want to. Bee's hand rested on my head, stroking my hair. For how long, I do not know, as she slowly rinsed cleansing water over my brother and me. Please live. Please live, my brother. Please live, I cried as I held. I heard a whisper. My ear was so close to his mouth. I heard him gasp, trying desperately to speak. He knew me. I listened hard, looking into his face with his head cradled in my open hands. He said very slowly, hoarsely, very distinctly one word, advocate, before he slipped more completely into the warm water in Bea's hands, barely alive, finally resting in silence and salvation. We bathed him quietly, with few words between us. We had to scrape his skin in several places where pus and acid had built up, attacking like barnacles on a ship hull. He made not one sound while the water recycled in the tank, and the rain continued over the next hour, thunder and lightning along with it.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Sage Hill podcast. The audio book, Anthem to the Invisible, is available now on audible.com. For more information about Sage Hill, visit us online at sagehillresources.com.