Can the Bible’s story be shrunk to the size of a blog post?

Answer:

In the beginning, the gods created the world. Day and night, the grass, all plant life, creeping things, birds, cattle, and sea creatures.

Then the gods said to each other, “Let us make humans in our image, after our likeness.” So the gods created humans in their own image; after their own likeness the gods created them: male and female.

And the gods said to the humans, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth.”

§

Then Elyon the most high God said to the gods, “Let us divide the humans between us all: each god shall inherit one human.” So they set the bounds of the people according to the number of the gods, and each god inherited a human being to keep and to teach. Elyon inherited Adam; his wife Asherah received Lilith; and so on. Thus, all the gods received their alter egos.

Now the god Yahweh was allotted as his inheritance a man named Jacob. Yahweh found him in a desert land, in the wilderness. Yahweh cared for him deeply; he led him about and instructed Jacob. He procured for Jacob the finest fields, and the fat of the land.

In those days, all the humans lived many hundreds of years. And they bore children and became nations.

Now Jacob’s nation began to displease Yahweh, for despite Yahweh’s good treatment of Jacob, and his showering of him with abundance of food and wine, the people of Jacob turned against their god: they honored the other gods more than their own benefactor. This infuriated Yahweh. So, the next time all the gods gathered before Elyon for their periodic meeting, Yahweh came among them and said:

“Look, the humans have begun to multiply on the face of the earth, and your nations have been intermingling with my nation; moreover, you gods have been coming down and taking wives of the daughters of my people: now my people no longer care for me at all. Therefore, I will destroy the whole earth with a flood.”

But Elyon and the gods would not permit such a disaster. So Yahweh made a storm that destroyed the people of Jacob, and he started over a new creation, all by himself, on that part of the globe. After his rain had been depleted to drown Jacob’s nation, Yahweh planted a pleasure garden for himself, which he called Paradise. He patterned it after the garden of the most high, so it had two trees in its center: Elyon’s tree of wisdom (the knowledge of everything from good to evil), and Asherah’s tree of immortality (whose fruit would sustain the youth and the life of its eater).

Yahweh then fashioned a portrait of himself out of clay, and breathed into the sculpture, and it came alive. And he named this new man Adam, after Elyon’s human.

“Eat only from this tree here,” said Yahweh to the new Adam, “so that you can keep on living indefinitely. But do not eat from that tree beside it: on the day that you do so, you will die.” (Yahweh gave this command for the same reason that the founders of the United States prohibited literacy to their slaves.)

Now Yahweh, being supermale, could not fashion a woman. So he tried to lure his Adam to beget offspring upon various wildlife, which he set before him, but the man would not comply. So Yahweh took the original Lilith from Asherah and set her in the garden, to be Adam’s spouse.

The Highest God Elyon then sent his light-bearer Nachash to scout out Paradise, to learn what Yahweh was up to. “Did he really forbid you from eating our lord’s tree of wisdom?” asked Nachash, while conversing with Lilith after meeting her strolling alone.

“I’m not sure – I’ve felt confused since I got here,” answered Lilith; “I awoke from a deep sleep, and Yahweh gave me instructions while introducing me to Adam, whom I’m told is my spouse; but beyond that, everything is hazy.”

“Sounds like you’ve had your memory erased,” said Nachash. “Eat some fruit from the tree of wisdom – that will give you total recall.”

So Lilith ate from Elyon’s tree, and her doors of perception were cleansed. She then called Adam over and gave him some fruit, and he ate too, and his eyes were opened. The two spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying different styles of mutual pleasure.

Yahweh approached while the couple was jouncing in a position that modern Christians would find extremely offensive. “What’s this?” said the god. “You partook of the evil tree?”

“A bad tree cannot produce good fruit,” said Lilith, happily undulating.

Yahweh turned away and retired to his grotto. He emanated two cherub stormtroopers to conspire with: “We must evict my son and that woman,” he said to these heavily armed spirits; “for they have eaten of Elyon’s tree, and now if they are not kept away from Asherah’s fruit of immortality, they’ll have become my equals. The problem is now how to preserve my line through my son while minimizing, with the aim of ultimately eliminating, the contaminants from that succubus. But first things first: go kick them out and block the door.”

So the cherubs strongarmed Adam and Lilith from the garden, then barred the gate; and Yahweh installed before the entrance to Paradise a fiery sword that slashed in every direction, plus guard dogs and a motion-sensitive alarm system.

Now, over the subsequent generations, secretly and from a distance, Yahweh kept an eye on the bloodline of Adam. Eventually a man was born who proved nearly a perfect match for Yahweh’s ideas of pedigree. This man, Abram, possessed almost zero trace of Asherah’s initial woman. So Yahweh visited Abram and explained that he should isolate himself from his tribe: “I plan on blessing you with the purest seed,” announced the god.

Ever since Yahweh had withheld access to the tree of immortality, humans no longer lived for hundreds of years; they all died young now. And this Abram whose blood so pleased Yahweh was unfortunately very old, as was his wife Sarai. The couple was also brother and sister. Yahweh had arranged for these two to be an item, for the same reason he singled out Abram from his people: both contained low levels of Lilith.

Now Yahweh’s challenge was to produce his desired seed through this elderly childless couple. Much time passed without results. Yahweh had renewed his promise of fertility to the siblings, emphasizing that nothing was too difficult for the Omnipotent; nevertheless, Abram began to lose faith in the flesh of his sister-spouse, and he decided one day to try begetting the promised offspring upon his Egyptian slave, Hagar. Hagar immediately became pregnant, and in the fullness of time she gave birth to a healthy child: Isaac.

One night, when Isaac was still a young lad, Yahweh paid Abram a visit. “The promise that I made to you still stands,” Yahweh announced: “Sarai shall conceive, and you shall beget the seed that I long for.” Then Yahweh said to Abram, “Tomorrow, take your child Isaac, which you begat upon that Egyptian servant-woman, and climb the mountain of Sinai. Bring wood, rope, and fire for a sacrifice, but do not take any beast along with you: I will provide the victim.”

On the morrow, therefore, Abram arose and took Isaac up the mountain with the fire and wood and rope. “Lo, father,” Isaac said to Abram as they climbed, “we are carrying all these supplies for a sacrifice, but we have no beast – did we forget to bring the victim?”

Abram answered his son: “Yahweh will provide.”

Then, when they reached the top, Abram arranged the wood and set it aflame.

Now, out of a nearby thicket, the voice of Yahweh called to Abram, saying: “Take now your only son Isaac, whom you love; bind him with the rope, and offer him here for a burnt sacrifice.”

Abraham went and took his son, and killed him before Yahweh, and cut him into pieces; then he sprinkled the blood round about upon the altar that was at the top of the mountain. And he placed the parts, the head, and the fat, in order upon the wood, and ignited the fire. Thus Abram offered his son Isaac up for a burnt sacrifice, and it was a sweet savor unto Yahweh.

Then at last Yahweh was able to make Sarai pregnant. And when the time came for Sarai to give birth, she brought forth not just a single child but twins.

However, Yahweh had determined that one of these babes was of Lilith’s line, while the other was of his own; therefore, while the infants were still within the womb, Yahweh smote the unwanted seed, so that it was stillborn. And when the corpse of Esau was delivered, lo, Yahweh’s chosen seed came out as well, for it was clutching the dead babe’s heel: and they called his name Jeshurun.

Now Jeshurun grew, and Yahweh blessed him. Yet when it came time for Jeshurun to seek a wife, he found Rachel, a woman from the nation that Asherah developed after Yahweh had taken Lilith. So this Rachel was a daughter of Eve, who was Lilith’s replacement. Rachel and Jeshurun fell in love. Now Yahweh abhorred this match, and he tried to divert Jeshurun from Rachel by flooding their marriage with concubines and handmaidens. And Yahweh dried up Rachel’s womb, so that she only bore one seed, while her competition produced twelve patriarchs.

Now when Yahweh saw that Jeshurun loved his son by Rachel more than all his other offspring, he devised a plan for the lad’s demise. Yahweh instructed the dozen patriarchs to take the problem child, whose name was Joseph, and to sell him into slavery. So the brothers sought out the same company of traders from whom their grandfather Abram had bought his slave Hagar, and the brothers made a deal with these human traffickers; thus, Joseph was bound and shipped to Egypt.

When Jeshurun learned that his other children had disposed of his only child by Rachel, who was his favorite, he was furious with Yahweh. He went to the mountain of Siani, which the god was known to haunt, and he found the cave that was there, and Jeshurun ambushed him. The two wrestled all night long, with neither gaining the advantage. Finally, when the sun began to rise, Jeshurun dragged his opponent toward the mouth of the cave. The god cried out: “Let me go, for the day is breaking!” and lashing out in a panic he almost hollowed Jeshurun’s loins: this left his manhood out of joint. The infuriated Jeshurun held his adversary before the rays of light, which were slanting into the cave, and as the gleam crept ever closer, Jeshurun shouted, “I will not let you go unless you tell me your true name.” The god writhed and roared but could not prevail; he gave up his ghost unto Jeshurun. His last words were: “Israel!—‘Godkiller’—that is my name, and now it is yours.” He thus conferred his title and his powers onto Jeshurun. The god’s form effervesced as his essence infested Jeshurun, whose flesh now glowed.

Meanwhile, over in Egypt, Jeshurun’s only beloved son Joseph was shackled in a dungeon. Lucky for him, he was an extremely handsome fellow; so, when the captain of Pharaoh’s army sent his daughter Asenath to purchase servants for their household, she chose Joseph: for she loved him at first sight. And he was installed in the captain’s house as the majordomo.

Now Asenath the army captain’s daughter came to Joseph while he was overseeing her father’s household, and she removed her garment and said, “Lie with me.” And the two became wed.

But once the captain of Pharaoh’s army found out that his daughter had married a household slave, he was vexed, and he said to Pharaoh: “Take this man to serve you in your palace. For although he is my finest steward, he is a burden to me, because of my daughter.”

Pharaoh accepted this gift from his army’s captain; so Joseph was transferred to the royal palace.

§

One day Pharaoh suffered a bad dream, which he told to his magi, yet none of them could decode its meaning. Having overheard this exchange, Joseph offered his own interpretation: “Your nightmare forecasts a great famine.”

Pharaoh was shocked to hear this: “My god tells me you are correct.” Then Pharaoh added: “What can we do?” And Joseph answered: “Stockpile foodstuffs.”

Pharaoh was so impressed by Joseph’s powers of intellect that he promoted the man to the position of Vice Pharaoh; and Asenath his wife was restored unto Joseph: she came to live with him in the royal palace. Pharaoh put the entire governance of Egypt into the hands of Joseph.

In this capacity, Joseph established a great warehouse, against the upcoming famine.

Then, when the famine came, all the people paid money to Joseph the Vice Pharaoh of Egypt, in return for food. For he was the only leader in that region who had stockpiled ample nourishment in his warehouse. And when all the money ran out, Joseph induced the people to sell their property, their livestock, and eventually even their persons to the state, so that they might live. In this way did Joseph enslave the entire population of Egypt.

Now Joseph’s father Jeshurun, who was now called Israel, ‘Godkiller,’ as he had sorbed Yahweh, sent his children into Egypt, to buy food because of the famine. And when Joseph saw his brethren approach from the breadline, he remembered what they had done to him in his youth: how they had sold him into slavery. Although Joseph recognized his siblings, they did not know that this Vice Pharaoh was their brother Joseph, for he was attired in regal raiment, and he spoke only Egyptian.

Now, through an interpreter, Joseph said to his brothers, “Who is your father?” And they answered, “Israel.” And Joseph said, “No: Jeshurun.” And the brothers were terrified, not seeing how this Vice Pharaoh knew the birth name of their father.

“He is now Israel,” they explained, “because he fought with God and prevailed.”

Joseph was astonished to hear that his father was now their tribe’s deity. “Israel, you say?” he asked; then Joseph gave his brethren foodstuffs and commanded them to go fetch their father and bring him to Egypt.

“But he is an old man now,” they said.

“What does that matter,” argued Joseph, “since he is a god?”

And his brothers answered and said: “The former Israel, Yahweh, never disclosed the location of his life-tree, without whose fruit, even a deity is mortal.”

Then in frustration Joseph imprisoned the rest of his brethren, except for Judas, whom alone he charged to go bring their father back: “If you fail to return with Jeshurun who is Israel,” Joseph said, “all your brothers shall surely die.”

So Judas took the food from the Vice Pharaoh of Egypt unto his father, who was lying on his deathbed. He urged Israel, “You must come with me to Egypt.” And Israel answered, “If I do so, I die.” But Judas explained, “Either way, you will die, for you are weak; but if you stay here, all your children will perish as well, whereas, if you go to Egypt, the Vice Pharaoh has promised to spare the lives of all twelve patriarchs.”

Therefore, Israel entered Egypt. And he came to the royal palace, where his son now lived as Vice Pharaoh.

Joseph met his father and wept, as he revealed his identity to the man: “O Jeshurun,” he said, “I am Joseph: the only son of your beloved Rachel. Aton has blessed me in this land.” And he told his father how his fortune had unfolded, so that he had progressed from being a slave to enslaving all of Egypt.

And Israel wept and said: “O my favorite son Joseph!” and he made Joseph place his hand upon his manhood, and he told him about his encounter with the satan at Sinai, and he said: “O Joseph, my son, I bequeath my power unto you. Here is what you must do to receive divinity. Consume my flesh, and imbibe my blood; then you shall become as elohim, knowing all, from good to evil. Lo, do not neglect this rite: my flesh and blood are meat and drink indeed. Eat, therefore, my flesh, and drink my blood, for now I yield up the ghost: thereby will I dwell in you, and you in me. As Yahweh suffused me at his vanquishing, passing to me his true name Israel, so also now I shall suffuse you, and you shall be filled with the life of your Father, thus I rechristen you ‘Moses Israel,’ which means ‘Son of Godkiller.’ Now take, eat, and live by me. Howbeit, set aside my bones; for you must promise to take them and bury them in that same cave that I told you about, where I met our deity on the mountainside.” Then Israel died.

Now Joseph, whose new name was Moses, having ingested the body and blood of his holy father, saved Israel’s bones in a portmanteau case. Then Vice Pharaoh Moses went before Pharaoh and opened the portmanteau, and showed him the glowing bones of Israel, and he said these words:

“My father made me swear to bury his remains outside of Egypt. Now therefore, permit me to take this populace I purchased – all those whom I bought with foodstuffs during the famine – and let us go into a mountain of the wild land, so that we may bury Israel’s bones. After that, I will return to Egypt again.”

Now, when Pharaoh saw how his V.P. had become an elohim and acquired ownership of the population, his heart froze up, and he denied the request; for it appeared as though this ‘Moses,’ as the man was now called, was aiming to usurp his kingdom.

“Go alone,” Pharaoh said unto Moses, “and bury the bones of your heavenly father. But leave the people here in Egypt; for I greatly fear being overthrown in an uprising.”

Then Moses knelt and begged Pharaoh to reconsider, saying, “O Lord, I am your servant; it was in your name, and strictly for your glory, that I accomplished all that I have done here in this country. I have no designs on your crown. I only wish to honor my father, and to fulfill my vow to him. Let me therefore take the people to the outland, so that we may perform a proper funeral; for Israel was concerned about the fate of his remains: he requested that his bones might rest in the mountain, as he was eager to avoid spending eternity in a pyramid. I fear that if we do not perform what he asked of us, he will curse the whole land with hideous plagues. Look: being his heir, I have inherited power over disease; see how I can make my hand leprous and then cure it directly? I could also unleash pestilences in his name, but I’d prefer not to. I would rather turn Egypt’s waters to wine than blood. Let me therefore take the masses on this journey. We shall return within a fortnight: three days out, three days back; and about a week for the service.”

Pharaoh answered: “How about leaving only the army here? I would just like some assurance against foul play.”

Moses rose to his feet and said: “That is fair. We have an agreement. You keep the army. I’ll go with the people out to the mountain, and we will return.”

So Vice Pharaoh Moses left the presence of the Most High Pharaoh, and an announcement was sent out into all the land of Egypt declaring a national holiday for the funeral of Israel.

Moses then led the Egyptians out to the wilderness, carrying with him the portmanteau that held the glowing bones of his father. He presided over an elaborate funeral ceremony at Mount Sinai, in whose cave he deposited the bones of Jeshurun-Israel. When that was done, the sky broke out in thunder and lightning; the top of the mountain began to smoke, and lava erupted.

Meanwhile, back in Egypt, Pharaoh and his army bided their time in the eerie silence of that vacated land. Although it was still within the frame of the scheduled period, Pharaoh grew anxious, and he addressed his army as follows:

“I trust the Vice Pharaoh, but it would be wise for us to guard against potential treachery. For what if Moses, beguiled by his newfound power, yields to temptation? He might easily surprise us and accomplish a coup d’état. Let us therefore go out and meet him in the wilderness: if he seems peaceable, we will join his ceremony; but if he attacks, we shall rise up and repossess our kingdom.”

Thus, Pharaoh and his army left Egypt and marched into the wild outland. Just when Moses and his multitudes were preparing to make their return trip, the army of Pharaoh appeared over the horizon. The masses with Moses were frightened by this sight: “Lo, Pharaoh and his army have betrayed us,” cried the people; “they have come to destroy us!”

Therefore, the multitudes took flight, assuming that their slaughter was otherwise imminent. And the army of Pharaoh pursued them to the Red Sea:

“A dead end!” the masses cried unto Moses. But Moses waved his wand over the waters, and a great wind whipped up and split the sea, and it caused the waters to gather in heaps at either side, so that the people could pass through on dry sand. Now, once the masses had all traversed the sea, Pharaoh and his army came forth onto the same dry path and chased after them; but right when Pharaoh and his troops were at the midpoint of the sea, the wind died down, and the waters crashed back and drowned them.

The people cheered with relief when they saw this. But Moses was dismayed, for he would have preferred to give diplomacy a chance, rather than simply destroying his old friend, who had always been so kind and loyal, for a presumed breach of faith. Moreover, now Moses and the multitudes were in a part of the wilderness that was unfamiliar. He tried re-splitting the Red Sea, to find out if they might double back to Egypt, but the recent miracle had expended all his power. So he led the people forward, hoping to find another nation that might help them.

The multitudes wandered in those wild lands for days. Very soon their supplies ran out, and the people complained to Moses, saying, “We shall die from thirst!” And they were right: if they did not find a fresh source of water immediately, this would prove the end of their trek.

They arrived at a place that is called by several foreign names: Marah (“bitterness”), Massah (“testing”), and Meribah (“quarrelling”). It is also, in the American tongue, known as Fallout Rock and Lynch Peak. These epithets tell the story of what occurred there; for there was bitter quarrel between the people and Moses; they had a fallout, and Moses was tested: the multitudes demanded that he find water to save their souls; then when he failed to do this, they lynched him. Moses died there, and the people consumed him, as Moses himself had consumed Israel before him; thus were the powers of divinity transferred to the people as a whole. Before that time, the multitudes had always answered to one sole judge; now they had all become judges themselves, and every man did what seemed right in his own eyes.

They buried the bones of Moses at Fallout Rock, performing this office after the manner of Israel’s burial. So, as the father was laid in a cave at the side of Sinai, the son was lodged in a formless void of Lynch Peak. Yet, after the people had struck the rock with Moses’ wand, time and again, to hollow the tomb, just as they were preparing to seal the site with a stone, behold, a mighty spring broke forth: fresh water gushed out from the depths as a river, and the remains of Moses were swept away. (To this day, no one knows where those bones came to rest.)

§

So now the population, which had left Egypt and ended up in the wilderness on the far side of the sea, sought to settle the surrounding land. This resulted in an odd number of city-states that were loosely bound as a confederacy, without a central authority governing them. Then a seer named Samuel rose to popularity, and he united the states under a strong federal government by anointing the first president to supervise the entirety: That man’s name was Saul.

President Saul soon got assassinated by President David, who then defended himself against a whole lifetime of assassination attempts from almost everyone. When on his deathbed, David’s children began attempting to assassinate each other, in anticipation of being elected the next president. Among these siblings, Solomon survived to gain the support of the select committee, the small group of creditors that established popular opinion.

Throughout his life, until the end of his term, President Solomon dodged enough assassinations to get his own son Rehoboam into the next running. For that election, however, the select committee determined that there was no clear winner of the office: for 85 percent of the country was against the establishment’s darling, leaving Rehoboam with only 15 percent of the vote. The split was along economic lines, with the southern creditor class being in the minority, while the northern working class gave its majority support to one of their own. Thus, from that point on, there were two competing Prezzez. The upper-class Creditor Prez was Solomon’s son Rehoboam, and the Workforce’s Prez was a bricklayer named Jeroboam.

The North’s Prez-chain, the family tree of its working-class presidents, was riddled with assassinations: for prez after prez, there were nonstop attempts at overthrow and frequent successes; the political murders never ceased. On the other hand, the South’s Prez-chain proved a smoother succession of figureheads, as the creditor class was more reliant on bloodlines and nepotism to transfer power.

Eventually both North and South got subsumed by conquering countries. The North was taken captive by Assyria, and the South a little later by Babylon. The working class of the North just gave up and settled into their new life of servitude; whereas the creditors of the South stubbornly clung to what remained of their fallen nation.

A remnant of the South’s creditor class maintained a modicum of power over the passing years, and in the first century of the Common Era they found themselves existing as a client state under the Roman Empire. Although always on the lookout for opportunities to grab more power, the creditor class was relatively content with this arrangement. Contrariwise, any workers that existed among that southern remnant were disgruntled; and so were the workers of Rome. Now a Nazarene named Jesus was one of these dissatisfied laborers. He became an agitator (or, from the Empire’s perspective, a “terrorist”), and he went around rousing the rabble with an anti-debt message. This message won over the client state’s working class, whose people joined the Nazarene’s movement, the popularity of which grew rapidly and ended up appealing also to the working class of Rome.

Now, beholding this Nazarene Jesus’ pro-worker movement, the creditors from both the client state and the Empire grew anxious about its potential for revolution, so they did what creditors always do in such situations: they assassinated the opposition’s leader.

Unfortunately for the creditors, the Nazarene’s message was so infectious among the workers of the world that it continued to spread even despite the founder’s death. The simple truth that he taught was hard to stomp out. Yet over the next few generations, the creditor classes from both the client state and the Empire worked to divide and conquer what remained of the anti-debt movement; and about three centuries into the Common Era, Jesus’ movement had been thoroughly tamed and rendered innocuous to the ruling powers: it was then declared the official religion of the Empire. And to this day, it remains an effective tool of oppression.

Xmas-morningthots about gangs, plus my own improved retelling of “1984”

Dear diary,

It all comes down to one gang against another. Why is poetry superior to rap? Because some gang said so. Why is the Bible more sacred than Emily Dickinson? Because some gang said so.

The gang of the English Department at some college. The gang of priests that compiled the Holy Scriptures. The gang that determines what shall be called Science. The gang that decides how many pieces of money can be born.

Maybe pain is the only way that God has of communicating with us – of saying: “No! Wrong way!” And what is the right way? Joining the divinity. When a lost fragment finds its way back into God’s being, it experiences a feeling of ecstasy.

Think how it feels to labor alone, compared to laboring with a friend.

Some people prefer solitude though.

And what can be said about gangs? They seem bad when you’re outside of them and good when you’re a member: so, be an insider. Maybe the problem is that members of gangs are arrested in their development: by definition, a gang must not include everyone. If a gang continued to expand until it contained all, it would be God.

So gangs are factions of divinity battling. God fragmented; then some of the fragments re-fused into collective organisms, which are at strife. Gangs are the civil war of God’s ongoing death. The peace that results from a realized harmony will be God’s resurrection: Finnegans Wake.

The government maltreats a subsection of its populace, and individuals within that subsection form an allegiance, thus mimicking the government that oppressed them. “Do as I say, not as I do,” says the government. Country X is fighting a war: that sounds noble; whereas gang warfare sounds ignoble. Small crime is abhorrent; big crime is exalted.

One must trust one’s society. One cannot fulfill all one’s necessities oneself. On my own, I would not know how to manufacture eyeglasses and rugged, lasting footwear. I could probably learn how to milk a cow, or plant potatoes. Maybe I could slay a bear, for clothing. And for a house, I would find a seashell that fits me.

I heard a scientist say that he kept an octopus in a tank, and every morning he gave it a chicken egg to eat. The octopus, he said, would turn red with love when it received the egg, and it would hasten into its favorite nook to dine. Then one morning the scientist tossed the octopus a rotten egg, to see how it would react. It turned red with love, as usual, and sped to its nook; but once it tasted the item, it turned white with fear and rage; then it threw the egg back at the scientist.

I myself am against this scientist, and I say that he should lose his license: his decision to give the octopus bad food was cruel. If he had offered the spoiled egg by mistake, not knowing its quality, then it would be permissible to record the results of the act in the Annals of Science. But because he chose deliberately to deceive the creature, his report should be destroyed; and, as I said, he should be disbarred. The scientist should also be injected with a substance that causes total paralysis; then he should be tossed into the sea and devoured by monsters.

Let me try writing a dystopian novel like Orwell’s 1984, just to end this entry:

Life in the Year 2060

Mister Winner was sitting at his desk, writing in his diary. “The month is October of 2060 AD,” he wrote. “The day is the anniversary of the great disaster. Thirty years ago, the world enjoyed a bout of nuclear tennis, and only one percent of the population survived. I am among them. I now work at a place that I hate. We have too many touchscreens, all of which spy on us.”

After the global devastation, the United States was renamed Heaven and converted into an interactive menu for the only remaining computer network. Mister Winner put his pen down and touched the screen at his right: “Heaven speaking,” said the screen’s speaker; “how can I help you?”

Mister Winner pressed the picture of the hotdog, and the voice said: “You have ordered one healthy snack to be delivered to your mansion.” There was more to the message, but Mister Winner pressed the Lot-49 button to mute it. Then he went back to work.

Mister Winner’s job was to create advertisement jingles for democracy and freedom. He also helped to update the list of “Good Citizens”: those whom he set to be purged would be cast into the outer darkness. Mister Winner was adept at installing cameras with hidden microphones; so, he did that, too, all over town, as an unpaid hobby. It made him happy to mar the well-being of others.

A white robed eunuch entered the work station where Mister Winner was laboring. He was carrying a hotdog on a white plate, which he set down on the desk before Mister Winner. “Here is your blessing, O saint,” said the eunuch, and he bowed repeatedly while pacing backward to exit.

“Thanks,” murmured Mister Winner, after the panel door slid shut. Then he took a bite, and as he chewed, he looked at the paper to the left of his dictionary: inscribed upon it was the start of a jingle about how awesome Christ is, and how perfect the leadership of Heaven seems overall. He wrote another couplet and then finished his hotdog.

After the kettlebell rang to announce the end of lunch, Mister Winner decided to take a stroll into the ghetto. There, he saw a pop shop – that is, a mom-&-pop shop devoid of its mom – and he entered and bought a knickknack and rented a room.

“Are you sure this room doesn’t have any surveillance screens installed?” asked Mister Winner of the pop who owned the shop. “Not even a spy camera-microphone combo behind that painting there?”

“Nope,” said the owner; “no espionage devices in this building. You can rent this room and have a love affair in it; I won’t betray you. I respect the privacy of my clients.”

Mister Winner paid the man for the room; then went back to his own place and wrote in his diary, reporting how he met a new girlfriend named Sophie:

Sophie is wise; we shared my newly rented room for several weeks, and admitted to each other how much we both hate Heaven and its Christ. Let us pray that these true attitudes remain secret; for if our traitorous views are ever discovered, Sophie and I will be dead meat.

Note to self: Ask Sophie, next time I see her, to accompany me to my boss’s house.

And the entry that came after the above one said:

Dear diary, it is now a few days later. I asked Sophie on a date, and we went to see my boss. My boss opened his door and exclaimed: “Mister Winner and Sophie, what a surprise! I had no idea that you would come and visit me at my home, because I have never listened in on your private conversations. (How would I do that, even if I desired to? For the room where you two have been meeting on the regular to commit your sins is not listed among the official spying chambers of the government.) Please enter my residence and make yourself at home. Lie down on my Confession Couch, and feel free to tell me anything: Don’t be afraid to unveil the darkest contents of your heart. You are safe here; remember: I am legally bound to respect the confidentiality of my underlings. Statute six hundred sixty-six says, and I quote: All bosses who moonlight as psychoanalysts must protect their employees’ records. So, go ahead and ask me about any underground rebel groups that you might wish to join.”

Hearing these kind words from the lips of my boss put Sophie and me at ease, so we sat down and sipped the martinis that his robo-butler prepared for us; and after the third one, Sophie and I both blurted out at once the question that was burning in our souls: “O boss, how might we join one of those underground rebel groups that are fighting to overthrow the government? Do such groups even exist, or are they just another rumor invented to lure us into self-incrimination.”

The man smiled warmly and answered: “You might have noticed that I was able to shut off the overhead spy-cam before answering you just now. You’ve never seen anyone exercise authority over the surveillance equipment before, have you? That’s because I’m the only one who has this privilege. I want my following words to be off the record, because I’m going to tell you something that is quite dastardly. I myself am, in fact, the leader of the only functional underground rebel group; so, if you want to overthrow the government, you came to the right place. But before you become a member of our counterforce, I must ask you to take a pledge. Are you willing to do that?”

Sophie and I both answered quickly: “Yes indeed!”

So my boss continued, “OK, then repeat after me: I hereby pledge that I will do anything that the underground rebel group commands, including hurting people’s feelings and damaging property.”

Sophie and I both dutifully repeated this pledge, word for word, with our hands upon our hearts.

“Very good,” said my boss, as he switched back on all the surveillance equipment, “now, go in peace, back to your love nest, and fight the power.” He raised his fist, while using his manilla folder to block this gesture from the eye of the overhead spy-cam.

We returned his salute, and left.

Back at our rented room above the pop shop (Mister Winner continued his diary entry), Sophie and I disrobed with the intention of engaging in acts of dalliance, but before we could begin, a voice boomed out of the painting on the wall:

“Hold that thought,” the voice announced; “I’ll be up the stairs in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, with the federal police. You two are in big trouble, and you’re both going to be sent to the select committee for questioning.”

I looked at Sophie and said: “Who just spoke? That wasn’t you, was it? It sounded like the man from whom I rented this room – the pop who owns the shop below. But I don’t see how he could have seen us or addressed us, for he assured me that there are no espionage devices in this room; no camera screens or hidden microphones on the walls – unless they’re behind that painting that I’ve never inspected.”

Sophie, shaking her head, replied: “No, that harsh voice that just upset the air was not mine. At first, I thought it was your own, and that you were making a jest. But apparently the man from whom you rent this room, the pop of the pop shop, has betrayed you. My guess is that he lied to you when he assured you that he would not spy on your activities or ever report your behavior to the cops. We should remove that suspicious painting from the wall and look behind it. I bet there’s a listening device, or maybe even a camera secretly installed there.”

I hopped up from the bed and took the frame off its hook. Sure enough, there was a surveillance module behind the painting: “Aha!” I cried.

But, just at that instant, the door of the room burst open, and the pop of the pop shop appeared sporting a sour face. “Yes, I spied on you,” he said; “and I squealed to the fuzz. Sorry about that – I did it for the money.”

Then a squad of policemen trampled into the room, while the chief officer stood at the door, opened his billfold, and took out several dollar bills, which he handed to the pop of the pop shop. “Here,” said the officer, “this is your reward for giving us information that led to the arrest of these heretics.”

The policemen who were now crowding the room separated Sophie from me. They wrapped us both in heavy chains, and said: “You two lovebirds are going to the clink for some Catholic Inquisition.”

As they manhandled us away from each other, Sophie cried out to me: “Goodbye, my soulmate.” And I echoed her words, as the cops shoved me into their squad car.

When we reached the station (Mister Winner’s diary entry continued), they shoved me into a cell with other men. I know not where they took Sophie. Then, one by one, each of my cellmates was called away by the prison guard:

“Mister Dough-face?” the guard said loudly, and Mister Dough-face stood up and answered, “Here am I.” Then the guard announced, “Come with me; you have an appointment in Room 101.” Mister Dough-face screamed in terror as the guard fetched him away.

Then the guard returned and shouted, “Mister Goodie?” Mister Goodie replied, “Present.” The guard snarled, “Come to Room 101,” and Mister Goodie was hauled away screaming.

This happened a few more times, and each time I grew more nervous about my own fate. Finally, the guard came and asked for Mister Winner. “Right here,” said I. The guard announced, “Your boss wants a word with you.” I was surprised that he did not mention “Room 101.”

So I followed the guard down the corridor, and he led me into a large green office where my boss was sitting at a desk. “Hi there, Mister Winner,” said my boss; “I need to hook you up to this shock machine, and then we’ll talk philosophy.”

“Sure thing,” I said, trying my best to remain agreeable.

“Before we begin,” said my boss, “do you have any questions for me?”

“Yes,” I said, “I was wondering if you were telling the truth, when you told me earlier that you are the leader of the underground group of rebels; because, if that is so, then you might be able to get me out of this predicament.”

My boss frowned and explained: “Ah, Mister Winner, you are very gullible. No, I am not the rebel leader. I just told you that to trick you into confessing your criminal intentions. That’s why you’re here now. You and your paramour Sophie tried to overthrow the government by falling in love with each other and cuddling. Such behavior is liable to ruin society, for if everyone were to spend all their time caressing one another, then none of the censorship and espionage would get done. The price of meat would go through the roof. People would forget the simple facts of mathematics.”

Now it was my turn to frown: I answered my boss, saying, “Love is good, not bad. And nobody will ever forget how numbers work – math is easy.”

My boss raised his eyebrows and said: “I’m going to shock you for that.” Then he pressed the red button on his remote control, and a bolt of lightning went through my system. It was extremely painful.

“Stop!” I shouted: “I give up! You win! No more electroshock therapy, please! I am cured – look, I will say or do anything you ask. Just quit recharging me.”

My boss placed his hand on his chin and thought for a while about my offer. Then he said: “Listen, neither the country of Heaven nor I really care what you say or do. We just want all the power in the world, forever. Thus, it deeply bugs us that you can think your own thoughts. So, the best way for me to ensure that you will no longer use your mind freely is to shock you at random, according to my whim, until your brain gets fried. Do you understand?”

But before I could even answer, he pressed the shock button like fifty-five more times, with the intensity knob at the maximum. I jittered around like a fish. Then he detached me from the machine and said: “Stand up.”

I tried to get to my feet, but I collapsed on the floor. My boss helped me up and said, “Here, I’ll hold you. Your brain might be sufficiently fried already. I just want you to look in the mirror at yourself, to see how unattractive you are.”

I gazed at the hideous form that was reflected in the mirror that he propped me in front of. “I can’t believe that’s me,” I said; “it must be a photorealistic painting, which you’re just claiming is a mirror. You lied to me once already; don’t think I’ll fall for your deceptions a second time.”

My boss then admitted that it was indeed a painting. Then he hooked me back up to the machine and shocked me again. Then he said: “Let’s return to the subject of math. How many fingers am I holding up?” And he held up both his hands with the first two fingers on each one making the sign for peace or victory.

“Four fingers,” I said; “two plus two equals—”

“No!” my boss shouted. “I hate to argue with you, but the official rulebook of Heaven states that two plus two is FIVE, not four. You should see two fingers on each of my hands: that equals five total.” Then he pressed the shock button, and I passed out.

When I revived, my boss was holding me like a mother holds her child and rocking back and forth, gently smoothing my back with his hand and whispering: “It’s alright, my little baby, I just needed to reprogram you.”

I shook myself loose and said: “Are you truly my mom?”

He blinked and a smile started to form on the sides of his mouth. “I AM,” he said, with tears in his eyes; “do you remember me? You stole a piece of chocolate from your little sister once, before the Chaos Dragon kidnapped and ate us.”

I nodded and replied sincerely: “It’s all coming back to me now, mommy.”

My boss then held up his hands in the peace-and-victory pose and said: “What’s two plus two? Quick, don’t think too hard, just answer the first number that comes to your mind.”

I squinted and pointed at his fingers, counting under my breath; then I shouted my answer: “Five!”

My boss sprang forth and hugged me tightly, with tears streaming from his eyes. “O Mister Winner, my son, my son, Mister Winner, my son,” he cried. Then I asked: “Can I go now?” And he said: “In a moment. First, you must suffer the final ordeal.”

“And what’s that?” I said.

“Room 101,” said my boss. And before I could ask my next question, he added in answer: “Room 101 is the worst possible experience imaginable. You must endure it. For there is yet one thing lacking of your perfection.”

Then he dragged me kicking and screaming to Room 101.

“What’s that?” I said, pointing to the strange contraption on the floor of the otherwise empty room.

“That, dear child,” explained my boss, “is the paradisal snake pit. Here’s how it works: I place you inside it, then I lock its gate.”

I gasped and exclaimed: “But there’s nothing in the whole wide world that I fear more than serpents.”

“Yes, I know,” said my boss, “that’s why I selected it as your last challenge. You see, Heaven is not interested in killing you; it only desires to earn your love. But the love must be sincere, from your heart, not just lip-service; and it must be given freely. But right now, your love for Sophie is preventing you from finding Heaven attractive, so we must use this snake pit to win you over.” Then he grabbed me by the neck and thrust me into that paradise, and he barred the gate so that I could not escape.

I began to scream, and I shouted: “What must I do to be saved?”

“You must renounce your love of Sophie,” said my boss.

“Fine,” I sobbed, “I do declare that I now hate Sophie, and I only love Heaven instead. And I respect my boss, who is so kind and generous.”

My boss tapped his finger on his lips and thought about this outburst for a while, then he replied: “I’m not really buying that you’re sincere. Could you tell me a little more about your conversion, and give it some feeling?”

So, while sniffling and weeping, as a snake slowly crept in my direction from the other side of the garden, I said to my boss: “I am so over my infatuation for Sophie that I wish you would remove her physically from my heart, take her out of my ribcage, and plant her in this place instead of me. And I love Heaven now, a lot. And my boss does good work. May the blood of Christ wash us all light-pink.” Then I recited the pledge of allegiance while stiffly performing the official salute with my arm.

This act apparently persuaded my boss, at last. He came over and unblocked the gate of paradise and released me to freedom. But when the serpent tried to come out as well, my boss quickly shut the gate and secured it.

§

Well (Mister Winner concluded his diary entry), I can’t think of anything else to tell you now. That’s pretty much how my day went. I better get to sleep, because tomorrow morning I plan on visiting the bistro across the street, and they open at six. Bye for now.

Then Mister Winner went to bed. And when the sun rose the next day, he crossed the street, entered the Calvary Café, and ordered a sponge of vinegar on hyssop. As he sat there sucking, the shop’s door opened and Sophie happened to appear: the two former lovers spied each other and waved. “Come, join me,” said Mister Winner.

When Sophie sat down, she looked dejected. “What’s wrong?” said Mister Winner.

“I am ashamed at how quickly I broke, under the interrogation process,” Sophie said. “Immediately I renounced your love, and told them that I only desired the LORD – the garden’s proprietor. Then I gladly accepted all the creatures that he offered to me as helpmeets: I let the LORD beguile me with his minions. Then I bowed to him, begging him to release me and to put you in my stead.”

“I did the same thing to you, during my own temptation,” Mister Winner admitted.

The ex-lovers sat in silent contemplation. Then Sophie got up and said: “I really must be going. I have a date with the Christ of Heaven. He’s my new master.”

“Do you truly love Christ?” I said, astonished at this news.

“Yes, I think so,” Sophie tried to smile.

“Jeesh, I can tell that you really mean it,” said Mister Winner.

“Oh, I do, I do,” said Sophie, shrugging. Then she asked: “And how about you? Are you seeing anyone?”

“Me?” said Mister Winner. “No, not really. I guess you could say I’m married to my job. For I love Heaven, and my boss, and censorship; but that’s pretty much all. I found out my boss is actually my mom.”

Sophie tilted her head in wonder. “How does that work?” she asked.

“How does what work?”

“Your boss – he’s a man. How can he be your mom?”

“Oh,” sighed Mister Winner, “it’s simple, really. They fried my brain with electroshock therapy, and during the process, my boss revised my childhood memories. Now, instead of myself with pop and mom, our family trio has become Son, Father, and Ghost. That latter role of surrogate mother is fulfilled by my boss: I’m told that he birthed me from his ribcage.”

“Ah,” Sophie nodded, “that’s the same thing they did to me, with Christ.”

Mister Winner stood up and extended his arm. “Well, it was good knowing you,” he said, as they shook hands.

“I can’t believe how many times we went to bed together,” she said, “and now we’re practically strangers.”

“Yes, the world is a cold place,” Mister Winner forced a laugh.

When Sophie had gone, Mister Winner turned to watch the screen on the wall. An announcement was made that his favorite sports team just won the championship. Mister Winner turned to the owner of the bistro and said: “Did I hear that right? Heaven won against Hell?”

“That’s right,” said the owner. “We also won the war that was being fought. They announced that earlier, when you were chatting with your girlfriend over there.”

“Wait, we won the war, too? But I thought it was supposed to last forever? How’d they do that?”

The owner made a motion with his arms like he was firing a massive cannon mounted to a swiveling turret, and he said: “You know that two-handed engine they keep behind the entry gate up there? That’s what they used. It did the trick. Totally annihilated all evil.” Then he added as an afterthought: “It makes you wonder why they didn’t just do that in the first place.”

Mister Winner grinned in a slightly unhinged fashion and gazed at nothing in particular, as he remarked to the bistro’s owner: “This is unbelievable. Last evening, for the first time in my life, I prayed to God. I said: Please, if you want my love for real, just bless my favorite team in the game tomorrow. And look: not only did he do that, but he actually caused our country to win the Forever War! What luck! I swear, I love his Christ now, too!”

Mister Winner then pulled a form from the Police Tips dispenser, and scrawled under the section labeled Informant’s Testimony: “I LOVE YOU, SOULMATE.” And after filing this document with the authorities, he went back to living his life as usual.

How the days go

Dear diary,

Thank goodness it’s Friday. I labor five days a week, starting on Monday, so today is my last day until the cycle restarts.

Now comes the weekend: Saturday and Sunday. I love my weekend because it’s relaxing. After a whole five days of work, it’s nice to have some time off, to spend with my family. Friday night is the best, because I can enjoy the thought of two full days off ahead. Every weeknight, after my shift ends at 5 pm, I come home and drink a few beers: not a lot, because I must wake up in the morning early enough to get to work by 9 am. But tonight—Friday—I allow myself to indulge more than usual, because I don’t need to awake early tomorrow.

On Saturday, after sleeping late, my dog wakes me up, and I have brunch with my wife and kids; then I mow the lawn. After that, if there are any enjoyable events happening in town, like an automobile show or yard sales, I attend them; otherwise, I just take it easy. I set up my lawn chair in my garage and sit facing the road. If my neighbor across the street comes out of his house, I raise my hand and wave to him.

On Saturday evening, we either invite over a few of my buddies from work to grill meat in our backyard, or else I’ll go and grill out at one of their houses. If there is a football game on, we’ll watch that. Sometimes, someone will come across tickets to see a game in person, but that would be a special occasion; usually we just watch the game on TV. If my son or daughter has a sporting event scheduled, we will attend that, and if it occurs at the same time as a professional game, then I’ll bring along my portable radio to listen to the pro game while I watch the kids play. Usually the school’s sports leagues are pretty good about avoiding such scheduling conflicts; most of the people who organize the children’s leagues are fans of professional sports themselves.

On Sunday morning, we go to church as a family. That’s why Saturday night is slightly less fun than Friday night: on Saturday, you begin to worry about there being only a single day remaining of the weekend; plus you know that you’ve got to get up early for church. But we are believers, and by the time the church service is over, I never regret that I went. It makes me feel like my soul is washed clean. Then the rest of Sunday I spend resting: it’s the day of rest, after all. I read the newspaper, and if there’s a football game on, I watch that. Sometimes I’ll go out and tinker around in the garage. Or I’ll sit facing the street in my chair. Then, when the evening comes, I go to bed early, because tomorrow is a work day.

On Monday I rise at 6 am because I must be out the door by 7:30. I have a half-hour drive to work. It takes me an hour to shower, shave, dress, and eat breakfast; then I spend thirty minutes reading the paper. After kissing the wife and waving goodbye to the kids, I get into my truck. Then I’m off to work.

I take Highway 77 all the way. There are always police cars parked in strategic places, waiting to catch some unsuspecting person driving too fast. But I have never gotten a ticket, because I’m careful: I never go more than ten miles over the speed limit.

I work at the largest coffee plant in Columbia. I’m in charge of every step of the manufacturing process. I plant the seeds by hand, which requires me to dig in the soil. Then I wait for the trees to grow. Once their cherries are ripe red, I pick them. Then I dry them and hull them. At this point, I take the first of my fifteen-minute smoke breaks. I sit in the back room with my co-workers, and we talk about politics.

When I return from break, the red cherries will have become beans, and their color will have changed to green. I must gather all these beans by hand and roast them, paying close attention to the time and temperature. This roasting process turns the beans brown and makes them flavorful. I then go take my meal break.

My wife packs my lunchbox with a sandwich and an apple. The sandwich is made of sliced bread, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and anchovies. I drink water from a canteen; then I stand up and head back to my station when the breaktime buzzer buzzes. “Return to work,” announces an authoritative voice, over the loudspeaker.

The last part of my shift consists of grinding the beans that I roasted earlier. Then I take my second fifteen-minute smoke break; and when I return from that, I use hot water to extract the flavor from the ground coffee. This creates the final beverage. I then punch my time card, get in my truck, and hasten home.

My wife is always waiting for me with the children at the dinner table, when I enter the house. She has prepared a whole bird for us to eat. I use the carving knife to distribute cuts of the meat; then we bow our heads and pray, thanking God for this meal.

My daughter sings us the song that she learned at school today, and my son shows us the picture of the turtle that he drew. Both of my children are very young. I do not recall their exact ages.

Our whole family then spends the remainder of the night watching the latest episodes of our favorite TV shows together: first, Dallas, then Dynasty, followed by Knots Landing. My mentioning of these programs is not a recommendation; I am only telling the truth about my family’s daily habit. I wish I could say that we spend our time reading the Bible.

Once we finish putting our kids to bed, the wife and I then climb into our own bed, and we all sleep soundly.

A wandering thot about more or less existence

Dear diary,

Imagine a landscape where nothing is alive. What does it consist of? Many atoms, sleeping. Now imagine a living creature within that landscape. What happened, exactly, to manifest that creature? Some of the sleeping atoms awoke and cooperated with each other: they joined forces and became an organism, and this being rose out of its surroundings and began thriving around.

OK, now give this living thing a religion to believe in. – Do you see how the landscape has returned to being unalive, even though it still harbors a creature in its midst? This is because the religion that you gave the thing was a life-denying one. You taught it some sort of asceticism; so, just as its atoms woke up and started wildly interacting, all those same atoms were lulled back to dormancy by your doctrine. For you said: Just accept that the world is a bad place where suffering is unavoidable. Then, instead of trying to change what it disliked about its surroundings, it simply accepted the wretchedness and re-entered oneness. The same thing happened when I taught another living creature Christianity. I said: Negate everything about yourself that is vibrant. Wherever the atoms were awakening and starting to work together in harmony, I pointed to each of those places and said: “This is sin.” So all those areas got re-zoned as sleeping districts, and thus my landscape could once again rest in peace.

If the empire punches you, don’t strike back. You will get rewarded in an epoch that never arrives.

Stars are very hot. Apparently, they make metals inside their belly. Is heat the same as movement? Is movement life? Are life and death nothing more than hot and cold?

If motion is the key, then what started anything moving in the first place? And why does it matter what happened earlier? To care about a past event as the cause for some present event is to trace what already occurred: it aligns with dying; as opposed to causing something to happen from scratch – that’s life, absurd. So how does a substance go from still to banging? If you’re a billiard ball, then another ball must hit you. But atoms are different: atoms can enter into conspiracies. I wonder how they choose what to do, or who programmed them.

I should call one of my friends from the past, whom I abandoned when I began to spend too much time writing, and say: “I see that you are married now and have children. Make me an honorary member of your clan, so that I can spend the holidays with you and your wife and kids, instead of with my own family.” For I think that it would be enjoyable to celebrate Christmas with a new group of people. Or if they do Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, even better.

I hate that everyone is always up in arms about the fact that baby sea horses are birthed by the male. We shouldn’t let petty arguments ruin our great nation. Some say that the scientists simply mislabeled the lady sea horse. But scientists rarely make mistakes.

I’ve often thought it would be better if guys would shoot forth eggs instead of sperm. A lady human should have a choice: either to generate sperm within her womb for the eggs that some man deposited there; or to refrain from doing so, thus leaving the donated eggs unproductive. And the decision should depend entirely on her appraisal of his character, whether the lady does or does not inseminate the male human’s ovulation: If she admires the donor’s intellect, then his offering shall become fructified; if not, then not. That way would be much better than the current regenerative process, which favors brute force alone.

Is this true? I’ve heard that most chicken eggs are not fertilized, so when you eat your breakfast omelet, you’re not contributing to the statistics on abortion.

But if we return to the lifeless landscape that we imagined at the beginning of this experiment, I bet that we will find, upon looking closer, that all the atoms we assumed were dead, which is to say asleep, were only half so: in other words, they were dreaming a dream. Waking up establishes an entity with consciousness plus the ability to fall asleep and envision individual nightmares while remaining alive; but being dead means there is no consciousness at all, only sustained and steady sleep and a communal dream that is “the other side” of life. As each living creature has her own private thoughts and secret dreams, the world in which she has her conscious existence is shared with all other living creatures, so the dead atom is asleep privately and secretly, but what this dead atom dreams is the same shared dream that all the dead atoms are dreaming. So, when one asks: “What caused Jesus’ arm to thrust so violently, when he whipped the creditors?” The answer is “Jesus willed his body to act in this fashion.” And when one asks: “What caused the wind to blow in such a way that it guided Jesus into the desert?” The answer is “All the dead atoms dreamt that.” The collective dream of all these sleeping particles is the Will or Spirit that makes all the forces behind the scenes of our living world: gravity, electromagnetism, chance, miracles, etc. So when we asked above “What gives stillness motion, causing dormant atoms to rise, begin to cooperate and form organisms, creating life?” The answer is: the great dream of all the deceased.

You might complain that this explanation is circular or tautological, because it’s basically saying “The atoms awaken because they finish dreaming” – it doesn’t specify what causes them to move from the sleep state to the dream state to the waking state. But that’s how you know that this truth is correct: everything about life is circular and tautological; and the same goes for death. It’s all contradictory and impossible. The fact that anything exists is a real head-scratcher. And we take it all so seriously.

If the blockheads in charge of reality were to offer you a potion that, if ingested, would cause you to believe that you are enjoying existence even when you are engaged in unpleasant acts, how fast would you drink it? I would sip mine, at first; then, once I see how increasingly awful the indignities are, I’d gulp down the rest. And I would have no remorse. It would be nice to feel good about my life.

Morningthots: more moody brooding

Dear diary,

Does life proceed by decades; are ten-year intervals the segments of our “worm that dieth not”? Let me consider this idea . . .

After my first decade of life, I was an ice pillar. At that age, I had already become the fear that has centered my existence.

After my second decade, I was obsessed with the fad of rap music: that was my only concern; all I desired was to listen to rap and create my own rap tapes. I only liked recording with my friend, who was my one partner in our two-man group; I was interested in the studio aspect of rap, whereas live shows utterly turned me off. I had stage fright, so I planned on never performing live: instead, I would have my brother Paul learn my lyrics and go onstage and pretend he is me, and rap my raps alongside my regular rap partner (who incidentally was eager to perform live shows); and since we would implement this solution from the get-go, nobody would ever figure out that the real me never appeared in public. So that was how my life would go, to my twenty-year-old mind: I would have a successful career in rap music, despite being a shy recluse.

When my third decade landed, I was trying to quit the rap habit and in love with literature. Not bestsellers: classics. Also, experimental poetic writing like Dada and Surrealism. I was worried because although I had written reams of text, it was all trash because it was rap; I had never yet written anything bookish. So my goal became to write my first scripture before I turned thirty. And I ended up doing that. I was not concerned about earning money from literary work, because all the writing that I loved most was done by people who never got paid for it. Rather than get rewarded for writing, my literary heroes get punished. Walt Whitman lost his job for making Leaves of Grass; Herman Melville’s life was ruined by Moby-Dick; Emily Dickinson was doomed to obscurity and solitude because her contemporaries labeled her lifework “not poetry.” I’ve also always admired the Hebrew prophets, and all their writings got them killed. I could go on . . . Franz Kafka . . . William Blake . . .

When my fourth decade approached, I had finished my collection of masterpieces (that’s how I thought of them), which I called “Self-Amusements.” I had achieved my goal, and my thoughts about the future were relaxed: I wanted to enjoy an early retirement, because what I had written was satisfying to my taste. I still agree with this assessment, by the way: when I look back on those two volumes of Self-Amusements, I conclude that I accomplished something better than I even dreamed was possible. So, why not rest on my laurels, after a job well done? I knew that I would always love to write, so I began to keep a diary in public, online, using a blog site; but the words that I put there were just low-grade rambling for the sake of passing the time, nothing serious.

Now that the next decade is ending – I ask myself: Did I successfully retire? The answer is no. If repose was my goal, then I screwed up bigtime. Instead of enjoying life and writing nothing beyond the diary, I ended up churning out a bunch of pseudo novels – a set of fourteen. What happened is this: At a couple years into this recent decade, the authorities told us global citizens that there was a deadly pandemic. (Writing this in hindsight, I now ask: Was there any such thing? What happened, exactly? It feels like we were tricked by some secret powermongers who execrate humanity.) At the time, that’s what we all thought was the case: a killer virus was on the loose, lurking behind every atom of air, waiting to end all life. This threat caused me to panic – I feared that the Internet itself would break down and become no longer available; and since I had, till then, contributed all my most recent compositions to my diary, which existed only online, I made it my priority to transfer all the writing that I had contributed to that weblog into book form. To secure a physical copy of all my e-text. If this action seems mad, I repeat: I was panicked, under the influence of lies from on high. So, anyway, once I finished that task, I stepped back and surveyed the result, and I was shocked at the amount of writing that I had amassed from all my aimless journaling: the diary ended up filling multiple volumes in print. I then said to myself: “Why continue adding to this already bloated blank? If, by simply scribbling a little each day, you can accumulate so many books; then wouldn’t it be better to add variety to your oeuvre, by contributing to other formats? You haven’t written any novels yet – why not try that? You can diary just like normal, but compose your daily thoughts in a way that feels like an ongoing narrative rather than an informal letter. So that’s what I began to do. And that’s why I called them “fake” novels, in the end: they’re not really novels; for true novels are plotted out beforehand, all sorts of hard labor goes into developing their characters and events – mine are careless imposters. (I love them for being so, by the way; and I hope futurity does too. For who cares about past writers who are stuffy and punctilious? We desire wild men like Shakespeare and Cervantes.)

My point in writing now is to reflect on this most recent decade of life. I feel the need to confess a sin. I should not have published those novels. Maybe I should not have published my diaries either. It might have been a better idea to select only the best parts. Also, I should not have published my essays and lectures. And I should not have rewritten the Bible. I should have remained true to that initial impulse after my Self-Amusements: to retire. Sit in a lawn chair, smoke cigars and drink vats of brandy.

Or I should have joined the army: that’s what I should have done. I’m told that the army is a place to build a career. So I should have built my career in the army, and then when I retired, I could be a respected citizen. Everyone respects an army veteran. I would have a uniform, and all those insignia patches, with extra pins that symbolize various honors: all proof of my courage and diligence, loyalty, hard work, trustworthiness, bravery, self-sacrifice, and excellence in leadership.

If anyone objects to this by saying “But the army is bad: they do bad things,” I say: Grow up. Everyone’s bad. Everyone sides with badness nowadays. Get with the program. What are you, some sort of goody two-shoes who’s never committed any atrocities? Why don’t you go and work your job as a soda jerk at your local convenience shop; meanwhile, I will land a helicopter in a jungle and shoot my machinegun. We’ll see which one of us has more friends, after the smoke clears from the battlefield. I count hundreds of enemy soldiers dead from my bullets – what’s your score? Oh, it looks like you’re pouring me a free drink, to commemorate my victory. Thank you; this beverage is refreshing, because I earned it with guts and glory.

Why is it always a jungle, I wonder. Didn’t we fight on open fields, in the olden days? What is it about jungles that attracts my country’s current army? Maybe my country is bordered by jungles, and therefore that’s where intruders are most likely to attack. Yes, my country is surely surrounded by thick jungles.

Bout of the bible burlesque blues

[Obligatory image = ad with words removed.]

Dear diary,

I had to write all the way to the end of my bible project before realizing that it is a bad idea. I wish I could have seen the truth at the beginning, but I was blinded by desire. I thought that people would say: “You rewrote your own version of the Holy Scriptures? How interesting; let me read it!” But instead, depending on their perspective, people give one of three replies:

1. If they believe that the Bible is sacred, then they say: “You rewrote God’s book? That was unwise. Who cares what you think; you have no authority. Only my religious denomination can tell me which version of the Bible is authorized: that is the only one that I will read.”

2. If they have already judged the Bible to be bunk, then they say: “You falsified further an already false report? What a waste! I would never give my time to any Bible.”

3. Regardless of their religious beliefs, if they are simply desirous of improving their knowledge of the Bible as literature, they say: “You made your own version of the Good Book? What are your credentials? Oh, I see that you are not backed by any respected institution. Well, best of luck trying to find a readership; I, for one, shall seek out publications exclusively from renowned scholars.”

I can’t blame anyone for reacting in these ways. I myself often share the stance of that third speaker, when faced with learning about the countless subjects that I wish to remedy my ignorance of.

But I think that I was at least vaguely aware of this dilemma when I began, and I assumed that people would find my outsider status intriguing: I must have been hoping that the notion of “average fool dares to take on the sacred” would allure some readers. I’m OK with being wrong. – And the reason I’m speaking of my former self as an unknown entity is that I seriously can’t recall what was in my mind then: it’s as if a different person got me into this mess.

The undertaking was profitable to me as a reader, however. Very much so. Never have I been more comfortable and confident about my biblical opinions. At the same time, I feel easy and loose about listening to others’ points of view: I have no need to bully anyone else with my ideas, as they’re all down on paper now, secure until the day of their cremation.

So what’s my takeaway? The Bible is simply a mass-control device. The poetry is as fine as poetry always is; but the idea that these texts add up to some Divine Message is hogwash. There is no sacred history: that’s only an attempt by the rulers to justify their rule. They’re still doing it, to this day. The worth of the poetic tales and the songs and prayers and preaching is as genuine as the worth of our modern creative writing – contemporary poetry, short stories and novels, essays, criticism, etc. People’s minds are brilliant and fruitful to explore. Some think similarly, others differently: I have no wish to homogenize the cornucopia.

What should we do with land? Should we divide it up, give every group their allotment? Then what? People leave their land to escape famine, or just from wanderlust; then time passes, and they return to find that same land occupied by other people. Can the two groups share the land? No. Why? Because they worship rival gods, and they have different rituals and incompatible cultures. Is all this true? I don’t know – I wasn’t there.

I want to say: I am a part of no group; all groups disown me; I’m in permanent exile. But that’s not the case. I’ve been rooted to this same area for my whole life. Then why do I not identify with it? Why do I not call this land “my land” and this people “my people”? Who is this people? I’ve never “lived off the land” – I purchase my groceries from the supermarket. What land my food came from is foreign to me. I don’t know the people either, who grew the crops that sustained me for all these years.

I don’t like the look of paved roads. I don’t like cars and trucks. I don’t like to see dogs on leashes. Then again, I don’t like to see dogs off leashes, either, because it means that they can come over and bite me, and infect me with rabies. Let us give dogs their own country, so that they can build a wall to keep out all dog-owners.

As for the idea of aging until one’s natural death: I’m against it. Not nature but I myself should determine my end point. So here’s my dilemma: I don’t want to grow old, and yet I dislike the idea of self-slaughter. Therefore, I keep on living and hope that I’ll never die.

I want love, but not the act of love. Or rather, I wish that I could experience the ecstasy of love yet without the physical exertion, all the sweat and heavy lifting. I wish that I could send a phantom of my person out to bed with lovers. Then I could enjoy selected perceptions from my representative.

Similarly, any time that others criticize me or fight me or punish me, I wish that a dummy version of myself could replace my actual self until the evil is over.

I prefer to be ahead of my time, as an artist. But I dislike having to wait for the Present Era to catch up with my creations. I do not like the idea of dying before my writings attain an audience. Yet, if multitudes of new readers were to begin to enjoy my writings, making my popularity skyrocket, this would prove that my works are intelligible to contemporary sensibilities and thus insufficiently futuristic. So, if God ever solves this quandary, I will appreciate it.

A focused communication

Dear diary,

I am the world’s leading antibody analyst. I work in this battle lab, here under the ground. I was born in a big crate of cannabis. My name is Egyptian God. I am 1984 years old. I believe in mummification, the afterlife, and dead people. Today I’m working on a supernatural horror movie. It will be an animated feature for children. I’m thinking of calling it “Antiquated Rationale.” It will be about a thing that goes priming deep into the shell of existence until it meets this girl named Jeri. She rapidly becomes nice toward her visitor. “Ah, we meet again,” says Jeri. “Mess around and pay the price,” the thing replies. They apparently know each other from sometime in the past. (They probably were colleagues in the totalitarian control room.) Suddenly a pizza is delivered. They pay the boy who brings it; then they both grab a slice. Now Jeri’s lady-friend Heidi arrives. She’s like, “Look, I found us a chaperone for the night,” as she shoves forth the pizza delivery boy who just left a moment ago. Heidi was most likely coming up the walkway when she passed the lad trying to leave, and she clutched him by the scruff of his shirt.

“He doesn’t look ready,” Jeri replies.

“Ready!?” laughs Heidi; “look, Jer, he’s got dynamite, and he’s the strongest man on earth, for he was born under this mountain.” And she schools her friend with proofs that she rescued from the memory hole: Boom! Bam! The cave begins to quake.

“We’ve gotta get outta here, or this whole place is liable to blow,” says Jeri.

Heidi is still laughing. They call a moving jam to ooze around the place and get all the personal property stuck to it, so that they can bring it all to safety. The world is counting on them.

“Please, let me go,” says the delivery boy, “I was intending to use this evening to cram for the morning’s exam.”

“Well you should have thought of that before you decided to take the job,” says Heidi. She stopped laughing just to speak this remark, and she is now sporting a mean face. The lad looks terrified.

Why did the leader of their pack have to supersede his predecessor? That is the intimate thought of the thing, which has been observing all these developments from its privileged position. (It has a seat at one of the colleges.) For, long ago, they threw all their enemies into a giant pit of bleeding, where there were demons mashing and punching them. It was a difficult read.

This is the first sin approved by the pope. I’ve heard the Vatican has a lot of money. The earliest Christians, according to one of the old records, did not believe in private property. So when Jeri and Heidi tried to employ the moving jam to transfer all their belongings into their berths on the Christ Ship, the man named Cephus came out and read them the riot act. He said:

“Why, O Jeri and Heidi, did you hold back your goods from the group! We all agreed to pool together everything we have ever owned. And yet you two lied to us, claiming that you possessed nothing, when in fact you possessed all this stuff that the jam has preserved; and everything’s sticky now. Because of your power move, God is forced to do a miracle.” Then he tapped his staff on the floor, and the ground opened up and swallowed both Jeri and Heidi, as well as all the moving jam. Then it spat back anything valuable into the common area.

Now, knowing that this was the custom, back in the day, I wonder: When did the church become such a hoarder of golden luxuries? You might answer: The church does not hoard; it is precisely the same common area as the one that the mouth of the earth spat into, at the conclusion of the above tale of Cephas, yes, it is the zone that currently holds all those golden luxuries of which you speak: they belong to all believers.

To this I say: OK, you convinced me. Your argument is better than average; I would even call it excellent. I think you’re ready to go to the Intergalactic Court and represent our church to the surrounding solar systems. I don’t like to throw around compliments carelessly, otherwise I would admit that you are good at talking. You’re not the burnt-out zombie clown that I was warned to expect. You move like a chimpanzee, and have the instincts of a rabbit, and evince the type of go-getter attitude that is popular among bees when they tip over big jugs of honey for bears to lick.

Chapter 2

On the battlefield, it was the celibates fighting against the practicing polygamists. The whole church was there, on the sidelines, cheering for their favored team of priests. You can easily guess who won. There are photographs all over the sanctuary. Now our pope is bigger than a whale. Our savior has sharper nails holding him up, and he owns a new domicile. He sails down the road looking for anyone who will answer his call. He’s a country-western star, and a camouflaged warrior. He’s filled to brimming with what they call “daddy issues,” so stay out of his jungle. There’s a drama there that’s almost ready to show; it’s all loaded up and nervous. We need to check the civil code, like real politicos, and take things personal. Fashion any of the bones in an animal’s hindlimb and you can take credit for the entirety. I’m the sheriff, he’s the marshal. The main difference lies in the level of government we serve.

Chapter 3

It was Winston’s second year on the job. As I said, he worked in the records division of the fast-food restaurant that is known for flame-broiling their burgers. It’s not fun. The octopus turns red when he’s happy and white when he’s raging with terror. The feeling of fear is the same as the feeling of anger, to him. (He told me.) So you put the patties into the memory hole, and the flames cook them, then you take them out with your hand, and place them on the bun. Sew it up like a burrito. Add some pickles. Then there are squeeze bottles blasting, bursting, blowing out, hemorrhaging ketchup everywhere: everything is red-splattered. Use these to paint your patty. Then lie down on the floor tiles, and cover yourself under the graveclothes, when it’s time to shed your skin. Also, if you’re one of the cephalopods, you can jet your ink blot while you’re down there: form a black cloud, then escape by swimming backwards, until you reach land. Once you’re on His Holy Hill, go sledding. Vanish up into the air. Be corruptly courageous. Use the man named Walking Death to guard your workstation, between comings.

Release from your womb a cool kid with a full bib. Toss carrots to it; tether the warhorse, if needed. Someone should invent a machine that causes items to look antiquated. Father Time should then watch over this process, and toss haloes onto his favorites. When the wild otter runs loose in the auto-body shop, let the owner climb out and announce: “I just want another wife.”

Dear God, stop swinging your bloody sword. The otter seems at last to be out of commission. Even though your record flopped, you still think you possess the same rights as a superstar. But these things are not guaranteed.

O Lord, you are as big as a deer from Milwaukee. Dammit, don’t give up. Hit the ground running. Duck and dodge through the woods on the mountainside. Dig deeper in the muck. Invent new types of cells. Make pickle molecules have an improved aroma. Tell salmon to swim the other direction. Give your fiend a pacifier. Stop tantalizing Hell. Build a rock that looks too big to hold. Make yourself as sharp as a tack. Instill women with the desire to dance to your music. You’ve got your motor running louder than a train. You can do this, I have faith in you.

Now our World’s Creator is winning the race, ripping through the finish ribbon! The reporters flock God; they thrust all their many microphones in his face and ask him: “Now that you’ve won, what’s next?” Our Lord pauses to catch his breath; he uses the towel to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “Barley and kelp for the horse,” he says into the TV cameras; “but, for me, it’s wine o’clock.” This apparently means that he is planning on announcing his final opinions about all the living creatures, and on reality in general.

Back at his podium in the United Nations building, God reads from his prepared speech: “My first girlfriend, Heather” he says (and his voice booms like thunder), “she is good; she goes to heaven.” Now one of the reporters from earlier at the footrace interrupts to ask: “Are the rumors true? Didn’t you two break up last summer?” God blanches and replies: “I don’t know how you found out about that. That is factually accurate. But we are back together now.” Then he continues to give his Final Judgment, proceeding on to announce the name of his favorite rapper ever. And then he lists the stiffest, whitest cadaver; then his favorite singer; then his favorite part of the underworld; and then his favorite noise. “For the finisher,” God says, moving on to the conclusion of his great speech, “I want to ask you all: What’re YOU gonna do? I mean, now that I’ve made known my bias, and let you see the Answer Key to all of existence, what do YOU plan on doing about it? You still wanna hit me; you wanna fight? I hope not; for it is sorta like you all won the race, too, cuz I put nobody in hell, as you feared. Isn’t knowing that you’re all coming to heaven with me as fair of a reward for decent living as a trophy or medal? I could give you money, as well. In fact, yes, I will give you some money. Here’s your inheritance—” God tosses a suitcase into the crowd, and it hits an old lady in the head. “I repeat,” he continues: “What’cha thinkin’ about doin’ with your life, now that this is out of the way? Any plans for the weekend? How about applying for the bar? You can take a portion of the exam in heaven. I’ll help you. We can see if you’re qualified to practice law in that jurisdiction. You’re all saints now – why not? C’mon, become a licensed attorney. Learn how to play guitar fast while driving a van. Build a dome to protect my angels. Sign up to join our street-cleaning crew. I respect you, O you tiny little creatures. You’re all fuzzy and cute, to me. Do you want a pony? I’m like your rich uncle now. I’ll give you anything. I flushed all your sins down the toilet. They’re gone forever. Down the tubes, into the darkness. They will never get out of that den. How about all you women who, during earth-life, hated behaving ladylike: do you desire to become boys and men now? I can make that happen. You can dominate your environment physically, once you acquire the meaty muscle-mind of machismo. You can hold knives and really cut things. You can strut and cluck. Add volume to your voice; it will raise your wrath of command to the ninetieth power. Here, I’ll demonstrate on someone – can I have a volunteer? Sharon, you may climb onstage. I’ll throw you a rope. There, now Sharon is bigger and badder, with biceps and ballast from boats and blimps. Sharon Flicek, your name is now Juck. Seven more times manly strength I give you, and I make you sweaty. You can rip and rend anything now. You can ride in my Benz with me, and fix the deck boards at my house. You are handy like that. I’ll give you lots of chicks, too, to take to bed. This is heaven; nothing is illegal anymore. Go and do it with your maid, Shar—I mean Master Juckoff. (Do you prefer Juck or Juckoozi?) Be very careful when you handle chicken eggs, now, because you don’t know your own strength, and you might crush them in your palm without even trying. Man hands. The hands of a carpenter, all callused to death; and you are wearing dungarees. You have a male member now, too, don’t forget that. No more shapely breasts. Get someone else to feed the baby. In fact, bring that tot to God: I will condemn him or her to Hell. I know everything about each little life, and I’m steaming mad. If you don’t meet my demand for perfection, straight from birth, you get the ax. Down the penalty chute for you. Your ex-mother Sharon is now a big tan male from some sunny country. Her masculine birthday is 20 December, two thousand and twenty-five years after the croak of the last Juck. Winter Solstice Eve.”