I promise that the two sources of this entry’s obligatory image will be revealed near the end of the text below.
Dear diary,
What if God truly existed and suddenly descended onto our planet without warning, some actual instant in the near future, like next Thursday, and it was different than many people expected… but we found that God really does look male-ish, although he’s more of a gentleman than a thug; and his armies are green-skinned, as I suspected all along.
No, God will be exactly as the priests desire. It will be another of those circumstances that the majority of us will just have to accept. We’ll resolve to move forward, as best we can. For not even God will be able to make this world bearable. God will attend to the needs of his inner circles while neglecting the downtrodden.
The kingdom of Heaven will be yet another grade school. When one graduates from grade school, one rejoices, thinking that the world will be different, freer, more creative and harmonious; but then one discovers that the adult world is a rerun of adolescence.
The problem with the satanic rebellion is that it was nonviolent. We were basically cannon fodder. God is only God because he’s willing to solve disputes with his long-distance weaponry. As it is written (in John Milton’s “Lycidas”):
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
But actually I’m on the side of the speaker of the above lines, “The Pilot of the Galilean lake”; so, when you re-read that passage and sympathize with its subject, please know that I’m with you. It’s just what I meant above by the word downtrodden:
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed…
Mainly I’m against warfare: I’m sick of hearing about bloodshed—it makes me mad. Every problem, absolutely every problem can be solved without recourse to arms. It embarrasses me that humankind can’t get beyond this. It proves that believers do not believe in their God, as he says “vengeance is mine” but they keep taking vengeance for themselves.
Or at least I wish that warmongers would have to fight warmongers. Innocents and anyone uninterested should be exempt from the fray; instead, they’re front-and-center. I always admired Darth Vader for flying a spaceship with the rest of his troops. At least if you’re going to instigate combat, you yourself can lead the charge. What if the empty suits that declare war nowadays had to take their part on the battleground?
Last night I went to bed cursing Jehovah for exactly this reason. We need world peace and he keeps sending us war hawks. I hope my sweetheart isn’t worried (as I am) that I’m losing my mind—I was really cursing audibly, with deep feeling and the choicest obscenities.
I’m ashamed of myself, because blasphemy is evidence of belief. And I’d rather be on the other side. No matter how hard I try to eradicate it, it’s like a strand of super-bacteria: there’s always a speck of faith besmirching my soul. Maybe it’s true that one cannot lose one’s salvation. I’d gladly sell my own for a bout of good luck. Prometheus is said to have given us the divine fire, and for that I’m grateful; but he’s also rumored to have inculcated the human heart with HOPE—for this, even if I were Satan, I could never forgive him.
Instead of quoting Hebrews 11:1, which is currently open before me as a seductive temptation waiting to be copied, I will list a couple of the movies that I’ve watched lately. I bought the Collected Poems of Mark Strand, which we have been enjoying, and which is admittedly a book, not a movie—and by “we” I mean my sweetheart and myself. This book’s cover includes a drawing by Saul Steinberg, a detail of which is shown in the top half of this blog post’s binary collage (my picture’s bottom half is the top half of the “jewel case” of the DVD for Ben-Hur (1959); I chose to wed these elements because I happened to spot them next to each other on my coffee table).
Also, handwritten letters from every city on Earth have been pouring in, begging me to name the four films from the Lubitsch set that I mentioned in my previous post, so here they are:
- The Love Parade (1929);
- Monte Carlo (1930);
- The Smiling Lieutenant (1931);
- One Hour with You (1932).
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